YOU WERE LOOKING FOR: The Pardoner's Tale Answers
The Pardoner tells us that all he cares about in life is the gain of money greed , but he preaches a tale against the evils of greed. In this regard, what is the main theme of the Pardoner's Tale? To expand on the theme "greed is the root of all...
As a demonstration, he tells a parable about three sinners who self-destruct through greed. In the story, Death is personified and symbolizes mortal sin. The poor old man keeps asking for death to take him, but he never does. What do you think the...
He says that greed over things like money is an evil thing, and his audience should give him large amounts of money so he can pardon them from their sins. Who murdered the man and how Pardoner's Tale? The rioters hear a bell signalling a burial; their friend has been killed by a "privee theef" known as Death, who has also killed a thousand others. The men set out to avenge them and kill Death. An old man they brusquely query tells them that he has asked Death to take him but has failed. Why did the Pardoner tell his tale? Why does the Pardoner tell his moral stories? Explain how his motive is ironic, or different from what you might have expected. The Pardoner tells his moral stories not to help sinners but to help himself.
He's greedy and wishes to scare people into buying his indulgences and relics. What happen to the three rioters at the end of the Pardoner's Tale? The Three Rioters see a corpse go by one day and learn that it is the body of a friend of theirs, killed by Death. After recalling all of the deaths Death has caused throughout the countryside, the Rioters swear a pact of brotherhood and make a plan to seek out and kill Death.
How many layers of irony are in the Pardoner's Tale? First he makes it clear that he preaches against the love of money as being the root of all evil, but he preaches only for gain, not out of concern for people's souls. This is ironic on three levels: first, that he would openly reveal his own sinful motives; second, that he preaches most against the vice.
The frame narrative for the Tales is that each story is being told as part of a storytelling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. For this tale, Chaucer selected a surprisingly universal story that, unbeknownst to him, originated in Buddhist India in the fourth- or third-century BCE, eventually spread through the Muslim world to Christendom, reached as far as sub-Saharan Africa, and eventually came to Hollywood, where it was retold as the classic John Huston movie starring Humphrey Bogart, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
The story typically involves two or more people who come upon a treasure, cannot bring themselves to divide it equally, and end up simultaneously killing each other. There is an obvious moral, which is that greed leads to conflict, which leads to death. This is the character of the Pardoner. This practice, which eventually helped to provoke the Protestant Reformation, was an obvious source of various corruptions both prohibited and sanctioned by the Church. We know little of the Pardoner prior to his tale. He has a strangely feminine appearance like David Bowie circa Diamond Dogs, I imagine , and he was apparently impressed by the debunking approach taken by another pilgrim, the Wife of Bath whose theme was the battle of the sexes , leading him to exclaim that he would take her for his wife.
The Pardoner starts by openly boasting about his fraud: For my intent is but only to win And nothing for the correction of sin. All translations are my own. In addition to skimming money off the top of his pardon business, he boasts about making a brisk trade in selling fraudulent relics, supposed bones of saints and whatnot, which were thought to possess magical healing qualities. Even as he admits to loving debauched drinking and carousing, he claims his homilies inspire people to give up their money, and that his theme is always that greed is the root of all evils: Thus I preach against that very same vice Which I practice, and that is avarice.
He is like a virus to altruism, hijacking it to his own ends. The tale itself is set in Flanders, then one of the richest and most commercially advanced countries in Europe, and opens with three riotous men in an unhallowed tavern who are drinking, gambling, whoring, and making blasphemous oaths. Taking this personification literally, the three men make an oath to kill Death. Lo how I vanish, flesh, and blood, and skin! Offended, the old man points them up a crooked path toward a tree, saying Death can be found there. Under the tree, they discover a massive treasure of Florentine gold coins. They agree to split it equally, but realize if they brought it back to town, they would be taken as thieves and hung, so they resolve to wait until cover of night to bring the treasure back home.
To hold them over, they decide to have one go back to town to get bread and wine again, a bizarre inversion, this time of the Eucharist. They draw straws to see who will go, and the youngest draws the shortest, so that he heads off into town. As soon as he is gone, the remaining two resolve to kill him when he comes back, so that they may split the treasure only between themselves. Unbeknownst to them, the youngest is also making plans, and while he buys bread and three bottles of wine, he also buys deadly poison that he puts in the two bottles he will give to his fellows. When the youngest returns to the treasure, the other two stab him. With his body lying dead on the ground, one of the killers grabs a bottle by chance, a poisoned one , drinks in celebration, and hands it to his accomplice, who drinks as well. They both immediately die. Wrapping up his tale, the Pardoner sermonizes as follows with what appears to be a rhetorical question that has often been interpreted, I think incorrectly, as an uncharacteristic outburst of faith: Alas, mankind, how can it ever be, That to your Creator, who your flesh wrought And, with His precious heart-blood, your soul bought, You are false and unnatural, alas?
