A Tale of Two Cities - Themes, Mofits, Symbols

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Ever-Present Possibility of Resurrection

With A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens asserts his belief in the possibility of resurrection and transformation, both on a personal level and on a societal level. The narrative suggests that Sydney Carton’s death secures a new, peaceful life for Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay, and even Carton himself. By delivering himself to the guillotine, Carton ascends to the plane of heroism, becoming a Christ-like figure whose death serves to save the lives of others. His own life thus gains meaning and value. Moreover, the final pages of the novel suggest that, like Christ, Carton will be resurrected—Carton is reborn in the hearts of those he has died to save. Similarly, the text implies that the death of the old regime in France prepares the way for the beautiful and renewed Paris that Carton supposedly envisions from the guillotine. Although Carton spends most of the novel in a life of indolence and apathy, the supreme selflessness of his final act speaks to a human capacity for change. Although the novel dedicates much time to describing the atrocities committed both by the aristocracy and by the outraged peasants, it ultimately expresses the belief that this violence will give way to a new and better society.

Dickens elaborates his theme with the character of Doctor Manette. Early on in the novel, Lorry holds an imaginary conversation with him in which he says that Manette has been “recalled to life.” As this statement implies, the doctor’s eighteen-year imprisonment has constituted a death of sorts. Lucie’s love enables Manette’s spiritual renewal, and her maternal cradling of him on her breast reinforces this notion of rebirth.

The Necessity of Sacrifice

Connected to the theme of the possibility of resurrection is the notion that sacrifice is necessary to achieve happiness. Dickens examines this second theme, again, on both a national and personal level. For example, the revolutionaries prove that a new, egalitarian French republic can come about only with a heavy and terrible cost—personal loves and loyalties must be sacrificed for the good of the nation. Also, when Darnay is arrested for the second time, in Book the Third, Chapter 7, the guard who seizes him reminds Manette of the primacy of state interests over personal loyalties. Moreover, Madame Defarge gives her husband a similar lesson when she chastises him for his devotion to Manette—an emotion that, in her opinion, only clouds his obligation to the revolutionary cause. Most important, Carton’s transformation into a man of moral worth depends upon his sacrificing of his former self. In choosing to die for his friends, Carton not only enables their happiness but also ensures his spiritual rebirth.

The Tendency Toward Violence and Oppression in Revolutionaries

Throughout the novel, Dickens approaches his historical subject with some ambivalence. While he supports the revolutionary cause, he often points to the evil of the revolutionaries themselves. Dickens deeply sympathizes with the plight of the French peasantry and emphasizes their need for liberation. The several chapters that deal with the Marquis Evrémonde successfully paint a picture of a vicious aristocracy that shamelessly exploits and oppresses the nation’s poor. Although Dickens condemns this oppression, however, he also condemns the peasants’ strategies in overcoming it. For in fighting cruelty with cruelty, the peasants effect no true revolution; rather, they only perpetuate the violence that they themselves have suffered. Dickens makes his stance clear in his suspicious and cautionary depictions of the mobs. The scenes in which the people sharpen their weapons at the grindstone and dance the grisly Carmagnole come across as deeply macabre. Dickens’s most concise and relevant view of revolution comes in the final chapter, in which he notes the slippery slope down from the oppressed to the oppressor: “Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.” Though Dickens sees the French Revolution as a great symbol of transformation and resurrection, he emphasizes that its violent means were ultimately antithetical to its end.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Doubles

The novel’s opening words (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .”) immediately establish the centrality of doubles to the narrative. The story’s action divides itself between two locales, the two cities of the title. Dickens positions various characters as doubles as well, thus heightening the various themes within the novel. The two most important females in the text function as diametrically opposed doubles: Lucie is as loving and nurturing as Madame Defarge is hateful and bloodthirsty. Dickens then uses this opposition to make judgments and thematic assertions. Thus, for example, while Lucie’s love initiates her father’s spiritual transformation and renewal, proving the possibility of resurrection, Madame Defarge’s vengefulness only propagates an infinite cycle of oppression, showing violence to be self-perpetuating.

Dickens’s doubling technique functions not only to draw oppositions, but to reveal hidden parallels. Carton, for example, initially seems a foil to Darnay; Darnay as a figure reminds him of what he could have been but has failed to become. By the end of the novel, however, Carton transforms himself from a good-for-nothing to a hero whose goodness equals or even surpasses that of the honorable Darnay. While the two men’s physical resemblance initially serves only to underscore Carton’s moral inferiority to Darnay, it ultimately enables Carton’s supremely self-elevating deed, allowing him to disguise himself as the condemned Darnay and die in his place. As Carton goes to the guillotine in his double’s stead, he raises himself up to, or above, Darnay’s virtuous status.

Shadows and Darkness

Shadows dominate the novel, creating a mood of thick obscurity and grave foreboding. An aura of gloom and apprehension surrounds the first images of the actual story—the mail coach’s journey in the dark and Jerry Cruncher’s emergence from the mist. The introduction of Lucie Manette to Jarvis Lorry furthers this motif, as Lucie stands in a room so darkened and awash with shadows that the candlelight seems buried in the dark panels of the walls. This atmosphere contributes to the mystery surrounding Lorry’s mission to Paris and Manette’s imprisonment. It also manifests Dickens’s observations about the shadowy depths of the human heart. As illustrated in the chapter with the appropriate subheading “The Night Shadows,” every living person carries profound secrets and mysteries that will never see the light of day. Shadows continue to fall across the entire novel. The vengeful Madame Defarge casts a shadow on Lucie and all of her hopes, as emphasized in Book the Third, Chapter 5. As Lucie stands in the pure, fresh snow, Madame Defarge passes by “like a shadow over the white road.” In addition, the letter that Defarge uses to condemn Darnay to death throws a crippling shadow over the entire family; fittingly, the chapter that reveals the letter’s contents bears the subheading “The Substance of the Shadow.”

