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The Road to Hell:

A Literary Analysis of
Geoffrey Chaucer’s
The Pardoner’s Tale
Ryan Dell’Erba
University of Maryland University College
Medieval British Literature (ENGL 309)
Prof. Carol L. Bellamy

Introduction – The Teller of Tales
eoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 1400) was born the
son of a successful wine merchant who was a
member of the burgeoning new middle class
of Medieval England (Greenblatt 238).
idely traveled and worldly from an early age,
Chaucer heard several languages every day as
a boy, learned French fluently, studied Latin,
worked as a page for an aristocratic family,
and traveled as a member of King Edward III’s
personal household on diplomatic missions to
Spain, France, and Italy, and probably all
before he was thirty years old (Greenblatt 238).
hese experiences undoubtedly shaped
Chaucer’s worldview and oeuvre, including
The Canterbury Tales (Greenblatt 238).

Introduction – The Canterbury Tales
he Canterbury Tales, which was probably first conceived of by
Chaucer in 1386, is a series of stories, the titular “tales”, told
within an overarching story of a fictional religious pilgrimage to
Canterbury, with this overarching story functioning as a framing
device for the tales themselves (Greenblatt 241).
haucer’s original plan was apparently to have written a total of
roughly one hundred twenty tales, two for each pilgrim to tell on
the way to Canterbury and two for each to tell on the return trip
from Canterbury (Greenblatt 241).
nfortunately Chaucer died having fully completed a mere twentytwo of the tales and having begun two others, and while the
pilgrims never make it to Canterbury, Chaucer did write The

Introduction – The Pardoner’s Tale and Prologue
he Prologue to the The Pardoner’s Tale
recounts how the titular Pardoner,
who is one of the individuals on the
pilgrimage, discusses his abuse of his
position of power as a pardoner which
was a collector of charitable donations
to the Catholic Church in the
Medieval period (Greenblatt 310).
he Pardoner then tells his story to his
fellow pilgrims, which is a moral tale
warning against the vice of greed and
the trouble this deadly sin can bring to
those who succumb to it (Greenblatt
311).

Introduction – The Pardoner’s Tale
he Pardoner’s Tale’s basic plot can be summed up as follows:
t is a symbolic story of three men who seek to kill Death, and on their
way to find Death in order to kill him, they encounter an intriguing
character, the mysterious Old Man, who tells them that he left Death not
long ago under a tree just up the road (Chaucer).
hen the men then find the tree, there is a huge treasure trove of gold at
the base of it which the men then agree to split evenly amongst
themselves, and it is decided that the treasure should be moved under
cover of night, and that the youngest of the men should go into town to
get bread and wine (Chaucer).
he two other men plot to kill the third when he returns, and the third
man, when he goes into town, buys a powerful poison and puts it in two
of the three vessels of wine and then returns to the tree only to be

Literary Analysis of The Pardoner’s Tale
s with all of Chaucer’s tales, the person who tells it is part of the
key to understanding it, so one must examine the Pardoner
himself as a character in order to fully understand his tale.
big part of the ironic and dark humor of the Pardoner’s tale is
present in the fact that the Pardoner himself is guilty of the very
sin of avarice which his tale inveighs against, and yet he tells it
and other such moral tales while attempting to bilk people out of
their money for his own personal gain, which is both hysterically
and darkly ironic and also extremely hypocritical on his part, as
well as eminently unwise on his part for he does not heed the
truly worthwhile warning against blind greed in his own moral
tale even as he tell it, thus pointing out his own moral hypocrisy
(Chaucer).

