Canterbury tales: The Wife of Bath and the Pardoner Essay

Similarities and differences are easly spotted in a work of fiction. Alot of the time the author will make it very clear what he or she is trying to portray through their similarities and differences. In the Canterbury tales the autthor makes sure that you know that there are alot more differences than there are similarities. For example the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner, they are very different stories but the author seems to tie in their similarities and differences. In the Wife of Bath and in the Pardoner there are many similariries and differences between the two tales. In the tales one of the similarities is that they both have experienced the world. There is one difference between them just in traveling around the world because the Wife of Bath experienced the world by traveling and also in a sexual sense. She goes on for a while in her tale about how she would be the best person to talk about marriage and how you can make it work, or how it wont work. And she states that she ahs the right to say this because she has been married fiive times, and she knows what will and wont work in a marriage. One of the big reasons that she said all of this is so that she can destroy the idea that men are the dominate species and they have a strong power over women, and that if women are given everything that they need, want, and desire, then thhey will be willing to do anything that their husbands want and they will be faithful to them always. While these stories are exptremly different in what they are talking about there are still a few things that they have in common. The Pardoner is all about the journey to canterbury and how they decidd to make the journey a little more bearable so they decided to have a story telling contest. So they decided have each of the men tell a story on their way to canterbury and on their way back and the Inn keeper will decide on the winner. Except for the fact that they never got to finsh their stories on the way back becase the Pardoner dies and their is never a clear winner. Sometimes the author wants you to be able to notice the similarites and differences within a peice of fiction. Sometimes it is hidden but other times, such as in this case they are very obvious.