We discussed in class today the Pardoner’s Tale from the Canterbury Tales. I remember reading it in my freshman year western literature course but that was so long ago, and a translated edition. It’s incredible how different the stories are in their original words. Everything has a deeper meaning.
Well, in the Pardoner’s tale (which is really just a short tale with a lot of preaching from the Pardoner) there are three “revelers” who are angered that the thief “Death” has killed one of their friends when he was in a drunken stupor on the beach.
A servant boy warns the men that this “Death” cuts the hearts of men in two and they should be wary.
The men decide still to form a brotherhood and to search for this thief “Death”. Now remember, they have also been drinking so they run off after death in a drunken fury.
At one point they are jumping over a “stile” and they run into an old man. No, to me this is the most interesting part of the story, and according to our text and professor, it is still uncertain who this old man is, what he represents.
The old man can not die; he is looking for a young man willing to exchange his youth for the old man’s age. The three revelers are rude to him, and say he is a spy for death. The old man chastises them and then tells them they can find death under an Oak where they actually find a pile of gold that they end up killing each other over.
Now, the old man, who is he? What is he? At first I lean towards him being Death, but perhaps he is just a tool of death… an informant? A worker of death? Somehow indebt to death? Why is he on this search to find someone who will trade youth for age?
Maybe, and I have nothing to back this up, maybe he made a deal with death long ago, when he was young. And the deal was that he could live forever if he worked as Death’s servant and the only way he could die was if he could find a young man willing to trade youth for age (which of course he will never find). Now he realizes the deal was not as sweet as it seemed when he was young, now that he is forever old. And he remains eternally Death’s servant.
