Proposing the inevitable motif of duty v. desire in A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens portrays the commitment of certain characters to their involvement in society. As he refers to himself as an “honest tradesman”, Jarvis Lorry is portrayed as a professional that gets his job done. (Dickens 22). In the early stages of the novel, although “the bank was almost always with him”, Lorry is fascinated by “another current impression that…he was on his way to dig some one out of a grave” (23). Dickens effectively implies foreshadowing as a tactic to further develop the theme of duty vs desire. In spite of the fact that Lorry is on a business trip to “recall [Dr. Manette] to life”, he often dreams about what his confrontation with the literal meaning …show more content…
With the intention of revealing the welfare and environment of the Antoine, Paris villagers, Dickens opens up the fifth paragraph of book the first with a hectic scene: “A LARGE cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street...shattered like a walnut shell” (36). A frenzy of villagers surrounded the pools of wine, sopping it up from the stones. With this being one of the most obvious foreshadowing methods used by Dickens, the villagers are compared to desperate vultures, in that they competed to get to consume the wine from the street. The villagers, in their right mind, would never want to be observed as deprived animals, which they really have no choice to prevent when trying to stay alive. However, Dickens doesn’t only introduce the villagers in that town, he also compares the red stains of the wine to the violence and blood of the soon to come revolution. He even includes a scene where a man is rubbing the red wine on the wall, spelling out BLOOD (38).While trying to be calm and composed after being shunned during his visit to the Opera, Monseigneur embarked onto his carriage and “his man drove as if he were charging an enemy”
In this passage, Dickens’ juxtaposition, personification, detail, and diction reinforce Dickens’ tone of empathy and pity for the social conditions of the people of lower class France. When a large cask of wine spills open on the streets of France there is a mad rush to collect a taste of the spoiled wine. The people’s reactions consisted of “...frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing a dozen together.” This exciting and scene of much happiness is juxtaposed by the “gloom that gathered on the scene that appeared more natural than sunshine” that occurs after all the wine has run out. This juxtaposition of the momentary happiness that the peasants of St. Antoine experience provide a contrast
Dickens used his great talent by describing the city London were he mostly spent his time. By doing this Dickens permits readers to experience the sights, sounds, and smells of the aged city, London. This ability to show the readers how it was then, how ...
In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens’ choice of sentimental expression had an excellent effect on the readers’ responses to the characters. The use of exaggerated sentimentality helped create a clear picture of the story’s issues in the readers’ minds; it gave a feel for the spirit of the times, and made it easier to understand the characters’ points of view. It was this very sentimentality that Dickens strived to achieve.
Dickens uses wine to represent the blood to be spilled in the war as well as to show how divided the classes are. Through the depiction of the poor rejoicing over spilled drops of wine against the backdrop of the aristocratic town of St. Antoine, Dickens is able to evince the polarity of rich and poor existent at the time. Dickens describes the scene of the broken wine cask, “When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the woman who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away to descend again; and a gloom gather on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine” (Dickens 21). The townspeople run to collect, drink, and play in the wine. The aristocrats are living lavishly while these townspeople are celebrating over a few drops of wine. He further describes how a townsperson, Gas...
Throughout A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens repeats a number of symbols and motifs. By employing these two literary devices throughout the duration of the story, Dickens is working to emphasize the importance of these specific components of the story. Motifs and symbols represent repeating ideas that help the reader to understand, as well as highlight the author’s central idea. Dickens employs the usage of symbols and motifs, such that by using both he adds a layer of significance and deeper meaning to actions, people, as well as objects. Additionally, by using symbols and motifs, Dickens is able to create a story in which both the characters, and the plot are interwoven.
A Tale of Two Cities Essay Throughout history, the powers of love and hate have constantly been engaged in a battle for superiority. Time and time again, love has proven to be stronger than hate, and has been able to overcome all of the obstacles that have stood in the way of it reaching its goal. On certain occasions, though, hate has been a viable foe and defeated love when they clash. In the novel A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens presents several different power struggles between love and hate.
The book has four metaphors, all of which have a significant part in the understanding of the novel. The first metaphor the readers encounter is the broken wine cask. The wine cask represents the plight of the poor and the blood of the revolution. The scene explicitly describes the people literally licking the streets and dripping the wine into the mouths of their children. The novel states, “Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women’s heads, which were squeezed dry into infants’ mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish.” The novel also shows the wine cask as a metaphor for the blood of the revolution. The red color of the wine is similar to that of rich, red blood, shed by many because of the plight of the poor experienced in France. The second metaphor would be revealed as the grind stone. The grind stone, which was used to grind the food the poor needed so badly, later became used to sharpen the tools the poor would use to overthrow the government. The grindstone became a metaphor of killing and empowered poor throughout the novel. The third metaphor is the shadow. A shadow represents the great unknown, the great unexpected. Not a single person may prepare for the unknown. None of the characters could prepare for the events that came about in the plot, such as the denouncement of
In this essay, I will argue that one of the underlying motives in Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is the reinforcement of Christian values in 18th century Victorian England. Dickens was very concerned with the accepted social norms of industrialized England, many of which he felt were very inhumane. Christian values were challenged, largely due to the recent publication of Darwin's Origins of a Species, and philosophy along with literature was greatly affected. In 1859, the industrial age was booming, making many entrepreneurs rich. However, the majority of the lower economic class remained impoverished, working in unsafe and horrific environments as underpaid factory workers. Additionally, child labor was an accepted practice in Victorian England's factories. Dickens, who worked, as a child in a shoe polish factory, detested this social convention with such strength that only one with experience in such exploitation could.
