Short Essays in The Great Cat Massacre by Darnton

← Doyle, William. The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc. 2001

The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the book "The Return of Martin Guerre" by Natalie Zamon Davis. Specifically, it will discuss the life of the peasant during the Middle Ages. This book is a fascinating account of a true case that happened during the 16th century in France. The book is also an excellent example of how the peasants lived in the Middle Ages, from what they ate, to how they traveled and what their family lives were like.

This all went very well for a while, but the revolution then took a drastic downfall. The animal’s freedom and individuality was slowly taken away. Napoleon took the dogs freedom away by “making them bow, “ and obey him only. The animals also began to have no freedom of speech, “ raised their voices timidly but they were promptly silent by a tremendous growling,” which shows us that the farm was no longer run by all the animals but rather by the pigs, anything they say is right and you may not argue. The animals no all had to be the same, which can be taken as equality, but it was taken to the extreme. The animals had to call each other, “comrade,” and they weren’t even allowed to stick out in the smallest ways, ” Molly’s ribbons were taken,” which was fine at first but then slowly the animals started forgetting who they were.

The central argument of Hay’s work shows that the elite abused law making as a way of controlling and oppressing the lower classes by having them submit via the threat of capital punishment, the bloody code. Customary activities of the poorer community to survive while working such as ‘gleaning’ and poaching were now criminalised by the land owners due to capitalistic greed, driving them to desperation. Criminalisation of such activities, along with the wholesale trading of food having grain being moved “from their parishes when it could compel a higher price elsewhere”

On September third and fourth of 1792, crowds, fueled by the terror the government had instilled in them over time, broke into prisons and brutally murdered the inmates who they deemed to be against the revolution. Nicolas-Edme Restif de la Bretonne’s Les nuits de Paris chronicles the horrific things he saw on that day. Of all of the horrible descriptions, the words “Dead bodies are piled high in front of the Châtelet” are enough to make it clear that this event was completely unjustified and inexcusably horrific. He also describes the murder of a woman by the Revolutionaries he witnessed first hand.

“Recalcitrant peasants [were] thrown into irons, they [were] forced to sit astride a sharp wooden horse, … they [were] given fifty strokes of the rod … [and] the serf who [arrived] late for his robot … [was] beaten to half-dead” (Document 4). This passage written in the perspective of the Bohemian government, exhibits the types of conditions that those peasants were forced to work under in 1769 after their rebellions. These cruel acts, and others, were in response to peasant rebellions against the unjust division of taxes, “the constant making of new laws” (1) that undermined the peasantry, and the beginning of enclosure by land holders. It is crucial to state that the acts of violence committed by the peasantry were not to contribute to a

The antagonist of the book ‘Animal Farm’, Napoleon was highly emphasized for his cruel tactics that he upheld against his fellow animals. He tortured and tormented them giving himself the title of a cruel leader. This sense of tyranny is why he resembles Mr.Jones the previous owner of Manor Farm. Similar to Mr.Jones, Napoleon has created a caste system in which he is the “farmer” and the rest of the animals are his “slaves”, he has shown that he only uses the animals for his own monetary gain, and that he uses fear and propaganda to control the rest of the animals. In this essay I will compare and contrast the two individuals.

This book is divided into nine chapters, from the Ancien Regime to the Thermidor and the Director. There are essential maps with the years and the page number, such as France in 1789. France were divided between Pays D’états such Rennes or Toulouse and Pays d’élections such as Ile-de-France or Normandy. Also, there were seat of parlement all around the coast or borders. Neely gave us a list of important figures in the French Revolution such as the Jacobins Club or Robespierre.

The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History. First Edition. Robert Darnton. New York: Basic Books, 1999 XIII + 298.

The peasants of France rebelled against the innocent Aristocrats and commenced to execute as many Aristocrats as they could find. Thinking the Aristocrats acted tyrannical, the peasants took matters in their own hands. These actions resulted in a terrible time for France. Everybody agrees that the peasants should take action against the Aristocrats; however, we disagree on whether to execute the Aristocrats.

The French Revolution was a period of time from 1789 to 1799 in France where there was political instability. It officially began on the 14th of July, 1789, when the Bastille, which was a symbol of the King’s harsh policies, was stormed. The King, Louis XVI, the Queen, Marie-Antoinette and about 40,000 people were all brutally murdered. But there was also a positive side, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was formally adopted on August 1789 and feudalism was abolished. This essay will address the issues of the three estates system, food shortages and the fiscal crisis. It will also be argued that the most significant cause of the French Revolution was the social inequality that stemmed from the three estates system.

Roger Chartier, in his article “Text, Symbols, and Frenchness,” began his argument with the belief that Darnton gave the incident of the cat massacre too many levels of meaning. How could this one act be a statement about the treatment of the workers, the practice of witchcraft, the cuckolding of a husband, and a critique of the new lifestyles of the masters all at one time? Chartier starts his argument against this interpretation by criticizing Darnton’s use of a modern definition of “symbol.” Chartier believed that, "anyone concerned primarily with

The violence in France will not stop until equality is reached. The revolutionaries picture a time when all the people of France live equal. This reasoning is the core factor of why they are fighting against the system. When we learned the motive for Madame Defarge’s reasoning for hating the Marquis and anyone associated with him, she replies that everyone against the revolution should “...tell the Wind and Fire where to stop; not me!” (326). We learn here that she has not intent to stop until she gets even with the Evrémonde family. Madame Defarge’s idea of equality is the death of Charles Darnay and everyone associated with him. When Madame Defarge and Defarge were discussing the end of the revolution Defarge asked the question, “but one must stop somewhere. After all, the question is still where?” (324). Defarge questions Madame Defarge’s intent to stop somewhere but Madame Defarge replies with “At extermination” (324). This strengthens the fact that Madame Defarge believes the revolution will be complete with the death

The French Revolution was a grim and primitive period in history lasting from 1789 to 1799 when the commoners attacked aristocrats because of their selfish and inhumane treatment of the lower class. In Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities the storm of the French Revolution is brewing and plots to overthrow the cruel aristocracy are underway. The aristocracy is hated by the commoners of France because of their harsh and abusive behavior towards the poor and their excessive lifestyle that leaves them subject to Hunger and Want. However, within the Revolutionaries’ plans are actions that mirror the aristocrats’ behavior towards them. Dickens’ symbols of the grindstone scene, the blue flies, and the knitting encompass his theme of man’s

Darnton does a fantastic job about inviting the reader into to the text. This can best be described a tour of Darton’s mind and thoughts with no particular bias. Through further analysis of Darton’s The Great Cat Massacre reveals that not all subjects in the seventeenth and eighteenth century benefited from the enlightenment. These essays and short stories tell us that the peasants, described in “Peasants Tell Tales” have violent, nasty, and brutal outlooks on life based on their harsh upbringing and the stories they told and passed down. Similarly, the workers in “Workers Revolt” are not pleased with their masters considering there was a time that the masters once ate at their own table and worked along side the workers, this is their