Wednesday, December 2, 2009

essential question 6

What parallels can be drawn between the Pardoner's Prologue and his tale? How is this tale different from the other two that we have studied? Think in regards to the Pardoner's voice and how Chaucer's style changes.

A parallel that can be drawn between the pardoner's prologue and tale is that both exemplify sin by showing what should not be done. Both stories give examples of people who sin. The pardoner and the three boys are representations of what people should not do in order to avoid sin. The pardoner being a priest of the church is charged with defining sin which he does by being a living example of a sinner: "I preach against the very vice I make my own living out of"(243). In his story the characters also live out these sins which he shows ends badly for them through their deaths. Also we see that in both stories that all their characters sins stem from good intentions that morph into their immoral deeds. The priest is charged with guiding people to living right but he now only serves to satisfy his own vices "Believe me, many a sermon or devotive exordium issues from an evil motive" (243). And the characters from his tale also had good intentions of enacting justice but it morphed into avarice. The planned to "be brothers in this affair [...] [to do] away with [Death] [...]" (251) but "no longer was it Death those fellows sought" (253); they instead only acted with their greedy thoughts.