The use of irony and personification are techniques that writers often use that may take only a few paragraphs or 5 pages to describe. An event that is frequently used in these short stories to these two methods is death. "The Pardoners Tale", "The Masque of the Red Death", and "Appointment in Samarra" are all examples of when an author uses death to fill the reader with wonder and surprise. In the short story "The Pardoners …showed first 75 words of 628 total…

…showed last 75 words of 628 total…Prospero along with some others lock themselves in his castle. They are killed by the death even though there is no way of anything getting to them. In this story the reader thinks that there is no way Prospero will die but yet he does and no one knows why. All three of these stories show Irony in different ways. Although they are in different forms the Irony still draws the interest of the reader.