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Literary analysis everyday use
Literary analysis of two kinds
Literary analysis of two kinds
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Greed in “The Pardoner's Tale” Enron scandal The Pardoner's Tale is a story for the ages. It contains many morals and teachings, but the one outlined in this paper is greed. The Bible says this about greed, “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith, and pierced themselves with many a pang (Holy Bible 6:10).” Greed has been the downfall of many things in this world. The most apparent of these things though are companies. They often become corrupted through greed and only worry about themselves. There are many examples of this, but the most apparent is Enron. When compared with “The Pardoner's Tale” the similarities are apparent. There are three similarities in these …show more content…
In “The Pardoner's Tale” all of the men decided to kill the other. The two decided to stab the one and the one decided to poison the two. The executives of Enron were also killing friends. They were just killing the savings of his friends. The last of the similarities between these two tales is the karma-like endings. In the end all of the people in both tales got what they bargained for. In the tale, their deceit led to their own untimely deaths, although for the executives the punishment was not quite so rough. For most of them their lives were over. For a few, though, it was a second chance they happily took. In Webster's Universal Dictionary and Thesaurus, “greed” means, “An excessive desire, especially for food or wealth.” (224) These tales are truly similar to this definition. They really overlap in three places: money, deceit, and karma-like endings. You can trace all of these back to the greed of the main characters of The Pardoner's Tale and the executives of Enron. In The Pardoner's Tale the men killed each other off for a little more of a giant share of money. In the case of Enron the executives landed time in jail and ruined a lot of families lives to make people think they still had money. Greed has caused much trouble especially in these tales by hiding the flaws of the company and its real worth. Sure the men knew each other and were truly friends but, without the investors the executives would be nothing and that is a form of friendship all in its
“Money and sex motivate people, Andy. And money is the one thing that gets their hands off their dicks and into work” (Prebble, Act 1 Scene 5). And so with dicks and dollar bills flying all over the place, “Enron” by Lucy Prebble opens the curtain for us, the audience and participants of consumers, to look into the backstage of the notorious Enron collapse in 2001, revealing the discourse and bizarreness of the corporate culture. From the coexisting affair and competition between Skilling and Roe, to the hissing raptors eating up debt from the dark basement of Andy Fastow’s office, the darkest characters of Man are brought under examination and questioned with the unethical rise and the inevitable fall of Enron. With its plot rooted from a
A pardoner is a person that could relieve someone from their sins. In the case of the Pardoners Tale, the Pardoner expects money for relieving sinners from their sins and for telling a story. The pardoner in this tale is hypocritical, his scare tactics prove this. He says that greed over things like money is an evil thing, and his audience should give him large amounts of money so he can pardon them from their sins.
The aspect of greed shows itself as the heart of the many immoral acts committed by fictional characters and real people. From Adam and Eve’s betrayal to Macbeth’s collapse portrays what greed can produce as a result: destruction. Whether it destroys one’s health, it inherently portrays as a force to the path of corruption. The Pardoner, from The Canterbury Tales, defines greed’s purpose. This includes how greed pulls them to degeneration. No matter how subtle the fall, it still brings to distasteful events for the characters from The Importance of Being Earnest. Although the characters differ, their obsessions with their immoral acts decline their personalities. Thus, the authors portray the characters’ greed, as a pernicious force that drives
Despite having been set far apart in eras, progressing differently, being under different circumstances, and having separate motivations, the moral of both stories are the same. Life necessitates change, and in the end both men must let go of the past. The ideals and priorities of their former selves can no longer function in the reality of the present; the past’s harmful effects create the circumstances that force both protagonists to move on. For both men, to live in the past is to be your own worst enemy; there is no future in living in the past.
The representation of human nature in literature can reveal an author’s or director’s views on the flaws in the characters and societies. This is evident in the texts, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Mystery Road by Ivan Sen, as they both make interpretations on the deadly sin, Greed. There are many character traits that make up human nature; greed is one such example, representing a flaw in people that drives an intense, destructive and selfish desire for something. Through Shelley’s characters, Victor Frankenstein and Robert Walton, she portrayed examples of greed and selflessness through their unabated obsession for knowledge and intention to help others. Shelley has used allusion and characterisation to portray their human nature. Similarly,
myself be a full vicious man, A moral tale yet I you telle kan.’ The
Janelly Pacheco Mrs Krudwig English 12 28 October 2016 The Pardoner’s Greed In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church became the most powerful institution in the Medieval period. The Pardoner had the job of selling indulgences during that time. “The Pardoner’s Tale” by Geoffrey Chaucer demonstrates the idea of not being greedy in order to show the enhanced characterization of the Pardoner as he used the church to gain money.
