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Book Review : A Tale Of Two Cities - A Novel By Charles Dickens

Discussion in 'Snippets of Life (Non-Fiction)' started by Navaljee, Jul 31, 2008.

  1. Navaljee

    Navaljee Senior IL'ite

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    A TALE OF TWO CITIES


    An Classic Novel By Charles Dickens
    It is quite difficult to write about the novels written by Charles Dickens, as you have to be one among the thousands of people who have done the job earlier. But I am so fascinated by the charm and attraction I felt while reading ‘A Tale Of Two Cities’ that I could not do without putting my efforts to show how I felt while reading this master piece.

    It is quite surprising that the master writer like Charles Dickens who wrote novels like HARD TIMES and GREAT EXPECTATIONS turned on the historic lane and configured a love story that is passing through the confused streets of two great cities: London and Paris, the most turbulent cities of 18th century.

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    THE PLOT: A STORY OF TURMOIL


    The love relationship of two unusual characters, Lucy Manette and Charles Darney, passed through the time narrated by Dickens as ‘It was the best of the times, it was the worst of the times’. The couple made their way through strange circumstances. They were caught in a storm of the revolutionary atmosphere of late eighteenth century France. And they would have hardly passed through it without offering abnormal responses to the situations they were forced to face.

    The story is painted on a torn canvass of turbulent London where mockery of law had replaced administration of justice, the guns were necessary articles for travellers, and the fresh graves were excavated for selling the parts of dead bodies. The warehouse of France in general and the theatre of Paris in particular were worse than London. The last phase of feudalism and the haunted conscience of French peasants had outrun all the notions of civility and human etiquettes. The peasant’s movement for ousting the tyrant rulers partially ended on the fall of the prison of Bastille. All the prisoners freed from the Bastille jail—Dr. Manette, father of Lucy Manette, one the prime characters of the novel, being one of them.

    Lucy helped her father to come out of the obsession of his jail term. She took charge of the boat and sailed through the demanding process of curing his father and developing her relationship with Charles. A migrant from France and language teacher in a London school, Charles Darney had aristocratic lineage that he kept undisclosed until the day of his marriage with Lucy. But his aristocratic virtue of protecting his one of the former loyalists drove him into the storm of France. He was caught; he was convicted for merely having the aristocratic lineage; and he was to be executed. But he was freed through unexpected assistance from Lucy’s former lover, Sydney Carton. His face was just like that of Charles’. Sydney Carton replaced himself in Charles’ place in the jail, sacrificing his life for saving the life of husband of the woman whom he loved. Other characters, Jarvis Lorry, Defarge couple, Mrs. Pross, and others walked with the story, making its flow lucid and the contents rich.


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    (London In Eighteenth Century)

    THE CHARACTERIZATION

    Dickens’ characterization of men and women of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ is near to the realistic. Some of them act a little bit dramatically, as and when the plot of novel so demands. Jarvis Lorry an uncomplicated banker and Madame Defarge a diehard revolutionary never depart from the strict necessities attached with their professions. But Dr. Manette turns himself into an advocate and takes the tools of a saviour in his hands for saving Charles from a certain death penalty.

    Charles Dickens was the technician who used symbols as effective implements for helping the larger picture of his novel to be understood deeply. Unlike the well-sculptured use of powerful symbols in his other novels, in ‘A Tale Of Two Cities’ he depended upon the sharp adjectives and salient humour. While caricaturing the host of characters, he displayed his masterly art of telling about the aspects of contemporary society. In the same manner he narrated the pros and cones of the ongoing revolution. The vivid description of all the characters is such that if by chance any one of them passes by us, we would immediately tell that this is Jerry Cruncher (from his unique style of walking) or this is Lucy (by seeing her serene beauty) or this is Madame Defarge (from the frozen lava of her anger).

    The dialogues go with the characters. Mr. Lorry and Dr. Manette are professionals, depicting the cultured face of the time; and Madame Defarge is the firebrand lady representing the wrath of the revolutionaries of contemporary France. As the novel was to be published as serial in a newspaper, the begging and the end of each chapter tend to be loaded with gunshot sentences. And when the writer like Dickens fires a shot, it is heard up to far far pavilions. He did not give us characters; he gave us the types of people. In real life, you would find replica of every man and woman Dickens depicted in his novels. Being the mother of children having convincing looks, Dickens had animated a crowd of characters: they are proud; they are feeble. They are generous; they are greedy. They are coward; they are bold. Dickens read the life before his eyes and used it for his creations, hoping that the readers would love the same and honour the same.


    THE THEME


    Dickens had courage to be an innovator. Standing against all the contemporary writers, he had chosen the subject like poverty in ‘Oliver Twist’. He obeyed his inner voice—his sincere service to the world in he lived. Again, even if being the writer of neat fiction, he chose history as background for ‘A Tale Of Two Cities’. The writer of ‘Domby and Sons’ and ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ preferred to narrate rigid truth of the history without reservations, without making compromises. And the result is before our eyes. He chose theme of history because it contained the hardest challenges the people had faced; he chose it because the larger portion of the people had at last responded to the wildest behaviour shown to them throughout the years. Every drop of blood spilled on the street of Paris, every drop of the sweat fallen on the farms of feudal France, melted into each other and became the blade of the Guillotine. And then everything flew from the power of that Guillotine. Dickens picked up that theme; honoured it in its right perspective; and dealt with it with his masterly skill.

    History tells us how people had hoped for better life and how they got them materialised. The parallel story of Lucy and Charles Darney’s love runs on the same rails of the hope and despair.


    DICKENS THE SATIRIST


    While reading Dickens, humour would not fail in helping your strains disappear, making your mind lighter. Had Dickens been not a humorist as he was, he would have been known as a reformist thanks to the subjects he chose for his writings. ‘A Tale Of Two Cities’, however, running overloaded with revolution, it contains salient stock of wits and irony. Though the thematic compulsions restrained Dickens to become outright humorist; but he fully counterbalanced it while caricaturing the characters. If we look at the novel from a different angle, then a war or a revolution is the greatest satire itself. The mankind has never learnt a lesson from the past. We go on slaughtering each other without realising the futility of our actions. Perhaps that was the biggest message this novel should have delivered.

    In ‘A Tale Of Two Cities’, Dickens had distributed the humour among various pockets: the way he described the characters, the manners that the Lords of the Land followed in France, and the narrative technique in which he had no competitor. While describing the human tragedies and the follies of common men, he had endeavoured to infuse humour through the comedy of manners. But he had not tried to soften the bitterness of the truth that the ongoing revolution was supposed to hold.

    In all ‘A Tale Of Two Cities’ is the masterpiece capable of imparting literary pleasure. It would shine like a gem on anyone’s bookshelf; and it can be a good reread.
     
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  2. Sriniketan

    Sriniketan IL Hall of Fame

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    Nice one, Sir.
    Few days back my hubby was talking about 'The tale of two cities' and started narrating the story....the climax is irony indeed...
    The way you had analysed it...wonderful..

    sriniketan
     
  3. Navaljee

    Navaljee Senior IL'ite

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    To Ms. Sriniketan

    Charles dickens had gifted the art of novel writing a new trend. His novel The Great Expectation is considered one of the greatest novels of English literature.
     
  4. sundarusha

    sundarusha Gold IL'ite

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    Dear Navalji

    This is my favorite book too!
     
  5. Navaljee

    Navaljee Senior IL'ite

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    From Navaljee to sundarusha

    Charles Dickens had created a new trend of writing the fact- based novels, presenting the contemporary society.

    Navaljee
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