I found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts...because it is the only thing that can make it stop hurting. ---Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in Strange Land

Chaucer's The Miller's Tale has been scrutinized in hundreds of ways throughout the centuries in many different ways. Every time it has been looked at it has been taken at its face value as a comedy due to the tone of the miller and it's stature as a fabliaux. I am going to take a different view of the piece, a view from the other side of the fence as it were. I am going to view it as a tragedy.

The source of my argument originates in Robert Heinlein novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. The main character, Valentine Michael Smith, is the lone survivor of the first mission to Mars. An infant at the time of...