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Sacrifice In Charles Dickens A Tale Of Two Cities

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Sensations the Entire Universe Should Feel and Display Charles Dickens grew up in England in the early nineteenth century, self-educated himself for the majority of his lifetime, and amazingly wrote many fabulous novels that are still top sellers to this very day. Due to the fact that he had been composing literature and working as an author from his mid-twenties, he was able to explore different ways that he could express his feelings through his writing, causing him to become a more successful and popular writer. One of his most favored novels is A Tale of Two Cities, which discusses the struggles throughout the French Revolution. Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities in the Victorian Era and incorporated diverse, but internally woven …show more content…

Carton was not very social with everyone, but he certainly did show his love for them. He was always discouraged with the thought of having no life purpose, being unwanted, and being unnoticed. Dickens uses wonderful imagery and metaphors to build and describe Sydney Carton’s character. One of his metaphors uses the relationship between two animals and is very fitting to illustrate the relationship between them; Dickens uses the jackal and lion to portray the relationship between Sydney Carton and Mr. Stryver. Dickens discusses, “Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver’s great ally…Stryver never had a case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court… although Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble capacity” (65). Carton prepares Stryver’s meals, in this case cases, as a jackal does for a lion and Stryver, as the lion, eats the meals or argues the cases, taking the credit for the research and persuading speech. In other words, Carton listens very closely to every detail in the cases and makes connections between pieces of information to eventually solve the case while acting like he was bored and staring at the ceiling. Stryver takes Cartons ideas and conclusions to solve the case, being praised and rewarded with various benefactions. Dickens also uses the properties of an eddy to describe Sydney Carton’s feelings: “He lingered [by the stream] yet a little longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and carried it on to the sea- ‘Like me!’” (244). Dickens uses his wondrous imagery to point out the similarity between an eddy and Sydney Carton in their use and purpose. An eddy has no purpose except to spin the water surrounding it.

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