Imprisonment

Almost all of the characters in A Tale of Two Cities fight against some form of imprisonment. For Darnay and Manette, this struggle is quite literal. Both serve significant sentences in French jails. Still, as the novel demonstrates, the memories of what one has experienced prove no less confining than the walls of prison. Manette, for example, finds himself trapped, at times, by the recollection of life in the Bastille and can do nothing but revert, trembling, to his pathetic shoemaking compulsion. Similarly, Carton spends much of the novel struggling against the confines of his own personality, dissatisfied with a life that he regards as worthless.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Broken Wine Cask

With his depiction of a broken wine cask outside Defarge’s wine shop, and with his portrayal of the passing peasants’ scrambles to lap up the spilling wine, Dickens creates a symbol for the desperate quality of the people’s hunger. This hunger is both the literal hunger for food—the French peasants were starving in their poverty—and the metaphorical hunger for political freedoms. On the surface, the scene shows the peasants in their desperation to satiate the first of these hungers. But it also evokes the violent measures that the peasants take in striving to satisfy their more metaphorical cravings. For instance, the narrative directly associates the wine with blood, noting that some of the peasants have acquired “a tigerish smear about the mouth” and portraying a drunken figure scrawling the word “blood” on the wall with a wine-dipped finger. Indeed, the blood of aristocrats later spills at the hands of a mob in these same streets.

Throughout the novel, Dickens sharply criticizes this mob mentality, which he condemns for perpetrating the very cruelty and oppression from which the revolutionaries hope to free themselves. The scene surrounding the wine cask is the novel’s first tableau of the mob in action. The mindless frenzy with which these peasants scoop up the fallen liquid prefigures the scene at the grindstone, where the revolutionaries sharpen their weapons (Book the Third, Chapter 2), as well as the dancing of the macabre Carmagnole (Book the Third, Chapter 5).

Madame Defarge’s Knitting

Even on a literal level, Madame Defarge’s knitting constitutes a whole network of symbols. Into her needlework she stitches a registry, or list of names, of all those condemned to die in the name of a new republic. But on a metaphoric level, the knitting constitutes a symbol in itself, representing the stealthy, cold-blooded vengefulness of the revolutionaries. As Madame Defarge sits quietly knitting, she appears harmless and quaint. In fact, however, she sentences her victims to death. Similarly, the French peasants may appear simple and humble figures, but they eventually rise up to massacre their oppressors.

Dickens’s knitting imagery also emphasizes an association between vengefulness and fate, which, in Greek mythology, is traditionally linked to knitting or weaving. The Fates, three sisters who control human life, busy themselves with the tasks of weavers or seamstresses: one sister spins the web of life, another measures it, and the last cuts it. Madame Defarge’s knitting thus becomes a symbol of her victims’ fate—death at the hands of a wrathful peasantry.

The Marquis

The Marquis Evrémonde is less a believable character than an archetype of an evil and corrupt social order. He is completely indifferent to the lives of the peasants whom he exploits, as evidenced by his lack of sympathy for the father of the child whom his carriage tramples to death. As such, the Marquis stands as a symbol of the ruthless aristocratic cruelty that the French Revolution seeks to overcome.

A Tale of Two Cities - Analysis of Major Characters

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

CHARACTERS

Sydney Carton

Sydney Carton proves the most dynamic character in A Tale of Two Cities. He first appears as a lazy, alcoholic attorney who cannot muster even the smallest amount of interest in his own life. He describes his existence as a supreme waste of life and takes every opportunity to declare that he cares for nothing and no one. But the reader senses, even in the initial chapters of the novel, that Carton in fact feels something that he perhaps cannot articulate. In his conversation with the recently acquitted Charles Darnay, Carton’s comments about Lucie Manette, while bitter and sardonic, betray his interest in, and budding feelings for, the gentle girl. Eventually, Carton reaches a point where he can admit his feelings to Lucie herself. Before Lucie weds Darnay, Carton professes his love to her, though he still persists in seeing himself as essentially worthless. This scene marks a vital transition for Carton and lays the foundation for the supreme sacrifice that he makes at the novel’s end.

Carton’s death has provided much material for scholars and critics of Dickens’s novel. Some readers consider it the inevitable conclusion to a work obsessed with the themes of redemption and resurrection. According to this interpretation, Carton becomes a Christ-like figure, a selfless martyr whose death enables the happiness of his beloved and ensures his own immortality. Other readers, however, question the ultimate significance of Carton’s final act. They argue that since Carton initially places little value on his existence, the sacrifice of his life proves relatively easy. However, Dickens’s frequent use in his text of other resurrection imagery—his motifs of wine and blood, for example—suggests that he did intend for Carton’s death to be redemptive, whether or not it ultimately appears so to the reader. As Carton goes to the guillotine, the narrator tells us that he envisions a beautiful, idyllic Paris “rising from the abyss” and sees “the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.” Just as the apocalyptic violence of the revolution precedes a new society’s birth, perhaps it is only in the sacrifice of his life that Carton can establish his life’s great worth.

Madame Defarge

Possessing a remorseless bloodlust, Madame Defarge embodies the chaos of the French Revolution. The initial chapters of the novel find her sitting quietly and knitting in the wine shop. However, her apparent passivity belies her relentless thirst for vengeance. With her stitches, she secretly knits a register of the names of the revolution’s intended victims. As the revolution breaks into full force, Madame Defarge reveals her true viciousness. She turns on Lucie in particular, and, as violence sweeps Paris, she invades Lucie’s physical and psychological space. She effects this invasion first by committing the faces of Lucie and her family to memory, in order to add them to her mental “register” of those slated to die in the revolution. Later, she bursts into the young woman’s apartment in an attempt to catch Lucie mourning Darnay’s imminent execution.

Dickens notes that Madame Defarge’s hatefulness does not reflect any inherent flaw, but rather results from the oppression and personal tragedy that she has suffered at the hands of the aristocracy, specifically the Evrémondes, to whom Darnay is related by blood, and Lucie by marriage. However, the author refrains from justifying Madame Defarge’s policy of retributive justice. For just as the aristocracy’s oppression has made an oppressor of Madame Defarge herself, so will her oppression, in turn, make oppressors of her victims. Madame Defarge’s death by a bullet from her own gun—she dies in a scuffle with Miss Pross—symbolizes Dickens’s belief that the sort of vengeful attitude embodied by Madame Defarge ultimately proves a self-damning one.

Doctor Manette

Dickens uses Doctor Manette to illustrate one of the dominant motifs of the novel: the essential mystery that surrounds every human being. As Jarvis Lorry makes his way toward France to recover Manette, the narrator reflects that “every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.” For much of the novel, the cause of Manette’s incarceration remains a mystery both to the other characters and to the reader. Even when the story concerning the evil Marquis Evrémonde comes to light, the conditions of Manette’s imprisonment remain hidden. Though the reader never learns exactly how Manette suffered, his relapses into trembling sessions of shoemaking evidence the depth of his misery.

