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Tale Of Two Cities Character Analysis

Decent Essays

Representation of the Body and the Mind in A Tale of Two Cities

In the novelette, A Tale of Two Cities, the characters Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton immensely resemble each other. Ironically, their individual personalities are also extremely different. So different that they reflect the body and the mind philosophical bugaboo that Rene Descartes proposed in the 17th century which puzzled philosophers for centuries. The characters Darnay and Carton are comparable to the body and the mind philosophical conundrum as a result of their interactions, Carton's charisma illustrating the mind, and accordingly Darnay's charisma illustrating the body.
In the body and mind conundrum, the body is a vessel for the mind (the mind in the problem is comparable to the soul). When comparing Carton and Darnay to the enigma, one must accept the fact that humans often have a critical opinion of themselves. For example, instinctively, a person's body image may disappoint them, believing that they are too scrawny or too fat and that no one will approve of them or convene with them if they regard their imperfection. Accordingly, Carton sarcastically acrimoniously replies," It must be an immense satisfaction!" to Darnay's alleviation over not dying, which reflects someone disliking their body image as Carton dislikes Darnay. When individuals dream, they conceive themselves as they are in real life. When they dream they still know who they are in the dream because that person looks like them.

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