Sherika Jiang Dr. S-R Foundations of Literature 23 January 2023 Pardoner’s Greed In “The Pardoner’s Tale” from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), the pardoner’s greedy methods of money-making by manipulating people's emotions often leads to the customer falling for his scam revealing the social problem of people's greed for money can cause society to not function correctly when everyone is only looking out for themselves. As a salesman, the pardoner uses fake relics to sell to his Christian customers.
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.
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.
“Radix malorum est cupiditas” translated from Latin into “Greed is the root of all evil.” (Chaucer 125) Throughout the Pardoner’s Tale, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, this is the story of three men that treat people lower than them and they end up finding a whole pile of gold, but they end up killing each other to get the gold to themselves. The entirety of the three men end up dead and not even one gets the gold. There are many topics involving greed, this essay will involve what it is about, the dangers, and the benefits of controlling the desire to gain.
As a French Proverb states, “greedy eaters dig their graves with their teeth”. People are consumed with wanting more and more rather than knowing what they need in life. The human race constantly carries on this pattern of greed. A theme of greed is shown in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
There is enough in the world for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed”(Frank Buchman). This quote expresses the pardoner’s character as greed. Chaucer is the father of English poetry. Canterbury tales is where a social occasion of travelers who are prompting to tell four stories during their travel. One of the traveler is Pardoner.
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 Canterbury Tales depicts the differing levels of society of the Medieval period. The tales with the most notable differences are “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Reeve’s Tale.” The former story is about three men consumed by greed, which ultimately leads them to their h. The latter tale is about two clerks who seek revenge on a miller who steals grain from their school. “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Reeve’s Tale” drastically differ in their moral themes that depict revenge, sin, and greed. “The Pardoner’s Tale” illustrates the effects of revenge, sin, and greed.
Of all intelligence and intuition attributed to man, it is not enough to overcome the characteristics that will lead to the downfall of our own kind. Such characteristics take root in man and protrude out of him no matter how hard he tries to deny their presence. Man himself is aware of these characteristics and they play a part on all forms of entertainment, and fuel almost all actions made by man. In “The Pardoner’s Tale” written by Chaucer, the theme of pride and greed leading to demise is prominent.
Greed is one of the worst things a person can have in his or her characteristics during the Middle Ages. The representation of being greedy made you get looked upon by the people in many bad ways. A good example of this is “The Pardoner's Tale” by Geoffrey Chaucer. “The Pardoner's Tale” shows that the idea of not being greedy in order to enhance the characterization of the Pardoner, as he used the church to his advantage to earn money.
He does not take the measure to simply admit to additionally wanting money, rather, exploits his sole desire for wealth and fortune. This creates a situation of verbal irony, as his job consists of his preaching against greed driven by his own greed. Finally, Chaucer exemplifies the true greedy persona the Church withholds through the voice of the Pardoner stating he, “will preach and beg in sundry lands;/ I will not work and labour with my hands” (“Pardoner’s Prologue” 157-158). In case the audience was not already in light of the mask the church hides behind, the pardoner proves once his true greediness.
To fully appreciate the layers of irony in “The Pardoner’s Tale,” you must consider all types of irony. There are three types of irony: verbal irony is when something is said that contradicts the truth, or is the opposite of how the person speaking truly feels, situational irony is when events have an affect on a situation to make the outcome the opposite of what was expected, and dramatic irony is when the significance of actions and doings of the characters in a story are obvious but the characters within the story remain oblivious. Within “The Pardoner's Tale” in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, all types of irony are used throughout the story in order to show society uses deliberate ignorance to justify its wrong doings. Particularly,
There are many types of themes in the pardoner tales. The most popular theme I decided to use are class, lies, and religion. The reason I choose these three types of themes are because throughout the whole pardoner tales it shows his class, talks about his lies, and his religion. Heading 1
The gold coins symbolized greed and acted as their desire for wealth. When the youngest of them went back to town, the other two plotted to kill him to divide the coins equally: “Then all this money will be ours to spend,/ Divided equally of course, dear friend./
The epic simile following the falls of Troy and Thebes, together with the description of the Punic Wars, likens Custance's suffering to monumental events in Greco-Roman history: but, notably, all of them are decidedly irreligious and focus more pertinently on human suffering rather than divine providence. This is notable as the epic simile is included in the description of Custance bidding farewell to her father, using a variety of epic examples of families being forcibly torn apart by war and duty, and it is telling that the Man of Law does not include any Latin glosses of biblical texts in the same section to emphasise God's power and control over the ensuing events. Instead, there are numerous references to cosmological theories and treatises