Like Carton, Manette undergoes a drastic change over the course of the novel. He is transformed from an insensate prisoner who mindlessly cobbles shoes into a man of distinction. The contemporary reader tends to understand human individuals not as fixed entities but rather as impressionable and reactive beings, affected and influenced by their surroundings and by the people with whom they interact. In Dickens’s age, however, this notion was rather revolutionary. Manette’s transformation testifies to the tremendous impact of relationships and experience on life. The strength that he displays while dedicating himself to rescuing Darnay seems to confirm the lesson that Carton learns by the end of the novel—that not only does one’s treatment of others play an important role in others’ personal development, but also that the very worth of one’s life is determined by its impact on the lives of others.

Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette

Novelist E. M. Forster famously criticized Dickens’s characters as “flat,” lamenting that they seem to lack the depth and complexity that make literary characters realistic and believable. Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette certainly fit this description. A man of honor, respect, and courage, Darnay conforms to the archetype of the hero but never exhibits the kind of inner struggle that Carton and Doctor Manette undergo. His opposition to the Marquis’ snobbish and cruel aristocratic values is admirable, but, ultimately, his virtue proves too uniform, and he fails to exert any compelling force on the imagination.

Along similar lines, Lucie likely seems to modern readers as uninteresting and two-dimensional as Darnay. In every detail of her being, she embodies compassion, love, and virtue; the indelible image of her cradling her father’s head delicately on her breast encapsulates her role as the “golden thread” that holds her family together. She manifests her purity of devotion to Darnay in her unquestioning willingness to wait at a street corner for two hours each day, on the off chance that he will catch sight of her from his prison window. In a letter to Dickens, a contemporary criticized such simplistic characterizations:

The tenacity of your imagination, the vehe-mence and fixity with which you impress your thought into the detail you wish to grasp, limit your knowledge, arrest you in a single feature, prevent you from reaching all the parts of the soul, and from sounding its depths.

While Darnay and Lucie may not act as windows into the gritty essence of humanity, in combination with other characters they contribute to a more detailed picture of human nature. First, they provide the light that counters the vengeful Madame Defarge’s darkness, revealing the moral aspects of the human soul so noticeably absent from Madame Defarge. Second, throughout the novel they manifest a virtuousness that Carton strives to attain and that inspires his very real and believable struggles to become a better person.

A Tale of Two Cities - Detailed Summary

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

SUMMARY

It’s 1775. Trouble is a-brewin’ in the French countryside. Apparently, the folks out there don’t like to be starved and taxed to death. Who would’ve guessed it, eh?

As our novel starts, a very businessman-like British gentleman makes his way into the heart of Paris. He’s on a very unsettling mission. In fact, it’s almost enough to make a businessman cry. You see, eighteen years ago, a French doctor was imprisoned without any warning (or any trial). He’s been locked up in the worst prison of all prisons, the Bastille. After almost two decades, he was released – again without any explanation – and he’s currently staying with an old servant of his, Ernst Defarge. Today, Mr. Lorry (that’s our British businessman) is on a mission to the French doctor back to England, where he can live in peace with his daughter.

Dr. Manette may be free, but he’s still a broken man. He spends most of his time cobbling together shoes and pacing up and down in his dark room. Too accustomed to the space of a prison to understand that he can actually leave his room, Dr. Manette seems doomed to live a pitiful life.

Fortunately for Dr. Manette (and for Mr. Lorry, now that we think about it), he happens to have the World’s Perfect Daughter. Lucie, the child he left eighteen years ago, is now a grown-up, smiling, blond, perfect ray of sunshine. Everything she touches seems to turn to gold. Vomit if you’d like, but Lucie is indeed perfect. And she’ll need every ounce of that perfection to restore her father back to health.

Of course, she does manage to bring Dr. Manette back into the everyday world. We never doubted her for a second. Within the space of five years (that’s 1780, for those of you who are counting), Dr. Manette is a new man. He’s a practicing doctor again; he and Lucie live in a small house in Soho. They don’t have much money (Dr. Manette’s cash was all seized in France), but Lucie manages to shine her rays of wonderfulness over their lives. In other words, they’re pretty happy. And they’ve adopted Mr. Lorry as a sort of drop-in uncle.

As we pick up the story in 1780, Dr. Manette and Lucie have been called as witnesses in a treason case. Apparently, a young man named Charles Darnay is accused of providing classified information to the French government. English trials at the time resemble smoke-and-mirror tricks: Dickens takes great delight in mocking the "esteemed" members of the court. Thanks to Lucie’s compassionate testimony and some quick work by a man who looks strangely like Charles Darnay, however, our man Charles is off the hook.

A free man, Charles Darnay immediately realizes just how perfect our perfect Lucie actually is. He sets up shop in the Manette house, coming to visit almost every day. The Charles look-alike, a disreputable (but, let’s face it, really likable) guy called Sydney Carton, also takes a liking to Lucie. If Charles is shiny and good and perfect, Sydney is… not any of those things. He also likes to beat himself up a lot. (In fact, we’re thinking that he could really use one of those twelve-step esteem boosting programs.)

Sydney loves Lucie with all his heart, but he’s convinced that he could never deserve her. What does he do? Well, he tells her precisely why she could never love him. Surprise, surprise: she agrees. She’d like to help him be a better person, but he would rather wallow in his misery. After all, wallowing sounds like so much fun, doesn’t it? Wallow, wallow, wallow. That’s Sydney in a nutshell.

Charles, meanwhile, fares a little bit better. He marries Lucie. On the day of his wedding, he tells Dr. Manette a secret: he’s actually a French nobleman in disguise. A very particular French nobleman, as a matter of fact: the Marquis Evrémonde. Because everything in a Dickens novel has to fit into a neat pattern, it’s no real surprise that the Evrémondes were the evil brothers who locked Dr. Manette up in the first place. The good doctor is a bit shocked, of course, but he eventually realizes that Charles is nothing like his father or his uncle (the evil Evrémondes brothers). Dr. Manette is willing to love Charles for the man he is, not the family he left behind.

Things are going swimmingly in England. Charles moves in with the Manettes, he makes a decent wage as a tutor, and Dr. Manette seems to be as happy as ever. But wait, wasn’t this a tale of two cities? What happened to the other city?

OK, you got us. While everything’s coming up roses in London, everything’s coming up dead in Paris. We only wish we were kidding. People are starving, the noblemen run over little children with their carriages, and everyone is pretty unhappy. In fact, they’re so unhappy that they’re beginning to band together as "citizens" of a new republic. Right now, Ernst Defarge and his wife are at the center of a revolutionary group. We can tell that they’re revolutionary because they’re super-secret. And they also call each other "Jacques." That’s "Jack" in French.

