The Miller’s Tale
Chaucer made a variety of characters that starred in his The Canterbury Tales. Many of those characters proved to be immoral. The miller is just one of the numerous characters this specific adjective applies to. A miller is someone who grinds grain to make bread. He isn’t very high on the social ladder and wasn’t well liked. The miller tells a story about a student who makes a fool of a carpenter and commits adultery with the carpenter’s wife. One of the themes of the story is that if you try to control someone and lock them away then they will rebel and go against you.
Bread was an important staple during the Middle Ages. To make bread you would first need to go see a miller. A miller is someone who works in and operates a mill. The mills were usually located on feudal estates. The miller would then rent the mill from the estate lord for a year or so. A portion of the grain that the miller earned in that time would go towards paying the rent. “Millers also made their own bread, so they were paid either one twelfth or one sixteenth of the grain that they ground, depending on the quality of the grain” (Allyson Terry). Normal work days consisted of grinding grain, which the townspeople would bring them, into flour. Before they could grind the grain, they had to get all of their equipment ready. Most of it was high maintenance and had to be cleaned out constantly. Grain would get stuck in all the nooks and crannies and cleaning proved very tedious. Millers were considered peasants and located in the class just above servants in the secular world. They were usually disliked due to the fact many of them chose to steal grain from their customers.
In the story an old carpenter, John, marries a y...
... middle of paper ...
...off other people just like the miller bums off the extra grain he steals. It makes me dislike the miller because he isn’t working for the grain he is stealing. Yes he works, but he isn’t doing anything to earn the extra grain he is taking.
The miller played an important part in everyday medieval life. Although he helped make bread possible, the miller was a cheater and a thief. He was drunk and didn’t take any ownership of his words or actions. He was selfish and took things that weren’t his just because he felt he deserved them. The miller is many things but moral isn’t one of them.
Works Cited
Terry, Allyson, and Kacey Marton. "Millers." Rights and Responsibilities in Medieval Guilds. N.p., 11 Apr. 2003. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.
"The Miller’s Tale." The Canterbury Tales. Ed. Ronald L. Ecker and Eugene J. Crook. Hodge & Braddock, Oct. 1994. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.
...night, the Miller's characters are not moral or honorable; they simply want to gratify themselves. While the Knight's story ends with an honorable death and a union between lovers, the Miller's tale ends with humiliation: the cuckholded husband is branded insane, Absolom suffered and prank, and Nicolas a painful burn. Consequently the Miller mocks the Knight's prayer. He wishes the company well, but the content of his tale expresses his laughter. In a way he "paid back" the Knight's tale.
How Secrecy is Presented in The Miller’s Tale Secrecy is a prominent theme in The Miller’s Tale and Chaucer uses it to not only make the tale more interesting but also to give the characters more depth, or in the case of Alison less depth. The way that secrecy is presented and what effects it has will be discussed. Chaucer introduces the reader to secrecy at the beginning of the tale in The Miller’s Prologue, indicating its importance, ‘An housbande shal not been inqusitif of Goddes privetee,’ and this immediately makes the reader assume that at least one of the characters will in fact be inquisitive of ‘Goddes privetee’ and that there will be secrets in The Miller’s Tale. The element of secrecy is evident in the characters and their descriptions. This is necessary as the characters in the tale are of a fabliau sort and the incorporation of sex with ‘low-life’ characters requires secrecy, and the description sets the tone for the tale.
