Genre: The Pardoner's Tale

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• Genre: Moral Exemplum • Characters: Three men, old man, Death The story starts by showing three drunken men receiving word that one of their friends was killed by a man named Death. Due to their intoxication the trio decides to go after Death and avenge their friend. While the three are travelling down a road they run into a old man who is mumbling about how he is filled with sorrow and has waited for death to take him for a very long time. The men respond by asking the senior where they can find Death. The old man directs them to an oak tree, where several bags of gold coins are located. The trio decides that they cannot take the gold to town during daylight or they will be branded as thieves. They end up doing a drawing to decide which one of them will go to town to fetch wine during …show more content…

The setting of the tavern at the beginning of the tale is ironic because all of the men participate in sinful behavior and the tale is a sermon against vices. The entire tale is also both ironic and tragic because the men swear to “live and die for one another” (Chaucer, p. 251), yet in the end they end up killing each other due to their greed. The old man also tells them that “To find out Death, turn up this crooked way towards that grove, I left him there today under a tree, and there you’ll find him waiting (Chaucer, p.252). They end up finding the gold and even though it is not Death itself it causes the men to turn on each other and kill. The Prologue, story and epilogue are all tied together by the presence or mentioning of avarice. The old man in the story is a symbol of death or its embodiment. The moral of the tale is that greed is the root of all evil, “Thus the two murderers received their due, so did the treacherous young poisoner too” The importance of the Epilogue is that it connects the story back to the Pardoner in a

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