The Miller s The Canterbury Tales - 1624 Words

â€Å"The Miller’s Tale,† part of Geoffrey Chaucer’s larger work, â€Å"The Canterbury Tales,† is a bawdy and irreverent story about lust, deception, and consequences. Chaucer’s work centers around four main characters: John is a dimwitted carpenter, Alison is John’s young and wife, Nicholas is a scholar who resides in John’s household, and Absolon is a priest’s assistant with a romantic fixation on Alison. Throughout the tale, deceptive plots and questionable decisions abound, and no one is completely innocent of wrongdoing. Of course, like with most any other story involving lies and selfish pursuits, every character gets an informal education on natural consequences. It is worth noting that Nicholas is the only character in the story with any†¦show more content†¦John is a controlling and foolish man who considers his wife as much his possession as any other material thing that his wealth has afforded him, and for th is he learns an emotionally and physically painful lesson about just how little control he really has. Immediately after describing John, Chaucer turns to the carpenter’s attitude about his young wife, saying, â€Å"Jalous he was, and heeld hire narwe in a cage, / For she was wilde and yong, and he was old, / And deemed himself been lik a cokewold† (Chaucer, 116-118). One cannot help but raise a proverbial eyebrow at John’s denial of Alison’s agency. In Paul A. Olsen’s â€Å"Poetic Justice in The Miller’s Tale,† the author asserts that, â€Å"The possessive and stupid, the Carpenter Johns, deserve to lose what they have even as they are eyeing a bigger take; they deserve to be set down for mad even as they think they are getting a corner on God’s secrets† (para. 9). Indeed, John suffers these exact fates. Having been convinced by Nicholas that God would send down a great flood, John hangs three tubs from his ceiling and falls asleep in one, secure in the belief that this plan will save himself, Alison, and Nicholas from God’s wrath. The next morning, when John awakens in confusion and cuts down his tub, he crashes to the floor and suffers physical injury. Later, he sustains emotional injury through being labeled a