[ Home | Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Tom Cadmus
T1: Cadmust
Date: 4/6/98
Time: 4:40:05 PM
Remote Name: 130.68.21.159
In book six Piers seems to echo the Statute of Labourers by chastising the "shirkers" for their lack of work. The statute goes on to specify that the laborers are charging "excessive wages" of "the great men". From the language of the statute it seems clear that the "damage" being done to the nobles by being charged excessively is not only monitary. The peasants were stirring up the order of things by demanding a form of power in the newly burgeoning "money" society. The statute appeals to the king as the source of authority that makes the peasants "bound to serve". Piers invokes the very authority of God himself along with Truth in further establishing the "binding" nature of the hierarchy that serves to relegate peasants to lives of service. The knight figure in the book seems to represent the kind of "justice" that the statute would bring to the post-plague chaos of the feudal system. Piers asks the knight to "protect him from these damned villians" and the knight responds by telling the Waster "I shall bring you to justice." However, Piers invokes the powers of Hunger to punish the Waster and therefore he exhibits his appeals to other sources of authority besides that of the nobles and the king.