Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities

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Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities are two of the greatest English novels ever written. One chronicles the twists and turns of the life of a young man named Pip while the other serves as an account of the story of one family during the French Revolution. In both novels, there are contrasts between characters that are representative of the themes of the novels. In Great Expectations, the themes are good vs. evil and guilt vs. innocence, while in A Tale of Two Cities the main themes are resurrection and revolution. However, the theme of good vs. evil is a theme common to the two books and there are contrasts between characters in both books that represent this theme. The characters include Madame Defarge and Miss Pross, and Carton and Darnay, from A Tale of Two Cities, Orlick and Joe, and Magwitch and Miss Havisham, from Great Expectations.

A Tale of Two Cities is set in France during the 1780’s, a very tumultuous time in the history of the French nation, when the lower classes were rebelling against the oppression, and unfair rights and privileges of the upper classes. It was during this time that France was transformed from a divine right monarchy into a republic, following the execution of King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. Dickens gives his own impressions of French society at the time through his narration of the story. His distaste for the extravagance and greed of the French upper-class is apparent in his description of the powerful aristocrat entertaining other aristocrats. He depicts the wastefulness of the aristocrats, and their use of servants, while the poor lack even a means of subsistence.

Although Dickens gives compassionate descriptions of the poor, such as when the Marquis is passing through his town, and the deplorable conditions in which they lived in Saint Antoine, he nevertheless also displays his aversion to the mobs of Paris. In his description of the courtroom that Darnay was being tried in, Dickens portrayed the crowd to be “blueflies” – flies that feed on dead bodies. This simile implies that the mob finds joy in death, regardless of the innocence or guilt of the person being hanged. His view of mobs is also evident when Jerry Cruncher joins a mob of people following Roger Cly’s body, and riots with them for fun.

