Canterbury Tales commentary

Emiliano Morales

Ms. Peifer

English 10 IB

1/13/11

The Pardoner’s Tale

            The Pardoner is a frank person who preaches against greed but is a victim of greed himself. He is undaunted by his hypocrisy and instead aims at making others better than himself. His story relates to his common theme that money is the root of all evil and is a fanciful story on morals.

            The Pardoner is a more intense character than the others in the fact that he admits to sins of gluttony and greed. “All my preaching is about avarice and such cursed sins, in order to make them give freely of their pennies—namely to me; for my intention is to win money, not at all to cast out sins.” (72-76). He is a very hypocritical person and is perversely proud of what he does, and how he cares only for money and not peoples souls. His sermons are to teach people the right way in life, but his true intention is to have personal gain.

            The theme of his story is Radix malorum est cupiditas, which is that money is the root of all evil. The symbolism of the tale is very straight forward to the meaning. When the men see the gold, they each plot a way to kill the others and take the gold for themselves. They each carry out their plan and in the end, they die. Greed made them turn on each other and commit murder, and also killed them so that no one could have the gold. The Pardoner uses this tale to point flaws in people but, as he told the rest of the pilgrims, he is as guilty of these crimes as the characters in the story.

            Each of Chaucer’s tales tells a moral of some kind, and the Pardoner’s Tale is no different. The clear moral is evident, but he added the personality of the Pardoner to the narration. Where the Pardoner speaks well, he isn’t truthful to his words and this use of a supposedly “pious” man is Chaucer’s way of questioning society. This story begs the question of how people lie for their own gain, and if people stay true to their morals and do as they preach.