Pardoner or Hypocrite??

I just want to start by pointing our that the Pardoner is so gross and crude that people tell him that they'll only listen to his story if it's one with moral...
     
        But right anon thise gentils gonne to crye,
        "Nay! lat him telle us of no ribaudye;
        Tel us som moral thing, that we may lere
        Som wit, and thanne wol we gladly here."

And then, on top of his grossness, hypocrisy seems to be his way of life! "My thee is alwey oon, and evere was- / Radix malorum est Cupiditas" (333). Which means that the love of money is the root to all evil, and yet...he's a pardoner!! He literally forgives the sins of others in exchange for money! And call me crazy, but if he was truly a God-fearing man, he would pardon people out of the kindness of his heart, not out of a desire for a heavier purse.

Not to mention, he preaches about the sin of covetousness and avarice, but he practices both himself. If fact, helping and pushing people to repent these sins is the very way that he feeds into his own vices (which he admits to around lines 424-434). And it would also appear to me that he targets those who are of less intelligence than him, because he believes that they are easier to trick because of their love of tales
    
        "For lewed peple loven tales olde;
        Swich thinges can they wel reporte and holde.
        What, trowe ye, the whyles I may preche
        And winne gold and silver for I teche
        That I wol live in poverty wilfully?

And to make me dislike him even more, he tells in his tale of people that drink and gamble and make false oaths, and says that all of those things are sins and whatnot. And yet again, he showcases his hypocrisy by the very fact that while he tells the tale, he himself is drunk. LOL he's so annoying...

I dislike the Pardoner.

Can I trim the sermon? Yes. Will I? No.

We’ve all heard fables and parables. They start out as simple stories, but then it becomes clear by the end that they have lessons. Usually, the storyteller does not drop the lesson until the end, and manages to reduce that lesson to a pithy sentence or two.

Not so with the Pardoner. Shamelessly, almost directly after introducing the three “ryotoures,” the Pardoner goes on for 175 lines (bless line numbers, bless them!) about the dangers of gluttony, gambling, swearing, and greed. Then, eventually, he gets back to the story, and his characters die. Afterward, he repeats his warnings and asks his fellow pilgrims and their host for money as penance. It seems redundant to give the moral up-front and then repeat it later. Were the Pardoner more laconic, it might make more sense for him to remind his audience, but like I said… 175 lines.

But perhaps this is just the Pardoner’s style of storytelling. It is not as pleasantly poetic as Chaucer’s way of not getting to the point (sorry not sorry, Chaucer), but it is a way of not getting to the point all the same. Perhaps the Pardoner thinks he will get the message across better if he goes on for longer. Not for the sake of others, I remind you; he says so himself: “But though myself be gilty in that sinne, / Yet can I maken other folk to twinne / From avarice, and sore to repente. / But that is nat my principal entente: / I preche nothing but for coveityse” (429-433). Maybe he has found in his line of work that speaking at length about sin riles up the most guilt and shame in the public, and thus brings him the most profit.

 Living the dream

Though the story and sermon stir discomfort in the host, and perhaps in the reader as well (advice: do not read this during a meal; at best, the references to burps, farts, and the half-digested muck in one’s stomach will induce a loss of appetite), there is also something a little humorous about the whole thing. The Pardoner is a hypocrite and he knows it. He knows it and he does not care. After drinking a good deal (one of the many things he warns against), he concludes his prologue with, “For though myself be a ful vicious man, / A moral tale yet I yow telle can, / Which I am wont to preche for to winne” (459-461). I don't know about you, but to me, there's something amusing in the repulsive shamelessness of the Pardoner's hypocrisy.

The Pardoner's Tale and Its Irony

In medieval times,“pardoners” would sell these indulgences, kind of like certificates, in order to forgive someone’s sins and even sometimes salvation from eternal damnation. Before the Pardoner begins his tale, he admits that he is a fraud. He proudly exclaims that he is only in the pardoning business for the money and that he is guilty greed. He even says that his relics are really "ful of cloutes and of bones," (pg 234, line 348). Kind of reminds me of Matilda's father, a greedy and sly used-car salesman.

The Pardoner tells us a tale of three young men who spend all of their time drinking, swearing, and gambling, and just wasting their lives away. It is here that the Pardoner interrupts his tale to tell the group why all of these things are terrible sins forbidden by God in the Bible, but he truly believes "gret swering is a thing abhominable," (pg 240, line 631). The three young men find out that an old friend has been killed by Death, and in their drunkenness decide that they shall find Death and kill him as revenge.

Quick sidebar question: how exactly does one kill Death?!

Anyway, back to the tale.

While wandering the road looking for Death, they meet an old man who says that he had left Death under an oak tree and points them towards a grove. Under the tree they find several sacks of gold and decide to wait until nightfall to carry them away so as not to arouse suspicion. While one of the young men goes to get bread and wine, the other two plot to kill him upon his return so that they only have to split the gold two ways. Meanwhile, the man getting food and drink poisons two of the three wine bottles so that he can keep the gold all to himself. Upon his return he is stabbed by his two friends and then they drink the poisoned wine in celebration and die as well. Inconceivable!!

This tale demonstrates that greed will only lead to your own demise and that it brings out the worst in people. It is so ironic that the Pardoner is telling this tale when he is practically the embodiment of greed and intoxication. So, do you think is it possible for him to tell a tale of morals and be taken seriously? 

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pardoner