The Pardoner as a symbol of the unattainable goals of the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer's work, The Canterbury Tales, paints a portrait of medieval life through the voices and stories of a wide variety of speakers. People on pilgrimages tell their stories for a wide range of reasons. Each story is told to accomplish two things. The Tales provoke their audience as much as they are a kind of self-reflection. These reactions range from humor, to extreme anger, to open admiration. Each story is symbolic for a meaning above the actual plot of the narrative itself. The theme of social and moral balance is a theme that ties every character and every story together. The character of the Pardoner exemplifies this ideal. Embodying images of balance in his character and story, the Pardoner becomes a symbol of the Pilgrims' unattainable goal of spiritual and moral balance. All the characters in The Canterbury Tales are on pilgrimage. Their physical journey takes them to Canterbury Cathedral, to visit the shrine of a former archbishop, Thomas a Becket. When their stories are viewed allegorically, the pilgrimage takes on new meaning. Beyond a physical journey, these pilgrims engage their minds and thoughts in a symbolic journey. The topics of their stories vary widely, but common to all is the desire for knowledge and self-understanding. The Knight's Tale, with its emphasis on courtly love and chivalric ideals, is a portrait of the changes that occurred within the upper classes of medieval English society. The drunken Miller shows his anger towards the aristocracy by telling a parody of the Knight's Tale. The Pardoner's Tale tells the story of three young people who, in the middle of the paper, find a way to reconcile the unbalanced portions of the human experience in order to promote growth in the face of sin and death. .Works Cited and Consulted Ames, Ruth M. God's Plenty Chaucer's Christian Humanism. Loyola University Press: Chicago, 1984. Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Pardoner's Tale." The Canterbury Tales: Nine Tales and the General Prologue. Ed. VA Kolve. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989. Colby, Elbridge. Chaucer's Christian Morality. The Bruce Publishing House: Milwaukee, 1936. Ellis, Roger. Patterns of religious narrative in the Canterbury Tales. Banes & Noble: Totowa, 1986. Patterson, Lee. "Redemption in Chaucer's Tale of the Pardoner." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Durham; Fall 2001. 507-560Reiff, Raychel Haugrud “Chaucer's Tale of the Pardoner.” The explainer. Washington, summer 1999. 855-58