Rubbing it in to the maximum extent, the Pardoner then begins needling his fellow pilgrims to buy his relics enshrined in glass, a mocking gesture in light of the fact that he just told them these relics are all fraudulent. He particularly focuses on Harry Bailly, the London tavern-keeper who first suggested having a storytelling contest, and who has been acting as a sort of leader throughout the pilgrimage. Ultimately, this outcome suggests, the only check on an evil man is force or humiliation, not conscience. Nevertheless, another pilgrim, the Knight, steps forward and asks them to reconcile, which they reluctantly do, giving each other a ceremonial kiss of peace. Mine is the drenching in the sea so wan; mine is the prison of darkest black coke; Mine is the strangling and hanging by throat; The murmur of the churls soon rebelling, The grumbling, and the secret poisoning; I do vengeance and ply full correction, While I dwell in the sign of the Lion.
Perhaps Chaucer, who saw society nearly collapse as a six-year-old during the Black Plague, which was symbolized at the time as Death riding a horse just like Death in the tale , learned something from the Pardoner as well. While I do not think Chaucer agreed with the Pardoner about God, morality, or human nature, I do believe that, like Plato with regard to Callicles in the Gorgias , Chaucer wanted to explore the Pardoner's worldview, to understand it from the inside out, and to weigh it for what it was worth. At the very least, it would seem that Chaucer had grave misgivings about the power of conscience to provide direction or instill self-control, and wanted to point toward a new, more grounded if less comforting view of human nature. Dan Johnson is an attorney in New York. Follow him on Twitter at DAJchicago.
Summary Analysis In Flanders, there were three young men who loved to amuse themselves by singing, reveling, and drinking. The Pardoner launches into a long criticism about their sinful lives, citing many Biblical examples as support. First, he denounces their gluttony, which he says caused the fall of Man. He next decries their drunkenness, which makes men witless and lecherous. He then denounces their gambling: dice, he says, are the mothers of lies. The Pardoner criticizes the swearing of false oaths, saying that cursing and perjury are wretched.
Although the Pardoner himself hardly leads a spotless life, he bashes the protagonists of his tale for their sinful ways, spelling out all the various reasons why gluttony, drunkenness, gambling, and cursing are so terrible. He himself is a hypocrite, but he uses his Tale as a moral example. Active Themes Finally, after his long tirade, the Pardoner returns to the three young rioters, who are drinking at a tavern when they hear the bell signaling the sound of a passing coffin. A servant tells them that the dead man was a friend of the revelers who had been stabbed in the night by a thief called Death.
The revelers declare that they will seek and slay this false traitor Death. They pledge to be true to each other as brothers in this quest. Rather than mourning their friend, they rashly seek their own glory. Although they here pledge that they will be brothers in their quest, as the story progresses it doesn't take much to dissolve their own bond. Active Themes The revelers meet an old man in rags who says that he must wander the earth restlessly because Death will not take his life. He makes a move to leave, but the rioters demand that he tell them where they can find Death. The old man says that he has just left Death a moment ago sitting under an oak tree. The youths run down the crooked path to the tree, where they find not Death but eight bushels of gold. The old man in rags is a typical character in a parable, a prophet-like figure who gives the travelers information that turns out to be dangerous. Instead of the figure of Death that they expect to find, the three revelers find bushels of gold that ultimately lead them to their deaths through their greed.
Active Themes The worst of the rioters speaks first, saying that this is their lucky day, but if they take the treasure down to the town by daylight, they will be accused as thieves, and therefore they must wait for nightfall to move the gold. He proposes that they draw straws, and whichever one gets the short straw must go to town to get food and drink so they can wait out the day. The revelers immediately decide to keep the treasure for themselves rather than try to find out if it belongs to anyone, and this first greedy action sets off a chain reaction of escalating greed. Download The youngest draws the short straw and leaves. While he is away, the other two rioters plot to kill the third when he returns so that the two of them will each get a bigger share of the treasure. Meanwhile, the youngest decides to poison the other two revelers so that he can keep all the money for himself.
He goes to an apothecary, buys the strongest poison available, and pours it into two bottles, keeping a third clean for himself. A third of the treasure is not enough for the rioters: even though the third will make each of them far richer than he was before, they each immediately see ways to become richer still. The bonds of brotherhood that they swore to each other disappear in the face of their greed. Active Themes When the youngest reveler returns, the two others slay him.
Then, celebrating, they drink the poisoned wine. Thus, all three of the revelers die. Everyone must therefore beware sins, says the Pardoner, especially greed, which is the root of all evils. All of the rioters meet their demise due to their gluttonous, avaricious ways, giving the Pardoner the chance to remind the listeners and reader yet again that greed is the root of all evils. Active Themes The Pardoner shows his relics and pardons to the pilgrims and asks for contributions, even though he has just admitted that they are all fakes.
The Knight must step in to resolve the conflict, telling the Host and the Pardoner to kiss and make up. The pardoner is a complicated character—the morals spouting and yet gleefully immoral man of the church. And as such it speaks volumes about the church that such a man would be associated with it. Active Themes.
What sort of story do the other pilgrims ask for instead? Answers: The Host asks for a merry story, because the Pardoner comes right after the Physician, whose tale involves the death of a young girl whose beauty led to a tragic series of events that ended in her death, at the hands of her father. The other pilgrims would rather hear a moral tale than a happy one.
