Les Miserables and A Tale of Two cities capture some of the most inspiring moments in history. The power of the people and love seems to always overcome all the bad. Both help audiences feel love, evil, revenge, loss, and passion. The characters play a tremendous role in helping the audience capture these emotions. Lucie and Cosette are the perfect symbols of love and light. The experienced loss and pain, but the see the good in everyone and everything. The distinctive characters display slightly different backgrounds, although the both give off joy despite all the darkness around them. Although being in different eras Lucie, A Tale of Two Cities and Cosette, Les Miserables are remarkably comparable due to their like experiences and charisma that draw them closer together.
Lucie is one of the most critical characters in A Tale of Two Cities., as she helps people understand love, and that love is stronger than hate. Dickens manufactures Lucie to be a kind, beautiful soul in a physical and spiritual manner. Her mother died in her youth while her father had been imprisoned and she grew up as an orphan. She was alone until she stumbled along with her father with the help of a family friend and her life changed. In caring for her father she was able to resurrect him and give
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Upon walking the streets with her father one day and seeing Marius she falls in love. Her alluring blonde hair, fair skin, and blue eyes help cast her off as a lively and brighter character in comparison to all the other characters. Jean Valjean even spoke” she showed me how to love” after he had so much hate reserved within him. So in a sense, she helps bring him back to be a kinder and more gentle, human, similar to Lucie resurrecting her father. Besides her similar appearance, they both displayed similar, if not exact personality
Love is something that is so beautiful it brings people together, but at the same time it can be the most destructive thing and it can tear people apart. Edmond Rostand's play, Cyrano de Bergerac, is a tale of a love triangle between Cyrano, Christian, and Roxane. In the play, Cyrano helps Christian make a false identity about himself for Roxane to fall in love for. Christian had the looks while Cyrano had the personality, together they could make the perfect man. Throughout the play, you see similarities and differences between Christian and Cyrano’s personality, looks, and who they love.
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
The French Revolution was a time of chaos and uprising in France during the mid-19th century that divided the French people. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is a novel that is set during this tumultuous time in history. During this period of time, the people of France made many sacrifices. Sacrifice is a common theme that is developed throughout this novel. One reason many people make sacrifices is for love, and throughout the novel this theme is developed through the characters Miss Pross, Doctor Alexandre Manette, and Sydney Carton.
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.
Lucie Manette is a compassionate and benevolent character that aids in the resurrection of Sydney Carton and Dr. Manette. At the beginning of the book Lucie is only 17, but maturity beyond her age is reflected in her character. She is the ideal Victorian lady, perfect in every way. Lucie is gorgeous, with long, beautiful golden hair. She is very positive and unselfish, always willing to help others. Her wonderfully kind and sympathetic nature causes the men to fall in love with her. She doesn't look down upon anyone and sees the best in who some may see the worst. These qualities in Lucy are what make possible the resurrections of Sydney Carton and Dr. Manette's lives.
A Tale of Two Cities In every great novel, there is a theme that is constant throughout the story. One of the better known themes portrays the fight of good verses evil. Different authors portray this in different ways. Some use colors, while others use seasons to show the contrast. Still, others go for the obvious and use characters.
Lucie Manette, in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, is a quiet young woman. She is deeply compassionate but never develops a real believable character. Her feelings, which are similar in all cases, are revealed to us when she interacts with her father Dr. Manette, Charles Darney, and Sydney Carton.
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. Indeed, Lucy has gone to great lengths to ensure that their bond stays strong. In the opening chapters of the novel, Lucie, in hopes that her pleas can cure her father’s insanity, devotes herself to Dr. Manette wholeheartedly, disregarding any personal desires of her own. She promises her father that if, “ ..I hint to you of a home there is before us, I will be true to you with all my duty.” (46) Lucie’s undying devotion to her father is a clear example of how one person’s sacrifice can inspire life in another.
