'The Pardoner's Tale' by Zia Akhtar

Seven men, in an inn on the outskirts of Canterbury, sipping ale until they are drunk. they have no names, they do not deserve names for their sins.

The first man, we will only know him as lust. He is married, with four children, who he makes work on the fields at his leisure, while he visits his wife, and then his mistress. He has never seen me, nor any other Pardoner, for the idiot believes he has done nothing wrong!
He should come to me, and I will have my profit, and he will find heaven.

The second man, who we call sloth, still lives with his mother, and the wheat that she grows, he eats, he stokes the fire with wood that she chops, and eats the meat that she kills.
He should come to me, and I will have my profit, and he will find heaven.

The third man, who shall hereby be called anger, has a wife but no child. his rage is fed by nothing, but seems to be endless. he hits his wife, he hits his mother, his father, and his brother, he hits the wooden walls of his dilapidated shack.
He should come to me, and I will have my profit, and he will find heaven.

The fourth man, who is known as envy, burnt down his neighbour's hut, fueled by jealousy of the oak of his walls against the mud of his own.
He should come to me, and I will have my profit, and he will find heaven.

The fifth man, who is gluttony, has never left his house, as the doors are too narrow. He eats everything, and has everything brought to him.
He should call me to him, and I will have my profit, and he will find heaven.

Lesson on The Pardoner's Prologue

We began the lesson all by creating our own Pardoner's Tale, Here is mine:



It was the third of September



That day I always remember



The rain came flooding down


As we ventured through the holy town



I always said the journey had to put you to the test



To prove the Lord you are worthy to be blessed



The weather was harsh but I prevailed



When others gave up and their spirits failed




The we went on to read the introduction to The Pardoner's Tale, which was about the Host commenting on the previous tale told by the Doctor. I have uploaded an audio video of The Prologue below so you can hear again just how it should sound.











In the prologue a lot of things are revealed about the Pardoner, for example the fact that "in chirches whan I preche, I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche" meaning he tries to impose upon people when he preaches even though we know Pardoner's aren't meant to teach the word of God.

The Pardoner does try to make himself out to be more important than he is by flashing his "Bulles" ( church documents) supposedly to make others think he is licensed to preach, but then he goes on to talk of the relics he has for sale which "as wenen they echoon ( they all believe )" to be real, suggesting he tricks people out of their money for false relics.








The Homework for this lesson was to read the rest of the Pardoner's prologue and answer the questions on pages 20 & 22 in the Text book.

My Pardoner's Tale

This is pretty awful, in fact just don't read it....

With my pig bones a yonder,
and my mind stuck in ponder,
I felt my mind begin to wonder,

Is it fair to make them pay?
in hopes of forgiveness without use of prey?
like they are my puppets, nothing more than clay,

Yet I continue to abuse there trust,
weather it be gluttony, greed or lust,
continue to make money I must

Aspects of narration.

On Monday we started the lesson with having to do a drawing of Lockwood, labelling it in terms of what the other characters, readers and Lockwood, himself, thought about his own character.

We found out that firstly Lockwood viewed himself as a person that was a reserved man “I felt interested in a man that was more exaggerated reserved then myself”. From this we referred back to the narration of Nick from “The Great Gatsby” in which his opening words to the novel “I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores”- When the reader of the novel reads this we automatically assume that both our narrators are people that are reserved and do not pass judgment, but this is not the case with either of them...

Similarly to Lockwood, we discussed that Nick also passes judgment when discovering facts about “Gatsby”- through the notion of gossip and private conversations from Jordan Baker, the readers also recognise the narration in the “Great Gatsby” to our filters. Lockwood a man that claims to be reserved in the start of the novel proves to be the complete opposite of this. The whole novel is based on the diary entrees of Lockwood and him pursuing Nellie in to telling him what happened at the Heights before he came even when it is time for Nellie to take rest.

Looking at what the readers thought of Lockwood the majority of us viewed him as being unreliable because of the many mistakes that he makes in narrating the story. Lockwood firstly mistakes a bag of dead rabbits for a cushion of cats, and then he assumes that he knows the relationships of the people at the heights by thinking that Cathy is the wife of Heathcliff and that Hareton is the son of Heathcliff. Lockwood also misjudges the weather by thinking that it will be a light snow shower when it is a heavy storm shower. From the misjudgements made us as the readers a forced to take all information given, into question again; as we are continually being misguided.

Thus, all the information we got is from letters and then from what Nelly overheard and then finally from Lockwood who acts as our frame narrator. We know that everything we are told might not be the whole truth because of the influence that people have had on to this information. For example Nelly is not fond of Heathcliff as she refers to him as a “gypsy” so when Nelly is giving account about Heathcliff this might be tainted with her emotional feelings towards Heathcliff.
After that exercise we looked at an article by Sue Hemming which looked at the similarities between Lockwood and Nick Carraway.
The main points that we took from this article were that both Nick and Lockwood enter the stories in the middle of things and have to learn about the past in order to understand the present.

From this article we also looked at the fact that both Nick and Lockwood are outsiders. This means that they are emotionally detached and both make mistakes in thinking what is happening has something to do with them. This provides the reader with a bit of comedy and intrigue.
We then took the point that both narrators in the end go back to where they came from because they find out that coming to these new places was not the new start that they where hoping for.

