The Pardoner's Tale Analysis

The Pardoner is a low level Church official selling pardons, papers signed by the church, that can be bought to excuse petty sins. In the prologue of the tale the while taking a drink of wine the Pardoner talks about how the passages he takes from town to town and specifically about how the pardons he sells along with relics that claim to have powers of redemption and salvation are all indeed fake and just for money. The Pardoner cares very little about the lives and spirits of his customers, and his only concern is himself. Right before he begins he informs readers that the tale is about to be told is about greed and selfishness in addition to something he uses to increase sales.
Readers are introduced to three drunken men who are on the the hunt for death who had just killed one of their close friends. Motivated by their …show more content…
The three men face an old man who happens to know exactly where death is “hiding”. The old man informs the drunken travelers that Death is currently under a tree in the woods. Hungry for a kill the men stumble on their way. They soon find the tree and under it lays piles of gold. At that point they completely forget what they set out to accomplish and shift focus on how to successfully acquire the gold for themselves. They decide to wait till nightfall so there would be no sighting of the crime in their small town. With the couple hours of downtime they have before dusk one of the men is sent off to buy drinks to celebrate their new wealth. As soon as the man exits the two men who are left plot to kill the first man when he returns to obtain more gold for themselves. The tale then follows the first man who went off for the celebratory drinks. He ironically also has a plan to kill the two men in order to hoard all the treasure for himself. After buying the drinks he enters a shop