A Tale Of Two Cities By Charles Dickens

Lastly, good did triumph over evil in Sydney Carton. Sydney Carton is a drunk who hates Darnay because if Carton was not a drunk he would have everything Darnay has, like the love of Lucie Manette. Carton is seen as the darkness because of the disparity he has and how low he has fallen. Whereas Darnay is seen as light or the good guy due to how his life is going. In the end when Sydney gives up his life for Darnay it shows how Sydney is transferring from being sad and dark. His selfless act proved that the “bad” Sydney Carton has saved Darnay and kept Lucie, Cartons love, happy.

The novel, A Tale of Two Cities, was written by Charles Dickens and was published in 1859. A Tale of Two Cities is a historical fiction based during the French Revolution. As two groups of people who both live in London and Paris find themselves in a situation that affects all of them, which ends with some deaths and suffering. Charles Dickens purpose for writing A Tale of Two Cities was to inform and amplify the readers mind on human nature. Throughout the book Charles Dickens uses many themes and characteristics, that bring out human nature in all his characters, to broaden the view of the readers.

Carton has given up his own life to give Lucie and a child whom he’s never met a better life. A main theme in A Tale of Two Cities is loyalty, and Sydney Carton’s loyalty seems to lie with not only Lucie, but with everyone but himself.

Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton have pretty much in common, as well as their similar appearances and their love for Lucie. They even have terribly several variations as well as their backgrounds and attitudes. However, in the end, the reader finishes up having the

Despite Carton’s disliking for Darnay decides to once again save Darnay’s life just before he is to be beheaded by the revolutionaries and their beloved guillotine. He creates an elaborate plan that includes blackmail with a double-crossing spy, Barsad, the changing of clothes with Darnay, and using a special vapor to knock Darnay out and send him back to England with his family. Carton, because of his uncanny resemblance to Darnay gets away with taking his identity. He stays unphased by the situations that follow and just before he is beheaded he envisions a better future. This includes “[Lucie] with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name… I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up the path of life” (292-293). Carton was not nervous when staring death in the face, proving his braveness.

This wasted potential is emphasized when both Darnay and Carton fall in love with Lucie Manette. Darnay, as the typical charming hero, is chosen over desperate, brooding Carton. As a result, Carton finds himself channeling his love and his physical advantage of being Darnay’s double into keeping Lucie safe and happy by way of rescuing Darnay from the guillotine. Thus, Carton is able to become the proverbial “good guy,” a role he saw for himself in his counterpart, Darnay. He also managed to thwart the Defarges’ plot to murder all those connected to the aristocracy in any way. In this way, Dickens is able to use the comparisons and contrasts between the two men to show how love is capable of victory over violence and vengeance.

Sydney’s position as a lawyer persuades his feelings of service. He fully shows the “ideology of service” as he gives his life to the service of his clients. To serve others, a person must have a sense of self-sacrifice; therefore, his profession as a lawyer “supplies a professional context for Carton’s self-sacrifice” (Petch 38). If not for Sydney’s profession and his self-sacrificial sense of duty, the end of the novel may have been extremely different.

Sydney Carton is a miserable drunk, but in his heart he finds tenderness for Lucie. Though he knows unworthy of being a prospect companion, Carton wishes her “a life [she] love[s]” (156). Keeping true to his promise, Carton knows nothing is more important to her than being reunited with her husband, Charles Darnay. Sydney has a reputation of being bitter and inhospitable, and feels that in dying he has a chance at redeeming himself. Alive, he has hurt people he loves, including himself- in death he is a hero in the eyes of himself and his friends.

Sydney Carton's life is made meaningful by the hope that he receives from Lucy Manette. At the beginning of the story, Sydney Carton's life has no significance. He is a drunkard with a seemingly worthless life. Sydney is working as a clerk for the lawyer C.J. Stryver, and though Sydney is the real brains behind the ideas, the attorney receives all the credit. Carton has had an unfavorable life and has no inspiration, nothing to live for. Sydney really wants for his life to have served some purpose, for him to have made a difference. He changes his life around after a conversation with Miss Manette in which Carton professes his love to her. Carton

In the beginning, Sydney Carton’s the character that everyone looks down upon. He is depression, hate and self-loathing personified. His total carelessness overshadows anything else about him, especially when his first impression is given. Sydney is introduced when Charles

In the beginning, Sydney Carton was a mean drunk that did nothing well and was only worried about himself. Carton had never done anything correctly, or for the benefit of others until he met Lucie, which was the love of his life, that he would do anything for. In another incident he shows his love for Lucie by dying in place of her husband, Charles Darnay, and when asked why he was dying for this man, his reply was, “ It is far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done: it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known” (446). Sydney Carton is basically saying that it was the best thing that he has ever done because he did not grow up doing things for other people’s better good. This shows how much he has changed from being a drunk and mean, to dying for the happiness of a person he loves. Sydney Carton has been greatly “recalled to life”, because he has changed so much, and it has made a huge impact in the book.

To help acquit Darnay, Carton brings to light the indistinguishable features the two men share. The court observes that they “were sufficiently like each other to surprise, not only the witness, but everybody present, when they were brought into comparison” (77). The witness and the spectators at the trial cannot seem to differentiate the two men, thus discrediting all accusations against Darnay. Their doppelgänger qualities prove extremely important to the end of the story. Dickens presents Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay as foil characters where each one augments the characteristics of the other.

From an existentialist’s point of view, life embodies a meaningless and unnecessary time in which individuals find no purpose for living. Encountering different stages of his metamorphosis, Sydney Carton accurately exemplifies one who lives an existentialist lifestyle, but eventually changes his views, further resulting in him giving up his life for someone else’s. Carton’s introduction in the novel, as a drunken and rude individual who sees no sense in life and love provides the audience with a character who lacks faith in himself. He views himself as a “disappointed drudge… [who] care[s] for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for [him]” due to his crude actions and personality (Dickens 87). Furthermore, his comparison to a lion illustrates

Driven by the plot, Sydney Carton helps to develop the theme through his sacrificial actions. Carton was introduced to the story as one of the lawyers that helped portray Charles Darnay as innocent in his hearing. Fading in and out after the trial, I thought he’d be a minor character. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Following the plot to the end of the book, Carton swaps places with Darnay right before his sentence to the guillotine, sacrificing his life to save Charles. Sydney’s selfless actions of sacrifice were made so the progression of well being could continue for the Manette family. No well being can come from the phase of depression Darnay's family would have suffered through if Carton hadn’t switched places with him.

As Lucie continues to care for her father she also has another dear friend she begins to help, Sydney Carton. Unlike Lucie, when the reader is first