Essay on Summary and Analysis of The Pardoners Tale

Summary and Analysis of The Pardoners Tale (The Canterbury Tales) Prologue to the Pardoners Tale: The Host thinks that the cause of Virginias death in the previous tale was her beauty. To counter the sadness of the tale, the Host suggests that the Pardoner tell a lighter tale. The Pardoner delays, for he wants to finish his meal, but says that he shall tell a moral tale. He says that he will tell a tale with this moral: the love of money is the root of all evil. He claims that during his sermons he shows useless trifles that he passes off as saints relics. He proudly tells about how he defrauds people who believed they have sinned. He states explicitly that his goal is not to save people from sin, but to gain money from them. The†¦show more content†¦Although he is one of the most developed characters, he is the character perhaps most defined by his profession. The Pardoner has substituted a system of values with a rote performance, which conforms to his profession, which substitutes a meaningless monetary transaction for penance for sin. The Pardoner therefore suggests a traditional Vice character who behaves strictly out of the most impure motives, but where he departs from vice characters, who shamelessly commit misdeeds for their own pleasure, is that he lacks the necessary amoral quality. The Pardoner is not a moral man, but he nevertheless has a moral system to which he most certainly does not adhere. The Pardoners Tale: There once lived in Flanders a group of three rioters who did nothing but engage in irresponsible and sinful behavior. They were blasphemous drunkards who, while in a tavern one night, witnessed men carrying a corpse to its grave. A boy told the rioters that the dead man was one of their friends, slain by an unseen thief called Death. They remark that Death has slain thousands, and vow to slay Death themselves. The three drunken men go off to find Death, but only come across an ancient man shrouded in robes. He claims that Death will not take him, and says that they can find Death underneath a nearby oak tree. When they found the tree they only found bushels of gold. They decide to take the treasure and divide it evenly, but realize that if they immediate wentShow MoreRelatedSniper and How Much Land Does Man Require5559 Words   |  23 Pagesones used in Chaucer’s â€Å"The Pardoner’s Tale.†Ã‚   The writing style of Tolstoy is reminiscent of Chaucer’s style. Both Chaucer and Tolstoy use apostrophe, where a belief or idea is portrayed as a character. In â€Å"The Pardoner’s Tale† death is a character. â€Å"There came a privy thief, they call him Death.† Tolstoy’s â€Å"How Much Land Does a Man Need?† has the devil as a character. â€Å"But the Devil sitting behind the stove had heard everything.†Ã‚   Chaucer’s â€Å"The Pardoner’s Tale† and Tolstoy’s â€Å"How Much LandRead MoreFigurative Language and the Canterbury Tales13472 Words   |  54 Pagesones. Often this term is used interchangeably with both the literary technique and the larger story itself that contains the smaller ones, which are called framed narratives or embedded narratives. The most famous example is Chaucers Canterbury Tales, in which the overarching frame narrative is the story of a band of pilgrims traveling to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. The band passes the time in a storytelling contest. The framed narratives are the individual stories told by the