The Prologue What is the topic of every sermon that the Pardoner preaches? What does the Pardoner get out after every sermon? Why is the answer to 2 an example of irony? The relics are not genuine — they are fake. The Pardoner enjoys the financial rewards that preaching has brought him. Why do the three youths decide to find Death and kill him? Who do you think the old man is that the youths meet while looking for Death? When the old man sends the youths to a particular tree, what do they find under it? The three rioters each plan murder.
How do these plans work? What is the overall lesson of the story, according to the Pardoner? Answers The four vices are gluttony, gambling, intoxication, and swearing. Interestingly the Pardoner argues that God hates swearing more than murder, because He forbade swearing in the second commandment, above the ban on murder. The young men hear that an old friend of theirs had been killed by Death. Emboldened by anger and alcohol, they decide to go out and find Death, to kill him. The old man sends the boys to a tree with eight bushels of gold under it — more than they could have carried away. The three youths realize they need the cover of night to carry the gold away without being accused of theft. In the meantime, they send the youngest of the three to town to get bread and wine.
The two who stay back plan to kill the youngest when he returns; the youngest poisons two of the three bottles of wine, thinking that he can get all of the treasure himself without the other two to share with. The two jump the youngest when he returns, killing him. However, they pick up poisoned wine, and all three of them end up dying together. According to the Pardoner, the lesson of his tale is that avarice, or greed, is a sin that can easily lead to violence and destruction.
First, the Pardoner says, he explains where has come from, and shows his papal bulls, indulgences, and glass cases crammed full of rags and bones, which he claims to the congregation, at least are holy relics with magical properties. Yet, although he knows he is guilty of the sin, he can still make other people turn away from it. He will not, he says, work with hands and make baskets, but get money, wool, cheese and wheat for himself, even if it is from the poorest page or poorest widow in a village. The Pardoner's Tale There once lived in Flanders a company of three rioters who did nothing but engage in irresponsible and sinful behavior. At this point, the narrator interrupts the tale itself to launch a lengthy diatribe against drunkenness - mentioning Herod, Seneca, Adam, Sampson, Attila the Hun and St. Paul as either sources or famed drunkards.
The three drunkards were in a tavern one night, and, hearing a bell ring, looked outside to see men carrying a corpse to its grave. One of them called to his slave to go and ask who the corpse was: he was told by a boy that the corpse was an old fellow whose heart was smashed in two by a secret thief called Death. When they had gone not even half a mile, they met an old, poor man at a style, who greeted them courteously. The proudest of the drunkards responded rudely, asking the man why he was still alive at such a ripe age.
The old man answered that he was alive, because he could not find anyone who would exchange their youth for his age - and, although he knocked on the ground, begging it to let him in, he still did not die. Moreover, the old man added, it was not courteous of the drunkards to speak so rudely to an old man. One of the other drunkards responded still more rudely that the old man was to tell them where Death was, or regret not telling them dearly. The old man, still polite, told the drunkards they could find Death up the crooked way and underneath an oak tree. The drunkards ran until they came to the tree, and, underneath it, they found eight bushels of gold coins.
The worst one of them spoke first, arguing that Fortune had given them the treasure to live their life in happiness - but realizing that they could not carry the gold home without people seeing them and thinking them thieves. Therefore, he suggested, they should draw lots, and one of them should run back to the town to fetch bread and wine, while the other two protected the treasure. Then, at night, they could agree where to take the treasure and carry it safety. This was agreed, and lots were drawn: the youngest of them was picked to go to the town.
However, as soon as he had gone to the town, the two remaining drunkards plotted amongst themselves to stab him upon his return, and then split the gold between them. While he was in the town, the youngest thought of the beauty of the gold coins, and decided to buy some poison in order to kill the other two, keeping the gold for himself.
Exactly as the other two had planned it, it befell. They killed him on his return, and sat down to enjoy the wine before burying his body — and, as it happened, drank the poison and died. The Pardoner is so angry with this response, he cannot speak a word, and, just in time, the Knight steps in, bringing the Pardoner and the Host together and making them again friends. This done, the company continues on its way. Analysis The Pardoner has — in recent years — become one of the most critically discussed of the Canterbury pilgrims. His tale is in many ways the exemplar of the contradiction which the structure of the Tales themselves can so easily exploit, and a good touchstone for highlighting precisely how Chaucer can complicate an issue without ever giving his own opinion. Thus the Pardoner embodies precisely the textual conundrum of the Tales themselves - he utters words which have absolutely no correlation with his actions. His voice, in other words, is entirely at odds with his behavior.
How far, in other words, can the teller negate his own moral? Yet the real problem is that the Pardoner is a successful preacher, and his profits point to several people who do learn from his speeches and repent their sin. His Tale too is an accurate demonstration of the way greed and avarice lead to evil. Hollow execution nevertheless, the Pardoner is an excellent preacher against greed. His voice, in short, operates regardless of his actions. Hollow sentiments produce real results. This is also reflected in the imagery of the tale itself.
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