Search results
A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel, about events approximately seventy years past when Dickens wrote the work. For the author in A Tale of Two Cities, memory is often a trap, pulling people into an abyss of despair. Madame Defarge's hatred of aristocrats in general and St. Evremonde in particular is based on her memory of the rape and ...
Charles Dickens and A Tale of Two Cities Background. Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England in 1812. As the second of eight children in a very poor family, he lived a difficult childhood. Eventually, his father was sent to debtor’s prison, and Dickens himself went to work at the age of twelve to help pay off the family’s debt.
A Tale of Two Cities Summary. The novel opens in the year 1775 with Mr. Jarvis Lorry traveling on a mission to Dover to meet Lucie Manette. Mr. Jarvis Lorry is the employer of Tellson’s Bank in England. On his way to Dover, Mr. Lorry happens to meet a man who gives him a mysterious message, and Mr. Lorry replies with the message, “Recalled ...
Defarge explains that Dr. Manette wrote the letter while in the Bastille to explain how he ended up in prison. He then reads the letter. Walking home one night in 1757, Dr. Manette was taken into a carriage by two men, identical twins. From their coat of arms, he learned that they were Evrémondes: Charles 's father (who was then the Marquis ...
A Tale of Two Cities is told from the omniscient, or all-knowing, point of view. The narrator, or storyteller, who is never identified, has access to the thoughts and feelings of all the characters. A Tale of Two Cities, which is one of two historical novels written by Charles Dickens, is set in London and in Paris and the French countryside at ...
A Tale of Two Cities was partly an attempt to show his readers the dangers of a possible revolution. This idea was not the first time a simple — and incorrect — conviction became the occasion for a serious and powerful work of art. Violent revolutionary activity caught up almost all of Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century ...
The prisoner's counsel was cross-examining this witness with no result, except that he had never seen the prisoner on any other occasion, when the wigged gentleman who had all this time been looking at the ceiling of the court, wrote a word or two on a little piece of paper, screwed it up, and tossed it to him.