In the village of the Evrémondes, the Marquis has been stabbed in the night. Gasp! The government hangs the killer, but tensions don’t ever really settle down. Finally, the steward of the Evrémonde estate sends a desperate letter to the new Marquis: because folks hated the old Marquis so much, they’re now throwing the steward into prison.

A bunch of fluke accidents conspire to make sure that Charles gets the letter. He’s the Marquis, remember? Even though he’s thrown off his old title and his old lands entirely, he can’t help but feel responsible for the fate of this steward. Without telling his wife or his father-in-law anything about what’s been going on, he secretly sets off for France.

Unfortunately for Charles, he picked a bad time for a summer vacation. By the time he arrives on the shores of France, the revolutionaries have overturned the country. The King is about to be beheaded. The Queen soon follows suit. Murder and vengeance and mob mentality are all boiling over. Immediately detained, Charles soon realizes that he’s made a big, big mistake. By the time he reaches Paris, he’s become a prisoner. New laws dictate that he’s going to be executed by La Guillotine. 

Fortunately, Dr. Manette hears about his fate. With Lucie in tow, he rushes to Paris. It turns out that he’s something of a celebrity there: anybody who was falsely arrested under the aristocratic rule of old is now revered as one of the heroes of the new Republic. The doctor shows up at Charles's trial and wows the judges with his heroic plea to save his son-in-law.

Everything seems happy again. Sure, it’s the middle of the French Revolution, but the Manettes and Charles are in the clear. Or at least, that’s how it seems for a few hours. All too quickly, however, Charles is arrested again. This time, the Defarges have accused him of being a member of the nobility and a stain on the country’s name.

Frantic, Doctor Manette tries to intervene. The court case for Charles’s second trial goes very differently from the first one, though. Ernst Defarge produces a letter, written by Dr. Manette himself, which condemns Charles to death.

Wait a second! Dr. Manette? Impossible! Well, not exactly. Long ago, Dr. Manette scribbled down the history of his own imprisonment and secreted it in a wall of the Bastille. The history tells a sordid tale of rape and murder – crimes committed by Charles’s father and brother. Incensed, the jury of French revolutionary "citizens" decides that Charles should pay for the crimes of his father.

Before he can be executed, however, Sydney Carton comes to the rescue. A few good tricks and a couple of disguises later, Charles is a free man. He and his family head back to England in (relative) safety. Sydney, however, doesn’t fare so well. He takes Charles’s place in prison and dies on the guillotine.

A Tale of Two Cities - Plot Analysis

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Plot Analysis

Initial Situation

Released from prison in France, Doctor Manette starts a new life in England.
Falsely imprisoned for almost two decades, the good doctor emerges from prison a broken man. With the help of his old servant, Defarge, and his good friend, Mr. Lorry, however, he’s reunited with his daughter. They begin to reconstruct a fragile happiness out of the wreckage of the doctor’s ruined life.

Conflict

Lucie marries a French aristocrat.
Of course, she doesn’t know that she’s doing it at the time. Charles Darnay has given up his lands and his title. He’s disgusted by the way that the aristocracy has been handling (or mis-handling) affairs in France. He earns his living as a tutor; the Manettes continue to have a carefree, happy life. Or do they?

Complication

Charles decides to return to France to save an old steward of his family’s lands.
Revolutionary fever is building in France. The house of Charles's family is burned, which is just fine. In fact, just about everybody thinks it’s a good idea. Unfortunately, however, a steward of the land gets caught in the cross-fire. He’s imprisoned for helping the aristocracy. When Charles hears about this, he realizes that he has to return to France to help free his old servant.

Climax

Charles is arrested as an emigrant and an aristocrat; Doctor Manette frees him.
As the French Republic emerges, chaos rules the land. Charles picks the wrong time to head back to France. He’s immediately arrested. Luckily, Dr. Manette has some sway in France because he was once wrongly imprisoned by the aristocracy. He manages to get Charles released.

Suspense

Charles is re-arrested.
Wait; can’t you only get tried once? Well, there are new laws in France now. In fact, some might say that there are no laws in France now. In court, the jury reads a letter written by Dr. Manette during his imprisonment. In it, he reveals that Charles's father was the one who put him in prison in the first place. Charles is immediately sentenced to death.

Denouement

Sydney Carton comes up with a plan to save Charles.
Sydney Carton, the ne’er-do-well who miraculously saved Charles years earlier, comes back to repeat his heroics. Sydney’s in love with Lucie, see, so this is his way of demonstrating his love for her. He switches places with Charles in prison.

Conclusion

Sydney Carton sacrifices his own life for the happiness of Lucie’s family.
La Guillotine isn’t stopping anytime soon. Today, in fact, it whacks off fifty-two heads. There’s no real positive way to account for the present moment. Instead, Dickens does something pretty amazing: he uses the thoughts of a dying man to predict a happy ending in the future. Any happiness that is to come, of course, takes place off stage. That’s why the carriage containing all our other favorite characters has rolled away. Left to himself, Sydney has the chance to become the hero that he’s never let himself be. It’s tragic, sure, but there’s also something sublime and wonderful in his sacrifice.

A Tale of Two Cities - Writing Style

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

WRITING STYLE

Master Puppeteer (and Major Chameleon)

Charles Dickens is the King of Style. We’ll say that again: when it comes to style, Charles Dickens is the King. He’s the grand-daddy of all great fiction writers. The best stylist you’ll probably ever read. Here’s why:

Dickens is the master of manipulating language to make scenes come alive. Not only does he describe scenes in vivid detail, but the very sentences he writes mimic the way the scenes themselves come to life. For example, when he wants to emphasize how long-winded and boring the court system can be, he spends five pages recounting a lawyer’s argument. Every single sentence of the lawyer’s speech begins with the word "that." "That, his position and attitude were, on the whole, sublime. That, he had been […]" (2.1.1). Get the picture? By the time we’re halfway through reading the speech, we wish the whole thing were over and done with. We’re almost bored out of our minds. That, friends, is exactly where Dickens wants us to be.

When things heat up, however, his style becomes as choppy and chaotic as the violence which rolls through the streets of Paris. The Storming of the Bastille is described like this:

Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and through the smoke--in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier— (2.21.40)

Short phrases emphasize the movement that’s going on all around Defarge. Repeated phrases emphasize the way that fire and smoke seem to take over the entire world. There’s nothing, for Defarge, outside of the present moment of battle. As we get drawn into the sped-up rhythm of Dickens’s sentences, there’s nothing outside of Defarge’s battle for us, either.

