Geoffrey Chaucer is considered to be the Father of English literature. His works, often religiously influenced and critical of their time, are continuously referred to as timeless classics. His most famous piece of work, however, is The Canterbury Tales. The collection of stories is broken down into many different fragments detailing a “story-telling” contest among many different people while on a religious pilgrimage. The presence of religion is one of the most reoccurring themes in the works. Through the character of the Pardoner and his tale, Chaucer provides insight and personifies the issue of corruption within the Church and uses the character to express his issues and bring them to life. The Pardoner can best be viewed as Chaucer being …show more content…
In the story, three brothers go off to find and kill Death. However, they discover a large amount of gold and thus their own personal greed sets in. They eventually plot to kill one another furthering this obsession with greed. In the end all three die and symbolically “find death”. It is clear by the plot of the story that the Pardoner is aware of the consequences of his actions; however he genuinely believes that he is a religious man. He believes he is a true “man of the cloth” even though in the prologue he boasts about his sins. The Pardoner even goes as far as admitting to the other characters that he is in fact a conman and describes his method of practice in detail, “I stand like a scholar in my pulpit, And when the ignorant people have sat down, I preach, so as you heard before, And tell a hundred false stories more.” (433). The fact that Chaucer would dare portray a Pardoner this way and describe the ways he stole from people during this time, period is insanity. This is during a time when speaking out against the Church meant sure imprisonment or death thus Chaucer risked a lot creating characters like the