Moral and Immoral Conversions in A Tale of Two Cities A conversion in the Webster's Dictionary is described as a change from one belief to another. In the novel A Tale of Two Cities, the acclaimed author Charles Dickens uses his great imaginative power to create a superior artwork in literary terms. A Tale of Two Cities is an in-depth story about the lives of people in the two countries of France and England during the French Revolution. Through the process of the novel many of the characters go through changes. The most drastic of these changes are moral or immoral conversions which empower the characters to become greater or lesser of human beings. The three characters who take moral or immoral conversion to the greatest extent …show more content…
Befor he had met lucie he didn't really care for anything in general, but now he really has found something to live for. Then when Sydney finds out that Lucie and Charles Darney are to be married he is a little surprised because even though he was expecting it to happen, when it did happen he was a little stunned. At this point Sydney Carton takes another conversion but this one is back to his old self. As the story progresses Charles returns to France to save a friend. While he is there he gets caught and is sent to La Force. Sydney hears of this arrest and begins to contemplate whether or not he should give up his life for Charles. Then Carton has his moment of epiphany. He has this moment like Jesus did the night before he was crucified, in the garden. This moment of deep thought allows him to really understand the true love Charles and Lucie share. So he decides to give up his life so that Charles and Lucie can live their life in love and happiness. Sydney plans to switch places with Charles in La Force so that he may face the guillotine instead of Charles Darney. By doing this Carton proves to the reader that he has brought his moral conscience from a demeaning low to a extreme high.
Dr. Alexandre Manette is the next character to go through a moral conversion. Dr. Manette is the father of Lucie Manette, a young, sweet, innocent looking-girl. Dr. Manette had been imprisoned for eighteen years because of
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.
Listing his name and profession would also help because Dr. Manette is a reputable doctor in France and has a high reputation there. Dr. Manette was sacrificing his name to try to save Darnay and get him released by persuading the people that Darnay is not in the wrong. Since Lucie had helped her father so much and helped him grow throughout his life, Dr. Manette thought he would try to repay her by getting her husband released from prison to ensure Lucie’s happiness.
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.
This statement is revisited at the top of the novel once Carton offers up his life so as to save lots of that of Charles to make sure Lucie’s happiness.
Lucie and Sydney Carton also illustrate sacrificing for their loved ones throughout the book. “‘She was the golden thread that united him to a past beyond misery’” (p. 96). This quote describes how Lucie holds her father together. Lucie demonstrates sacrifice for her loved ones by guiding Dr.Manette to his recovery. Lucie sacrifices time to help Dr.Manette recover from his prison sentence. She makes sure that nothing will interrupt his peace and bring him back to his awful prison memories. Carton demonstrates sacrifice for his loved ones because even though he is battling with addiction and depression he still puts a smile on his face whenever he is around Lucie. He sacrifices his own heart wrenching feelings to make Lucie feel safe and sound.
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 Carton, “one of Dickens’s most loved and best-remembered characters” (Stout 29), is not just another two-dimensional character; he seems to fly off the pages and into real life throughout all the trials and tribulations he experiences. He touches many hearts, and he even saves the life of Charles Darnay, a man who looks surprisingly similar to him. In Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton is a selfish man of habit, a cynic, a self-loathing drunk, and an incorrigible barrister until he meets Lucie Manette; throughout the novel Sydney is overcome by his noble love for Lucie and transforms from a cynic to a hero as he accomplishes one of the most selfless acts a man can carry out.
“‘Are you dying for him?’ she whispered. ‘And his wife and child. Hush! Yes.’ ‘O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?’”( Dickens 631). The Seamstress recognizes that Sydney has taken Charles place to be killed, she begins to adore him because of his heroic act. Sydney gave up his opportunity to marry the love of his life, Lucie and instead gave his life for her happiness. Sydney thought of himself as a Christ-like figure because of his sacrifice. Carton a foolish hero shows how love for one's cause can cause you to take your own life.
Earlier in the novel, when Carton confesses his love to Lucie, he states, “And when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you” (117). His word is tested later in the end of the novel. Darnay is sentenced for execution, but Carton would not allow for Lucie to loose “the life she loves” (117). Carton trickes Darnay into switching places and eventually, Carton is executed in Darnay’s place, without any of the Revolutionists realizing. Indeed, he is willing to give up his own life, a life Lucie could never love the way she loves Darnay, so she and Darnay could stay together. Besides sacrificing his life for Lucie’s husband, Sydney also sacrifices his life because he believes the people of the city would benefit from it. Carton states during his last moments of life, “I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see 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” (292). Carton explains how he thinks the Revolution will end since the revolutionist have achieved their goal of killing the last “Evrémonde.”
Later the Patriots look up to Dr. Manette as a type of role model because he took the pain for those eighteen years to set an example for those who thought that the revolution would come easy. He of course did not know this nor did he have a choice to be imprisoned. But nonetheless his captivity in the Bastille served as a prime example of what the peasants of France must go through in order to achieve their goals. This sacrifice does not become known until later in the book when his time spent gives him a leadership quality over the Revolutionists.
He knows of nothing other than his prison life and frequently reverts to busily making shoes, a hobby he picked up while jailed. He is completely incapable of functioning in the outside world, having entirely forgotten what life outside of prison is like. Lucie loves him unconditionally and helps him regain his sanity. Dr. Manette recovers gradually with the help of family and friends. It is a long process, but Lucie is dedicated to her father and assists in recovering from his crazed state. As time passes, Dr. Manette becomes more mentally stable and his regressions to shoe-making become less often. By the end of the book, Dr. Manette is nearly back to normal; he is once again a fully functional person. Lucie's love and determination nurse Dr. Manette back to normality.
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
Sydney Carton walks through the streets and repeats the following words spoken by the priest at his father’s funeral, “These solemn words, which had been read at his father’s grave, arose in his mind...“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die” (3.9.323). These words are foreshadowing that he will sacrifice himself for Lucy as Christ sacrificed himself. Sydney is symbolizing Jesus, an innocent man sacrificing himself for the ones he loves. Carton loves Lucy so much that he will sacrifice himself so that she can live with 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.