How Does Dickens Present Society In A Tale Of Two Cities

Imagine living in the 1700s surrounded by an era of revolution. You are poor, and survive off of whatever you can find on the streets. You live on the verge of death everyday, and you can do nothing about it. The little money you’ve earned goes to different types of taxes from the church, to the government, and even the lord. Around the world the exact same thing is happening, and it is destroying humanity. Chaos fills the streets, and the peasants demand blood. This is because less than one percent of the people living in France control all the money, and these nobles are corrupt. In chapter eight of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, he describes society and the people during that time. He express his views on the society by showing that the nobles are corrupted by power, and the common citizens have nothing. Charles Dickens suggests that society is broken, and that it is run by those who do not deserve the power given to them. Dickens starts with a metaphor describing society. He talks about the landscape “with the corn bright in it, but not

He describes the setting by referring to it as a “broken country.” The village has “one poor street...poor brewery...poor tannery...poor tavern...poor stable...poor apartments…[and] it had its poor people too.” The tone dickens provides is harsh and disturbing. The people live on nothing, and even eat whatever edible leaves and grasses they can find just to stay alive. Dickens then goes on to state why they are poor. “The tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general.” All of the money they own goes to tax, so they don’t have to go to jail. Dickens then states that this is “life on the lowest terms that could sustain it...or captivity and Death in the dominant prison.” You can either choose to barely survive, or rot away in prison until you