How Does Chaucer Use Satire In Animal Farm

Throughout the Canterbury Tales, various characters are introduced and tell a tale, each of which tells a different story. All of the tales are unique and address different issues. “The Miller’s Tale” is the second of the many stories and varies from all of the rest. As seen from the “General Prologue,” Chaucer clearly depicts the Miller as a crude, slobbish man who will say anything. This reputation is held true as the Miller drunkenly tells a story full of adultery and bickering. Despite the scandalous nature of “The Miller’s Tale,” the story also displays some of Chaucer’s prominent beliefs. As “The Miller’s Prologue” and “The Miller’s Tale” are told, it becomes evident that Chaucer is challenging the common roles and behaviors of women, and he is also questioning the effectiveness of social class.

The Pardoner has many other examples of irony just waiting to show up to the readers.
    The Pardoner's next example of irony is situational irony. The reader is originally told a story about three men searching for a man named death. Readers seem to forget all about the part of the story when these young men find the gold. At this point the story took a sure twist up until all of the young men are dead. When this happens Chaucer goes back “Thus these two murderers received their due,/So did the the treacherous young poisoner too” (294-5).   The “due” in this case is death. When this occurs the reader will most likely remember that death was what these young men were searching from the beginning for, the reader would assume that the quest to find this assassin would be a wild goose chase, the young men did indeed find what they where looking for. The Pardoner has one more form of irony in store for his listeners.
    The final example of irony from the Pardoner is dramatic irony. To let his audience know that these three young men are doomed to death before they have the slightest idea Chaucer uses foreshadowing. The best example of foreshadowing is the old man that they meet on the road to find Death. The old man give several clues to his identity such as “One who would change his youth to have my age/And so my age is mine and must be still” (121-2). The reader easily mistakes the old man as looking for an exchange of youth and old age when in

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are some of the most widely read and anthologized pieces of medieval poetry. These tales are generally celebrated and enjoyed because of the author’s use of wit and satire, as Chaucer often uses word play and characterization to deliver hard-hitting, yet entertaining truths about his time period. This is the case in “The Miller’s Tale,” which portrays the story of a carpenter with an adulterous wife and the shenanigans that take place during and after one of her affairs. After closely examining “Absalom’s Revenge,” the last section of this tale, it is clear to see that Chaucer uses language, puns, and other writing techniques to provide a commentary on the lewdness of some who lived during the Middle Ages.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Canterbury Tales." Trans. Nevill Coghill. Glencoe Literature, The Reader's Choice, British Literature. Columbus: Glencoe/McGraw Hill, 2000. 118-119.

There are two examples of situational irony in the tale. A first example that Chaucer uses is when the three rioters head to the tree to find Death. However, when they arrive under the tree; the three rioters find gold rather than Death: “At once the three young rioters began/ To run, and reached the tree, and there they found/ A pile of golden florins on the ground” (162-64). Situational irony is used by Chaucer making his reader think that Death will be found by the rioters under the tree; instead the three rioters find gold. Second, the Pardoner is another example of situational irony. Rather than forgiving the people of the village from their sins, the Pardoner charges money to forgive the sinner. Situational irony is demonstrating that “greed is root of all evil” in “The Pardoner’s

In “The Miller’s Tale” Chaucer explains how the Miller was a drunk and pale man that did not have a wife or children, but even before telling his story, it wasn’t his turn by interrupting the Monk before him and begins to explain his story. The miller start to explain about a young girl called Alison and her husband called the Carpenter, Alison was an only 18 years old when she married her husband and he was an old man. They lived in Oxford the Carpenter would admire the beauty of his wife and how the town man would be envious of him for his wife. It also involved two other man Nicholas and Absolon these men were also young, Nicholas was a clerk that would happen to be a secret love affairs, but also very clever and discreet and Absolon was a foppish clerk and a handsome man that every woman loved. Those three men were in love with Alison, but affording Alison only

Throughout his The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer makes it his goal to expose the true nature of each of his characters through the descriptions given by the narrator and reflected in the tale told by each character. At the end of the Miller’s Tale, almost all of the characters are guilty of some wrongdoing and physically harmed in some manner. The unfortunate chain of events at the story’s conclusion and the Miller’s extreme amusement in response to the story enable the reader to become privy to the Miller’s unique agenda. A superficial possibility, and easily the most reflective of the Miller’s personality, is a simple desire to find and provide amusement in a vulgar tale with graphic imagery and inappropriate actions by the characters. Another

This passage (lines 678-702) of Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale describes Absolon’s revenge against Alison and Nicholas. At line 678 he has procured a hot iron cultour which he takes to Alison’s window. There, he proceeds in an attempt to lure her out with the promise of a gold ring in exchange for a kiss. Nicholas, hearing this from Alison’s room, decides to make the joke better by putting his behind out the window and farting in Absolon’s face, to which Absolon responds by striking him with the hot iron.

