Character Analysis Essay “The Canterbury Tales” Considered one of the most interesting and famous pieces of literary work, “The Canterbury Tales” The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer deals with five different social groups. Every social group is made up of characters who can be seen as ideal and realistic and characters who can be seen as the complete opposite of that. Chaucer's incredible analysis of each character's personality allows the reader to determine whether a character is compelling or questionable. Based on Chaucer's analysis of each character, the most ideal characters in The Canterbury Tales are the ruling-class knight, the middle-class Oxford clerk, and the peasant-class plowman; However, each social group also has a character who does not live up to the ideal established by the model character of each group, for example the squire in the ruling class, the doctor in the middle class and the captain in the peasant class. One of the most ideal characters of the ruling class is considered to be the Knight. The character of the knight is summed up by the narrator when he remarks: "There was a knight, / That from his beginnings, / To go out on horseback, he loved chivalry, / Truth and honor, freedom and courtesy. The knight was a gentleman who loved the truth and preached freedom and equality. The knight sets out on the pilgrimage to thank the saints for preserving his life through his battles, as he fought more than 15 battles during the Crusades and was victorious in each of them. The Knight's kind and genuine personality has made him one of the most respectable characters in history. However, the knight's son, the squire, was the complete opposite of his father. He does not have...... middle of paper ......and temperament. The Skipper is definitely a character that does not have the ideal characteristics of a character such as the Plowman who is very calm and kind. The development of the plot in “The Canterbury Tales” is based on the development of the characters and the definition of the ideal. characters as opposed to characters who are not an ideal character. Chaucer carefully gives each character certain aspects that a character from a certain social group should have, but he also adds unique personality traits to each character that help develop each of the characters' stories. Each character's backstory reciprocates the personality traits they display. Geoffrey Chaucer does an excellent job of distinguishing the characters in this novel, allowing the reader to automatically decide which characters can be considered true and ideal, as opposed to false and exaggerated..