Imagery and Motifs

Upon closer inspection, one may find the nature of a shadow to share a striking likeness to the darker aspects of human emotion. Waning by day and ubiquitous by night, as apprehension shrinks from confidence and thrives with ambiguity, shadows clearly display many symbolic characteristics of fear. Throughout his novel, A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens visually illustrates this concept through numerous instances of his own motif of shadows. He makes use of the prevalence of oppression regarding eighteenth century France and its observably dehumanizing effects on its victims, specifically Alexandre and Lucie Manette as well as the entire peasant class, to form the image of a fearful target, frequently faced with the shadow of its own repressed fears. As evidence shows, Dickens appropriately uses visual imagery to depict how the motif of shadows corresponds with apprehension and fear.

In order to demonstrate the foreboding and dreadful aspect of shadows, Dickens specifically uses Alexandre Manette’s visual reactions to stimuli that remind him of his dark past. Upon first sight of French aristocrat, Charles Darnay, Manette instantly responds with an expression of “dislike and distrust, not even unmixed with fear”, as Darnay’s resemblance to his sinful ancestors re-establishes the painful memory of their involvement in Manette’s past imprisonment. Dickens shortly provides how Manette dismisses the memory and “shook the shadow off”, introducing the correlation between shadows and apprehension (Dickens 81). Here, Manette’s past fears cast themselves over him in a manner only capable of by a fleeting shadow: sudden yet subtle, and completely disregardable. Later, however, following Darnay’s disclosure of his family name to Manette, which co...

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...kens’ foreboding images of shadows elucidate their connection to, and tendency to imitate, the characteristics of fear. Through Alexandre Manette’s apprehensions concerning the inescapable horrors of his past imprisonment, one recognizes the follower aspect of both fear and shadows. For shadows, this stands quite literally; for fears, however, it depicts the common truth that deep-seated fears frequently remain with someone throughout a lifetime, present but not always active. Through the experiences of Lucie Manette and the revolutionaries, the oppressive aspect of shadows unveils itself: symbolic of fear, shadows cast themselves over others like tyrants, deprecating them and inducing terror in the process. It goes without saying that Charles Dickens’ usage of visual imagery constructs a sound and solid connection between the concepts of shadows, and inherent fear.