Essential Question 6

Both the pardoner’s prologue and tale are both similar because they speak of many vices and sins but it teaches us a lesson. In his prologue he stresses the importance of the Latin phrase, "Radix malorum est cupiditas"(241), this means that greed is the root of all evil. In his "moral tale" (244), he speaks a lot about sin, but the one sin he places the most importance on is greed. When he speaks of the three rioters that find the gold it starts to corrupt their minds into thinking how to take all this gold for themselves and not share it with the other. In both sections it seems that avoiding greed is the moral lesson. The knight’s tale was about honor; plus how love and war are both mutual. The miller's tale also had a theme of love between a woman, her husband, her lover, and a pastor. Both tales were read by a narrator, but in the pardoner’s tale he tells most of it himself. He seems to interject his opinions into the story and his beliefs seem to contradict themselves.