Modern Day Lessons

The most important lesson learned from the pardoners tale is that you must surround yourself with people you trust. The three rioters strove to eliminate each other, not only out of greed, but also because they knew that the others would not hesitate to eliminate them, if given the chance. This culture of fear acted as a catalyst in their decisions to eliminate their fellow rioters. If they had been able to trust their compatriots not to stab them in the backs when given the chance, then they might have been able to overcome their greed and simply split the money and move on.

Greed may have been at the root of this betrayal, but the events could also not have transpired were it not for the personalities of the rioters. While others placed in their situation would likely have desired all of the gold, only these deeply flawed people would go to the lengths of killing their accomplices for it. These louts are acting as the pardoner would like people to think people act, simply because he is the one telling the tale, and it benefits him to inspire a fear of greed in any people listening to his tale, because that will result in more money foe himself.

Modern Day Beowulf

         It is difficult to find a "modern day Beowulf" because there are not many people with the same values as Beowulf, and those that do share common values with him are not going around killing monsters. It is my belief that there is no sole person who is a good representation of a modern day beowulf, rather, I feel that the closest thing there is to a modern day beowulf is the United States, and more specifically the United States military.
         One example of this is the "war on terror" in which the government of the United States has identified several terrorist organizations, most notably Al Qaeda and set out to destroy them, in much the way Beowulf set out to destroy Grendel. In both situations the villain is looked at as having no rationale other than being purely evil, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. The United States Military is considered by Americans, and many other western nations as heroic, whereas there are many onlookers who condemn them for being too heavy handed. This is similar to Beowulf in the sense that when he kills Grendel and Grendel's mother, his men as well as the Danes see him as a great hero, however it is easy to see how someone looking at the situation from another perspective might think that he went too far.
       In some regards, it seems as though the responses to both situations, 9/11 and Grendel slaughtering the Danes, were only marginally more moral than the situations themselves. In both cases the response was to seek out, and kill, the perpetrators. Well it is subject to debate as to whether or not those were the right responses, they do seem very similar in nature, hence my likening Beowulf to the United States military.