In the Canterbury Tales Chaucer presents a story involved a malicious man. Chaucer uses the character and story of the Pardoner as a representative of a clergyman of the time and often of the church itself. There is irony in that he is only named as a pardoner with the power of a poena, the absolution of punishment, as he is the one in need of repentance. In his prologue and tale Chaucer presents the Pardoner as a blasphemous and dishonest man who freely admits to being a fraud to highlight the corruption of the workers of the church and to allude to the corruption in the Church itself.
The Pardoners Tale is a tale written by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1392. The Canterbury Tales consists of different people who were on a journey to Canterbury. Each of these travelers would tell a tale as they travel which added up to the many stories in the Canterbury Tales. These tales all entail very diverse yet important themes. One distinctive that happens to occur consistently not only through the Pardoners Tale, but through the Canterbury Tales itself is hypocrisy.
“A hypocrite is a person who- but who isn’t?” asked Don Marquis. By definition, a hypocrite is described as one whose actions contradict his stated or internal beliefs. Hypocrisy has been relevant in society for decades; one of the most prominent examples that personifies hypocrisy is The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. This piece of literature, which originates from the early thirteen hundreds, embodies characters that possess hypocrisy. Amongst these characters is the Pardoner, who is a member of the clergy. Chaucer illustrates the hypocrisy of the Pardoner in The Pardoner’s Tale through the use of satire and irony. Hypocrisy continues to be a part of society and will always exist due to people wanting to appear as better people than
... The greed portrayed by these characters has no explanation, at least that Fitzgerald offers, and thus should not exist; proving that these characters are simply greedy and deserve all that comes to them. And thus these two authors differ in the reasons why the greed occurs and, effectively, the difference in the short, 1-day gap from October 24 into October 25, 1929. And so greed exists in the modern period, saturating its two of its most famous novels and a theme of two of its most famous authors, portraying all evil as caused by greed, illustrating the true cynicism of the era. Works Cited Stenbeck, J. a.
Throughout literature, relationships can often be found between the author of a story and the story that he writes. In Geoffrey Chaucer's frame story, Canterbury Tales, many of the characters make this idea evident with the tales that they tell. A distinct relationship can be made between the character of the Pardoner and the tale that he tells.
The Canterbury Tales is a literary masterpiece in which the brilliant author Geoffrey Chaucer sought out to accomplish various goals. Chaucer wrote his tales during the late 1300’s. This puts him right at the beginning of the decline of the Middle Ages. Historically, we know that a middle class was just starting to take shape at this time, due to the emerging commerce industry. Chaucer was able to see the importance and future success of the middle class, and wrote his work with them in mind. Knowing that the middle class was not interested in lofty philosophical literature, Chaucer wrote his work as an extremely comical and entertaining piece that would be more interesting to his audience. Also, Chaucer tried to reach the middle class by writing The Canterbury Tales in English, the language of the middle class rather than French, the language of the educated upper class. The most impressive aspect of Chaucer’s writing is how he incorporated into his piece some of his own controversial views of society, but yet kept it very entertaining and light on the surface level. One of the most prevalent of these ideas was his view that certain aspects of the church had become corrupt. This idea sharply contrasted previous Middle Age thought, which excepted the church’s absolute power and goodness unquestionably. He used corrupt church officials in his tales to illustrate to his audience that certain aspects of the church needed to be reformed. The most intriguing of these characters was the Pardoner. Chaucer’s satirical account of the Pardoner is written in a very matter-of-fact manner that made it even more unsettling with his audience. Chaucer uses his straightforwardness regarding the hypocrisy of the Pardoner, suggestive physiognomy of the character, and an interesting scene at the conclusion of the Pardoner’s Tale to inculcate his views of the church to his audience. The way that Chaucer used these literary devices to subtly make his views known to an audience while hooking them with entertainment, shows that Chaucer was truly a literary genius.
The nature of greed is insatiable. It thrives on human weaknesses, and therefore, has no limits on how much it can grow to be stronger and more profound, within a human. Each person is unique in the way how they express their geed. For many, taking advantage of others is a prime example of how greed exerts itself. In the story, Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury, by Ray Bradbury, the author demonstrates how people who highly value self-importance, leave no room for compassion and are driven to manipulate others for their own selfish desires. The author shows us how there are multiple ways a person can manipulate others. For some, lying becomes an effective way of manipulation. Others like
The Pardoner tells the story for the reasons of him showing how he is greedy, manipulative, and shameless.