The Reeve which is Osewold does take offense at the Miller’s tale of a stupid carpenter and counters his tale of a dishonest Miller. Osewold speaks in the Millers churl’s terms to basically lay it on the line for him on basically how he feels about the Miller’s tale, but in a weird, friendly way. Osewold speaks “I pray to God his neck may break into pieces, he can well in my eye see a piece of straw, but in his own he can not see a large piece of timber” In Lines (3918-20). Basically, the Miller and the Reeve don’t like each other at all due to them working with each other as carpenters in the same mill. Osewold is basically, trying to explain that the Miller is a thief and a dishonest miller and not fully honest with the company. Plus, the Miller is drunk so it’s still going to look bad on him because of him still being dishonest with his
...nd Money In The Miller's Tale And The Reeve's Tale." Medieval Perspectives 3.1 (1988): 76-88. Web. 16 May 2013. [ILL]
Williams, David. "Language Redeemed: 'The Pardoner's Tale,'." "The Canterbury Tales": A Literary Pilgrimage. Twayne Publishers, 1987. 53-100. Rpt. in Poetry for Students. Ed. Anne Marie Hacht. Vol. 14. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Feb. 2011.
In John Stuart Mill’s literature (575-580), he describes a system of ethics which he dubs as Utilitarianism. Mill’s Utilitarianism is unique because it is a Consequentialist theory – it focuses on the consequences of things, rather than individual processes involved. In other words, Mill argues that, for an action to be morally correct, it must solely contribute towards benefitting the greater good and maximizing humanity’s happiness. I argue that this ethical theory is flawed and cannot be used as a standard to gauge the morality of our actions because, since Utilitarianism is so entrenched on the outcomes that are produced, it has the potential to sanction clearly wrong actions, so long as they promote the general welfare. In this critique,
...l, Miller attempts to criticize societies that are governed by hypocrisies as they open the gateway for many to attain previously unreachable levels of power and are able to commit a crime without paying for it by blaming it entirely on someone else on false charges. Miller’s The Crucible does an excellent job in reflecting not only the society in its direct context of Salem but also other societies such as the society of the U.S during McCarthyism. Miller even though being accused of being a communist, is able to pass on his views about how hypocrisy is a dangerous yet immensely famous tool to which societies sometimes fall to in order to achieve almost an anarchy where people’s survival are based on their ability to blame others.
The roles of women are seen as not as important as the role in which men play. Focussing on the roles of a lustful temptress and a trophy wife in the Miller’s Tale, the roles of a hostess and monster in Beowulf, and the role of being passive and a sex symbol in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight of which the roles women had to be condemned to play in society at the time of these two text.
It is always shocking when someone that was generally well loved and respected is ruined. Because such people usually have few enemies, often times, the cause of their hardship is out of control hubris. Excessive pride can ruin even the most morally upright person by motivating them to do things they would never do unless they stand to lo. In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, Miller utilizes the prideful nature of John Proctor and Mary Warren to demonstrate how arrogance can lead to the downfall of any kind of person, whether they are a moral person or a social climber.
Geoffrey Chaucer put in an extravagant amount of dedication and hard work into his poems, his originality of his work is seen in every piece of his poems, especially in “The Miller’s Tale.” As today, where mockery, deception, and obscenity lives in the world, gripping onto those who are relentless, these three key concepts are clearly depicted through the actions and words of the characters presented in “The Miller 's
Mandell, Jerome. Geoffrey Chaucer : building the fragments of the Canterbury tales. N.J. : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992.
Arthur Miller states in his essay, "Tragedy and the Common Man," " . . . we are often held to be below tragedy--or tragedy below us . . . (tragedy is) fit only for the highly placed . . . and where this admission is not made in so many words it is most often implied." However, Miller believes " . . . the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were" (1021). It is this belief that causes Miller to use a common man, Willie Loman, as the subject of his tragedy, Death of a Salesman. Miller redefines the tragic hero to fit a more modern age, and the product of this redefinition is Willie.
In conclusion, Miller uses the theme of reputation like a puppet master controlling every person in Salem and affecting their choices and decisions. Moreover, the necessity to have a perfect image of oneself in the village is such that it is fear of judgement that drives their good behaviour rather than true belief in their religion.
The Canterbury Tales. Trans. Nevill Coghill. Literature: The British Tradition. Ed.
Florio, Thomas A., ed. “Miller’s Tales.” The New Yorker. 70 (1994): 35-36. Martin, Robert A., ed., pp.