One similarity between the two works is the use of a Beatrice-Dante-esque love plot. In A Tale of Two Cities Charles Darnay becomes obsessed with Lucie Manette without really knowing her. He soon grows to almost worship her, despite her lack of any apparent character development through the entire novel. This also occurs between Marius and Cosette in Les Mis. Marius falls madly in love with Cosette and vice versa in a moments glance across a crowded square. Marius continues to idolize Cosette, despite the attentions of Eponine, a character with whom he has a markedly more substantial relationship and who, unlike Cosette, actually has a personality. Both stories feature this “innocent” love story probably as a commentary on the purity of love,
Dr. Manette is resurrected, or recalled to life, multiple times in A Tale of Two Cities. Lucie Manette, Dr. Manette’s daughter, always helps in saving him. Dr. Manette’s story begins with him being imprisoned in the Bastille. He gets out after eighteen years and stays at Monsieur Defarge, an old servant’s house. This is where Lucie meets him for the first time. She instantly tries to help save him. She insists on taking him out of Paris with her to keep him safe. He goes with her to a court hearing for Charles Darnay, where she speaks in court and he is acquitted. Charles and Lucie fall in love and plan to get married. On their wedding day Charles has a private conversation with Dr. Manette. During this conversation he tells Dr. Manette his real name, Charles Evrémonde. The next day, Mr. Lorry discovers that Dr. Manette has a relapse and is making shoes, as he did in prison. This relapse lasts nine days and nine nights. Afterwards, Mr. Lorry tells Dr. Manette that he has to get rid of his shoe making tools. Dr. Manette is hesitant until Mr. Lorry brings up Lucie saying, “‘I would recommend him to sacrifice it. Come! Give me your authority, like a dear good man. For his daughter’s sake, my dear Manette’… ‘In her name, then, let it be done.’”(232). This shows that Lucie is the only thing he cares about. In this way Lucie saved him as well. These are two w...
Lastly and most importantly would be Lucie’s elaborate expression of sentimentality in her constant fainting at the least sign of distress. However unbearable it might have seemed, the reader could not fully appreciate the significance of her character and why she was loved by so many equally sentimental; characters in the novel. When Lucie early on testifies at Darnay’s trial in the English court, she says, “He was kind, and good, and useful to my father. I hope,” and here she bursts into tears, “ I may not repay him by doing him harm here today.” Her deep sensitivity and generous nature shines through. And remember, when Lucie stands forlornly and devotedly at a place near the Paris prison in order for her husband, Darnay, to glimpse her and their child, it is clear that Dickens wanted to portray her as a loving, faithful, and sympathetic person.
Throughout A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens repeats a number of symbols and motifs. By employing these two literary devices throughout the duration of the story, Dickens is working to emphasize the importance of these specific components of the story. Motifs and symbols represent repeating ideas that help the reader to understand, as well as highlight the author’s central idea. Dickens employs the usage of symbols and motifs, such that by using both he adds a layer of significance and deeper meaning to actions, people, as well as objects. Additionally, by using symbols and motifs, Dickens is able to create a story in which both the characters, and the plot are interwoven.
My favorite scene in A Tale of Two Cities is one of the last scenes, when Sydney Carton is about to go to the guillotine. It takes place in Paris, near a prison, and many people have gathered to watch french aristocrats be beheaded. The atmosphere is tense and chaotic; Sydney, however, remains calm, even though he is about to be killed. Sydney is holding the hand of a young girl who is given no name other than a "poor little seamstress". Sydney and the seamstress, who are both being wrongfully killed, comfort each other just before they reach the guillotine, and they seem to have an instant romantic connection with each other. I loved this scene because it showed that Sydney Carton had finally found someone who could love him, as he could love them, but it saddened me that he had found her just before their deaths.
Lucie Manette is a breathless mermaid attracting men with her magnetic traits. Following Lucie's rescue of her father, after being in prison for 18 years, she settles down with him in a quiet home in Soho. But the silence does not last long and the house becomes full with the footsteps of hundreds of suitors looking for the heart of an angel. In a conversation between Miss Pross and Jar...
The essentially healthy emotional intelligence of Rosalind and Orlando and their suitability for each other emerge from their separate encounters with Jaques (in some editions Jacques), the melancholy ex-courtier who is part of Duke Senior's troupe in the forest. Both Rosalind and Orlando take an instant dislike to Jaques (which is mutual). And in that dislike we are invited to see something vitally right about the two of them.