The Moral Corruption In The Pardoner's Tale

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Often throughout daily life, people will encounter others that they dislike because they behave in a hypocritical manner. This notion is reflected in literature, even in older stories. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a book from the medieval time period, that still reflects this occurrence, mainly through the embedded story, “The Pardoner’s Tale”. Chaucer sets the hypocritical person to be the Pardoner in that tale, and his hypocritical actions are evident by the story he tells. The Pardoner is just as morally bad a human being as the men he describes in his story, which would depict the The Pardoner tells a tale of three men who have clear moral corruption. The three men are notified that an old friend of theirs died the night …show more content…
Even if they are drunk, it is not necessarily guaranteed that they would behave in an opposite manner when sober. Chaucer sets up these characters to seem as if they hold these noble ideas, indicating that they retain a high moral stature. However, later in the story, they meet a mysterious man who talks with them about his woes, and then “points” them to where Death might be. When they reached the location, “No longer was it Death those fellows sought” (263) as they set their eyes on “[golden] florins so beautiful and bright” (253). The minds of these men have changed from the noble purpose of supporting their friend to the selfish purpose of enjoying their wealth. The selfishness of the purpose is amplified because in addition to the purpose itself, it was doing the already selfish purpose instead of a noble purpose. Later, two of the men plot to put their “dagger through his [the third man’s] back” (254) so they could divide the wealth among the two of them instead of the three of them so each man gets more. This packs a double immoral punch: they want to go

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