Oh, and since we’re talking about repetition, we should mention that Dickens is a big fan of it. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times […]"; "It is a far, far better thing I do […]; it is a far, far better rest I go to […]" The novel begins and ends with phrases that would have made Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. proud. We even have a strong hunch that the "I Have a Dream" speech might have taken a few pointers from the master himself. Repetition forces us to realize just how important the phrases we’re reading are. After all, we read them again and again.

A Tale of Two Cities - Tone

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

TONE

Journalistic and Moralistic

Enthralled by Thomas Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution, Dickens decided to try his hand at historical fiction. It wasn’t something that he often did. In fact, A Tale of Two Cities is one of two historical novels that Dickens wrote. And in case you were wondering, he wrote a lot of novels. His style in A Tale of Two Cities is actually pretty remarkable, if only because it’s so different from most of his other works.

Dickens has gone down in history as a writer whose skill with humor and satire allowed him to make all sorts of social critiques. A phrase from Mary Poppins might just describe Dickens’s method best: "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down." Because they were funny social critiques, audiences ate them up.

The first volume of A Tale of Two Cities does contain some of this satire: see, for example, Dickens’s description of the court case in England. It’s so over the top that it begins to be humorous. Here’s an example of the lawyer’s argument in favor of executing Charles Darnay:

That, for these reasons, the jury, being a loyal jury (as he knew they were), and being a responsible jury (as THEY knew they were), must positively find the prisoner Guilty, and make an end of him, whether they liked it or not. That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner's head was taken off. (2.3.1)

It’s a serious subject, sure, but it’s also good for a laugh. More important, spinning out court procedures to ridiculous lengths allows Dickens to demonstrate how, well, ridiculous the judicial system actually is.

Once Dickens moves into describing the events leading up to the French Revolution, however, his tone takes a 180º turn. He’s building up the work of Carlyle, who tried to make the French Revolution into something of a family drama. For Dickens, this means that there aren’t too many funny characters whom he can satirize (like, for example, the Crunchers) in France.

We know that spousal abuse isn’t actually funny. For Dickens’s readers, however, it was. It’s sort of like a Punch-and-Judy show. Want to know what a Punch-and-Judy show is? Basically, two puppets (a husband and wife) beat up on each other. Everyone thought it was HIL-arious.

Back to our discussion, though: in France, no Crunchers. No laughs. Instead, we get a pretty journalistic approach to the oncoming violence. Here’s an example of his language in the last volume:

One year and three months. […]Every day, through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst. Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death;--the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine! (3.5.1)

Perhaps the most startling aspect of Dickens’s depiction of the revolution is his insistence on recounting the violence just as it occurred. There are rarely any moments of comedic relief in the last sections of the novel.

What we do get, however, are some bird’s-eye (or God’s-eye) views of the scenes playing out below us. See our analysis of "Narrative Voice" for more details on this one. Briefly, though, we’ll just say that Dickens can’t seem to resist throwing in a few moral opinions every now and then. Since he can’t satirize mass violence and death, he chooses to offer us a few short lessons on the subjects, instead.

A Tale of Two Cities - Genre

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

GENRE

Historical Fiction; Family Drama

Well, A Tale of Two Cities is largely a tale of the French Revolution. That’s about as historical as you can get. Here’s the difference between "history" and "historical fiction," though: history will tell you how many people stormed the Bastille or how many folks got executed by the guillotine. Historical fiction can delve into the minds of characters like The Vengeance or Madame Defarge and try to piece together reasons for what might otherwise seem like senseless bloodshed.

Interestingly, however, the only reasons that Dickens can come up with don’t have anything to do with the revolution, precisely. Madame Defarge reacts so violently against the Evrémonde family because she’s re-enacting her own family revenge story. Her father and brother were killed; her sister was raped. Let’s face it: the woman has reasons to be angry. They’re not, however, reasons that the history books would ever cite as the impetus for the French Revolution. Using fiction allows Dickens to construct a world that blurs the line between real events (like the Storming of the Bastille, the Tribunals of the New Republic) and ones that are, well, fictional. Madame Defarge’s history is a weird overlap of personal and public dramas. That’s why it’s so disturbing…and so convincing.

Talking about Madame Defarge brings us to our next point: A Tale of Two Cities is about history. It’s full of political intrigues, governmental scandals, and well-documented violence. It’s also, however, a tale of families. The Evrémondes, the Manettes, and the Defarges become woven together through marriages, family alliances, and friendships. The bonds which exist between Lucie and Charles allow Dr. Manette to move past the burden of his own history. We could even say that the failure of Madame Defarge lies in her inability to look beyond the shattering consequences of history. As she says, "In a word, my husband has not my reason for pursuing this family annihilation, and I have not his reason for regarding this Doctor with any sensibility" (3.14.12). In other words, her relationship with her husband means next to nothing compared to the need she has for avenging the past.

When it comes right down to it, for Dickens, people matter more than the past. Characters that are able to form relationships despite the burdens of their histories are those that become the most heroic. Think about Sydney Carton, for example: although he’s not able to change his own masochism, he is able to channel that self-destructive impulse into a form of action which helps those he cares about most. He recognizes this, saying, "It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done […]" (3.15. 50). See our analysis in "What’s Up with the Ending?" for more of the dirty details of this particular phrase. OK, OK, death isn’t a great solution. But it’s better than living a life that’s locked in the past.

A Tale of Two Cities - Narrator, Point of View

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Narrator, Point of View

Third Person Omniscient

Dickens likes to play the Voice of God. His narrator tends to know it all. Not in a bad way – it’s more like the voice of your favorite high school teacher and Oprah all rolled into one.

See, for example, the sweeping statements of the first chapter of the book:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair [...]. (1.1.1)

As you can probably tell from his opening foray, Dickens’s narrator is a big-picture sort of guy. We’re going to get the whole world packed into one novel, which is why it’s lucky that our narrator seems to know exactly what’s going on. All the time.

This, friends, is no modernist text. There’s a clear (if complicated) plot. It develops in exactly the way that our narrator expects it to do. And believe us, we’re going to need all the help that we can get to navigate through the complicated web of historical social uprisings, long-kept family secrets, and unspoken allegiances. Luckily, Dickens’s narrator knows exactly where he’s taking us. He lets us into the minds of characters whenever it seems prudent for him to do so.

