Notesale: Turn your study into money

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DEATH:
Main Episodes:
1
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2
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Death is personified as its actions are described
4
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The Old Man cannot be killed by Death
6
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Old Man sends them in the direction where Death is, which eventually brings about their own
death due to their avaricious nature
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Plan to kill each other due to their sinful nature
9
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”
“
...
”
“And sodeynly he was yslain to-nigt,
Fordronke, as he sat on his bench upright
...

“And with his spere he smoot his herte atwo,
And wente his wey withouten words mo
...
”
“Me thinketh that it were necessarie
For to be war of swich an adversarie
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for he hath slain this yeer,
Henne over a mile, withinne greet village,
Bothe man and woman, child, and hine, and page
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He shal be slain
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”

“Ne Deeth, allas ne wol nat han my lyf
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… thou art his espye
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“No lenger thanne after Deeth they soughte
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”
“
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“For this was outrely his fulle entente,
To sleen hem bothe, and nevere to repente
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”
“
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“Paraventure ther may fallen oon or two
Doun of his hors, and breke his nekke atwo
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The idea of a thief called ‘Death’ stealing the souls of men may sound a little odd to
a modern audience unused to seeing the world in such metaphorical terms, but this was a device
that Chaucer’s readers would have accepted as a necessary part of a highly moral story
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Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ
our Lord
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Despite the graphic descriptions of the horrible physical effects of gluttony and drunkenness, and his
outraged tone, the Pardoner in his long tirade against sin only one mentions death as direct
consequence of committing a sin
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The Pardoner never directly mentions the outcome of the other sins he decries as being fatal
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On the other hand, perhaps he is saving this moral outcome for the end of the Tale itself
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Theories about the cause of the disease were numerous,

ranging from a punishment from God to planetary alignment to evil stares
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The effect was at its worst in cities, where overcrowding and primitive sanitation aided its spread
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Over the next 2 years the disease killed between 30-40% of the entire population
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One of the worst aspects of the disease to the medieval Christian mind is that people died without
last rites and without having a chance to confess their sins
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People were allowed to confess their sins to one another, or "even to a woman"
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For Catholics it is important to die in a
State of Grace – that is with all your past sins being absolved or pardoned
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Catholics believe that if you die without being in a
State of Grace, your journey to heaven is impeded
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The attitude towards life in the Medieval Era was influenced by the people’s beliefs of death
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Therefore to prevent one from going to hell, they had to carry out good actions and avoid sin
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The Church taught that the fate of a person’s soul was not only determined by their behaviour in life
but by the manner of how they died
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A sudden death would be viewed as a ‘bad death’ – it was greatly feared as it
would increase the probability of going to Hell or spending a longer time in purgatory
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The Black Death, also known as at the time ‘The Great Plague’, ‘Great Pestilence’ or ‘the Plague’, and
it peaked in Europe between 1348-1350
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It was one of the most
devastating pandemics in human history
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The
idea of death was very relevant to the common folk in Chaucer’s day therefore making it easy for the
Pardoner to sell his relics and pardons as death was imminent and unexpected so people wanted

their souls to definitely go to heaven
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Death imagery was seen throughout many pieces of literature; this was called Mors Mortis Motif
and is used in Chaucer’s poetry
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The common folk in the 1300s believed that many things could lead to death especially the 7 Deadly
Sins
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In the poem:
Death is viewed constantly as a traitor for taking away one of the three revellers’ friends and the
gamblers are determined to kill death themselves
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Death is portrayed as a
ruthless opponent who has killed many people in a nearby village which angers the men
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The man has an ironic role in the poem as he is searching for death to take his life as he is
very old and wants to die or swap his old age with youth
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Throughout the poem
there is a sense that the through the pace of the tale; the revellers are rushing head forth into their
deaths
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In "The Pardoner's Tale" by Geoffrey Chaucer, the Pardoner portrays death as a character,
symbolism, and a theme to support his sermons about sin
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One
direct symbol of death is the gold the rioters find under the oak tree
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Through this, the money is a symbol of the
deaths soon coming to the three young men
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One dies by the other two betraying and murdering him for the gold
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His connections in the story back up his lectures

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