The Pardoner's Tale

The world is full of hypocrites and in the story “The Pardoner’s Tale”, Chaucer writes about a man who is living a life of sin. The Pardoner’s tale is an ipologia of a pardoner who has the power from the church to forgive others for their sins but makes a living out of lying and tricking his audience. Throughout the Pardoner’s Tale he preaches about greed, drinking, blasphemy, and gambling but in the Pardoner’s Prologue he admits to committing these sins himself. The pardoner is really just a 14th century con artist who makes a living by his own hypocrisy.


In the Pardoner’s Tale the pardoner condemns people who drink and says, “Witness the Bible, which is most express/That lust is bred of wine and drunkenness” (263). He denounces drinkers and the evils they create, but in his prologue he states, “No, let me drink the liquor of the grape…Now as I’ve drunk a draught of corn-ripe ale” (262). The pardoner admits to drinking but later preaches against it, his hypocrisy knows no bounds as he makes others feel guilty for something that he himself does, after all, isn’t he telling the story while inside a bar. As a church appointed pardoner he is responsible to set a certain example for those who look to him for guidance but still he lives his greed controlled life.


The pardoner teaches about gluttony and greed, and the evils that befall it, but in his prologue he contradicts his teachings many times. In his story he tells about three men





who go searching for death and finding a pile of gold, in the end the gold ended up destroying them all. He taught of how their greed killed them all but in his prologue he admits to lying and making his living off greed, “But let me briefly make my purpose plain; /I preach for nothing but for greed of gain…And thus I preach against the very vice/I make my living out of – Avarice” (261). He comes out and admits that the only reason he preaches is to become a wealthy man, he doesn’t care about the...