A Tale of Two Cities- A Historical fiction
A Tale of Two Cities is a novel categorized as historical fiction. Historical fiction is a composite material, with a portion of history embedded in a matrix of fiction. A Tale of Two Cities is appropriately titled, as the novel is the story of England and Revolutionary France; as a result it can be categorized as historical fiction. A Tale of Two Cities is parallel to history in many different respects. The English setting, and atmosphere, is similarly portrayed, as it actually existed in the seventeenth century.
In the novel, Dickens goes into more detail about Revolutionary France in history with regards to setting, politics and the social structure, as well as the events, which occurred
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Whether it was the best of times or the worst of times depended on one's point of view. The quote describes the spirit of the era in which this story takes place.
Dickens also shows that crime ran rampant and robbery and murder were common occurrences in England at the time. “Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night” (Dickens 36). This shows the terror that the highwaymen brought to the people in England.
The Old Bailey, a court of law, which stands beside the famous Newgate Prison, is the place where Charles Darnay was tried for treason. The Old Bailey was a real court in London. Prisoners were kept in the gaol, brought next door for trial, and hung on the street outside, until 1866 (Dickens 406). “ ‘You know the Old Bailey well, no doubt?’ said one of the oldest of the clerks to Jerry the messenger” (Dickens 89). The Old Bailey was a court of law until it was renovated and called the Central Criminal Court.
The Tellson’s Bank, where Mr. Lorry works is based on a real life bank called Thelusson’s Bank. “Tellson’s Bank by temple bar was an old fashioned place even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty” (Dickens 83). Dickens needed a name for the organization, which brings Lucie and Dr. Manette from France to England; he had read about Thelusson’s Bank in Carlyle’s work and shifted the name to Tellson’s Bank, which
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens deals with many coincidences that impact the plot and
The novel, like many other classics, paints the society and time period in which the author lives through. Victorian England, which is the basis of Dickens setting, was a time where social principles were focused on the hierarchy and human nature. The
Resurrection is a common theme for stories. In order for someone or something to be resurrected, it must first be created and then dilapidated. The focus in A Tale of Two Cities is on the dilapidated and resurrection portion of this pattern. There are a myriad of examples in this novel of resurrection. Specific people, groups of people, and even France are all examples of resurrection in A Tale of Two Cities. The theme of resurrection applies to Sydney Carton and Dr. Manette in A Tale of Two Cities written by Charles Dickens.
Juxtaposition is also used to further stress the socioeconomic disparities during the French Revolution by comparing the anguish of peasants and the excessiveness of the aristocrats in an even more extreme light. In Book the First, chapter five, Dickens writes, “All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine…Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women’s heads, which were squeezed dry into infants’ mouths” (27). This description of the broken wine cask in front of the wine shop is meant to illustrate the true hunger and squalid living conditions of the peasants, who are so desperate for nourishment that they will feed their babies vile wine through dirty rags. This scene was juxtaposed with a description from Book the Second, chapter seven. In this chapter, the hot chocolate drinking process of a noble is described and “It took four men, all four a-blaze with gorgeous decoration, and the chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur’s lips” (109). This over
Although Dickens clearly supports the revolutionaries cause, through metaphors of water, he highlights the sometimes animalistic nature of the revolution. In Book one, “[T]he sea did what it liked and what it liked was destruction.” Dickens acknowledges the inevitable nature of the revolution by comparing the sea to the French mob. And the mob, much like a sea,
In Dover, Mr lowrey takes a room at the Royal George Hotel. The 17-year-old Lucie Manette arrives that same afternoon, having received vague instructions to meet a Tellson's Bank employee at the Royal George Hotel regarding some business of her "long dead" father. Though he describes his news as just a "business matter," Mr. Lorry struggles with his emotions as he explains the "story of one of our customers"—Lucie's father, Dr. Manette.
“Still, our first impressions of the Germans were rather reassuring. The officers were billeted in private homes, even in the homes of Jews. Their attitude toward their hosts was distant, but polite. They never demanded the impossible, made no unpleasant comments, and even smiled occasionally at the mistress of the house.” (5)
A tale of two cities begins in 1775 when Mr. Jarvis Lorry goes to fetch Lucy Manette to visit her father, who has been imprisoned for her whole life. The Manettes meet Charles Darnay Stryver, and Sydney Carton at a legal trial they are witnesses to, where Darnay is accused of being a spy. Sydney Carton, the lawyer wins the case by pointing out the court cannot prove it was Darnay. Here we learn Darnay and
The novel’s opening words (Book 1, Chapter 1) “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. . .” Provided, Dickens conveys the relationship between poverty and aristocracy through the use of parallelism, paradox, and other poetic techniques. In addition to, Dickens's technique functions not only to draw opposites, but to reveal hidden parallels.
A Tale of Two Cities, a book written by Charles Dickens in 1859, describes the situation of France and the French Revolution. At the end of Chapter Six, Dr. Manette, Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay, Sydney Carton, and Miss Pross are at a Tea Party. A turbulent storm occurs and incites an eerie mood within the characters. Charles Darnay starts telling a story about a paper he found. After telling the story, Dr. Manette begins to feel ill. Following this is a section which contains multiple literary elements. In Chapter Six, Dickens utilizes descriptive literary devices, such as imagery, personification, and anaphora, to foretell the French Revolution and set the mood of the passage.
In the book, Dickens portrays the people as having the hatred necessary for mob violence. Immediately, the book shows us an example how such hatred was created. When a youth’s hands were chopped off, “tongue torn out with pincers” and “his body burned alive” it shows the violence and torture that led to the French revolution. The youth represents the weak in French society
A Tale of Two Cities Jarvis Lorry, an employee of Tellson's Bank, was sent to find Dr. Manette, an unjustly imprisoned physician, in Paris and bring him back to England. Lucie, Manette's daughter who thought that he was dead, accompanied Mr. Lorry. Upon arriving at Defarge's wine shop in Paris, they found Mr. Manette in a dreadful state and took him back to London with them. Mr. Manette could not rember why he had been imprisoned, or when he was imprisoned. He was in a state of Post Tramatic Stress Dis-order.
One might believe that because capital punishment plays such a large role in Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities, that Dickens himself is a supporter of it. This just simply is not true. Dickens uses capitol punishment as a tool to define the evil embodied in both the French ruling class, and the opposing lower class during the French Revolution; as well as comment on the sheep-like nature of humankind.
Many events that take place in A Tale of Two Cities, written by Charles Dickens, foreshadow upcoming obstacles and give insight into the hardships of the townspeople. Symbolic events occur which describe the vengefulness of the peasants towards the aristocrats. The novel contains many events, which have symbolic value. Many of the symbols have to do with the inevitable clash between the aristocrats and peasants. These events foreshadow the war that is soon to become reality.
Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities in order to enlighten the average Briton about the events of the French Revolution. The novel compares and contrasts cities of London and Paris, which represent French and British society, through the eyes of Dickens’ human characters. The two cities play such a large part in the novel that they become characters themselves, and the contrasting societies of the two cities become a conflict. In Charles Dickens’ classic, A Tale of Two Cities, the individualistic society of London champions the first feudalistic and later socialistic society of Paris.