Irony in The Pardoner's Tale

     The Pardoner’s Tale, by Chaucer, is about how greed can destroy a man. The Pardoner is described as a greedy and mischievous man. It is ironic that he chose to tell this story about greed. There is also irony in the story with the three men who set out to kill Death and agree to kill and fight for one another.
     The three rioters in the Pardoner’s tale promise to find Death and kill him. This situation is ironic because the men truly believe that Death is an actual man and that they could possibly kill him. The reader may feel that the three men are acting very idiotic.
     Another ironic part of the tale is that the three men promise to kill and fight for each other. Sadly, the three men allow their greed to push them to kill one another. The reader may believe that the men certainly found death and that it is their own fault for the way things ended.
     The relationship between the story and the Pardoner is ironic because the pardoner is giving a moral lesson about greed when he is a greedy man, himself. He does not practice what he preaches. The reader may be upset to find that a man of the church is so corrupt.
     The Pardoner’s tale has many examples of irony. The three men who set out to slay death and agree to kill and fight for each other show irony through their idiotic actions. The Pardoner ironically tells a story about greed when he is described as a very greedy man. His tale is about how greed can destroy a man and the reader sees that it destroys him, a man of the church.

    In Pygmalion there is many themes throughout the story. In this essay I am going to tell you about two of them, along with a relationship from one and how it relates to myself. One theme in the book is “do not judge a book by its cover”. Another theme in the story is wealth and poverty.
    “Do not judge a book by its cover” is the first theme that I recognized in the story. It means do not judge someone until you actually get to know them. This relates to me because I judged a person who is now my best friend before i knew him well enough to tell what he was actually like as a person. I figured he was just going to be another person I was not really close to, he and I ended up having a lot of things in common. Now he is my best friend and we do a lot of things together. This proves a point of “Do not judge a book by its cover”.
    There are many more themes that are in the story but I picked Wealth and poverty as my last choice. This can relate to the “do not judge a book by its cover” theme. Just because someone is richer than another does not mean that they are not living a happy and nice life. We do not know what put them in there financial situation, if they were born into poverty then we cannot help that,but if they put themselves in poverty for doing dumb things then that is there own fault. People who are born into wealth sometimes take things for granted, you can go from being rich to being poor in an instant. I chose this theme because the theme of wealth and poverty go along with “do not judge a book by its cover”.
    These are just some of the themes in this story. I chose these because they can closely relate to each other and to my life.