Greed Leads to Unwanted Endings Authors of folktale should present a meaningful lesson within their stories. In the folktale, The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving, the lesson is to understand the negative effects of greed. Tom Walker's major character flaw is greed. His greed leads to a series of unfortunate events, which eventually brings him to his final destination, hell with the Devil. There are more important things than money and possessions and at the end of the story this point is emphasized when his prized possessions disappear.
Geoffrey Chaucer, considered one of the greatest English poets in the Middle Ages, composed The Canterbury Tales in the late fourteenth century. In the novel twenty-nine men and women representing all aspects of Medieval society embark on a religious pilgrimage to the cathedral at Canterbury in southeast England. On their journey their host engages them in a storytelling contest with a free meal as the prize upon their return. Chaucer wrote the tales in Middle English, the vernacular of the Medieval period, making his work accessible to all classes of people.
As a French Proverb states, “greedy eaters dig their graves with their teeth”. People are consumed with wanting more and more rather than knowing what they need in life. The human race constantly carries on this pattern of greed. A theme of greed is shown in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
In the cautionary tale, The Pardoner, the author exemplifies the dangers of greed. The story focuses on three men who come together to defeat “Death.” As they begin their journey, they are displayed as friends, even going as far as calling each other brothers. When they discover a large sum of money, they begin turning on one another, all of whom want the money for theirselves. The author’s shows that greed is the root of all evil.
Three examples of greed and its effects are shown in the stories of “The Necklace”, “Civil Peace”, and “The Golden Touch”. The short story “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant tells the story of a woman, named Mathilde, who borrows a very expensive necklace, ends up losing it, and spends 10 years of her life repaying the debt it took to buy a new one, only to find out the original was fake and not expensive at all. This alone states the extent at which we will go to replace materialistic items. The lady had been part of the middle class, living comfortably, and even had a maid and a cook.
The temptation of greed ended up killing the three men at the end of the tale. ”The Pardoner's Tale” provides a clear understanding that greed is a sin we all have to battle with in our lives, whereas the moral of the wife of bath's tale applies to people doing bad things. This tale teaches the reader a lesson about greed and how it can overcome people, making them do bad
“Radix malorum est cupiditas” translated from Latin into “Greed is the root of all evil.” (Chaucer 125) Throughout the Pardoner’s Tale, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, this is the story of three men that treat people lower than them and they end up finding a whole pile of gold, but they end up killing each other to get the gold to themselves. The entirety of the three men end up dead and not even one gets the gold. There are many topics involving greed, this essay will involve what it is about, the dangers, and the benefits of controlling the desire to gain.
To fully appreciate the layers of irony in “The Pardoner’s Tale,” you must consider all types of irony. There are three types of irony: verbal irony is when something is said that contradicts the truth, or is the opposite of how the person speaking truly feels, situational irony is when events have an affect on a situation to make the outcome the opposite of what was expected, and dramatic irony is when the significance of actions and doings of the characters in a story are obvious but the characters within the story remain oblivious. Within “The Pardoner's Tale” in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, all types of irony are used throughout the story in order to show society uses deliberate ignorance to justify its wrong doings. Particularly,
The Pardoners tale begins in lines (81 to 85) where three very good friends were drinking at a tavern. Then they left the tavern and while they were walking come across a old man. The man was quite interesting, he lead the trio of friends to a bunch of gold. I personal think that the old man is Death considering that he said if they would find Death under the tree.
Greed is the most talked about moral in “The Pardoner’s Tale” and seems to be one of the most problematic and relatable moral. In “The Pardoner’s Tale” Three rioters end up begging killed for being so greedy. As the rioters were out on their quest to find death, they find some gold. The youngest goes back to get a few things to help collect the gold and the other two plot to kill him,and the young rioter had poison. Because they all planned to kill each other because they wanted the gold, they found death and death killed them before they could kill him.
Death is usually portrayed as a heartless and cruel character, but in the story the author shows a different side of death, with compassion and human-like feelings, which is very ironic. 2. What are Death ’s feelings for each victim?
Albert Baugh, an online critic, stated that “The Pardoner’s Tale is a reminder that death is inevitable. Death is personified as a thief who pierces the heart of his victims.” This quote portrays how death is impossible to escape and how everything is set to be in life. Anyhow, the old man travels around the city waiting for Death to take him. The man is not very patient and will do anything to be taken by God.
The discovery of this gold corrupted the rioters and led them to their death. This story is ironic because the reader expects them to end up with the gold but they all die in the end. After the story, the Pardoner says "Your horse may throw you down and break your neck" implying that you will die if you do not buy his relics. This is ironic because the Pardoner is being greedy just after he told a story about how greed will get you killed. These examples of irony in the Pardoner's tale serve to demonstrate specific moral lessons.
The story teaches three important lessons about death: death is fair to all, death can not be cheated and death is more powerful than mortals. Through this story the grimm brothers show that death does not differentiate between all man. In the beginning of the story a man chooses death as a godfather to his son, he explains he does this because “[you(death)] are the right person- you make no difference between the rich and the poor”. The lesson to be learned from this is that death doesn’t pick who to take based on who they are in their in the mortal life, people die no matter the possessions they have. This can be taken into an ever deeper lesson that teaches that possessions are only temporary and one should not get too obsessed with what the have because none of this will matter when death comes for them.
When they found him, they all died because the role of the coins was to be the antagonist that led the three to betray each other for their greed. One evidence was when the youngest of them sought to kill them through poison: “To men in such a state the Devil sends/ Thoughts of this kind, and has full permission/ To lure them on to sorrow and perdition” (Chaucer 130). Another evidence is when Death disguised himself as the coins: “No longer was it Death those fellows sought,/ For they were all so thrilled to see the sight, The florins were so beautiful and bright” (Chaucer 128). At the end of the story, the gold coins send them to death.
