The dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering premises, rose before me in the avenging coals.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 2. Pip is haunted by guilt after his pledge to Magwitch to steal food and a file for him from Joe and Mrs. Joe’s house, so the convict can saw through his leg irons. Personification is used to emphasize Pip’s shame, as he imagines his pledge rising up before him in the “avenging” coals of the fire in the Gargery home. Seeing himself as a criminal, he uses the language of criminal law to describe what he is about to do as “larceny.”