All the religious characters in the General Prologue are shown to be down right hypocritical, barring the Parson who is too idealistic and thus unconvincing. Discuss
... is clearly shown to be rich and not giving all the money to the church. The Parson is an ideal religious type and is the only one of the pilgrims who does exactly as he should. However, on the whole the religious characters in the Prologue are hypocritical and so this opinion does show a valid point. The Summoner and Pardoner are good examples of being down right hypocritical and very corrupt. They use religion to extort people and gain profit for themselves. Chaucer even describes their features repulsively saying how they have warts and facial problems, ‘of his visage children were aferd.’ The descriptions given of them allow the reader to know that they are evil without reading what they do. So the statement of all the religious characters being down right hypocritical is correct to a certain extent. Some of the characters are hypocritical such as the Summoner and pardoner but others such as the Clerk are not. I do not feel that the Parson is so idealistic that he is therefore unbelievable for a number of reasons. Firstly, is entirely possible that a person can be consumed by there faith and they can live for it as the Parson does. For example Muslin suicide bombers are willing to sacrifice there own life just because of what they believe in so it is plausible that a man could gave when he so desperately needs it himself. The Parson is so wholly good and Christ like that he can seem to be unconvincing but it is still possible that he truly is that good. However, it is clearly evident how it could be seen that he is just too good. Even the most faithful and true monks must sometimes ‘let their hair down’ and so it is hard to believe that a man can give all his money away all of the time. No one can live without a little enjoyment from expense spent so it is implausible that he can. He may also have just been placed in by Chaucer to emphasise just how bad the others are. It would allow the reader to compare his true goodness and see just how corrupt the others are. I believe that this is the reasoning for the Knight to be at the ...