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Analysis Of The Novel ' Tale Of Two Cities '

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In the novel Tale of Two Cities, author Charles Dickens defines character Madame Defarge’s symbolism of knitting as an expression of how it weaves its way in the themes of fate and duality. Throughout the novel Dickens uses knitting in a way of affecting other people’s lives, for instance, the Evremonde family, related blood Charles Darnay with wife Lucie, and their daughter. It affects especially in Lucie Manette’s character, for she is the one who knits the lives of all the characters with her “golden thread” expressing her ability to create a knitted circle of family and friends. To Madame Defarge’s knitting represents her element of fate, her ability to express her vengeance for the misfortune of her family 's fate. The symbolism of Madame Defarge’s knitting is the ability to share the duality with Lucie’s “golden thread” revealing the duality between their two characters, for instance, Lucie’s nurturing pleasant nature, compared to Madame Defarge’s ruthless villains like composers. The symbol knitting is used in representing two things in the novel. The first is to represent the vengeance that Madame Defarge wishes to take upon the aristocracy and their bloodlines, and the second is the duality it helps tie between two individual characters. Madame Defarge knits the names of her victims, she is constantly seen knitting in her husband’s wine shop. Madame Defarge has the ability to be the main antagonist in the novel. She uses knitting as a death list for her victims,

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