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A TALE OF TWO CITIES - CHARACTER LIST
Themes
Themes are
the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Ever-Present Possibility of Resurrection
With A Tale
of Two Cities, Dickens asserts his belief in the possibility of
resurrection and transformation, both on a personal level and on a
societal level. The narrative suggests that Sydney Carton’s death secures
a new, peaceful life for Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay, and even Carton
himself. By delivering himself to the guillotine, Carton ascends to the
plane of heroism, becoming a Christ-like figure whose death serves to save
the lives of others. His own life thus gains meaning and value. Moreover,
the final pages of the novel suggest that, like Christ, Carton will be
resurrected—Carton is reborn in the hearts of those he has died to save.
Similarly, the text implies that the death of the old regime in France
prepares the way for the beautiful and renewed Paris that Carton
supposedly envisions from the guillotine. Although Carton spends most of
the novel in a life of indolence and apathy, the supreme selflessness of
his final act speaks to a human capacity for change. Although the novel
dedicates much time to describing the atrocities committed both by the
aristocracy and by the outraged peasants, it ultimately expresses the
belief that this violence will give way to a new and better society
Dickens elaborates his theme with the
character of Doctor Manette. Early on in the novel, Lorry holds an
imaginary conversation with him in which he says that Manette has been
“recalled to life.” As this statement implies, the doctor’s eighteen-year
imprisonment has constituted a death of sorts. Lucie’s love enables
Manette’s spiritual renewal, and her maternal cradling of him on her
breast reinforces this notion of rebirth.
The Necessity of Sacrifice
Connected to the theme of the possibility
of resurrection is the notion that sacrifice is necessary to achieve
happiness. Dickens examines this second theme, again, on both a national
and personal level. For example, the revolutionaries prove that a new,
egalitarian French republic can come about only with a heavy and terrible
cost—personal loves and loyalties must be sacrificed for the good of the
nation. Also, when Darnay is arrested for the second time, in Book the
Third, Chapter 7, the guard who seizes him
reminds Manette of the primacy of state interests over personal loyalties.
Moreover, Madame Defarge gives her husband a similar lesson when she
chastises him for his devotion to Manette—an emotion that, in her opinion,
only clouds his obligation to the revolutionary cause. Most important,
Carton’s transformation into a man of moral worth depends upon his
sacrificing of his former self. In choosing to die for his friends, Carton
not only enables their happiness but also ensures his spiritual rebirth.
The Tendency toward Violence and Oppression in Revolutionaries
Throughout the novel, Dickens approaches
his historical subject with some ambivalence. While he supports the
revolutionary cause, he often points to the evil of the revolutionaries
themselves. Dickens deeply sympathizes with the plight of the French
peasantry and emphasizes their need for liberation. The several chapters
that deal with the Marquis Evrémonde successfully paint a picture of a
vicious aristocracy that shamelessly exploits and oppresses the nation’s
poor. Although Dickens condemns this oppression, however, he also condemns
the peasants’ strategies in overcoming it. For in fighting cruelty with
cruelty, the peasants effect no true revolution; rather, they only
perpetuate the violence that they themselves have suffered. Dickens makes
his stance clear in his suspicious and cautionary depictions of the mobs.
The scenes in which the people sharpen their weapons at the grindstone and
dance the grisly Carmagnole come across as deeply macabre. Dickens’s most
concise and relevant view of revolution comes in the final chapter, in
which he notes the slippery slope down from the oppressed to the oppressor:
“Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it
will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.” Though Dickens
sees the French Revolution as a great symbol of transformation and
resurrection, he emphasizes that its violent means were ultimately
antithetical to its end.
Motifs
Motifs are
recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to
develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Doubles
The novel’s opening words (“It was the best
of times, it was the worst of times. . . .”) immediately establish the
centrality of doubles to the narrative. The story’s action divides itself
between two locales, the two cities of the title. Dickens positions
various characters as doubles as well, thus heightening the various themes
within the novel. The two most important females in the text function as
diametrically opposed doubles: Lucie is as loving and nurturing as Madame
Defarge is hateful and bloodthirsty. Dickens then uses this opposition to
make judgments and thematic assertions. Thus, for example, while Lucie’s
love initiates her father’s spiritual transformation and renewal, proving
the possibility of resurrection, Madame Defarge’s vengefulness only
propagates an infinite cycle of oppression, showing violence to be self-perpetuating.
Dickens’s doubling technique functions not
only to draw oppositions, but to reveal hidden parallels. Carton, for
example, initially seems a foil to Darnay; Darnay as a figure reminds him
of what he could have been but has failed to become. By the end of the
novel, however, Carton transforms himself from a good-for-nothing to a
hero whose goodness equals or even surpasses that of the honorable Darnay.
