Hypocriticism In The Pardoner's Tale

Furthermore, the Pardoner is made out to be an undesirable, untrustworthy character through his hypocritical characteristics. A hypocrite is someone who claims to have moral standards or beliefs and project their beliefs onto another meanwhile not conforming to their beliefs oneself. The Pardoner is hypocritical because he talks about how greed, gluttony, and swearing are sinful act although he commits those sins himself. He is hypocritical through greed, on line 329 he says, “Radis malorum est cupiditas”, but then says, “I preach for nothing but greed…” by this he is saying greed is the root of all evil but he preaches only out of greed in which makes it hypocritical because he is contradicting himself and ultimately becoming untrustworthy.

This is known because he is associated with the Church and the Church is supposed to be truthful and yet his actions show otherwise. He is hypocritical because of his sermons on gluttony, on lines 448-449, “…this world is ruined by gluttony!” yet, on lines 455-456, “Now that I have drunk a good draught of a malty beer, the Lord I hope I shall tell you a thing…” In which he is criticizing gluttony for ruining the world and yet he says that now that he is drunk, he now can tell his tale. He is contradicting and making him untrustworthy for the fact that his contradicting showing that he is corrupt. Line 638-640 “…swearing is a wicked thing.” then a few lines later, on 658, he says, “Now for the love of Christ.” Ridiculously after he has finished his condemnation of swearing, he begins to swear, making him