The Pardoner’s Tale

INTRODUCTION

The Host reacts to the Physician’s Tale.He is shocked at the death of the young Roman girl in the tale and asks the Pardoner to tell the group a merrier, farcical tale.

The Pardoner agrees and after drinking and eating something he begins to tell the moral story.

THE PROLOGUE

The Pardoner tells the other pilgrims about what he does for a living. He’s a church official who travels the countryside, selling pardons and showing off fake relics. He tells the listening pilgrims that what he cares about is money, not saving the souls of those he preaches to. He tells the others that he uses stories with morals to cheat people out of their money. The theme of this story is greed.

THE TALE

There is a group of three young Flemish man who spend their time drinking and reveling, indulging in all forms of excess. At this time The Pardoner start to criticize the vices that they practice. The first one is the gluttony which identifies as original sin in the garden of Eden. Subsequently, he criticizes drunkenness that makes a man seem mad and witless.

Next is gambling, the temptation that ruins men of power and wealth.

While they are drinking they hear a funeral knell. A man says that a friend of them was slain by a man called “Death”.

So, they decide to find and kill Death to avenge their friend and during the way they meet a old man who seems suffering and weak. He says that he has been waiting for Death to come and take him for some time. They ask to him where they can find this person  and the old man directs them into a grove, where he says he just left Death under an oak tree.

However, they don’t find Death but a large quantity of gold.

They undertand that if they want to bring the money home, they have to do it at night. So one of the three in the meantime goes to get bread and wine.

The two young men decide to kill the third friend to receive a bigger loot but also the boy with bread and wine is thinking about this. In fact he dicides to put the poison in the bottles of his two friends but upon his arrival the two hidden ones kill him before he could notice.

Both of them drink the two bottle of wine and a few minuts later they died next to their friend.

It’s an honor and advantage for the pilgrims to have a Pardoner on the pilgrimage, for he can absolve them of their sins in the event that anyone meets with an untimely death. So the Pardoner invites the pilgrims to step up and buy his relics or purchase a pardon to use along the way and he supposed Host to be the first one. The Host is not amused. He tells the Pardoner he’d like to cut his balls off and use them for relics. The Knight steps in and tells them to calm down, make up, and get on with their journey.

THE END