The Miller's Tale

The Miller's Tale reflects Chaucer's relation of the nature of each character's tale to the personality of the character telling it.  While the Knight's Tale was a noble, heroic story of two men battling for love, with the noble Duke Theseus making things better in the end, the Miller's tale is a nasty tale told by the drunken Miller when it is not even his turn to tell a tale.  While Theseus is portrayed as noble by the Knight, the Miller portrays hende Nicholas as cunning and good with girls, and Nicholas ends up with the carpenter's wife in the end.  While the Nicholas's actions are obscene, grabbing Alison's crotch and farting in Absalon's face, he still ends up with the carpenter's wife, who is "ful moore blisful on to see than is the newe pere-jonette tree" (3247-3248), while the whole town thinks John is crazy.  The Miller's Tale provides a contrast to  The Knight's Tale.  In The Knight's Tale, the characters pray to the God's, make sacrifices to the Gods, and promise to be obedient to the Gods in hopes that the Gods will help them.  In The Miller's Tale, Nicholas can use astronomy to predict God's will, and he even pretend to know what God will do in order to trick John, the carpenter.