"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." (7)
This is how the book a "Tale of Two Cities" begins. Below is a short book review for all those who have not and have read the novel "A Tale of Two Cities" before. The story revolves around true events that took place during the French Revolution.
The Main Characters of the Plot:
1.
Charles Darnay: a French citizen by birth who moves to England for several important reasons and becomes entangled with the Manette family. He is highly motivated man and strives to make the most out of his life.
. Sydney Carton: is an English citizen by birth that is quite brilliant but does not work diligently. Although he has a wonderful heart, he is lazy and abrupt. Below is the novel's description of him:
"Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him and resigning himself to let it eat him away." (pp 93)
3. Doctor Manette: is a French citizen who spent the beginning of his life training to be a doctor. After he becomes a doctor, due to unfortunate circumstances, he is sent to the Bastille for eighteen years. His time in the Bastille turns him into the man one sees at the beginning of the book. He is a wonderful doctor who has a wonderful heart and a very caring personality.
"Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he covered upeir tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of them, even in his sleep." (pp 189)
4. Lucie Manette: is the daughter of Doctor Manette and a French citizen by birth, who is raised, as a child, in England by Miss Pross (Lucie's servant). Lucie finds and dutifully takes care of her father throughout the book, making his time in the Bastille seem as if it were a whisper of time.
5. Jarvis Lorry: an elderly man who works as a businessman for Tellson's bank in England. He is a wonderful old man who is intricately involved in the lives of the Manette family. He is a helper and comforter to many characters in the book, but foremost the Manette family.
6. Monsuier and Madame Defarge: wine shop keepers in France who are deeply involved in the start of the French Revolution and who are also involved in the lives of the Manette family.
The Review:
The characters above are all intertwined in a complicated, but amazingly crafted, plot by Charles Dickens. As with most books Charles Dickens wrote, the first hundred and fifty pages are quite laborious. Although tiring, those first pages are extremely important, as they develop the characters, and bond the reader to the Manette family. The rest of the storyline is a fight of emotions to the finish.
The many emotions the novel evokes include: love, longing, anger, horror, compassion, hate, kindness, and, ultimately, sacrificial love. It is one of the best, if not the best, novel ever written in English history but unless one is willing to read the entire book this realization will never come to pass.
The book begins with Mr. Lorry and ultimately leads to the reunion of the Manette family. The family then goes back to England. There a trial takes place that starts turning the "wheels" of the plot that takes place over the next hundred and fifty pages. I would describe more of what take place after the trial but I would not want to spoil the surprises.
Not only is the novel a great work of fiction but it also helps one to understand what it must have been like to live right before, and during, the French Revolution. It is a frightening picture that Dickens paints and one that comes with a warning for all future people groups.
"Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind." (pp. 376)
Lack of Morality
The book is a demonstration of what life might be like without any morality. It’s hard to picture a world without morality when one lives in the United States; we accept that, except for a few people in history and the world today, most people are "good." Although this may seem to be true for those of the world, Dickens demonstrates that in the face of fear, death and suffering many can go from possessing "good" character to becoming morally inept. "A Tale of Two Cities" is both a picture of unimaginable love and also of what man can become without morality (i.e. without God).
At several points in the story I understood and was horrified at the lack of morality portrayed by many of the characters in the book. Below are several examples:
1. As the emergence of the French Revolution comes to the brink a nobleman (who is still in power), a man named Monseignur, runs over a young girl with his carriage and kills her, as he flies through the streets of France. Instead of feeling compassion he offers the father some money and commands his driver to move forward. This is the description of what the people do:
"So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the men, not one." "His contemptuous eyes passed...over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat again and gave the word 'Go on!'" (pp 112 -113)
2. Another example is seen through the description of Madame Defarge. As the book says:
"It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to die for the sins of his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan..." "To appeal to her was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself. If she had been laid low in the streets, in any of the many encounters...she would not have pitied herself, nor, if she had been ordered to the axe to-marrow, would she have gone to it with any softer feeling than a fierce desire to change places with the man who sent her there. Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her rough robe." (pp 359)
Although it seems at first incomprehensible that any human being can harbor such a coldness of heart, after some thought it did not seem as such a shock, at least to me. For without God everyone, at heart, is capable of such hardness and bitter hatred for other human beings. We have seen such coldness many times throughout history for example during the French Revolution, in Nazi Germany, Cuba, and South Korea. Without God's infinite grace and mercy we all could commit such acts, but due to His mercy and character God gave us an option of salvation from such coldness of heart, and for those who will not believe, common grace.
Unconditional Love and Acceptance
Although there is much suffering in the world there is also much happiness, joy, and unconditional love. This novel shows a beautiful picture of unconditional love and a wonderful picture of how close a family can become. Although I do not want to give away the storyline there is a part in the book that demonstrates, oh so minimally, how much Christ really did for mankind. A phrase in the book that demonstrates the importance of human life is below:
"Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort [the effort to save it]. It would cost nothing to lay down if it were not."
No matter who you are I fully believe that "A Tale of Two Cities" is well worth the read!!
Even the last line of this book ends beautifully:
"It is far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known."(pp 372)
None of the above pictures are owned or were taken by me. All copyright is owned by the authors.
