Trickery

Pranks, sometimes you must do one, and you may have a laugh, but in other occasions the prank can backfire right into you. In The Millers Tale we can get a peak at both of those types of pranks. The very funny ones which make the victim look very badly, and the ones which don’t work as you thought they would and in some way it hurts you.

The first prank I am going to refer too is the one Nicholas played on the carpenter. He tells him that he has foreseen a terrible flood and that the only way they can save themselves is sleeping in tubs. The objective of his trick is to be able to spend a night with the carpenter’s wife called Alisoun. His plan is perfectly executed, the carpenter falls for the trick and sleeps on a tub hanging on the top of a house. (I leave this prank to continue another one, but they will both connect at the end)

This new trick is also performed by Nicholas, but this time it is against Absolon, a clerk who also has a crush for Alisoun. So this time Absolon goes to where Alisoun sleeps, and asks her for a kiss, but instead he, “But with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers” (3734) Absolon sees this and decides to payback. He goes to pick up hot iron so when he went next time he would mark Nicholas. So he went back as he asked for another kiss, Nicholas ass appeared and it was marked.

When it was marked Nicholas screamed “Help! Water! Water! Help, for Goddess herte!”(3815). Precisely then the carpenter thought the fooled had come because of the scream and cut the tubs from the house for them to float but instead they fell to the floor. These are both pranks that appear in The Millers Tale. The first one went out very well for Nicholas, but the second one backfired on him.

What Is Torture?

The Knights tale. Right before reading his tale I began imagining how a knight’s tale would go in such a time. What I have as a mental picture of a knight is one with armor, a horse, and a quest which he must achieve to save his ideals, girl, kingdom, or the world. My expectations were pretty much like the ones I explained just moments ago.

But as I read I realized that this wasn’t the knight’s tale, but a story the Knight was telling. With this said I’d like to comment on the tale the character is telling.

His story is based, from what I understood, of three men of Greece, Theseus (governor of Athens), Arcite, and Palamoun (war prisoners). They are both incarcerated together and fall in love with a woman that they see every day named Emelye. I don’t know why but until this point the story seemed very familiar. I thought I may have heard this story before, and as I continued it began to look very familiar. The dilemma that the knight proposes, of who is happier, Arcite who is free but can’t see the women he loves, or Palamoun who can see her but is in jail.

"1347 Yow loveres axe I now this questioun:
1348 Who hath the worse, Arcite or Palamoun?"

This rhetorical question made me think a lot. In my opinion the worse situation is Palamoun’s since he is tempted every day by just seeing Emelye. While Arcite isn’t tempted, though he is always thinking about her, but he mustn’t suffer the torture of seeing her every day and knowing you can’t have her. This question is very interesting, it states a moral dilemma that most of us have had to deal or will have to deal sometime in our life.

Migrations, A Start To Poetry

After reading the first part of the poem "Migrations" by Dorian Merina, I saw a great resemblence on the way the text was written and how the poem was phicically like. For instance take the following exerpt into consideration.

"into the waters of open sea


On the boats come the goods that cross the waters"(line 15-18)

We can see how when Merina mentions the "open sea" there is a wide gap between that line and the next one. As if though that gap was actualy representing the "open sea". The author is trying to make us flow with the poem, his way of not only writting but showing us in the poem what he means is a great way to keep the reader trapped on the text.