Simkin In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, is a book of tales that are filled with moral and life lessons. In “The Reeve’s Tale”, the miller, Simkin, often cheats many of his customers and has a pugnacious nature. When the maniciple becomes ill, two of his students, Alan and John, decide to help out by traveling to the miller. Because of his reputation, Alan and John ask the miller if they could watch him grain the corn so that they can prevent Simkin from cheating them. Skimkin realizes their plan and devises a new one to counteract theirs so he can steal the flour from them. He agrees to their condition but then releases their horses, foiling their plans and allowing the miller to cheat them. When the duo finally get their horses

back, the decide to spend the night at the miller’s and make the miller regret for having cheated them by sleeping with Simkin’s wife and daughter. This tale was written to highlight the concept of justice and the dangers of deception. Chaucer incorporates the theme of lies and deceit to bring out Simkin’s character to life.
In the beginning, Chaucer describes Simkin as a petty character who can easily be identified as an antagonist. For “a thief he was”, Chaucer immediately points out what causes his future demise (Chaucer 3939). By foreshadowing the miller’s downfall, we can understand that those who lie and deceive will get punished. Although we infer that, the story implies that Simkin continues to cheat others and has yet to be punished by his deeds. Because he is “usant to steal”, it has become a habit to deceive others (Chaucer 3940). From this, we see that justice will be administered eventually, but not at the moment and will happen later in the story. Thus, the readers can anticipate that Simkin will get the punishment he deserves.
When the two lads come to prevent the miller from cheating them, Simkin devises another plan to counteract their strategy. When the duo decides to “stand by the hopper”, Simkin immediately tries to find a way to prevent them from doing so (Chaucer 4036). Instead of simply allowing them to watch and not cheat them, Simkin must find a way to stop them. By taking this measure, Simkin adds to his demise because does not stop to think that he should not deceive them. This makes the reader ask themselves, why does Simkin need to cheat these two students? Chaucer shows the miller’s true nature and his inability to do anything moral. When Simkin takes "the bridle” off the horses, he is able to cheat the duo (Chaucer 4063). The idea of not cheating the lads does not occur to him whatsoever. Simkin seems to only be guided by his greedy nature and nothing else.
After being cheated, Alan and John decide to bring matters into their own hands.

Alan and John sneak into Simkin’s wife and daughter’s room and becomes “at one” with them (Chaucer 4197). The justice brought upon the miller is to degrade the women who are closest to Simkin, essentially defiling what Simkin loves most, his property. When the miller finds out, he threatens them that they “shalt be dead” for what they have done (Chaucer 4270). Simkin does not initially realize that this is his punishment for continually cheating others and resorts to anger and violence instead or repentance. We are shown more of his destructive nature that becomes his demise. Additionally, for a moment we can see that perhaps Simkin has a shred of humanity until Chaucer mentions that the women “come of such lineage” (Chaucer 4273). By doing so, Chaucer destroys any kind of sympathy for Simkin and makes him the sole example of what becomes of deceit and lies.

All in all, Chaucer conveys human corruption through Simkin and makes him the example of justice. Although all his tales describe similar morals, it is evident to say that those who lie and deceive will always be punished. In more ways than one, we find ourselves often disagreeing with this sentiment and harbor anger towards those who cheat because they always seem to be the most successful. Chaucer empathizes with that and shows the audience that although the miller continually cheats, he eventually gets punished by Alan and John thus showing that patience is a key role within

justice.