Examples Of Personification In The Pardoner's Tale

Chaucer’s Use of Irony and Personification Geoffrey Chaucer has a crater on the moon named after him. Here on Earth, he’s most famous for the Canterbury Tales. One of the best known stories in the collection is “The Pardoner’s Tale.” One reason it is so popular is because Chaucer uses personification and irony throughout the tale. Death is personified by every character in the story. Personification is when a writer gives human qualities to nonhuman things. The first example of personification occurs when the tavern knave describes the death of their friend to the three rioters. He says, “There came a privy thief, they call him Death… He speared him through the heart, he never stirred.” (Chaucer, ll. 67-69) By saying that, he was referring to death as a human that killed his friend. The next

I’ll search for him…and we will kill this traitor Death, I say!” (Chaucer, ll. 85-93) The rioters wanted to search for Death and kill him. Another time when Death was personified was when the rioters came across an old man that told them, “Well sirs, if it be your design to find out Death, turn up his crooked way towards that grove, I left him there today under a tree, and there you’ll find him waiting.” (Chaucer, ll. 154-1588) Chaucer also uses irony in the story. Situational irony occurs when someone does the opposite of what they are expected to do. An example of situational irony is how the rioters say they are going out to kill Death and Death killed them instead. Another example of situational irony is when the rioters vow to be brothers and protect each other and they all kill each other in the end. The rioters say, “The three of us together now, hold up your hands like me, and we’ll be brothers in this affair, and each