Revenge is Not So Sweet in A Tale of Two Cities

The French Revolution took place at the time when the poor peasants who had been mistreated, revolted against the wealthy and cruel aristocrats. When they did this, it was bloody, chaotic, and no lived were spared in their conquest for revenge. In Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, the French Revolution is depicted through the lives of both peasants and aristocrats. The Marquis St. Evermonde and the whole Evermonde family treated many of the peasants cruelly and inhumanely. In the book, the poor townspeople from the suburb called Saint Antoine are among the many French peasants to revolt against the Marquis and all the aristocrats, but this is only the beginning of their revenge. Dickens uses the symbols of a whirlpool, a storm, and a sea, to portray the building of anger in the peasants, which drives them to seek revenge.
The whirlpool represents the building of emotions that forms a vortex, which sucks everyone in, in order to get revenge. In the book, Dickens writes about the whirlpool saying, “The whirlpool of boiling waters has a center point, so, all this raging circled around the Defarge’s wine shop”(Dickens 165). The Defarges are the leaders of the St. Antoine revolution, and their wine shop is the center of it. The Defarges are the leaders of the revolution because Madame Defarge is desperate to get revenge for what happened to her family years ago. She had a sister who was raped by one of the Evermonde brothers and when her brother tries to save the sister, he is fatally wounded. Dr.Manette is tied to this situation because he was called to care for the sister, and when realizing what they had done to this woman, he wrote a letter, which was the reason he was in jail. As for Madame Defarge, she is able to escape,...

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... symbol of the revolutionaries as the frightening and dominant sea, truly showed the reader how determined the peasants were to get their revenge.
Through the whirlpool, the storm, and the sea, Dickens portrays the image of revenge effectively and memorably. Each symbol exhibits the wrath and ferocity of the revolutionaries. They displayed a power and determination that is while very frightening, quite admirable in the sense that they would stop at nothing to exact their revenge. The symbols have a common thread; they were powerful, destructive, and yet effective. The book makes the reader question if he or she would go this far for revenge. It is human nature to seek revenge for wrongdoing and Dickens accurately illustrates the lengths any revolutionary let alone human would go to, to get revenge for such heinous crimes committed by the aristocracy or anyone.