Examples Of Greed In The Pardoner's Tale

In the Canterbury Tales, the “Pardoner’s Tale” is a tale, Chaucer demonstrates the idea that greed can make people do awful things that they thought they would never do. In the tale, three rioters turn on one another when gold gets involved. Throughout the reading, the reader learns that Pardoner himself is greedy. The tale signifies how money is the root of all evil.
At the beginning of the tale, the three rioters find out one of their friends had died. They find out “Death” is the one who killed him and they make a promise to stick together and kill Death. When they go out looking for death, they come across piles of gold underneath a tree. The youngest rioter gets sent into town to get supplies for them to last all night. While he was in town, the other two rioters plan to kill him to take the gold for themselves. In the text it states, “You know our friend has gone to get supplies and here’s a lot of gold that is to be divided equally amongst us three. Nevertheless, if I could shape things thus so that we shared it out –the two of us– wouldn’t you take it as a friendly act?” (Chaucer 147). Little did they know the youngest rioter was out buying poison to kill the other two to keep the gold for him. The gold caused them all to turn on one another and break their promise with one another. All because the three

A pardoner is a person who is supposed to raise money for the church. In the tale, the Pardoner says, “Dearly beloved, God forgive your sin And keep you from the Vice of avarice! My holy pardon frees you all of this.” (Chaucer 150). He tells the listeners that if they buy the pardons, God will forgive all their sins. The Pardoner is a hypocrite because he does not practice what he preaches. He preaches to donate to the church and that people are greedy when realistically he is greedy himself because he wants to keep the