Stryver And Sydney Carton In A Tale Of Two Cities

Context: In the novel, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton are both at their office where they analyze and solve the cases that were given before they go to the court. Carton, as the assistant of Stryver, asks the lawyer the number of cases that are needed for research. As Carton does all the work, Stryver relaxes on his sofa as he indulges in his drinks, doing absolutely nothing at all.

Concept: Dickens uses metaphor to emphasize how Carton is seen as compared to Stryver. The lawyer, who is the lion, “composed himself on his back on a sofa on one side of the drinking table” and Carton is the jackal, sitting “at his own paper-bestrewn table proper” working on the files which were supposedly Stryver’s job to handle (90). In nature, the lion will have most of the meat to satisfy their hunger and the jackal would eat the leftovers of the lion’s meal, only to have bones and scraps of meat for

Dickens has this motif to develop the idea that a class will see and treat those who they think are lower than them like animals. This motif was also shown when the Maquis killed a man’s child due to his carriage’s reckless driving down the street of Saint Antoine and gives the father a gold coin as a compensation for the dead child. Upon leaving, the coin was thrown at the carriage and the Maquis was furious at the action, yelling to the people, “You dogs!...I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth” (112). The Marquis is a high aristocrat who looks lowly at the common people and treats them as if they shouldn’t be considered human at all. He calls them a dog to support his fact how savage they seem to him and having the desire for those poor people to be dead. This assists the idea that each class treats other class differently and one may have the belief that the other class is at the same level as the