Sidney Ison AP English Mrs. Sutton November 24, 2015 Manipulative Mercy In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner, a corrupt, greedy man, uses his tale to manipulate his audience into repentance for his own profitable benefit. The Pardoner is known for cheating people and stealing their money through his selling of false relics. Through his tale, he manipulates his audience by inspiring repentance through his ability to evoke emotions of shame, guilt, and fear. These emotions are evoked by his being able to read and adjust to his audience, making his tale relatable to his audience by social status and monetary desires, and instilling in the pilgrims a fear of death and damnation. The prologue to the tale begins with the Pardoner …show more content…
In his tale, death can be portrayed as desirable. The Old man, otherwise known as Death himself, longs to die so that his days of suffering on earth may come to an end. As a Christian, death is viewed as a joyous thing because with death we are set apart from a world of misery and placed into heaven. Christians don’t fear death because they have something greater to look forward to. Death is a gateway to an eternal, everlasting utopia. However, the greed and selfishness of the rioters in the tale portray death to be undesirable. The rioters’ death implies that if you live a life in sin your sin will ultimately lead to your demise and eternal damnation. This forces the pilgrims to not only fear death, but to also fear of dying with an unpardoned soul. The Pardoner exploits this fear of being unprepared for death and uses it to urge the pilgrims to repent and give him their money. Immediately following the tale he says to the …show more content…
Alas mankind, how may it be that you art so false and unkind to your Creator, Who made you and redeemed you with His precious heart’s blood, alas! Now, good men, God forgive you of your trespasses and guard you from the sin of avarice. My holy pardon will cure you all… This dialogue evokes emotions of guilt and shame into the audience for having sinned against God and it aides in evoking the emotion of fear because the Pardoner makes the audience feel that if they do not repent they will not be forgiven and they will therefore die and suffer in hell. Medieval Catholics strongly believed in relics and pardons. They would be willing to buy them from the pardoner even if they knew he was a hypocrite because they took advantage of every opportunity for repentance. Knowing this, the Pardoner uses it to comfort the pilgrims by informing them that he can pardon their sins. He sells salvation to make it appear as a bargain to them. The Pardoner successfully utilizes his tale as an aide to manipulate his audience. He uses various techniques and strategies while addressing the audience and telling his tale in order to evoke emotions of shame, guilt, and
The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, reveals that religion does not make moral individuals. Chaucer goes on about telling how several of the characters on the pilgrimage had questionable lifestyles yet the characters were taking part in a religious journey. Religion can only influence a moral character but does not make its followers untouchable to the imperfections found on earth. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s character, The Pardoner, is a church official who altered the peoples mind by cheating the people into believing any nonsense.
Throughout the Pardoner’s Tale, greed is portrayed through the rioters and drives them to commit cruel deeds, which can be compared and related to the modern world. For example, the rioters were willing to turn on each of their partners just to receive more wealth. The old man directed the rioters to a grove, where he claims he left death under an oak
The presence of greed utilized by Chaucer in the Pardoner’s tale presents satire as his character is meant to be honorable, yet, behind the scenes is actually the most unethical one. The first example the audience is shown of this fraud is as the pardoner explains his motives, when he states, “Of avarice and of swich cursednesse/ Is al my prechyng, for to make hem free/ To yeven hir pens; and namely, unto me!/ For myn entente is nat but for to wynne,/ And no thyng for correccioun of synne” (114 – 118).
The character of the Pardoner in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is a complex one, full of contradictions and ambiguity. On one hand, he is described as a "noble ecclesiast" (Chaucer 691) and a skilled preacher, capable of moving his listeners to tears with his sermons. On the other hand, he is also a con artist, selling indulgences to people who believe that they can buy their way out of sin. This duality is central to the Pardoner's character, and it is the source of both his power and his corruption.
