Theme Of Sidney Carton

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, narrates the frustrations of the common people toward Foulon, a French magistrate. The people rejoice when Foulon is imprisoned since he treated them awfully. The nature of the French Revolution is the common people’s elation at the downfall of the aristocracy. Dickens utilizes personification, motif, and symbolism to describe the relationship between the common people and Foulon.

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.

In A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton is the clear protagonist of the book. This normally would make the antagonist (however there is no clear one) his antithesis. Yet straying from the norm, Dickens creates a very peculiar opposite for Carton in the form of Jarvis Lorry. Lorry is a man of business, and will not be strayed from his financial past even by an encroaching revolution. Carton on the other hand is a bleeding heart romantic hero, who is motivated by love and passion. To complicate the entire ordeal further, both Carton and Lorry are fighting for the same side. The different personalities of the characters play vital roles in the outcome of the book as well as the outcome of the revolution.

This book may be analyzed as a story of two totally different cities, London and Paris, as Charles Dickens writes in this book, “Every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.” where he describes how isolated

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.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest that I have ever known” (Dickens 367). Sydney Carton spoke these immortal words in the last few moments of his life in the novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. In the shadows of the growing French Revolution Carton, a lawyer, wastes his life on alcohol and apathy. But in the midst of it all the noble part of his life is his love for Lucie, a young married French woman, which is strong enough to induce him to give his life for her husband, Charles Darnay. Through his death Carton redeems himself and is reborn in his namesake that the Darnay family shall survive. He ultimately develops into the tragic romantic hero that readers will come to

The novel’s opening words (Book 1, Chapter 1) “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. . .” Provided, Dickens conveys the relationship between poverty and aristocracy through the use of parallelism, paradox, and other poetic techniques. In addition to, Dickens's technique functions not only to draw opposites, but to reveal hidden parallels.

Charles Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities, reveals a person that is so complex that students of British Literature still have not fully understood Sydney Carton’s character. Dickens introduces him to the reader as an arrogant, frustrated, no account barrister who lives through the lives of others. Yet throughout the novel one can see that he is a brilliant barrister who does not realize his worth, a man changed through love and devotion, and a self-sacrificing individual.

In the beginning Sydney Carton is explained as, “Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men.” He is mostly describe like this because of his drinking habits and weak demeanor. In the first chapters that introduces Carton, he is seen as too much of a drunk to accomplish any of his goals. He has sacrificed his milestones and takes no advances in his career as a lawyer because he has no will to live. However, Lucie awakens his true potential in life by the end of the book. Carton also shows sacrifice by loving and supporting Lucie after Darnay is taken. Carton sacrifice time and energy to help Lucie in this time of need. Showing his sacrifice and devotion to Lucie, he is renewed with life and eventually “reborn”. He shows dedication and it rectifies for his past behavior of addiction. Also, Carton exemplifies sacrifice by giving up his addiction to alcohol when he starts to be involved in Lucie and Darnay’s life. He gives up something that is a demanding addiction. When he becomes sober, he is freed from his chains of alcoholism and reborn; unrestrictive life. Not only does Carton sacrifice drinking but most importantly his life. Sydney Carton gives up his life for Lucie and Darnay. He saves them so they can come back and live together. His sacrifice helps him live debt free from his earlier sinful behavior making him renewed through this service. In conclusion, Carton is a character that exhibits the

Sydney Carton is the most memorable character in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, a story of redemption, resurrection, self-sacrifice change and love, all of these words have to do with the extreme transformation of. Sydney Carton had such great love for Lucie Mannette that evolves from a depressed loaner that can only attempt to substitute happiness with alcoholic indulgence to a loyal caring friend who makes the ultimate sacrifice for the ones he loves.

This love eventually drives Carton to give his life, which protects Lucie’s happiness. Carton says to Lucie, “If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have returned the love of the man you see before you-self-flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse as you know him to be-he would have been conscious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with him” (Dickens 156). In this scene, Carton is telling Lucie that even though he loves her, he knows that she does not return this love. He proceeds to tell her that even if she had loved him, he would have made her miserable because of how he lives his life. Carton’s conversation with Lucie shows that Carton is hopelessly in love with Lucie, and yet that love is unattainable to him. However, he has the strength to sacrifice his feelings for her because of this love. During this conversation, Carton also says to Lucie, “think now and then that there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you!” (Dickens 159). Here, Carton tells Lucie that if ever her life and happiness were in danger, and he could save her from that pain by giving his life, he would gladly do it. This is a direct reference to the end of the novel, where

Carton further helps Darnay and implies more of his heroism when he dies for him. Carton’s great love and respect for Lucie holds him to the promise he made to her when he said that he would die for anyone she loved. The sheer act of heroism possessed him to buy the elixir that would cause Darnay to pass out, to switch clothing, and take Darnay’s place in prison. Carton knew that if his plan was discovered, he would be just as dead as Darnay. However, Carton kept in mind his promise and carried it through. At this point in time, Darnay expressed a sense of heroism as well because he was prepared to face his death without fear. Darnay would have

I don’t think that Carton’s love for Lucie was any stronger than Darnay’s. Readers just tend to focus on Carton’s love more because he simply wasn’t able to get Lucie, but he still sacrificed his life for her. I believe that Darnay would have done the same thing if the positions were switched. Charles had a full loving family and a genuinely happy life; he had so much to sacrifice. While Carton didn’t really have anything. Carton even admits that his life was a failure, and the only good thing he has done to make his life worth living was to sacrifice his life for

In The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, the most dynamic and central character of the story is Sydney Carton, who helps serve as the catalyst for one of the book’s major themes, that love requires sacrifice. Character development is a huge part of how Sydney will eventually experience loss for the sake of love. Sydney Carton is a complicated individual. He is described as the “idlest, and most uncompromising of men”( 1.5.65). He is extremely intelligent, but a drunkard and unmotivated with his life.

Sacrifice, even when it comes to one’s ultimate end, is crucial in order to survive as a productive race. In the book Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, he illustrates the hardships of the early-nineteenth-century lifestyles. With the resurrection of an evicted man, the novel sprouts from a broken family recovering and growing. This novel incorporates many grand gestures and adventures, such as the French Revolution, treason trials, and the sacrifice of one’s own life in the name of love.