Attention Getter In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

[attention getter]. Geoffrey Chaucer, in his novel The Canterbury Tales, deals with many tales of medieval life and morals. The writing follows a large group of pilgrims who have all been challenged to tell their best tale, one that teaches a valuable lesson, on the journey to Canterbury. Two of the stories told, “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, make their points in very notable ways. The Pardoner tells a story of three men who come to pay for indulging in the sin of greed, while the Wife of Bath recounts a story of questionable morality involving a knight struggling for redemption after breaking his code of honor. Though The Canterbury Tales presents two sound stories, “The Pardoner’s Tale” is clearly better story based on its adherence to the central plot, its use of personification, and its moral.

Firstly, “The Pardoner’s Tale” had fewer digressions from the main plot and thus remained more coherent throughout the telling. The Wife of Bath avoids the point of her story several times, most notably going off on an excessively long tangent about “The unhappy Midas [who] grew a splendid pair / Of ass’s ears” (188) to demonstrate

While undeniably a person in the modern age would find it easier to relate to a story of rape, all people deal with greed, and all people must face the consequences of their actions. What sort of justice is it when the rapist is pleasured to live “ever after to the end / In perfect bliss” (196)? In a true assault, no victim would be satisfied knowing their attacker paid no price. The men in “The Pardoner’s Tale” deal with murder, this is true, but the core of the conflict in the story is greed, a universally understood concept, and the story clearly demonstrates them getting precisely what they deserved for indulging in it so