Minor and Major Characters in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

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A Tale of Two Cities In the book A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, he compares many characters by including similar and contrasting characteristics between a minor character and a major character. Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are characters who exemplify this comparison because at the beginning of the novel Carton is portrayed as a drunken, careless man while Darnay on the other hand is the example of what Carton should to be, successful, polite and respectable. While Darnay is considered a major character, he would not be anything if it wasn’t for the physically alike but characteristically different Carton. In the beginning of the novel, Sydney Carton is introduced as the look-alike to Charles Darnay while in court because Darnay was being tried for treason. When a witness takes the stand to tell the court he had seen previously seen Darnay in England, it is brought to the attention of Darnay’s lawyer that there is someone who looks almost exactly similar and asked if he had seen anyone who looked extremely similar to him. When the witness tells him no, Carton is called and it is pointed out how he and Carton look almost alike. “So like each other in feature, so unlike each other in manner- standing side by side, both reflected in the glass above them”(79 Dickens). Because Carton had been in the court room, Darnay was acquitted. It seems as though this chapter will foreshadow the rest of the book because Carton saves Darnay by convincing the jury that they look alike. Their similar appearances will save Darnay again in the end of the book when Carton goes in place to die for him. But even throughout the book, many comparisons and contrasts are made between the two character, and example being their shared love f... ... middle of paper ... ...e. Darnay did do something heroic and that is going back to France after receiving a letter from Gabelle saying he needed help because he had been taken a prisoner by the revolutionaries “I have been seized, with great violence and indignity, and brought a long journey on foot to Paris” (243 Dickens). Darnay goes to help out Gabelle, but it ultimately backfires on him, because he had been arrested as well for being an emigrant. At this point in the book it would seem as though Carton is the protagonist because his character had been built and changed so considerably while Charles had not changed as extremely as Sydney had. Because Sydney had changed so much in the book, Charles would have not been the character he had been because if Sydney had not helped him, Charles would’ve died a long time ago and would have never married Lucie and become part of her family.

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