Eamon Straub

Mr. Rosenbusch
15 October 2019
Honors English 12
The Canterbury Tales

“The Canterbury Tales” is a book that base its stories on moral instruct. This means that

characters should get their comeuppance, or an easier way of saying this is getting what they

deserve. Furthermore, there are a variety of characters in this book written by Geoffrey Chaucer

that indeed got their comeuppance. To be more specific, the tales that will be identified are the

Pardoner’s Tale as well as the Wife of Bath’s Tale. These feature unusual characters that do

unspoken acts.

First, the first tale that is told in the book “The Canterbury Tales”, written by Geoffrey

Chaucer is the Pardoner’s tale. To begin, there are three important character in this tale. These

three characters are rioters and they receive their comeuppance in this tale. The Pardoner’s tale

starts out with the three rioters drinking and one of the servants introduces a figure whose name

is death. He then goes on to tell a short story about someone who he knew. Moving forward, they

meet an old man who then talks about death. The rioters want to know what death is and where is

it. The old man tells them that he left death under an oak tree. When the rioters arrive at the oak

tree, the see tons of gold lying under the tree. They rioters want to take the gold and have it for

themselves. They come up with a plan in order to move the gold secretly. One of the servant's

heads into down while the other two stay back. The servants are all thinking alike although none

of them know that they are. The rioter who went to town gets three bottles of wine and poisons

two of the three bottles. He plans on giving the two rioters who are at the tree the poisoned wine

while he drinks the safe one in order to kill them and become rich from the gold. But, the two
rioters who were at the tree come up with the idea to kill the man who went to town.

Furthermore, when the rioter comes back from town, he is killed by the other two individuals.

The remaining two individuals see the wine and begin to drink it, not knowing about the poison,

“Now for a drink. Sit down and let’s be merry, / For later on there’ll be the corpse to bury.”

(Lines 279-280). They both then die within minutes. This tale shows the unusual acts that the

characters are willing to go through. It also displays how the three rioters got their comeuppance.

They got their comeuppance because all three of them were planning on being manipulative

towards one another. They all wanted to kill each other for the goal of getting more gold, “Thus

these two murderers received their due, / So did the treacherous young poisoner too…” (lines

289-290). All in all, this was obviously a failure for all three of the rioters because all three of

them ended up meeting who death was and died.

Second, another tale that is mentioned in the book “The Canterbury Tales”, written by

Geoffrey Chaucer is the Wife of Bath’s tale. This tale perfectly demonstrates when horrible

characters commit unthoughtful acts and how their actions come back to haunt them. The Wife

of Bath’s tale starts out with a lustful knight who rapes a woman. The knight was then brought to

the ruler of the town which was the queen. Her first ruling was for the knight to be decapitated

but rather than that she decided to give the knight three hundred and sixty-five days to find what

women want the most. The knight then goes off searching for what women want most, asking

thousands of women. It gets to the point where he is ready to give up, until he sees a massive

group of women. When he goes to approach them, it ends up being one old lady. He then asks

for her help. The old lady tells him that in order to receive her help, he must obey to what she has

in store for him next, “Give me your hand,” she said, “and swear to do / Whatever I shall next

require of you / — If so to do should lie within your might— / And you shall know the answer
before night” (Lines 185-188). The old lady comes to see the queen with the knight and the

knight tells the queen what women desire most, which is that all women desire to be in charge of

their husbands and lovers. The queen lets the knight live. The old woman then asks the knight to

marry her, and he must obey because she has helped him live. He is not happy with this but has

to agree. We see the knight receive his comeuppance in this tale. He receives it because he raped

a woman and is given a difficult task to fulfill. He ends up finding the old woman and gets to live

because the queen was satisfied with his answer. But his comeuppance is that he is now married

to someone who he begged not to marry. Overall, we see the knight has received what he

deserved and has gotten his karma.

With all that has been said, the pardoners and the knight have all learned a lesson for

either the greed the pardoners possessed, or the lust that the knight had shown. Whether it being

the death of poisoning or stabbing, to marrying a woman not satisfying to the eye of man.

Furthermore, from this it is shown that both stories featured main characters that could not

overcome self-deprivation and suffered the consequences for this.