Out of the many pilgrims described in The Canterbury Tales, one stands out as the most wicked of them all: the Pardoner. The work under discussion in this essay is The Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer. It is a narrative poem written in heroic verse. The Canterbury Tales is a poem about a group of pilgrims who are traveling from the Tabard Inn in Southwark to St Thomas Beckets shrine at Canterbury Cathedral. The character called the Host suggests that each of the pilgrims tells stories and that the best story teller will be rewarded with a meal when they returned to the Inn. The part of The Canterbury Tales that is focused on in this essay is the beginning where Chaucer gives a description and details about each pilgrim. In this essay, the word wicked will be defined as evil or morally wrong (Oxford Dictionary). The Bible even further defines wickedness for us in Proverbs 6:12-15 saying A worthless person, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech, winks with his eyes, signals with his feet, points with his finger, with perverted heart devis
es evil, continually sowing discord; therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly; in a moment he will be broken beyond healing. It is widely agreed that the are many wicked pilgrims on the journey described in The Canterbury Tales, among which is the Pardoner. Some may debate, however, that although the Pardoner is wicked, there are other pilgrims more wicked than he. It will be argued in this essay, based on contextual evidence, that the pardoner is in fact the most wicked pilgrim. This essay will prove this using three points and will also refute a common attempt to show that the Pardoner is not the most wicked. First, it will be shown that the pardoner commits the unforgivable sin of blasphemy to make him the most wicked on the journey. Second, the text will show us how the Pardoner goes out of his way to deceive others and directly affects them in a negative way whereas some of the other pilgrims do not have much affect on others. Third and lastly, it will be shown that Chaucer himself likely even believes the Pardoner to be the most wicked pilgrim.