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Canterbury Tales

Canterbury tales is a very successful literary piece of Geoffrey Chaucer. It is a collection of 24 stories or tales told by the pilgrims, a group of people who travel to Canterbury. It was a challenge of the host, Harry Bailey, he explained the structure of the challenge that each of them must share two stories on their way to Canterbury and on their way back home, for those who recited the most beautiful and wonderful tales will be considered as a winner and will be treated to a feast. In Canterbury tales, some of the stories are concerned with social status of the individual, religious belief, morality, power and corruption. All of these correlates into modern world society, as we observe that there’s a rampant corruption in our country, some government officials are concerned about their power and position they are being selfish. The same with social status, it is important to someone nowadays to live a good impression to people they just met, so that they can’t say anything bad behind their back. The morality and religious belief of individual are the same, it is part of human nature that cannot be change for years or more as it is past down generation to generation. The Miller’s Tale is one of the most popular story in Canterbury tales, it talks about the Carpenter’s wife and her lover tricking the Carpenter several times so that they can spend some time together. This story talks about the lust, misused of religion, and broken marriage that is most likely relatable to modern society. Cheating is so rampant, most people who are in relationships in this kind of relationship ended up breaking up or worse filling for divorced and annulment. Misused of religion is more alarming because of the recent events, some of the people that has higher position in any religion overused their power and authority by abusing their member through collecting offerings more than they can give and the worse is sexual abuse, there were many cases like this happened in a past and it is sickening. The Cook’s Tale talks about the apprentice who love to sing and dance, he was working in the store of this master at first he was obedient and diligent at work however when his master is around he was being irresponsible. There are times that the apprentice leave the store unattended just to join the people outside to sing, dance and have fun there are times that he used to stole some money from the store of his master to spend in gambling. When he’s master heard about the things he did he was immediately kick out and fired from his job. This story shows how human live their life sometimes, they tend to just have fun and live the moment, they don’t see opportunity that awaits them. In addition, his master did the great job on firing him because the apprentice behavior may affect his business and his co workers might do the same thing he does. As saying says “Do not mix a piece of rotten tomato with a basket of fresh tomatoes because it will rot as well”. The Prioress’s Tale is about a seven years old chorister who always sing a song and pray to mother Mary the mother of Christ. He was a very diligent boy but because of this, he was become the target of evil, they are eager to make the boy stop singing. The evil whisper something to the Jews and urge them to do bad things, but they ended up killing him by slitting his throat and dumping him into the dark ally. This story shows that we as a human being sometimes are easy to manipulate. It also shows that we human can be cruel sometimes, we let our emotions control us and ended up doing something we don’t want to. The Canterbury Tales they say is the door to the life during the medieval period. Chaucer seems to show us and let us understand their way of living on how they give important to their social status, religious belief and morality.