The Story of Samson in the Monk’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Introduction

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales feature a short story titles The Monk’s Tale. In this story, a host demands a merry tale from a monk, who instead narrates several tragedies dealing with how fortune plays a role in the life of a man. The Monk is sure to catalogue the changeability of fortune and the role it has in life using a series of tales about individuals such as Adam, Lucifer, Samson, Hercules, Nero, and others. A common factor for all these individuals is that they initially had favor on their side until fortunes changed and their stories ended in tragedy. In his definition, the Monk offers a detailed description of a tragedy as story regarding an individual in high degree with great prosperity who falls into misery and ends up wretched. In the story of Samson, the Monk advises men to refrain from blindly trusting prosperity and always remember that fortunes change in an instant.

Summary of Samson’s Story from The Monk’s Tale

Samson, the mighty warrior who could rip a huge beast apart with his bare hands, is the subject of the Monk’s next tale. Samson is presented as a strong warrior, one with extraordinary strength. He is said to have been so strong that he could fend off an entire army with a only one finger. This ability was God-given, with the condition that he could not cut his hair. He was able to meet this condition for a majority of his life, garnering success as a mighty warrior. Everyone was awed by his incredible strength making him a respectable member of the society. This was until he fell in love with Delilah, a spy. Samson’s story is developed further, with the author describing how he fell from grace after confessing his secret to his wife, who then betrayed him to his enemies and took up with another man. In one night, Samson slew a thousand men with a jawbone from a donkey and then prayed to God to quench his hunger. The tooth of the jawbone sprouted a well, and the well grew. Without telling Delilah, he would have been able to conquer the world if he had not revealed to her that his strength came from his refusal to cut his hair. As a result of Samson’s lack of strength, his enemies were able to cut out his eyes and imprison him. His detractors subjected him to abuse and ridicule. He was invited to a temple banquet where he was tasked with performing a series of impressive feats. He destroyed two pillars in the temple where Samson was imprisoned, killing himself and everyone else in the temple as a result of the destruction. Despite his success in killing his enemies, Samson lost his own life, his success, and his own ability as a warrior. He fell from grace as fortunes turned against him. He was not only deprived of his strength but also his ability to see and function as a man. His ego was bruised repeatedly and was used as a form of entertainment for his enemies. His story is purely that of a tragedy, beginning on a significant high when he was fighting off armies alone to being a blind prisoner eating only when his masters pleased. His story is a depiction of how a man should be too trusting because the events of the future rely on present actions. The Monk concludes by emphasizing that the tragedy serves as a warning to husbands/men to avoid confiding life-threatening secrets to their wives.

Analysis of Related Themes in Samson’s Story

Powerful People Fall

The Monk’s story has an obvious moral that fortune takeovers the mighty and powerful. Samson comes to his dejected and tragic end because of a woman, essentially it can mean because of trusting the wrong person. This highlights the first theme, that anyone can fall from a mighty and high place to the worst conditions. The majority of people have experienced total ruin and various losses at some point in their lives. The term “everything” means something different to different people; it is completely subjective. It could mean one’s career, material possessions, relationships. health, or wealth, as well as personal reputation, among other things. In the Monk’s story about Samson, the description reveals how he lost all of these elements. He lost his career, material possessions, relationships. health, or wealth, as well as personal reputation. While it is common for people to rise and fall in a short period of time, Samson’s rise and fall story was too tragic for human comprehension. His choices led to actions that brought about his fall. He forgot that even the strongest would fall at some point for various reasons. His strength made him oblivious to the point that even weak people have strong brains that could lead to an individual’s downfall. For example, Delilah would have been no match for the mighty Samson, yet she was able to single-handedly weaken him by getting him to trust him. Samson’s fell from being a mighty and fearful warrior to an amusement for his captors, locked in a cage for years to be humiliated and reminded daily that he was nothing. Despite being a soldier and a fighter with extraordinary strength, he could not prevent his own downfall. He rapidly fell from his high societal position to that of the lowest members of the community.

Trust and Relationships

The story also reveals another theme that trust often comes at an extremely high cost, usually in the form of betrayal. Stories involving significant triumph or tragedy have always included elements of trust and relationships. In some cases, spies have renounced their nations for the sake of a foreign philosophy, or even for the sake of money and other personal reasons. The Monk uses the story of Samson to encourage people to be wary of strangers who ask for personal information. Warnings are all over the internet and in print these days about con artists who call or knock on a person’s door asking for personal information in exchange for plans or programs that may be of use to their target audience. Most people only realize that they have been conned when it is too late and there is already remarkable losses in different parts of life. The Monk uses Samson to show how trust in relationships can lead to immense individual losses. Trusting the wrong person is such a huge life mistake that the consequences are dire. For Samson, trusting a foreign spy with personal information regarding his strength led to loss of strength, end of their relationship, loss of his personal reputation and status in the society, loss of personal possessions, and a loss of his career as a leader in the community. By completely trusting his newly wedded wife, he confided in her regarding the source of his extraordinary help. He was betrayed as others learnt of the same secret. Trust and betrayal are dominant themes in the Monk’s Tale as he emphasizes the need to understand that fortunes change and favor turns, bringing with it negative outcomes, especially for people who are too trusting. The Monk advises men to refrain from blindly trusting prosperity, in this case the prosperity of a god relationship.

Rhyme Scheme and Meter

In the Monk’s Tale, the metrical form is very complex following an 8-line stanza that has a ABABBCBC rhyme scheme. The metrical form also has an existing syntactical connection between the 4th and 5th lines, that serves the role of bridging the stanza to avoid breaking it into two. The metrical style used in the Monk’s Tale provides a spacious and elevated tone, despite the use of simple as well as direct language except in the points where conclusions about Fortune or God are made where vocabularies are heavier. The rhythm used is very consistent all through the story. By repeating the “b” line quite often, Chaucer brings the entire story together. The following quote shows this relationship:

“MONK there was, one of the finest sort,

An outrider; hunting was his sport;

A manly man, to be an abbot able.

Very many excellent horses had he in stable” – Geoffrey Chaucer

However, the story gains a drowning effect due to the repetitive rhythm and meter used. A possible result of the drowning effect is the excessive repetition of a tragic ending for the main characters, leading to the listener (Host) cutting the Monk short and demanding merrier tales to break the monotony.

Conclusion

To sum up, the story of Samson as told by the Monk in the Monk’s Tale is a friendly reminder on the aforementioned themes. It retells of the consequences of blind trust and the need to always remember that no matter how high one climbs, there is always a chance of falling. Samson’s rise to glory comes with his huge tumble and losses leading to his own death amidst misery and frustrations. In this discussion, the story and how it is told come together to show how the Monk’s Tale is effective as an English tool.

Works Cited

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The canterbury tales. Broadview Press, 2012.