The Inhumanity of Man in A Tale of Two Cities

The time preceding and following the French Revolution was not only an era of change, but also a time of deceit and suspicion in England and France. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens thoroughly illustrates through symbols what every stage of the French Revolution looked like from the point of view of revolutionaries, aristocrats, and bystanders. The events that caused the changes in France were acts of injustice towards the peasant class. However, when the Revolution began, the revolutionaries started treating the aristocrats inhumanely. Blue flies, knitting, the shadow, and the grindstone are the symbols that best portray the theme of man’s inhumanity towards his fellow man in A Tale of Two Cities.

Blue flies represent the English people’s hunger for Charles Darnay’s pain and death as they swarm and chatter. In the Old Bailey when Charles Darnay is suspected of being a spy, he enters the court on public trial, and “…a buzz arose in the courthouse as if a cloud of great blue flies were swarming around the prisoner, in anticipation of what he was soon to become” (Dickens 50). The English common people are crowded into the courthouse, knowing that if the prisoner is found guilty, as the Tellson’s employees imply, he will be quartered, a gruesome death in which the subject would have his insides removed and displayed to him and his limbs torn off. The movement and chatter of the crowd are similar to that of blue flies swarming and buzzing around the carcass of a dead animal. In this way, the people are feeding off of Darnay’s anticipated pain. During the trial when Lucie is called to give her testimony about Darnay, she states emotionally, “‘I may not repay him by doing him harm to-day.’ Buzzing from the blue flies” (54). She...

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...it turns, causes change, and is smothered by unforgivable blood. The blood red hue of the grindstone represents the inhumanity of taking innocent lives and the blood that cannot be revoked.

Man’s inhumanity toward his fellow man is represented throughout every stage of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities through symbols such as the blue flies, the knitting, the shadow, and the grindstone. The blue flies show that the English people are just as bloodthirsty as the French are during the novel. The knitting and the shadow are examples that represent the French people’s heartlessness toward other men. The grindstone displays the fact that the mercilessness of each individual affects the Earth by overwhelming it with blood. Charles Dickens uses symbols very artfully to illustrate his theme of man’s inhumanity toward his fellow man in his novel, A Tale of Two Cities.