Throughout the book, Dickens portrays his objectivity between the classes through a series of graphic descriptions. For example, the horrid events that occur when the Marquis murders the child is a time when Dickens most definitely favors the rebels. Dickens’s attitude when Jacques kills the Marquis is that justice has been supplied. There is a definite tone of approval in his voice after these actions. On the other hand, Dickens’s attitude towards the mutineers is not always one of endorsement. When the activists nearly kill Gabelle and burn the Chateau, Dickens’s attitude changes from one of approval to one of disbelief. His disposition is almost one of sorrow for all the beauty being carelessly destroyed. As the reader can see, Dickens’s opinion varies greatly in accordance to the portion of the story the person is reading.
9. Ashbury, M (2001) Representation of Industrialization in Dickens’ Hard Times [Online]. Available: http://www.colourpurple.com [Accessed 25th April 2005].
With imagery revealing the poor straits and desperation of the peasant class of France, Dickens influences the reader to pity them. He writes, “The cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy—cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, want were the lords waiting on the saintly presence—nobles of great power all of them; but most especially the last” (Dickens 22). Through hunger, want, etc. being personified and compared to nobles through language such as “nobles” and “lords”, Dickens shows the extent of the suffering of the peasants, their deserving to be pitied, and the human nobles’ apathy towards them. The peasants of Saint Antoine suffer in the 1770s, and the town’s name is made into a play on words with “saintly presence”, with the cloud of cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want looming forming the imagery of irony. Another description of the peasants’ plight is revealed in the quote saying, “Ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sign Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere...Hunger was the inscription on th...
Our Mutual Friend, Dickens' last novel, exposes the reality Dickens is surrounded by in his life in Victorian England. The novel heavily displays the corruption of society through multiple examples. These examples, that are planted within the novel, relate to both the society in Dickens' writing and his reality. In order to properly portray the fraud taking place within his novels, Dickens' uses morality in his universe to compare to the reality of society. He repetitively references to the change of mind and soul for both the better and the worst. He speaks of the change of heart when poisoned by wealth, and he connects this disease to the balance of the rich and the poor. This is another major factor to novel, where the plot is surrounded by a social hierarchy that condemns the poor to a life of misery, and yet, condones any action that would normally be seen as immoral when it occurs in the aristocracy. It expands on the idea that only an education and inheritance will bring success in society, with few exceptions. Lastly, Dickens expands his opinions of society through his mockery of ...
Charles Dickens is a talented author who wrote many notable novels, including A Tale of Two Cities. Barbara Hardy notes that at a young age Dickens’ father was imprisoned for debt, leaving young Charles to support himself and his family alone (47). Dickens strongly disliked prisons, which shows as a motif in A Tale of Two Cities. Many of his interests contributed to the formulation of the novel. In the essay “Introduction” from the book, Charles Dickens, Harold Bloom claims Dickens hoped “to add something to the popular and picturesque means of understanding [the] terrible time” of the Revolution (20). Dickens’ reading and “extraordinary reliance upon Carlyle’s bizarre but effective French Revolution” may have motivated him to write the novel (Bloom 21). Sir James Fitzjames Stephen believed that Dickens was “on the look-out for a subject, determined off-hand to write a novel about [French Revolution]” (Bloom 20). In Brown’s book Dickens in his Time, Dickens guided the writing of the play Frozen Deep where two rivals share the same love, and one ultimately sacrifices himself for...
In this novel, no one commits an entirely unselfish act. Even those characters that appear to be unselfish, help others only to fulfill their need to be seen as benevolent. For Dickens to rail against social inequality and not rail against the immoral and inherent selfishness of man, is an oversight that helped to embed the social caste system in England that pervades it to this day.
When considering representation, the ways in which the authors choose to portray their characters can have a great impact on their accessibility. A firm character basis is the foundation for any believable novel. It is arguable that for an allegorical novel - in which Hard Times takes its structure, Dickens uses an unusually complex character basis. The characters in Hard Times combine both the simplistic characteristics of a character developed for allegorical purposes, as well as the concise qualities of ‘real’ people (McLucas, 1995). These characters are portrayed to think and feel like we as readers do and react to their situations in the same way that most of us would. Such attributes are what give the characters life and allow us to relate to their decisions.