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Symbolism in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Symbolism in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Symbolism in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
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Charles Dickens’s mastery of syntax and style is perhaps the most unique style of any writer to walk this Earth. His diction unrivaled; his mood unmatched. One could determine these truths simply by reading his passage in A Tale Of Two Cities about the carmagnole. In this passage, Dickens demonstrates how he believes like throngs of people, revolutions often become violent and represent the cause they originally aspired to thwart. However, he never outright says any of this, it’s all in his figurative language and syntax that creates mood. When describing the mob at the carmagnole, it’s written; “There could not be fewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing like five thousand demons” (271). This mob is large, but not five thousand large. The simile demonstrates how their emotion is physical, it makes them more than a group of people. Their anger multiplies their numbers, and they begin a frenzy of craziness. He goes on to say, “There was no other music than their own singing,” (271) and this is his metaphor to say that the mob began as an unguided movement. The movement was anger. Dickens is saying that that is why they then go on to decapitate so many innocent people; there is no overarching guidance to their anger. There was just bloodthirst. …show more content…
To contrast Dickens’s description of the carmagnole from the beginning to the end, at the end of the “dance” it even says: “No fight could have been half so terrible as this dance” (271).
A single fight would have shed less blood than the result of the legal guillotining of all these people. Charles goes on to write in the very next sentence, “... a fallen sport - a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry” (271). If this doesn’t sum the revolution up into one phrase, I’m not sure what does. By condemning the violence and sheer devilry of a movement turned so violent, Dickens is urging us too to condemn things that turn from peaceful to violent for no reason other than
madness. The carmagnole is Dickens’s effect of showing how a revolution so good-hearted turned violent so easily because revolutions too often get caught up in their own anger and go on to use that anger to justify evil. They sweep people like Lucie Manette up, leaving them confused as to what is right and what is wrong. They plunge their bloody hands into innocent humans like Sydney Carton and dry them on his beautiful, luscious hair. As Charles Dickens himself wrote: It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.
Although the passage foreshadows the events later throughout the novel, Dickens ultimately uses a pathetic tone toward the social conditions of France before the French Revolution through the use of anaphora in the first half of the passage and the diction throughout the second half of the passage.
In this passage, Dickens’ juxtaposition, personification, detail, and diction reinforce Dickens’ tone of empathy and pity for the social conditions of the people of lower class France. When a large cask of wine spills open on the streets of France there is a mad rush to collect a taste of the spoiled wine. The people’s reactions consisted of “...frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing a dozen together.” This exciting and scene of much happiness is juxtaposed by the “gloom that gathered on the scene that appeared more natural than sunshine” that occurs after all the wine has run out. This juxtaposition of the momentary happiness that the peasants of St. Antoine experience provide a contrast
This [violence] is explained by the nature of Mrs. Stowe's subject matter, her laudable determination to flinch from nothing in presenting the complete picture; an explanation which falters only if we pause to ask whether or not her picture is indeed complete; and what construction . . . forced her to so depend on the description of brutality - unmotivated, senseless - and to leave unanswered and unnoticed the only important question: what it was, after all, that moved her people to such deeds. (1654)
Charles Dickens writes this book explaining the French Revolution, in which the social and economic systems in France had huge changes and the French monarchy collapsed. This causes high taxes, unfair laws, and the poor being mistreated. Charles Dickens shows that cruelty of other people will lead to a revolution and in addition to the revolution more cruelty will occur. He explores the idea of justice and violence through the use of ambiguous characters with positive and negative qualities, meaning that they have to different sides to them; for example, Charles Darnay, Sydney Carton, and Dr. Manette. Throughout the story of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles dickens uses ambiguous characters to shows how violence and cruelty can be stopped through the power of true sacrifice.
The first statement about the cyclic nature of violence is in line 3. Dickens states that “the new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and behead”. This shows cyclicity because it states that a new era had begun, meaning that there was one before it, and it is a “new era” not the final era, thus more will follow it thus showing the cycle of these ‘eras’. In this example, the concept of cyclicity represents the cycle of oppression, a characteristic of which, is extremism, thus showing how the concept of cyclicity shows the return to immorality from extremism. Another example of cyclicity in the passage, can be seen through the literary technique of universality, as “three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France”. This quote demonstrates extremism leads to universal immorality, as it shows how when the masses of people change their state (from prior state to revolutionary state or “rise against” state), they become immoral (seen through their merciless slaughter). Thus, the concept of cyclicity shows the return to immorality from extremism. Another example of cyclicity can be seen in the second paragraph’s description of the executions. Dickens used the literary device of repetition to describe them as having “no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement
...remonde bloodline, most of which is innocent, must be exterminated to compensate for the deaths of her two siblings. The distinctions between the two women are especially evident when they engage in battle over the Evremonde family because they are speaking in different languages. Neither can understand the other linguistically, nor on a moral level. The message Dickens is attempting to convey through these characters is that of the many applications of passion, such zeal is best employed “with the vigorous tenacity of love [because it is] always so much stronger than hate” (365). In a decision between using one’s energy for love or hate, it is more productive and personally satisfying to choose the path of love because it is able to overcome that of hate.