While the two men’s physical resemblance initially serves only to
underscore Carton’s moral inferiority to Darnay, it ultimately enables
Carton’s supremely self-elevating deed, allowing him to disguise himself
as the condemned Darnay and die in his place. As Carton goes to the
guillotine in his double’s stead, he raises himself up to, or above,
Darnay’s virtuous status.
Shadows and Darkness
Shadows dominate the novel, creating a mood
of thick obscurity and grave foreboding. An aura of gloom and apprehension
surrounds the first images of the actual story—the mail coach’s journey in
the dark and Jerry Cruncher’s emergence from the mist. The introduction of
Lucie Manette to Jarvis Lorry furthers this motif, as Lucie stands in a
room so darkened and awash with shadows that the candlelight seems buried
in the dark panels of the walls. This atmosphere contributes to the
mystery surrounding Lorry’s mission to Paris and Manette’s imprisonment.
It also creates a literal manifestation of Dickens’s observations about
the shadowy depths of the human heart. As illustrated in the chapter with
the appropriate subheading “The Night Shadows,” every living person
carries profound secrets and mysteries that will never see the light of
day. Shadows continue to fall across the entire novel. The vengeful Madame
Defarge casts a shadow on Lucie and all of her hopes, as emphasized in
Book the Third, Chapter 5. As Lucie stands
in the pure, fresh snow, Madame Defarge passes by “like a shadow over the
white road.” In addition, the letter that Defarge uses to condemn Darnay
to death throws a crippling shadow over the entire family; fittingly, the
chapter that reveals the letter’s contents bears the subheading “The
Substance of the Shadow.”
Imprisonment
Almost all of the characters in
A Tale of Two Cities fight against
some form of imprisonment. For Darnay and Manette, this struggle is quite
literal. Both serve significant sentences in French jails. Still, as the
novel demonstrates, the memories of what one has experienced prove no less
confining than the walls of prison. Manette, for example, finds himself
trapped, at times, by the recollection of life in the Bastille and can do
nothing but revert, trembling, to his pathetic shoemaking compulsion.
Similarly, Carton spends much of the novel struggling against the confines
of his own personality, dissatisfied with a life that he regards as
worthless.
Symbols
Symbols are
objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or
concepts.
The Broken Wine Cask
With his depiction of a broken wine cask
outside Defarge’s wine-shop, and with his portrayal of the passing
peasants’ scrambles to lap up the spilling wine, Dickens creates a symbol
for the desperate quality of the people’s hunger. This hunger is both the
literal hunger for food—the French peasants were starving in their poverty—and
the metaphorical hunger for political freedoms. On the surface, the scene
shows the peasants in their desperation to satiate the first of these
hungers. But it also evokes the violent measures that the peasants take in
striving to satisfy their more metaphorical cravings. For instance, the
narrative directly associates the wine with blood, noting that some of the
peasants have acquired “a tigerish smear about the mouth” and portraying a
drunken figure scrawling the word “blood” on the wall with a wine-dipped
finger. Indeed, the blood of aristocrats later spills at the hands of a
mob in these same streets.
Throughout the novel, Dickens sharply
criticizes this mob mentality, which he condemns for perpetrating the very
cruelty and oppression from which the revolutionaries hope to free
themselves. The scene surrounding the wine cask is the novel’s first
tableau of the mob in action. The mindless frenzy with which these
peasants scoop up the fallen liquid prefigures the scene at the grindstone,
where the revolutionaries sharpen their weapons (Book the Third, Chapter
2), as well as the dancing of the macabre
Carmagnole (Book the Third, Chapter 5).
Madame Defarge’s Knitting
Even on a literal level, Madame Defarge’s
knitting constitutes a whole network of symbols. Into her needlework she
stitches a registry, or list of names, of all those condemned to die in
the name of a new republic. But on a metaphoric level, the knitting
constitutes a symbol in itself, representing the stealthy, cold-blooded
vengefulness of the revolutionaries. As Madame Defarge sits quietly
knitting, she appears harmless and quaint. In fact, however, she sentences
her victims to death. Similarly, the French peasants may appear simple and
humble figures, but they eventually rise up to massacre their oppressors.
Dickens’s knitting imagery also emphasizes
an association between vengefulness and fate, which, in Greek mythology,
is traditionally linked to knitting or weaving. The Fates, three sisters
who control human life, busy themselves with the tasks of weavers or
seamstresses: one sister spins the web of life, another measures it, and
the last cuts it. Madame Defarge’s knitting thus becomes a symbol of her
victims’ fate—death at the hands of a wrathful peasantry.
The Marquis
The Marquis Evrémonde is less a believable
character than an archetype of an evil and corrupt social order. He is not
only overly self-indulgent, as evidenced by the train of attendants who
help him to drink his chocolate; he is also completely indifferent to the
lives of the peasants whom he exploits, as evidenced by his lack of
sympathy for the father of the child whom his carriage tramples to death.
As such, the Marquis stands as a symbol of the ruthless aristocratic
cruelty that the French Revolution seeks to overcome.