Each tale reveals moral lessons that attempt to prevent the reader from performing the same mistakes as the character. “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Reeve’s Tale” possess similar themes, distinct differences arise in the topics presented in each passage. “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Reeve’s Tale” illustrates how greed corrupts men, how sin leads to more sin, and how revenge drives men to undertake foolish feats. The differences between Chaucer’s tales allows for a humorous yet insightful
“All they needed was a series of impressive looking letters and a confident manner in making the appeal” (Chaucer role of pardoner).The pardoner would go on to using the same tricks on everyone they saw near them. All they did was pull out the papers with the bishop's signature and use a confident manner to impress them. When the people of the villages found out about the scamming they would just ignore the pardoner's when they saw them. The pardoner’s were looked down upon the people all over the villages and all across the land. They would just simply ignore them or just keep on walking if they happened to come across a pardoner.
The Pardoners Tale is a short story about three irresponsible men who caused nothing but trouble. The men would spend their nights drunk, nearly hopeless. " No, let me drink the alcohol of the grape"
In the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer utilizes the immoral character of the Pardoner to tell the utmost moral tale through satirical devices, presenting the true greed and hypocrisy that runs throughout the Church, regardless of it attempt to cover it. Chaucer introduces the hypocrisy within the Church through the characterization of the Pardoner, as he is explained to be a man with, “flattery and equal japes./He made the parson and the rest his apes” (“General Prologue” 607-608). “Japes” are tricks, alluding to the Pardoner’s relics, as they are fake; yet, the Pardoner still sells these relics to the Church members as genuine treasures. This creates dramatic irony, because the character of the Church body is unaware of the situation bestowed
This is ironic as the pardoner tries to get the group to give him money after telling them how it was all a scam, “My holy pardon saves you from all this:/ If you will offer nobles, sterlings, rings,/ Soome brooches, spoons or other silver things,”(906-908). While he knows that they know his faulsities he deliberately ignores this in order to try and proceed with his con. Another layer of irony in this is that he promises pureness while he himself is not pure, “If you will give. You’ll be as clean and pure/
The discovery of this gold corrupted the rioters and led them to their death. This story is ironic because the reader expects them to end up with the gold but they all die in the end. After the story, the Pardoner says "Your horse may throw you down and break your neck" implying that you will die if you do not buy his relics. This is ironic because the Pardoner is being greedy just after he told a story about how greed will get you killed. These examples of irony in the Pardoner's tale serve to demonstrate specific moral lessons.
Virtues are good qualities to strive for and try to model our daily lives after. The men in “The Pardoner” realized that greed is the root of all evil. The prologue told us “Radix Malorum Cupiditas” which means “greed is the root of all evil.” The 3 became greedy for what they believed was behind the tree, and this ended up turning
During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had a great amount of power because it was the only one at the time. As expressed in The Canterbury Tales, it even oversaw the court, so one could propose that the Church had exponential power. They seemed to rule the economy and hold a lot of land. Kings and queens were even preceded by the Church. Supposedly, in those times, the Catholic Church was a source of great hypocrisy or a good number of its people were.
Historically, the church in the medieval ages was corrupt and money hungry. Geoffrey Chaucer depicts this corruption through The Pardoner’s Tale. Specifically, the Pardoner was a prime example of abusing the power of the church, “I preach, as you have heard me say before/And tell a hundred lyin mockeries more”(Chaucer 142). The Pardoner admits that he follows the narrative of corruption in the
In “The Canterbury Tales” Chaucer illustrates the corruption of the church through the religious characters in both the tales and the prologue and their obsession with money. Illustrating the fact that medieval England, the church had a big impact on the lives of people due to them being able to “read” the bible. In many cases, this was uses to manipulate people into giving their money to church. Throughout the tales, people are shown to stand up to the church and beat them at their own game and this provides the ideal response to church corruption.
Reality in the Sarcasm (A Discussion on Chaucer 's usage of Satire to Meet His Agenda.) Geoffrey Chaucer was known as the father of the English Language. During Chaucer 's time in the late 1300’s, he had many issues with the state of how people lived. He used his writing to criticize the societal issues he noticed during his time.