Once we’ve said that, though, we’ve got to wonder: why do we get to hear so much about what’s going on in Carton’s head and so little about Darnay? We understand why it’s important to be inside the doctor’s head (if only because then we get just how crippling a long prison stay can be), but why do we hear almost nothing at all about Lucie’s thoughts? Dickens seems to be strategically making some characters more accessible to us than others, and we’re pretty sure that he has reasons for his choices.

These are all good – and big – questions. Unfortunately, we don't have Dickens around to give us the answers. We do think, however, that our narrator is playing with our emotions just a little bit. That letter from Doctor Manette? It’s like when Oprah pulls out that big, tear-jerking surprise at the end of a family reunion episode. How can we know so much about Dr. Manette and still not know this?

It’s almost as if Dickens is playing a big game of "Gotcha." Just when we think we know it all, his narrator manages to pull a few tricks out of his sleeve. That’s why we’re saying he does a pretty decent job of playing God. It’s his world. Make sure you remember it.

A Tale of Two Cities - Setting

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

SETTING

London, England and Paris, France. 1775-1790

OK, this is a huge one. You can probably guess from the title of this novel (that’s A Tale of Two Cities, in case you’ve forgotten) that the actual events occurring in the cities might be rather important. If you guessed that, you’d be right. In fact, it’s so important that Dickens spends the first chapter of his novel laying out the broad-brush strokes of the similarities and differences between the two places:

There was a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face on the throne of England; there was a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face on the throne of France. (1.1.2)

And believe us, he’s just warming up.

Dickens, you see, places his novel smack-dab in the middle of a nifty little event called the French Revolution. You might have read about it in your middle school social studies classes. We’ll get back to the French Revolution in a minute. We promise.

For now, however, we’ll start with the first city on our list: London. It’s a safe haven in this novel, all things considered. That doesn’t mean that it’s all that great, but at least folks aren’t chopping off other folks’ heads every Saturday morning. Then again, Dickens makes it pretty clear that Londoners would really like to see some heads rolling…or at least a good drawing and quartering on occasion. Take Charles Darnay’s first trial in London, for example: a whole crowd of drunken ruffians gathers to see the "condemned" man sentenced to death. As this scene demonstrates, there’s not that much difference between Londoners and Parisians. Given the situation that’s about to unfold in France, this is a pretty scary thought.

Actually, the courtroom in London is one of the three major sites that we get to know in London. The other two, of course, are the Manette’s house in Soho and the infamous Tellson’s Bank. In many ways, the court starts to stand in for the British government as a whole: it’s got lots of official-looking people scurrying about, and important-sounding words like "law" and "justice" get discussed there everyday.

Sadly, however, not too many laws are followed…and not that much justice is served. Dickens gets pretty explicit about just how crummy the court system is when Charles Darnay gets charged with treason. Everyone thinks he’s guilty before he even goes to trial, so the lawyers just spend a lot of time listening to the sounds of their own voices. The court is nothing more that a hall of mirrors. In fact, it’s literally a hall of mirrors: they hang big mirrors in front of the accused so that the folks in the audience can watch the accused squirm. Fortunately, of course, Charles gets acquitted – but it’s really not because justice works so well in England.

If the court is an extension of British government, then Tellson’s Bank is representative of British culture and economics. Tellson’s lives up to just about every stereotype of stodgy, tweed-wearing British businessmen that you’ve ever gotten from watching the BBC. Here’s a sample of how Dickens describes it:

Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. (2.1.1)

Respectability, inconvenience and a fierce pride in both the respectability and the inconvenience of Tellson’s makes it sound rather like…a stodgy old butler. Or a crotchety old aunt. Either way, it’s very old, very fussy, and probably not a very fun place to hang out for an evening.

Fortunately, Dickens allows Tellson’s to redeem itself through Mr. Lorry. See our "Character Analysis" of Jarvis Lorry for further details on this fascinating chap. For now, we’ll just say that Tellson’s may be old and stodgy – but Mr. Lorry also makes it kind of loveable.

That brings us to our last stop in this whirlwind tour of London: the Manette’s house in Soho. It’s a perfect haven from the noise and bustle of the city. It’s even perfect-er because Lucie makes it such a very homey home. Everyone’s happy there. Even Sydney Carton is happy there. And believe us, that’s saying something.

When we stop to think about it, we realize that Dickens has actually been pretty crafty in choosing these three settings: we’ve got good descriptions of the British Home, the British business, and the British government.

Funnily enough, we get exactly the same sorts of settings in France. This time, however, things aren’t quite so pleasant. There’s the French chateau, where a young girl as raped, her brother murdered, and her husband worked to death. There’s the Defarge’s wine shop (a.k.a. the French business), which actually doesn’t function as much of a business at all: it’s a front for revolutionary activities. And then, of course, there’s the Tribunals of the Republic. If the courts of England were bad, the French Tribunals are hell. Hundreds are brought to trial and sentenced to execution every day. Dickens makes it quite clear that the jurors are often drunk or otherwise not paying attention to the trials of the day. There are no mirrors, but there sure are lots and lots of blood-thirsty audience members.

Which brings us to the one major missing puzzle-piece in this whirlwind tour of life in the 1700s: the French Revolution. Here are the basics:

1. Poor people were very, very poor.
2. Rich people were very, very rich.
3. Rich people were often very rich because they exploited the very, very poor.
4. Eventually, the poor got tired of being beaten, starved, raped, and killed.
5. The King, Luis XVI, wasn’t doing too much to help alleviate the suffering of the poor.
6. On July 14, 1789, mobs stormed the Bastille, the prison where many political prisoners were held.
7. Several factions (the aristocrats, the middle class, and the peasants) vie for power. Dickens tends to blur these transitions in A Tale of Two Cities.
8. The new French Republic is formed.
9. It also quickly dissolves – but that’s beyond the scope of our story.

This may sound like a pretty simplistic rendition of a very, very complicated history. That’s because Dickens himself tended to focus on simple, heart-string-tugging images instead of detailing the political intrigues of the time. For example, one reading of A Tale of Two Cities could be that Defarge and his wife were patriots who opposed a regime which suppressed the poor. Another reading, however, could be that Madame Defarge simply wanted revenge for the ruin of her family.

Don’t worry – they’re both true statements. One, however, is political; the other is personal. In blending the two, Dickens allows us to feel the emotional impact of a revolution as a family drama. It’s a fairly tricky thing to pull off. When it works, though, we feel like the French Revolution is as close to us (and as emotionally taxing) as our own family feuds.

