THE PARDONER’S TALE
Setting
The tale is set in Flanders, and the Pardoner during the telling of the tale, tends to drift from
the plot and sermonize to the Pilgrims.
Summary
This story concerns three young men who spend much of their time in revelry. The tale is set in
Flanders, and the Pardoner during the telling of the tale, tends to drift from the plot and
sermonize to the Pilgrims.
On this particular day as the three men indulge in gambling and drunkenness, they hear a
funeral passing outside the Inn. They ask a servant who has died. He responds by saying that it
is a friend of the three men who was stabbed in the back by a thief called Death. He has killed
many in the neighborhood recently. The three drunken men decide to seek this thief out, and
they travel to the next town in pursuit.
On the way they meet an extremely old man dressed in rags. He explains that he has been
cursed to wander the earth until he can find a youth who will change places with him. He goes
on to say that not even Death will take his life. The three men ask the old man if he has seen
Death, and he responds that he was last seen under the tree at the end of the lane.
The three men go and find bags of gold beneath the tree and they decide to keep this for
themselves. It would be too dangerous to move the gold in daytime so they will wait for
nightfall. They draw straws to see who will go into town to obtain food, and the youngest is
given this task. When he has gone, the two that are left decide that they will murder him when
he returns and keep the gold for themselves.
The youngest of the three decides to poison the food he brings to the other two and keep the
gold for himself.
The youngest is stabbed, and the other two are poisoned.
Interpretation
Again Chaucer takes the opportunity to highlight the hypocrisy of the Medieval Church in his
portrayal of the Pardoner. It is the old story of the Pardoner not practicing what he preaches.
You will recall that the Pardoner sells Pardons and Indulgences to sinners by the authority of the
Pope, and it is no coincidence that Chaucer depicts him as probably the most evil of the
Pilgrims. This is perhaps what makes this character so intriguing and this is shared by the tale
that he tells.
There has been some ambiguity about this story, but I am convinced that the old man is in fact
Death or the Devil, and he is very familiar with the frailties of man and what these three will do
when they find the gold that he has left under the tree. He has another three souls to add to his
kingdom!
The old man mirrors the hypocrisy of the Narrator himself in the way he deceives the three men.
The Pardoner’s work is also based on deceit, selling relics to the unwary.
The message is, therefore, that you cannot covet money without coveting death itself.