Animal Farm is the brilliant work of art by George Orwell. The book has many themes including Tyrants, False Allegiance, and Satire. George Orwell put all of these themes perfectly throughout the book enchanting the overall book and making readers not want to put the book down. Animal Farm is a five out of five star book according to Common Sense Media. Even winning the Prometheus Hall of Fame in 2011 and the Retro Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1996.

During the medieval times corruption in the Catholic Church was prevalent. As corruption was prevalent during Chaucer’s time so was a Pardoner’s practice of selling indulgences, becoming one of deception and greed. Similar to the upper class focusing their time on becoming the richest and most powerful. In many of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer would use satire to criticize different social classes. For example, the middle class, those people who worked for their possessions. He satirizes religious hypocrisy in such tales as the Pardoner, in which a middle class man, showing the corruption of the Pardoner’s job. Through his description of the Pardoner as being a man who is disitful, greedy, and hypocritical, Chaucer uses

Animal Farm was published in 1945 by Eric Arthur Blair under the pen name George Orwell. It is a satirical book. Satirical books are a popular form of fiction where characters or ideas are made fun of and mocked. Authors of satires use sarcasm and irony to make their point. I chose to read Animal Farm because I enjoy learning about history and reading satirical books.

It tells in his tale that the Pardoner’s favorite thing to preach against is greed, but what people don’t know is that he is only the pardoner because he likes the money; he is greedy. Chaucer uses this type of satire to help illustrate that the Pardoned is a hypocrite. “Out come the pence, and specially for myself, for my exclusive purpose is to win and not at all to castigate their sin.” When the pardoned says this he is basically saying that I’m only doing this job for the money, and that he could care less about the people he is supposed to help. That is how Chaucer uses satire for the Pardoner.

In Animal Farm by George Orwell, he uses the animals to represent everyone in our society today. In this novel, satire is the use of animal characters as a representation to show the Russian Revolution. The humans, portrayed by animals, are being ridiculed and it shows the breakdown of political ideology, and the misuse of power. Each of the characters portray an individual in society that expresses how humans can act similarly to animals. We can be perceived as animals because we can be separated by classes, or by our appearances. We often become what we don’t want to be, as in the novel the animals make rules to not become humans. We soon find out that the pigs are standing and becoming just like humans. The pigs hold all the power, and everything is fitted around them.

In the story there are many circumstances under which the people in the middle class have been manipulated, by those with evil intent, effortlessly. Chaucer acknowledges the devious deeds of the Pardoner, “On one short day, in money down, he drew more than the parson in a month or two, and by his flatteries and prevarication made monkeys of the priest and congregation.” (Chaucer 115). The Pardoner took advantage of people and robbed them for their last dime with no remorse. Though the Pardoner was wrong for what he did there should never be a scenario when somebody is robbed of their last dime by intellectual manipulation, there should always be a point of return. Next Chaucer displays, “There was no Pardoner of equal grace for in his trunk he had a pillowcase.” (Chaucer 115). Here Chaucer is implying that this is not the

Accordingly, in “The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer displays three specific forms of irony. One form of irony which is demonstrated in the selection is that of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is a literary technique where the full significance of a character’s words or actions are clear to the audience or reader but are unknown to the character. In the “Pardoners Tale”, three men set out to kill death in revenge. During their journey, the second man makes a promise to keep the first man’s secret. The readers by this moment in time, know for a fact that this man’s word means absolutely nothing. As the journey progresses, the men abandoned their vow to kill death and instead claimed gold which was not theirs and are now conspiring to break the vow to divide the money equally. “That on my word, I nothing will betray” (Chaucer, 720). The statement “On my word”, turns out to be a statement depicting dramatic irony. By this time the audience knows that the man’s inability to keep his word, will in turn be the down fall and dramatic irony of the selection.