The Pardoner's Tale

The Pardoner in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales: “The Pardoner’s Tale” is a lot like many people we know today. He is that person that is quick to tell someone they are doing something wrong; whereas in return he is just as guilty. How is one supposed to obey and learn from someone who is conducted from pure evil and has no concern of their well-being? Chaucer gave the Pardoner very bad personality traits that mold the type of person he is from the very beginning. The Pardoner is portrayed throughout this tale as a very dirty and evil man. The Pardoner in “The Pardoner’s Tale” fails to exemplify what he preaches and uses it in his advantage by means of taking great amounts of money from all the people that listen to his tales, especially …show more content…
In fact, it was normal for people in the medieval time period to sell indulgences for forgiveness of their sins. He is to be seen as a religious figure where he has a lot of pull on his congregation and “[…] practically baits the pilgrims with his abilities as a storyteller […]” (Cespedes 1). The pilgrims have an option to feel the need to listen to the Pardoner, or not. He is so intelligent and good with his words he can con them out of their money. By saying this it shows that he is a good preacher and he does a good job at getting his word across, but he is a terrible teacher of God’s word. The Pardoner tries to sell his “fake” relics and pardons to the pilgrims and he knew the pilgrims had no idea. When the Pardoner sways his fake pardons on to different people this should be the first sign that would signal that one should look deeper in his teachings and as a person in …show more content…
This is a biblical idea meaning greed is the root of all evil, which comes from the Book of 1 Timothy. Every time the Pardoner was asked to speak somewhere this was always his go to sermon. Greed is many times recognized as one of the seven deadly sins. Even though shown as one of the deadly sins, it is very common. People are so caught up with making money; many will go great lengths to get a dollar. The Pardoner is a prime example of this. He will go to dishonorable measures just for a little change in their pocket. “Now the connection between the sentence and the plight of the greedy "riotoures thre" of the tale is clear and, insofar as the Pardoner himself is a study in cupidinous evil […]” (Cespedes 2). The ironic element of his idea that greed is the root of all evil; he is a delinquent of just that. (Why is this