A Tale Of Two Cities and The Dark Knight Rises
572 Words | 2 Pages
In the book A Tale Of Two Cities the ways that they would kill people were that they would behead them and they would hang them or they would let them rot in prison. Most of the people that were killed were innocents or they were people that were in the way of them trying to take down the city. In the book the main character, Charles Darnay was arrested and was falsely accused of treason and being an illegal alien. Madame Defarge was taking out her anger on the whole family in which she thought had killed her sister. So Madame Defarge was going after all of the Marquis no matter if they had anything to do with t...
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Symbols of Man’s Inhumanity
920 Words | 2 Pages
The French Revolution was a period of social and political uprisings in France from 1789 to 1799, which is when the novel A Tale of Two Cities written by Charles Dickens takes place. The French Revolution marked the decline of powerful monarchies and the rise of democracy and nationalism. As it is said in the first sentence of the novel, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. During the extensive period of time during the conflicts of the revolution, every man is fighting for themselves. Due to this state of helplessness and solitude of the men in the revolution, many symbols in the novel were concocted and displayed to demonstrate a specific and powerful theme.
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Sacrifices of Love in 'A Tale of Two Cities'
1634 Words | 4 Pages
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.
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2045 Words | 5 Pages
that she no longer has life or energy. She looks like as if she is
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706 Words | 2 Pages
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.
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1590 Words | 4 Pages
The French Revolution was a period of radical social and political upheaval, lead by the lower class of France, which began the decline of powerful monarchies in France and the rise of nationalism and democracy. In A Tale Of Two Cities, written by Charles Dickens, he highlights these aspects of the war between classes and makes them personal to the reader. Throughout the novel, Dickens’ establishes and develops several symbols in order to help the reader better understand the Revolution and the way people acted during this time. He shows that while emotion, desperation, and irrationality run high, humanity, justice, and morality are scarce. The blue flies, Madame Defarge’s knitting, and the sea are three of Dickens’ symbols that develop his theme of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man throughout the novel.
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763 Words | 2 Pages
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. But what makes them all so different is the authors point of view. In Charles Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities, he portrays good and evil in somewhat of a unique way. Dickens shows this difference by using characters, although we sometimes have to think about the difference between the good and the evil and wonder if they are not the same in the long run. Good and evil differs with the characters in this novel, yet sometimes coincides.
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A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
1389 Words | 3 Pages
Of the extraordinary amount of literary devices available to authors, Charles Dickens uses quite a few in his novel A Tale of Two Cities, which is set during the French Revolution. One of his more distinctive devices is character foils. The five sets of foils are Carton and Darnay, Carton and Stryver, Darnay and the Marquis de Evremonde, Madame Defarge, and Mr. Lorry and Jerry Cruncher. Dickens uses foil characters to highlight the virtues of several major characters in order to show the theme of personal, loving relationships having the ability to prevail over heartless violence and self-consuming vengeance.
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Examining Techniques Used by Dickens' to Present Pip and the Convict in Chapters One and Thirty-Nine
1382 Words | 3 Pages
Charles Dickens’ novels criticize the injustices of his time, especially the brutal treatment of the poor in a society sharply divided by differences of wealth. He lived through that world at an early age; he saw the bitter side of the social class system and had wanted it to be exposed, so people could see the exploitation that the system rests on. But he presents these criticisms through the lives of characters, Pip and Magwitch.
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A Tale of Much Imagery: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
890 Words | 2 Pages
With imagery revealing the poor straits and desperation of the peasant class of France, Dickens influences the reader to pity them. He writes, “The cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy—cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, want were the lords waiting on the saintly presence—nobles of great power all of them; but most especially the last” (Dickens 22). Through hunger, want, etc. being personified and compared to nobles through language such as “nobles” and “lords”, Dickens shows the extent of the suffering of the peasants, their deserving to be pitied, and the human nobles’ apathy towards them. The peasants of Saint Antoine suffer in the 1770s, and the town’s name is made into a play on words with “saintly presence”, with the cloud of cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want looming forming the imagery of irony. Another description of the peasants’ plight is revealed in the quote saying, “Ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sign Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere...Hunger was the inscription on th...
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2870 Words | 6 Pages
At the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Dickens once again expresses his concern. The novel opens in 1775, with a comparison of England and pre-revolutionary France. While drawing parallels between the two countries, Dickens also alludes to his own time: "the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only" (1; bk. 1, ch. 1). The rest of the chapter shows that Dickens regarded the condition to be an 'evil' one, since he depicts both countries as rife with poverty, injustice, and violence due to the irresponsibility of the ruling elite (1-3; bk. 1, ch. 1). As the novel unfolds, however, England becomes a safe haven for those escaping the violence perpetrated by the French Revolution. In this paper, I shall argue that A Tale of Two Cities reflects the popular confidence in the stability of England in the eighteen-fifties, despite Dickens's suggestions at the beginning. A Tale of Two Cities thus becomes a novel about the England and the English of Dickens's time. And yet, many people today would believe that the novel is essentially about the French Revolution, which brings me to my second point. If in the nineteenth century the novel served to affirm the stability of Britain, in this century it has been greatly influential in the formation of the popular image of the French Revolution, mainly thanks to film and television adaptations. The purpose of this paper is to look at the popular reception of the novel from the time of its first publication in 1859 to the nineteen-nineties.
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528 Words | 2 Pages
Charles Dickens’s voice varies from being sympathetic with the revolutionaries, to a feeling of discord with their method of revolting. A Tale of Two Cities revolves around the French revolution and the tension in England. Dickens gives the tale of a family caught in the conflict between the French aristocracy and radicals. In the course of the book, the family handles extreme difficulty and obscurity. Dickens’s neutrality, though sometimes wavering from side to side, is apparent throughout each book in the novel.
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2559 Words | 6 Pages
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, is a story set in the year 1775 and through the turbulent time of the French Revolution. It is of people living in love and betrayal, murder and joy, peril and safety, hate and fondness, misery and happiness, gentle actions and ferocious crowds. The novel surrounds a drunken man, Sydney Carton, who performs a heroic deed for his beloved, Lucie Manette, while Monsieur and Madame Defarge, ruthless revolutionaries, seek revenge against the nobles of France. Research suggests that through Dickens’ portrayal of the revolutionaries and nobles of the war, he gives accurate insight to the era of the Revolution.
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A Tale of Two Cities Essay: The French Revolution and the Legacy
698 Words | 2 Pages
A Tale of Two Cities promoted the image of a stable England by using revolutionary France as a setting to highlight the contrasts between the two countries, although Dickens seemed to believe in the eighteen-fifties that England was heading towards an uprising on the scale of the French Revolution. In the twentieth century, we see the French Revolution used as a 'lavish' setting in film and TV productions of A Tale of Two Cities. In the preface to the novel, Dickens says "It has been one of my hopes to add something to the popular and picturesque means of understanding that terrible time" (xiii).
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Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale Of Two Cities and The Dark Knight Rises

Symbols of Man’s Inhumanity

Sacrifices of Love in 'A Tale of Two Cities'