How Does Dickens Present Dr. Manette In A Tale Of Two Cities

Charles Dickens is well known for the interesting, colorful, and cartoonish characters he likes to use in most of his stories. These characters are often more like caricatures, which makes reading about them funny and interesting. However, this is not the case with A Tale of Two Cities. In this novel, Dickens is less concerned with individual characters and more concerned with the plot as a whole. While the characters aren’t particularly stressed as a very important element of the story, they still maintain a quality of roundness and complexity. Dr. Manette is just one example of a character displaying these traits. When Dr. Manette is first introduced in Book the First, he has just endured a torturous imprisonment that has lasted nearly eighteen years. As such, Dickens introduces him as a broken, faraway person who is confused and barely aware of himself. Dickens drives this personality trait across while describing Dr. Manette’s voice in Chapter six of “Book

So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die. (Dickens 43)
To add even more evidence to support his roundness as a character, Dr. Manette behaves realistically. His mental state accurately portrays someone who has been tortured in solitary confinement for nearly eighteen years. Despite this, Dr. Manette does develop and change, as any dynamic character would. During his brief appearance in “Book the First”, the reader can already see how he changes from nearly unresponsive and absorbed in his shoemaking to being “recalled to life” by his daughter,