Betrayal In The Pardoner's Tale

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In the "Miller's Tale", consists of a messy love triangle between the carpenter, John, and his young beautiful wife, Alison, and two other men, Nicholas and Absalon. John is a jealous and vacuous husband. Alison is a beautiful devious wife who enjoys attention. Nicholas, the scholar, and Absalon, the parish clerk, lust for Alison. The entire tale is full of lies and deceit. The wrong doings follows into a no-win situation in the end of the tale, "Thus the carpenter lost his wife, for all his watching and jealousy; and Nicholas was sore burned. This tale is done, and God save the entire company" (Chaucer 8). The tale is analyzing the betrayal, mostly to John, because Alison's beauty attracts Nicholas and Absalom. John is clueless on marrying a young girl who damages his pride and makes him a mad man to the entire town. Absalon is made a fool after his embarrassment of kissing Alison's rear end. Nicholas sexual desire for Alison earn him to get …show more content…

In the tale, three drunk rioters make a pledge of loyalty to chase "Death" who killed an old friend of theirs. The rioters dismiss Death after coming across treasure, but their own greediness overcomes the men that eventually leads them to kill off each other. At the beginning of the prologue the pardoner justifies the theme of his tale, "My theme is and always was one and the same: Radix malorum est cupiditas" (Chaucer 1). The idea of justice was that the rioters' desire and greed, cause each to die by death. The rioters display a common trait in greed to fulfill their avarice in riches. The men swear loyalty before killing each other which establishes that "greed is the root of all evil." "Death" was not present in order to kill the rioters, "Death" just lay out gold because the rioters' selfish lust for gold would overrule to deceive. The concept of justice in the tale is death overcomes