"The Pardoners' Tale"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines "The Pardoners' Tale" from Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," about three drunkards, very unrepentant, who decide that they themselves will slay Death in exchange for all of those that he has taken for himself. It provides a brief synopsis of the plot and analyzes the last passage at the end of the tale in depth. It shows how the Pardoner often steps in to stop the flow of the story to give a sermon on one point or another and so to remind his listeners of his own godliness. It evaluates how "The Pardoner's Tale" is perhaps of all of the tales the most direct expression of the narrator's own beliefs and preferences since the narrator uses an explicitly moralistic story for the purpose of deriving a specific response from the listeners.

From the Paper:

"The pardoner tells his listeners a story that has as its only aim the condemnation of greed (along with the other vices that the three originally demonstrate). And yet, of course, the pardoner is only pretending (in one of the grossest examples of hypocrisy in all of these tales) to decry greed. By condemning the sin of avarice, the Pardoner is in fact trying to induce his fellow travelers to pay him to absolve them of their sins. In effect he is simply protesting too much: By decrying greed he hopes to deflect the pilgrims' attention from his own greed."

More papers on "The Pardoners' Tale":

• Persuasive Essay # 91974 : "'The Canterbury Tales'"
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• Analytical Essay # 86897 : "The Canterbury Tales"

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