Doctor Manette PTSD

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Tale of Two Cities: Within Bars

Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, is the famous novel of the Victorian era that talks about the French Revolution revolving around the good human nature and evil of aristocracy and peasantry, and struggles against forms of imprisonment. In Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens develops certain characters to struggle against a form of imprisonment; Doctor Manette, Charles Darnay, and Sydney Carton, struggle against a form of imprisonment, allowing them to transform. Transform is defined here as a change in composition, appearance, or condition. Doctor Manette was literally imprisoned in jail for eighteen years, Charles Darnay is figuratively imprisoned in the evil of aristocracy rather than being seen …show more content…

Because of this, Doctor Manette has episodes of relapses in prison, and coincidentally near the trials of Charles Darnay. In the following quote, Doctor Manette is introduced and in one of his relapses of PTSD. “He had put a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him, without first looking down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound; he never spoke, without first wandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak.” (pg.44, A Tale of Two Cities) Within the eighteen years of prison, Doctor Manette developed PTSD causing his relapses to represent his imprisonment of suffering. Doctor Manette’s PTSD also contributes to his hobby of shoemaking. “Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for, with his back towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes. (pg. 42, A Tale of Two Cities) His shoemaking is symbolic of his imprisonment because throughout the novel, he makes shoes when he is suffering from the relapses. From his imprisonment in his suffering of PTSD, Doctor Manette comes to realize how he is affected by the relapses and PTSD. “Even now, when I believe he is more hopeful of himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind of confidence, the idea that he might need that old employment, and not find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child.” (pg. 206-207, A Tale of Two Cities) Doctor Manette speaks to Mr. Lorry about himself in second person coming to the conclusion that his shoemaking bench reminds him of his suffering and pain. He decides that he wants Mr. Lorry to get rid of it;

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