Examples Of Cruelty In A Tale Of Two Cities

The Abused Become Abusers: Is Mankind Stuck in This Vicious Circle?

Human beings are an impressionable race who learn from each other what they should and should not do. While this is sometimes a useful trait, in other instances it can lead to death and cruelty. This is showcased copiously in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The book starts off with the French nobility horribly mistreating the destitute peasants, beating them and starving them without feeling any guilt whatsoever. To the rebels, it does not matter whether the people they execute are innocent or guilty of crimes against them, and instead see the entire upperclass as responsible for what a portion of them actually did. In this way, the cycle comes to a complete

circle; the oppressed poor become the powerful poor who oppress the rich who have previously blighted them, leaving them in the cycle of the abused becoming the abusers because that is all they had ever known and all they were ever taught to do. The vicious cycle is caused by years of maltreatment that shape the abused in their abusers image, it causes the oppressed to eventually rise up to show that they will not be victimized any longer, and to exact revenge on those who have tormented them.
After suffering years of maltreatment at the hands of the rich, the downtrodden peasants come to think that only those who are merciless and ruthless prosper in this world, and as such, become that way themselves. Charles Dickens talks very prevalently of “one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world- the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a particular delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack” (Dickens 212). During the time of the revolution, deaths by La Guillotine became such a common sight that revolutionaries began to speak of it in such blasé terms that they even joked about it, turning hundreds of peoples’ lives lost to La Guillotine into a comedy. This is only one way in which those previously oppressed showcase horrible brutality towards other members of their nations. After anyone of noble birth or who was not a member of the revolution fled the country, the rebels were left in charge of the justice system, meaning revolutionaries also make all of the laws and are able to condemn any emigrants to death by La Guillotine as they did to Charles Darnay. It is described as, “Charles Evremonde, called Darnay.

Released yesterday. Reaccused and retaken yesterday. Indictment delivered to him last night, Suspected and Denounced enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat, one of a family of tyrants, one of a race proscribed, for that they had used their abolished privileges to the infamous oppression of the people. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, in right of such proscription, absolutely Dead in Law” (245). He is not given a real chance for being given freedom whatsoever, given that he is a member of the nobility. The court pays no attention the the fact that he spurned his heritage and left the country, his sprawling estate, and his lofty title behind in favor of a simple job as a tutor in England. The rebels were taught this cruelty by the aristocrats, and in almost karmic revenge, came back to use it against the very ones who taught them. Human beings can only be oppressed and mistreated for so long before they rebel against their tormentors to show that they will not be victimized any longer. Everyone has their breaking point, that time when they are just pushed too hard, and eventually the peasants reached that point. They decide that they had been abused for long enough and that it is time to put a stop to it, so they do. This revolt had been a

long time coming, little insults and upsets building up over time until they all exploded, running over the slowly filling cup. One example of such an insult comes from Old Foulon, a nobleman, who told the starving people something they are not happy to hear and he ended up with a brutal death because of it. “Foulon who told the starving people that they might eat grass… Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserable wretch in a deadly embrace- Madame Defarge had but followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied…”(173). This angers the French peasants greatly as they feel that this is just adding an insult to the injury of them not having enough food. Another time in which the peasants were oppressed was told by Dickens like this, “We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs are by those superior beings- taxed by him without mercy, obliged to work for him without pay, obliged to grind corn at his mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own…”(252) The peasants are so poor and oppressed by the Nobles that eventually they could not stand anymore mistreatment and rebelled.
Long periods of persecution have inspired the abused to rise up and extract their revenge on the people who kept them so downtrodden for so long. Revenge is defined as the action of inflicting hurt or harm on someone for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands. This statement holds very true for the way the revolutionaries regarded what they were doing. They felt that everything they did was deserved by the rich oppressors. An example of an act of revenge was described by Dickens as, “It portended that there was one stone face to many, up at the chateau. The gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years. It lay back on the pillow on Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife.” The Marquis was killed by Gaspard in an act to avenge Gaspard’s little son whom the Marquis ran over with his carriage and killed. The Marquis showed no apologetic behavior, which stood to showcase how the upperclass saw the lower-class as less than humans. Vengeance for family members is one of the main reasons for revenge in Tale of Two Cities such as the way Madame Defarge plays such a huge part in the revolution because of what happened to her family when she was a young child and how it shaped her life. She describes it as, ““Defarge, I was brought up among the fisherman of the sea-shore, and that peasant family so injured by the two Evremonde brothers, as that Bastille paper describes, is my family. Defarge, that sister of the mortally wounded boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband was my sister’s husband, that unborn child was their child, that brother was my brother, that father was my father, those dead are my dead, and that summons to answer for those things descends to me”(264)!Revenge is another reason why mankind gets stuck in the cycle in which abused become the abusers because everyone wants to get even for what happened to them and make someone else hurt as much as they have. Mankind is stuck in an unbreakable cycle where those who are hurt eventually morph into the ones doing the hurting. It requires great strength and bravery to break this cycle and not let anything or anyone convince one to continue the circle. Breaking the cycle is not an easy thing to do as it is human nature to want to have the last word in every argument or problem, but when that cycle gets broken, the world becomes a much better place because things like the French Revolution, in which thousands of people, innocent or not, were killed, do not happen, which can only ever be a good thing. If mankind can just break this vicious cycle that is ingrained into their senses, the human race will be much better off.