A Tale of Two Cities - Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

Wine/Blood

Dickens isn’t exactly placing this metaphor delicately into his readers’ hands. He’s shoving it down our throats. If you missed the part where he warns us that blood will soon spill in the streets like wine, check out most of Volume One again. We promise you, it’s easy to find.

Using the wine that spills into the streets early in the novel as a metaphor for the blood spilled in the revolution serves a practical purpose: the Defarges run a wine shop. The Defarges are the hub of revolutionary activity. It all fits together neatly.

More important, however, allowing wine to stand in for blood allows Dickens to hint at the fatal flaws in the revolutionaries’ plans: too much wine makes people drunk and often more than a little crazy. A few glasses too many, and suddenly you’re not thinking nearly as well as you probably should be.

Similarly, spilling a little blood makes people hunger for more. Suddenly, it’s not enough to kill the people who’ve wronged the poor. It’s also pretty fun to kill their wives, their sons, their daughters, and that guy that people once saw standing next to them. See how things can get out of control? La Guillotine becomes a glutton, demanding more and more wine to satiate her ever-growing thirst. Revolution may be a great idea theoretically. According to Dickens, however, it just gets you too drunk too fast. Violence, folks, is not the answer.

Golden thread

Lucie is the "golden-haired doll" who charms just about everyone she meets with her beauty. She’s got yellow hair, as you’ve probably guessed. More interestingly, however, Dickens uses her hair color as an image that binds her family together. She becomes the "golden thread" that unites her father with his present, not allowing him to dwell too much in the horrors of the past.

A golden thread almost sounds like some sort of magical power; in fact, the Manettes lead a "charmed" life in Soho. Lucie may not be the character that gets the most screen time in this novel, but Dickens makes sure that we all know she’s its heart. Lucie unites Carton to Darnay, Dr. Manette to Darnay, and Mr. Lorry to the family in general. Lucie becomes the reason that Charles escapes the grasp of the Republic’s "justice."

In one terrifying moment of the novel, Jacques Three speculates about how wonderful it would be to see her golden hair on the chopping block of La Guillotine. The charm of Lucie’s influence, however, makes this an impossibility. Mr. Lorry and Sydney are determined to save her at any cost. Guess being a blonde has some good points, after all.

Monseigneur

Monseigneur is a character. He’s also an allegory.

Wait, how can a character be both a character and an allegory? Well, Dickens describes Monseigneur as a member of the aristocracy. It becomes pretty clear, however, that "Monseigneur" also becomes a shorthand way for Dickens to refer to the aristocracy as a class.

For example, when the narrator spends a good portion of a chapter describing how Monseigneur takes his hot chocolate, we could be reading about one man. When we read, however, that "Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from the phenomenon of his not being appreciated," it seems fairly self-evident that we’re reading about more than one individual. In fact, we’re reading about an entire class of people (2.24.3).

Why the blurring between individual and class? Well, for one thing, it allows Dickens to describe an entire group of people rather quickly. Once we know how picky and self-satisfied Monseigneur is when he drinks his chocolate in the morning, we’re probably pretty ready to hate on him for the rest of the novel.

In some ways, that’s not a fair analysis. Charles Darnay is a monseigneur, if we get right down to it. But maybe the allegory becomes as important for the ways that it doesn’t fit as for the ways that it does. We’re ready to hate all aristocrats. They’re all bad. But that makes us…rather like Madame Defarge. Scary, huh?

A Tale of Two Cities - Detailed Themes, All Themes, Questions, Chew on This

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

THEMES

Family

This is a novel about war. But it’s also a novel about devotion. How much will you sacrifice to ensure that your family survives? Can you shoulder the blame for the actions of the past? Even if you can, should you? These questions and others like them become central to the workings of A Tale of Two Cities. Various types of family ties thread through this novel, offering multiple opportunities to compare the ways that families deal with difficult situations. Because the aristocracy in France passed on power through inherited titles and lands, entire families became the targets of the revolutionary uprisings which sparked the new regime. Of course, this quickly becomes a novel about how families fall apart, as well. But that’s another story.

Questions About Family

A Tale of Two Cities is largely a story about families. The Manettes, the Evrémondes, and the Defarges all play central roles in the novel. More specifically, however, the novel seems to focus on parent-child relationships (Lucie and Doctor Manette, Charles and the Marquis, etc). In this light, why might it be important that the Defarges have no children?

Is it reasonable or realistic to expect that Lucie should give up her life to care for her father?

The Manettes seem to have constructed an extended family which includes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry. How does this change our understanding of the way that families function in this novel?

How does Dickens’s depiction of the Crunchers contribute to the novel as a whole?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Because Lucie is the "golden thread" that links her family together, she never becomes a character in her own right.

Lucie’s central role in the lives of all of the other characters in the novel makes her one of the most complex characters in A Tale of Two Cities.

Warfare

The French Revolution. The Storming of the Bastille. The formation of the New Republic. Sound like multiple choice answers to your next history test? Well, yes. But they’re also all important topics that work their ways into the center of A Tale of Two Cities. As the poor and downtrodden of France take to the streets, they spark a bloody and violent revolution. Blood runs through the streets of Paris, entire families hang in the balance of new (and often unjust) laws, and no one can be sure of their future in the first years of the New Republic. Dickens’s novel explores the complicated relationship that emerges between the political and the social consequences of revolution.

Questions About Warfare

What justifies the French citizens’ revolt? At what point does it become unjustifiable?

Are there forms of violence in the novel which Dickens critiques? Do you agree with his critique?

Are there moments when the novel seems to think violence is an appropriate course of action? Do you agree? Why or why not?

Are the executions at the end of the novel a continuance of warfare?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Although the violence depicted in A Tale of Two Cities is horrible, it’s also the only way that a new form of government can emerge.

The senseless violence of the revolutionaries quickly undercuts any moral authority they had to create a new social order.

Loyalty

War seems to test the limits of all sorts of ties. Loyalty to family, friends, and even the institutions in which you believe suddenly comes into question. Just how much are you willing to sacrifice for the good of the nation? Does the nation come before your family? Before your own life? In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens forces his characters into situations which demand answers to exactly these questions. As we see, there aren’t ever any simple answers – and, in massive social uproar, there’s rarely a time when anyone emerges unharmed. Characters learn how to honor the promises and the relationships which matter to them, even when those promises seem impossible to uphold.

Questions About Loyalty

Is Miss Pross’ die-hard loyalty believable?

Why does Mr. Lorry devote himself to Tellson’s?

Is Mrs. Cruncher actually disloyal to her husband? Why or why not?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Mr. Lorry’s refusal to be completely devoted to business becomes an allegory for the good-heartedness of the British people as a whole.

