Symbols In The Rioter's Tale

In “The Pardoner’s Tale” three rioters went looking for Death. One night as the three of them sat there, one of the servants told the others that he once had this friend that was slain the very night the funeral knell by a mysterious figure named, Death. The rioters, hearing the name of Death, demand to know where they can find him. The old man, they saw walking down the road, directs them into a grove, where he says he just left Death under an oak tree. The rioters rush to the tree, underneath which they find not Death but eight bushels of gold coins with no owner in sight.

The gold coins first start to cause trouble between the three. Two of them set a trap to kill the youngest when he arrived back at the oak tree from town. While the rioter was in town he also had similar thoughts and bought rat poisoning to put in the wine. “Sell me some poison if you will, I have a lot of rats i want to kill and there’s a polecat too about my yard that takes my chickens and it hits me hard; but I’ll get even, as only right, with vermin that destroy a man by night.” (Chaucer 130-131).
They drank the wine, and they perished both. “He took a bottle of poison up and drank; and his companion, nothing loth, drank from it also, and they perished both.” (Chaucer 131).

All three rioters went looking for Death, and all three of them found it. They all died from Death and got what they deserved. If you do not go looking for Death, then it will not come find you as quickly. “Thus these two murderers recieved their due, so did the treacherous young poisoner too.” (Chaucer