preview

Tale Of Two Cities Inhumanity Analysis

Decent Essays

An Age of Inhumanity The French Revolution was an age of savagery, in which man killed fellow man out of cold blood and irrepressible hatred. In his novel A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens paints a clear picture of that hatred and its manifestation in the mass exterminations of the aristocratic class. He captures not only the brutality of the aristocrats before the revolution, who flaunted their authority over the mass peasantry, but also highlights the sadistic nature of the peasantry in their quest for bloody “justice” during the revolution. Throughout the novel, Dickens depicts the theme of man’s inhumanity towards his fellow man in France during the events in the years prior to and during the revolution. Dickens skillfully develops …show more content…

In Book the First, Dickens only casually mentions knitting when describing Madame Defarge. As he describes her he states, “Her knitting was before her . . .” (24). It is not revealed why until later chapters, but is only stated now that she spends all her time knitting. The reader only realizes later what she is really doing, and how barbaric is it that this is how Madame Defarge spends all of her time, premeditating the murder of thousands. In Book the Second, Dickens reveals Madame Defarge’s pastime. Her husband declares, “Knitted, in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun” (132). Monsieur Defarge is referring to the register his wife spends all her time knitting, which is a list of all those who have committed crimes against the peasants of France and their families, and who are to die in the revolution. It is the “hit list” of the revolutionaries. It is a system to make sure everyone who “deserves punishment” receives it. However, it makes no distinction between the innocent and the guilty. This is apparent in Book the Third, when Dickens describes the death of the seamstress. He writes, “She goes next before him—is gone; the knitting women count Twenty-Two” (292). In this scene, the innocent seamstress meets her death at the hands of the guillotine on no other account than suspicion. She is only one of the many innocents who dies for no cause and cannot escape the revolutionaries’ killing machine. During all these unjust executions, the French revolutionary women casually knit on the sideline, planning more deaths. This is the most horrid development of the theme of inhumanity yet. As the peasants move through their organized revolution, they carry out the deaths they had planned, and move to killing

Get Access