The main point that we took was the last point that the article made which was in the direct words of Sue Hemming “If the distorting prism of the narrator is removed and the focus placed directly on the central characters (as it so often is in film and television adaptations) the stories tend to degenerate into melodrama lacking the moral questioning and ambivalence of the originals”.
This means that if the stories did not have these narrators, the stories would lack mystery and excitement that we gain from finding out the whole picture through bits and pieces.

sorry guys here is the home work!!!!!!!!

Home work
Read chapter 3
1.What does Cathrine Earnshaw's diary add to the narrative?
2. How does the portrayal of Hinley and Francies's relationship contrast with that of Heathcliff and Cathrine?
3. How is the extent of Heathcliff's anguish (sorrow)reveald when he hears of Lockwood's dream. what is Lockwoods /your reaction to Heathcliff's feeling here
4.How is suspence built up in this chapter?

Sooo yeah heres my story, which by the way has no relevance to pardoners... but who cares! Plus I just thought Id like to make up a story...

Pardoner and the Beast

"Day one...Pardoners tell tales, that direct the way of a pilgrimage. As I walked half awake the other half at rest, my fragile mind was still under the illusions of a disturbing dream. Each step a recreation of last night. As far as I remember, whilst approaching two narrow walls of equal stature and weight. There opposition to each other like a static war of glares, judging by the marks upon the Dacite rock.

I entered, I felt the harsh chilled serenity that seemed to dominate every end of the hall. Its ancient shadows mimicked my movements. Until the last burning ember of the crimson flame, left nothing but the absence of light. From all angles, the screech of crying howls sculpt and almost embody the fastening footsteps, of that of a synchronised but yet ambitious hunt.

He approaches me and the black fire in the cave, escapes into his hungry colourless eyes. I call out to the familiar face that is the reason for my presence in the holy pilgrimage "Wise pardoner?", the words that are climbing out from my static lips and leaving me motionless. The face of hope revealed its true identity.

Half beast and half man, half Angelic and half Satanic. At this precise stagnant moment, when all that was moving was the pouncing paws of the Pardoner and his serrated teeth, when even the ancient walls turned to see the bloody coritied artery dissevered from my neck, spew blood like the compressing of a puppies head, I realised that the pilgrimage had sent my soul to the skies and sent my body deep into the imprisoning layers of the earth.

My story; a representation of a possible tale, Chaucer's Pardoner may tell.

And as I blew the candles of the holy church,
There came before me a poor boy sorry to search.
For his sin's had drowned him thoroughly as did the rain,
Yet it did not stop him collapsing from guilt and pain.
I asked him, "What do you here,cold and out of breath?"
He replied, "My lord, please, oh please save me from death!"
I seized my duty and took him in my arms,"Tell me, what have you done?"
"I stole an apple my lord. Ate it, and now its gone"
"Stealing is a sin! Your full of greed! pay for your forgiveness and plead"
"I have no money, my lord, I live on the streets"
"Then go! Leave! Pick up your feet!"
"Have mercy my good lord! All i possess is my petty soul"
"Leave! i am no longer your lord."
"I do have the only thing special to me, my mothers necklace. She has died."
"My son! Give me that gold, and come inside."

Mahsa.

The Portrait of the Pardoner

The main purpose of this lesson was to understand the portrait of the pardoner and the role of a pardoner in medieval society.

The first thing we done in lesson was to look at an image shown on the board and discuss in pairs what we think the image could be conveying. The image is shown below:

Chain Of Being

After discussing in pairs we came together as a class and began to share our ideas about the image. We discussed how the picture could be showing different levels of hell or perhaps a sort of hierarchy towards god. In the end we came to the conclusion that the image was showing the chain of being.

The chain of being is a Christian concept that states the hierarchal order of life on earth. The chain of being is as follows:

• God
• Angels 
• Humans
• Animals
• Plants

After this activity we then moved on to pondering on the role of a pardoner. Normally after committing a sin a person would need to seek advice on how to gain penance in order to gain forgiveness from god. (penance is a way to gain forgiveness i.e praying or giving up your time for others) A pardoner’s role is essentially to eliminate the need for penance after committing a sin. A pardoner would ask for money in exchange to give someone forgiveness from god. The amount of money asked for by the pardoner would depend on the severity of the sin committed.

For people seeking a path to heaven in the middle ages a pardoner would have seemed such an easy method to gain forgiveness from god so naturally people would not mind paying sometimes large sums of money to a pardoner in order to gain forgiveness.

Pardoners also offered biblical relics in exchange for money; they would claim to own the bones of saints which they would sell to people for sometimes very large amounts of money. More often than not however these ‘biblical relics’ were jus bones of animals. We talked about how greed; a sin in itself was often a sin that could be associated with pardoners.

For the last part of the lesson we began to annotate the portrait o fthe pardoner. Through carefull analysis of the text we began to depict key physical aspects of this particular pardoner. with these physical attributes we built up a picture of the pardoner.

“this pardoner  hadde heer as yellow as wex’ (line 677) = the pardoner has bright blonde hair

“dischevelee, save his cappe, he rood al bare.” (line 685) = he has dishevelled (dirty) hair and was bareheaded apart from a skullcap.

“a vericle hadde he sowed upon his cappe” (line 687) = a vernicle is a medal that is representative of a pilgrimage to Rome.

These are jus a few examples of the annotations we made, homework was to draw a picture of the pardoner based on what we depicted from the portrait of the pardoner.