A Tale Of Two Cities By Charles Dickens

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.

Of the extraordinary amount of literary devices available to authors, Charles Dickens uses quite a few in his novel A Tale of Two Cities, which is set during the French Revolution. One of his more distinctive devices is character foils. The five sets of foils are Carton and Darnay, Carton and Stryver, Darnay and the Marquis de Evremonde, Madame Defarge, and Mr. Lorry and Jerry Cruncher. Dickens uses foil characters to highlight the virtues of several major characters in order to show the theme of personal, loving relationships having the ability to prevail over heartless violence and self-consuming vengeance.

A Tale of Two Cities has several recurring themes, including the failure of the French Revolution. In the book, the peasants defeated the aristocrats by imprisoning and murdering them. Although many of the imprisonments and executions were unjust, the peasants had gain complete power. The peasants’ revolution did not end the tyranny that existed with the aristocrats ruling, but created a new tyranny with lack of justice and mercy.

In A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, isolation impacts Madame Defarge and Sydney Carton by altering their perception of life, influencing Madame to become obsessive with her vengeful goal of eliminating the aristocracy and damaging Carton by forcing him to contain his depressive emotions.

Humanity is inherently flawed. Charles Dickens illustrates this in his novel A Tale of Two Cities as he writes about the lives of the Manettes and the people they draw around them. In this novel, Dickens uses Sydney Carton, a main character in the novel and the lover of Lucie Manette, to reveal his thoughts about the inherent nature of humanity. The characteristics of humanity change and mutate with the experiences of each person and the workings of their own mind, as illustrated by Mr. Stryver’s inhumane and thoughtless treatment of Sydney, the first time Sydney saves Charles Darnay’s life, and Sydney’s love for Lucie Manette.

Charles Dickens utilizes themes in his novel, A Tale of Two Cities, to enrich the plot and intensify the meaning of the text to the reader. Dickens wrote the novel sixty years after the French Revolution; however, he compared his present time period to that of the past using universal themes and motifs. Even though Dickens uses many themes, one of the most important and most frequent themes is that of sacrifice. In fact, most of Dickens characters make sacrifices in the name of love. Dickens exemplifies the theme of sacrifice in the name of love with the sacrifices of several characters including: Doctor Manette, Miss Pross, and Sydney Carton.

The era surrounding the French Revolution was a horrifically bloody and violent period of history – the best of times and the worst of times. The violence enacted by the citizens of French on their fellow countrymen set a gruesome scene in the cities and country sides of France. Charles Dickens uses a palate of storm, wine, and blood imagery in A Tale of Two Cities to paint exactly how tremendously brutal this period of time was.

A Tale of Two Cities, set in the era of the impending French Revolution, describes the life of the tyrannical nobility, the raging mob, and the dynamic central figures of the book. To portray these dynamic characters, Charles Dickens’ uses themes and motifs such as resurrection, secrecy, sacrifice, shadows, imprisonment and the women of the revolution knitting. Of these themes, sacrifice for happiness is most prevalent in Dickens’ writing, because he uses it to portray that, in order for someone to be truly happy, sacrifice is vital.

Charles Dickens composed many great novels, including A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens combats social injustice using great suspense and complex metaphors, leaving room for thought. There are three series of scenes which perfectly exemplify man’s inhumanity to man throughout the course of this novel. These scenes are used by Dickens to underline the inhumanity of mankind. The cycle of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man leads to the dehumanization of each man to another and is exhibited through the lives of the Monseigneurs, the execution of the prisoners, and the trials of Charles Darnay.

Throughout the novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, the historical setting during Dickens’ life influenced the morality and ethics of society in the novel. The issues of hunger and an unjust law system are critiqued throughout the text. The people in society later take these ideas to fuel their revenge against the aristocracy. Dickens’ use of the issues of hunger and unjustness in the government are used to convey society’s sources of anger in England and France.

“Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away” (Dickens 92). A Tale of Two Cities, a novel by Charles Dickens, describes the “imprisonment of the whole French people within the walls of an unyielding social system.” During the time before the French Revolution, a person’s fate was determined by the family into which someone was born. No matter how hard someone worked to rise above this social status, it was impossible to overcome this fate. Many were weary of this mistreatment of the poor and decided to turn to rebellions to break the separation between the wealthy and the poor. The characters in this novel are analogous to the French people in that they are ensnared by love and hatred, mental instability, and the unfortunate events that lead up to their imprisonment. Nonetheless, Dickens’ allows them to be unchained by embracing their past and fate to further determine their “key to release.”

Charles Dickens is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 19th century, and A Tale Of Two Cities is widely regarded as one of his best novels. Unlike other novels by Dickens, A Tale Of Two Cities relies upon an engrossing plot and vivid descriptions to develop characters, rather than dialogue and character interactions. The result is a compelling story of sacrifice and resurrection that has made A Tale Of Two Cities (hereafter abbreviated ATOTC) a staple in literature classes all around the world. To achieve the level of writing that elevates ATOTC, Dickens utilizes beautiful imagery to describe the setting, The French Revolution, and a great deal of metaphors and symbolism throughout in order to realize the novel’s central theme of resurrection and rebirth.

“If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society”-Bayard Rustin. An ideal society cannot stand on the weak pillars of atrocities committed during the struggle toward perfection. Likewise, the French Revolution struggled for equality, yet the chaotic time achieved little. Peasants and the proletariat had finally reached their breaking point, resulting in a merciless revolution, sparing no one. Charles Dickens’ 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, focuses on a family in the midst of the horrifying French Revolution. Dickens used the novel as a mouthpiece to express his dissatisfaction

When people go through traumatic experiences, they often tend to have a different perspective of the world around them. Dickens puts his characters through many distinct personal struggles that end up shaping who they are. Although each of these struggles was particular to each of the characters, they all were affected in some way, whether that be in a positive or negative light. Throughout the course of the novel A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens toys with the idea of personal change to develop the ambiguity of the characters Sydney Carton, Ernest Defarge, and Madame Defarge.

The French Revolution mainly took place in the city of Paris during the late 1700’s. The Revolution did not only affect the people of France, but also the citizens of England as well. The French Revolution is known as one of the most brutal and inhumane periods of history. If one studied the beliefs and views of the people involved at the time, one would see a reoccurring theme of “ being recalled to life”. Born from the world of literature, Charles Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities takes a deeper look at the culture of the late 1700’s, in both England and France. Dickens uses the character of Lucie Manette to further examine one of the major themes presented in the novel, consisting of the belief of one being