Summary:
In the Canterbury Tale, The summoner's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer pokes fun at religion and Chaucer kinds degrades the church and creates a bad image of the church. Chaucer created the Friar to kind of send a message. This Canterbury Tale shows what really goes on in the corrupt world of the church.
In the Canterbury Tale, The summoner's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer pokes fun at religion and Chaucer kinds degrades the church and creates a bad image of the church. Chaucer created the Friar to kind of send a message. This Canterbury Tale shows what really goes on in the corrupt world of the church.
In the summoner's tale the friar in a church is the main character and this main character and this friar made to be a liar and a very untrustworthy person. The friar is supposed to be a servant to god, but he does many ungodly things. The friar uses the church and god to further himself, economically. " 'Give us of wheat or malt or rye' he'd say, 'A bushel; or a God's cake; or some cheese; Give us God's halfpenny or a mass-penny, Or give us or your brawn, if you have any."(2) Deception is the one word used to describe this. The friar is promising prayers and possible salvation in return for contributions from the parishioners. The summoner believes that friars are a disgrace to the church because of what they do. The friars are described as Satan's Arse. This is an ironic name to give a person working for the will of god. In olden times people thought that if the gave a certain amount of money to the church they would receive salvation from the church. This payment to the church is called indulgences. This sounds really bad, but it's what occurred.
By the middle of the tale, the real conniving ways of the friars come out. The friar comes to Thomas's house and again asks him for indulgences. The friar gives Thomas a long sermon on the necessity of avoiding excessive wealth. He will go to any extent to further the church economically. He tells Thomas that the church prays for him every night and he even suggests that Thomas donate a portion of his gold to the church and the deception goes on. While there he fondles and kisses Thomas's wife. This story is screwed up. Then when they were finished Thomas's wife requested the deceitful friar to preach to her husband about anger because she feels that he his being very unpleasant and tells the friar about her baby. "My child has died within this fortnight- oh, soon after you left town last, it did die."(5) When the friar is disclosed this news, he really doesn't know of this, but he pretends that he already knows this because he and the other friars have seen the child being carried upward, and they have prayed and fasted.
Thomas is old and ill, but besides that he is a very wealthy man, this is the reason why the friar is so consistent in trying to prosper off of his wealth. The friar even tries to insist on trying to get all of the indulgences to go straight to the friars. The friar had to do something to make himself seem godly so the friar goes on Thomas's wife's request and gives Thomas a sermon on sin of anger (which doesn't exist) and he even brings up classical examples to try to further his shrewd lie. Thomas has by now, figured out the friars lie and he gets angrier and angrier as the friar goes on and on with his spew. Thomas doesn't want to her the friars deceit any more so he agrees to make a contribution and he stated that he has a gift, but under one condition. He said that he had to share his gift with all of the other friars in the church. Being the greedy person that the friar was he ineptly agreed, but what he was going to get into. Thomas said, "reach down your hand beneath my buttocks, and there you are sure to find something I have hidden there."(11) Again, being the greedy person he was, the friar quickly runs his hand down Thomas's pants and "Into his hand he let out an enormous fart."(11) The friar jumps up and angrily storms out of Thomas's house and goes to see his lord. The friar sits at the dinner table and his lord repeatedly asks him what is bothering him and he explains saying, "I won't be asked to divide what cannot be divided into equal parts."(13) The lord's servant humorously explains how the fart can be divided and everyone understands the joke except for the friar, so in the end karma came around and farted in the friar's hand.
As a result of everything that the friar did to the parishioners, in the end the friar got what he deserved and he learned his lesson. This Canterbury tale is a tale that can be related to modern times and Geoffrey Chaucer created this story for the reason of teaching people not to do the conniving and deceitful things that the Friar John did in this tale. Today the church is just as untrustworthy and dishonest as it was back when this story was written. Contributions to churches for salvation and promised prayers is still going on today.
This is the complete article, containing 850 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