ut why does the Pardoner not heed his own warning against
avarice?
ould it be because of something about him that is not perhaps
readily apparent?
erhaps it is after all the case that he behaves the way he does in
spite of his own knowledge of the potential for greed to lead even
to death because of his own nature.
his may be the case because, interestingly indeed, it has been
argued that the Pardoner is meant by Chaucer to be a eunuch,
which might explain why he continues to be greedy in that one of
his biggest sources of pleasure, since he cannot derive sexual

s for the thematic concerns of The Pardoner’s Tale itself, what are
they?
bviously the main theme, or one of them anyway, as stated by the
Pardoner himself in the prologue, is greed or avarice, which he
says is the root of all evil in spite of him not seeming to care much
about his own warnings of the evil to which the vice certainly can
lead (Chaucer).
nd of course it is true that greed or avarice is one of the central
themes, but perhaps even more fundamental to the tale is the
theme of death, who is also a personified and apparently unseen
character called Death, and also the closely related theme of aging
or old age itself (Bushnell; Chaucer; Hamilton; Owen).

he themes of old age, aging, and dying are all related to the most
fascinating character in the tale, the character of the Old Man.
he character of the Old Man has been a hotly debated issue in the
study of The Canterbury Tales in general, and this tale in particular
for many years (Bushnell; Hamilton; Owen).
ho is this man really?
s he hiding something?
hat does he represent in the story?
ll of these questions and other have been of concern to many for a

o who is the Old Man who arguably holds the key to
understanding the entire tale?
ne may quickly assume, and admittedly with good reason, that he
I a messenger of Death or Death himself, and that he purposefully
tricks the men into finding the treasure because he knows what
will become of them and either wants this to happen or doesn’t
care if it does at the very least (Bushnell; Hamilton; Owen).
his is certainly a possibility, but a much more interesting
proposition to many is the idea that the Old Man is meant to be an
at least partly Biblically-based folkloric character known as The
Wandering Jew (Bushnell; Hamilton; Owen).

he Wandering Jew, who there were reported sightings of for a
number of centuries, was as his name implies a Jew who
wandered, but beyond that the details of who precisely he was
often differed (Bushnell).
ne thing that was widely agreed upon however, was that The
Wandering Jew was a man who did something cruel to Christ
during the course of the Passion and that he was condemned by
Christ to live eternally until his return (Bushnell).
hile no one will ever know for certain if Chaucer intended the Old
Man to be The Wandering Jew, there is compelling evidence that it
certainly would have been a distinct possibility (Bushnell).

ike The Wandering Jew, the Old Man in Chaucer’s story is a
wanderer, unable to die, old, world-weary seemingly even beyond
his years even as old as he appears to be, and seemingly piously
devout in his relationship with God (Bushnell).
lso like The Wandering Jew he says he wishes he could essentially
change bodies or at least conditions thereof with someone young,
which can be interpreted as a reference to the generally agreed
upon characteristic of The Wandering Jew wherein after reaching
a certain age, usually said to be a level of of aging equivalent to
being one-hundred or the end of the one-hundredth year, he
would regenerate to the age he was at the Passion, and begin the
cycle again, aging and wandering about until Christ’s return
(Bushnell).

Conclusion
learly there are a few interpretations of The Pardoner’s Tale
which are widely accepted by different factions of literary
analysts be they of professional or arm-chair variety.
owever, what everyone should be able to agree upon is that The
Pardoner’s Tale can only be understood by first understanding
something of the teller of the tale, both the fictional teller of the
Pardoner, and the real teller as well, namely Chaucer himself,
and also that the themes of the tale and the central character of
the Old Man, whatever one’s interpretation of him may be,
must be as well.

Works Cited
Bushnell, Nelson Sherwin. "The Wandering Jew and The Pardoner's Tale." Studies in Philology 28.3 (1931):
450-60. JSTOR. Web. 20 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/4172104>.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen
Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. A. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. Print.
Hamilton, Marie Padgett. "Death and Old Age in The Pardoner's Tale." Studies in Philology 36.4
(1939): 571-76. JSTOR. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4172460>.
Miller, Robert P. "Chaucer's Pardoner, the Scriptural Eunuch, and The Pardoner's Tale." Speculum
30.2 (1955): 180-99. JSTOR. Web. 20 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/2848465>.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. A.
New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. Print.
Owen, W. J. B. "The Old Man in 'The Pardoner's Tale'" The Review of English Studies ns 2.5 (1951):
49-55. JSTOR. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/511910>.

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