The Pardoners Tale
The Pardoner’s Tale1216 Literature Essay
Geoffrey Chaucers’ “The Pardoner’s Tale” is a good example of a creative work that uses an exemplum. The tale taught that good greed was the root of all evil, and betrayal was wrong. What really made this tale a great one was Chaucer’s use of symbolism to get his points across?
The story has three rioters that swear brotherhood in Christ to each other, making that the ideal unselfish relationship. Their mission is to find death, and make him stop killing people. So, these three “smart” men decide that it can’t be that much hard to find death. Well, they do catch up with an old man that represents death in the story, and the old man tells them that they will find what they are looking for under the oak tree. At the tree the men find a treasure chest full of money that could have had totaled up to eight bushels. “ What was that foolish old man thinking?” They must ask themselves, “ Here’s the good life, not death.” Ironically the treasure is what leads all three men to...
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