What is the purpose of the personification here?:
"Going on was not altogether easy. They had packs to carry, and the bushes and brambles were reluctant to let them through."
- to give more to the action by creating an antagonist in the passive nature of the plants?
>give more to the action
give more to the protagonists being together. There can be no "together" as long as there's no "against"
>>9209064
It tries to make a natural passivity a rational one.
>>9209064
to characterize their own misgivings, or dark reluctance to continue on