In A Tale of Two Cities, religion becomes nothing more than a punch line for Dickens’s jokes: economics, not morality, will prevent a revolution in England.

Suffering

If you’re looking for suffering, A Tale of Two Cities is the novel for you. The poor of England have it pretty bad. The poor of France have it really, really bad. There’s no food, the noblemen press rural peasants to give up every cent they earn to fund exorbitant parties for the rich. And folks get locked up for decades without ever getting to go to trial. Though this is France in the 1780s, Dickens doesn't expect this sort of suffering to remain in the past: the causes of suffering, he claims, aren’t historical. In fact, the prime cause of human suffering might just be human nature itself.

Questions About Suffering

Why does Sydney Carton seem determined to believe that his life will never improve?

Doctor Manette’s status as a former prisoner eventually gives him political power in France. Does this suggest that his suffering might be worth it in the long run?

Lucie seems to be the one character whose suffering the novel often overlooks. Why do you think this is the case?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Because Sydney Carton believes from the beginning of the novel that his life will be full of suffering, his death is not really a change in the status quo.

In dying, Sydney Carton transcends all the expectations he had for himself and becomes a sublime figure of mercy.

Society and Class

In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens loves to demonstrate how rich the rich actually are. One guy even needs four servants (count them: FOUR) to make his hot chocolate every morning. It’s exactly this sort of excess that breeds discontent…especially when the poor are on their hands and knees in the street to lick up drops of spilled wine. The French Revolution began as a critique of the aristocracy; as Dickens demonstrates, however, the "classless" formation of the new French Republic becomes yet another form of class violence. Someone’s always in power. And the powerless always suffer.

Questions About Society and Class

How different are class relations in England from those of France? Why do the citizens of France revolt?

Why does the novel shuttle between France and England? How does that contribute to our understanding of the revolution?

Is Madame Defarge’s accusation of Charles Darnay retaliation for the role of the aristocracy in France? Why or why not?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

A Tale of Two Cities may be set in France, but it’s actually a moral warning for the people of England.

Because the poor in France are never realistically depicted in A Tale of Two Cities, our understanding of the revolution is limited at best.

Justice and Judgment

Dickens exploits the hypocrisies and idiosyncrasies of the justice system in A Tale of Two Cities. As French citizens take to the streets, demanding justice for themselves and their families, they also construct a justice system that becomes anything but fair and impartial. To keep us from blaming the French too much, however, Dickens also gives us a good look at the justice system in England. Complete with magic mirrors and smoke-and-dagger tricks, the English can't brag about their courts, either. So how does justice get rendered? That is one of the questions this novel explores.

Questions About Justice and Judgment

Which is more corrupt: the justice system in France or the justice system in England?

The English court establishes that Sydney and Charles's physical similarity is reason enough to assume that it wouldn’t be just to hang Charles for treason. Does this make sense to you?

Doctor Manette only gets his day in court when the Defarges include his letter in Darnay’s trial in France. In some ways, isn’t this actually a just thing for the Defarges to do? Why or why not?

How does Sydney Carton develop his sense of justice (and why does he insist on working in the legal system)?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Dickens inserts two court cases (one French and one English) into A Tale of Two Cities in order to demonstrate the unsettling similarities between the two countries.

The English court, for all its failings, is still able to hand down good verdicts; by incorporating Darnay’s English court case into the novel, Dickens proves that the English justice system can never be corrupted in the ways that the French one will be.

Politics

When an entire country decides to revolt against the ruling class, a couple of conversations about politics are certainly going to have to happen along the way. Unfortunately, too much of what passes for "politics" in France during the decades before the revolution seems to be "whatever the rich can get away with." When the poor of the nation decide that they can become political players as well, violence erupts. As the central characters of A Tale of Two Cities find out, no one can really escape playing a political role when a nation’s in turmoil.

Questions About Politics

Is Sydney’s vision for France one that’s based on the events that have occurred in the novel?

The political records of the revolutionaries are kept in Madame Defarge’s knitting. How does the novel depict women’s role in politics?

Are national politics separable from family politics in this novel?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

A woman’s place is in the home: women who enter into political action in A Tale of Two Cities transform into inhuman, savage creatures.

The complicated relationship between family life and political life in A Tale of Two Cities makes the women who engage in revolutionary activities the most interesting characters in the novel.

Morals and Ethics

Things aren’t always what they seem. Disreputable, lazy good-for-nothings turn out to be saviors. Righteous, justice-seeking people turn out to be bloodthirsty thugs. In other words, war tends to confound most people’s expectations. Once blood starts spilling in the streets, telling the difference between right and wrong becomes extremely difficult. When the world turns upside-down, how do you decide what to believe? More important, whom can you trust? A Tale of Two Cities explores the agonizing consequences of revolution, such as how "freedom" can too easily become another tagline for fanaticism. Sure, revolution can bring freedom – but at what cost?

Questions About Morals and Ethics

Dickens tends to discuss entire populations as if they were single characters: "Monseigneur" stands in for the aristocracy, "Saint Antoine" for the poor. How does this affect the way that we read about the different sides of the revolution?

Is it fair that Darnay should go back to France? Why or why not?

How effective are Tellson’s ethics? Why does Mr. Lorry deviate from them so often?

What do you think of Mr. Cruncher’s rationalization of his "profession" as a grave-digger?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Because Charles Darnay’s sense of morality is completely fully-formed (and never troubled) at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities, he never becomes a truly interesting character.

In the turmoil of political upheaval, characters whose morals remain constant become the only ones on which we can rely. That’s why we like Charles Darnay so much.

Life, Consciousness, and Existence

Dickens the storyteller is closely linked to Dickens the philosopher. Sure, A Tale of Two Cities is a rollicking good story. More than that, though, it’s also a meditation on some of the most pressing existential questions which can trouble humankind. Do we really know anything at all about the people around us – even the people that we love? Can a single life make any difference in a world filled with hatred, rage, and violence? Times of strife make these questions all the more pressing to answer, but, as Dickens reminds us, that doesn’t mean that the answers are easy to find.

Questions About Life, Consciousness, and Existence

Is Sydney Carton a hero, or is his death just a continuance of his fatalistic logic?

Is Carton a Christ-like figure? Why or why not?

How does the young woman who dies with Carton change our understanding of his character?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Sydney Carton’s death is the ultimate example of his masochism.

Sydney Carton’s death might appear to be the ultimate example of his masochism, but it actually occurs because of a complete shift in his self-understanding.