Character Analysis
By Shayni
The three rakes are morally corrupt characters. The pardoner expresses to the reader the sins of gambling, gluttony, and breaking oaths. The three rakes exemplify all these sins within the tale. They exemplify gluttony because they take more than what is necessary and they are greedy. They are not just happy splitting the gold three ways, they want as much as they can get for themselves. They all also make an oath to each other to be brothers, yet they kill each other for more money. They gamble the risk of losing everything when the two rakes decide to kill the younger one and the younger one decides to poison the other two, all for money. These rakes technically do not fit into an estate, they are not those who fight, those who pray, or those who work. They are outside of an estate and morally corrupt. They cannot differentiate between good and bad, and they ultimately choose bad. They are not characters to emulate from. They are scoundrels down to the bone. The are corrupt and filled with greed. After all, the root of all evil is money, according to the pardoner. Another character in the tale is the old man. The rakes are rude to the old man, and clearly don't respect their elders. The rakes question his age, and how he has escaped death. The old man responds by saying, "Because even if I walked all the way to India I could not find a man, either in a city or a village, who would exchange his youth for my age" ( lines 259-262). So despite the fact that the old man wishes to die, he still lives on, waiting for death to take him. The old man is obviously very wise. He tries to teach a lesson to the three rakes, telling them to respect their elders, and not treat elders the way they treated him. The old man is accused of being deaths spy by the rakes. Although Chaucer does not give any indication of weather or not this is true, the old man does send the rakes to death. The old man says where t death is, and that happens to be where the money is, showing the death beneath the money. This shows the old mans insight because he knew the root of all evil is greed, and therefor could see that death would play a role in the rakes finding the money. He is a beggar, so he is outside of the estates. He is a character to emulate from, because of his insight. He tries to teach the rakes a lesson, and in the process they meet their deaths.