In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens’ choice of sentimental expression had an excellent effect on the readers’ responses to the characters. The use of exaggerated sentimentality helped create a clear picture of the story’s issues in the readers’ minds; it gave a feel for the spirit of the times, and made it easier to understand the characters’ points of view. It was this very sentimentality that Dickens strived to achieve.
The blue flies, Madame Defarge’s knitting, and the sea are just three of Dickens’ many symbols that develop the theme of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man in A Tale of Two Cities. Although Revolutions are not particularly humane in themselves, the individual characters and the majority of the peasantry in this book took inhumane to its extreme. Because the revolutionaries follow their ruthless leader, Madame Defarge, they do not question the humanity or morality of the massacre of the aristocracy. In a Revolution meant to free peasants, peasants should be last on the list of those being murdered, and this injustice should be realized. In the French Revolution as well as A Tale of Two Cities, the oppressed become the oppressors and the main cause behind the revolution is lost.
A Tale of Two Cities Essay Throughout history, the powers of love and hate have constantly been engaged in a battle for superiority. Time and time again, love has proven to be stronger than hate, and has been able to overcome all of the obstacles that have stood in the way of it reaching its goal. On certain occasions, though, hate has been a viable foe and defeated love when they clash. In the novel A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens presents several different power struggles between love and hate.
This passage from A Tale of Two Cities consists of the preparation and the eventual storming of the Bastille, a fortress in Paris that was used as a state prison. The citizens of Saint Antoine, led by Monsieur and Madame Defarge, begin to arm themselves with any weapon available and proceed to storm the Bastille. Dickens chooses to convey the violent storming of the Bastille through the use of multiple literary terms such as imagery, similes, and metaphors.
Frederick Douglass once said, “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” He meant that if people are oppressed, one day they will pass their breaking point and fight back. As a consequence neither side will be safe or secure as violence and terror would corrupt them both. In A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, the author employs satire, symbolism, and irony to emphasize the social/economic inequality between the wealthy and the poor. The inequality is revealed by Dicken’s satirical description of the lifestyles of Monsignor of Chocolate and the Marquis Evrémonde. In contrast with the people in the wine cask scene; the scene indicates that the people are on their breaking point. Finally, the irony of the trials emphasizes Dicken’s warning to the upper class of England during the 1850s; if they abuse power then vengence will be sought. If action is not taken, England will be engulfed in violence and both the aristocracy and the peasants will suffer.
Dickens notes that in the midst of a revolution, heavy bloodshed must be made in order to achieve the vengeance that the peasants desire. Though the peasants were originally people of good faith, they were forced by the aristocratic government to take drastic actions. Poverty, the mother of all crimes, along with the aristocrats “crushing humanity out of shape once more” gave the peasants no choice.” Dickens conveys here that because of the negligence of the government, the people were forced to sacrifice their good nature and engage in the violent acts that caused a time of great animosity and dejection. Sacrifices are often made to strengthen bonds, and no other bond in the novel is stronger than the one that Lucie Mannette shares with her father, Dr. Manette.
“People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.” This quote by Emma Goldman not only perfectly sums up the French Revolution, but also reflects on the issue in society today with police racism and brutality. In Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities, the peasants suffer extreme injustice, they allow the revolution to go to their heads, and we see how violence only ever brings more violence . When Dickens describes the peasants he makes sure their plight is made clear to all. The nobles consistently take advantage of them and do not show any compassion.
Throughout the novel, Dickens employs imagery to make the readers pity the peasants, have compassion for the innocent nobles being punished, and even better understand the antagonist and her motives. His use of personified hunger and description of the poor’s straits made the reader pity them for the situation caused by the overlord nobles. However, Dickens then uses the same literary device to alight sympathy for the nobles, albeit the innocent ones! Then, he uses imagery to make the reader better understand and perhaps even feel empathy for Madame Defarge, the book’s murderous villainess. Through skillful but swaying use of imagery, Dickens truly affects the readers’ sympathies.
Charles Dickens is a talented author who wrote many notable novels, including A Tale of Two Cities. Barbara Hardy notes that at a young age Dickens’ father was imprisoned for debt, leaving young Charles to support himself and his family alone (47). Dickens strongly disliked prisons, which shows as a motif in A Tale of Two Cities. Many of his interests contributed to the formulation of the novel. In the essay “Introduction” from the book, Charles Dickens, Harold Bloom claims Dickens hoped “to add something to the popular and picturesque means of understanding [the] terrible time” of the Revolution (20). Dickens’ reading and “extraordinary reliance upon Carlyle’s bizarre but effective French Revolution” may have motivated him to write the novel (Bloom 21). Sir James Fitzjames Stephen believed that Dickens was “on the look-out for a subject, determined off-hand to write a novel about [French Revolution]” (Bloom 20). In Brown’s book Dickens in his Time, Dickens guided the writing of the play Frozen Deep where two rivals share the same love, and one ultimately sacrifices himself for...