Love and Hate In a Tale of Two Cities

For a novel to succeed it has to contain a profound plot, astonishing characters and themes that give the book a sense of all around meaning. Themes can be few or many, prevalent or irrelevant, but for this novel the themes help make the book what it is. The themes are

interconnected with each other and they play a big part in the plot of the book. Through the examination of love, hate, one can see that themes play an important role to the great success of A Tale of Two Cities.

Many characters are skilled with the force of love in this book. Darnay came to love Lucie after meeting with during his trial. He worried about her when he was in prison, he took of her family when he could. The first strong example of love we read about in the novel is that of Lucie Manette and her father, Dr Manette who was stuck in the Bastille for eighteen years. Lucie, after seeing her father for the first time in years, felt a great rush of forgotten love for her father and took care of him for there on out and tells her father that his wait is over and that she'll take him to London, "'If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it!” (Dickens pg 34). Later in the story, the night before Lucie is to be in marriage with Charles Darney, we find that Lucie has saved her last day as a single woman to be with her father and to reassure him that she'll still be with him even though she is to be married, "Lucie was to be married tomorrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father, and they sat alone under t...

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...ts of revenge. Wine is used to show how bloody and gruesome the revolution would become. When a wine barrel spills, Dickens uses symbolism and foreshadowing of death by writing, “The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there," (22).

As can be seen, love and hate truly do have an impact on the characters whether they are good or bad. The Manettes and their friends showed great love for one another, with Carton displaying a tremendous sacrifice in a time where it was much needed. For the hate, Madame Defarge claims to have taken it to whole another level, possibly for the love of her family. All in all Dickens was right when he said, “The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there," (22).