Is This A Joke?

I’ve noticed a bit of contradiction in all the tales. More in the characters themselves than in their stories. The Knight was so knighty that most of what he said was not true, it was obviously exaggerated and taken to a level of fantasy. The Miller claims to have a tale as good as the Knight’s Tale and it a grotesque and low class. The Wife of Bath is very much a contradiction, she gets all tangled up in her beliefs and her role as a wife, of five husbands. And The Pardoner seems to be the top of hypocrisy. There is a lot of irony, the famous and so beloved irony.

For definition a pardoner is “: a medieval preacher delegated to raise money for religious works by soliciting offerings and granting indulgences” and “: one that pardons”. Delegated to raise money, yet NOT to keep the money. It is the one that pardons, and in order to pardon, or forgive a person, in my beliefs, you shouldn’t do what you are forgiving. In other words, if I forgive Pepita for lying to me, I should not lie, because then I would not have to forgive her because I do it myself. Get me? But IRONICALLY in the Prologue the pardoner, without any shame admits his relics are fake, the ones he sells and the ones that all the pilgrim believe to have healing powers. But not only he is a liar, but greedy. Greedy people can others to get a profit. “By this gaude have I wonne, yeer by yeer, An hundred mark sith I was pardoner. “ (The Prologue, lines 389-390) AND HE ADMITS IT! This tale is an exaggeration of irony, it is hipocrecy “sin aguero” (a Colombian expression to describe something that was done without shame).

And that is only the Prologue. Then comes the Tale. The ending reminded me of Romeo and Juliet, after the two fellows kill their friend to get a bigger share of the gold, they To take the botel ther the poyson was, And drank, and yaf his felawe drynke also, For which anon they storven bothe two. (The Pardoner’s Tale, lines 886-888). The difference is that in Romeo and Juliet, they die for love and passion for the other one, in this tale, they die of greed. Exactly about what the pardoner preaches about. The story is a good story, it resembles the stories of the bible or the stories that our mothers used to read to us for us to learn virtues and morals, and consequences to our actions. I think The Pardoner did not have that kind of mother, he lacks those moral stories, yet he is incredibly skillful to mesmerize the pilgrims with his forgiveness and ethic lectures.