The Miller's Tale By Geoffrey Chaucer

Upon reading Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale”, we as the readers are introduced to the four main characters present throughout the entirety of the poem. These characters include: John the carpenter, Nicholas the student, John’s wife Alison, and the parish clerk Absalom. Chaucer sets up “The Miller’s Tale” by first introducing his characters and briefly describing their personalities and what role they played in the story. One may come to realize, after completing the poem, that these brief descriptions acted as a way to foreshadow later events and actions carried out by each respective character. John the carpenter’s introduction is focused on here and it may be seen that his introduction was a foreshadowing of what he was to do later on in the work.
From this description, we as the audience might see John has a paranoid sort of person, a person who may have believed that because he was able to wed such an attractive young woman, that he would have to keep watch on her at all times to ensure he would keep her. The other detail mentioning how he was uneducated, can also give the reader an idea that this man may also believe anything told to him, as he would not know any better. These descriptions of John as a character become a foreshadowing for his later behaviors, as we then come to see later