Tale of Two Cities Test 6/8 Flashcards
The Woodman,
In Charles Dickens’s monumental classic, A Tale of Two Cities, the employment of the personification of fate as the Woodman and death as the Farmer portends the future actions of the French Revolution. For, it is the woodman who builds the guillotine which effects the many deaths of the aristocracy.
The Farmer,
it is the farmers’ tumbrils which carry them to their deaths at the guillotine, and, of course, those peasant farmers who stormed the Bastille with their pitchforks as they fought in bloody battle against the king’s soldiers.
wine,
Dickens uses this symbol in two ways. First, the eagerness of the people to drink spilled wine from the filthy Paris street symbolizes the extreme state of poverty and hunger that the average people of Paris experienced before the Revolution. Also, the brief euphoria and merriment of the wine-drinkers symbolize the way in which the peasants of Paris revolted against the royal and wealthy, and the mob behavior that Dickens found disturbing.
Using the wine that spills into the streets early in the novel as a metaphor for the blood spilled in the revolution serves a practical purpose: the Defarges run a wine shop. The Defarges are the hub of revolutionary activity. It all fits together neatly.
gorgon/stone faces,
Symbolizes the stone coldness of the Marquis and the nobles towards the peasants as made eminent in chapter nine book the second, titled ‘the Gorgon’s heads’.
St. Antoine,
A street in the Paris suburb of Saint Antoine is the scene of chaos as a crowd gathers in front of a wine-shop to scoop up pools of wine spilled from a broken cask. When the wine is gone, the people resume their everyday activities.
jackal, lion
At last, it began to get about, among such as were interested in the matter, that although Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble capacity.
The Jackal like Sydney does all the work while the Lion like Stryver takes all the credit for, making him look strong in the front of all action while Sydney is perceived as weak and helpless.
Golden Thread
A unifying theme of happiness. Lucie: golden hair; golden thread woven into marriage and family life.
Lucie is the “golden-haired doll” who charms just about everyone she meets with her beauty. She’s got yellow hair, as you’ve probably guessed. More interestingly, however, Dickens uses her hair color as an image that binds her family together. She becomes the “golden thread” that unites her father with his present, not allowing him to dwell too much on the horrors of his past:
She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond his misery: and the sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial influence with him almost always. (2.4.3)
A golden thread almost sounds like some sort of magical power; in fact, the Manettes lead a “charmed” life in Soho. Lucie may not be the character who gets the most screen time in this novel, but Dickens makes sure that we all know she’s its heart. Lucie unites Sydney to Charles, Doctor Manette to Charles, and Mr. Lorry to the family in general. Lucie becomes the reason that Charles escapes the grasp of the Republic’s “justice.”golden thread,
scarecrows, birds of fine song and feathers,
The scarecrows are the citizens, because they have rags, are thin, and scare away ‘birds’, while the birds are the nobles, because they are free and high up in the sky; the nobles are not being wary of the citizens
knitting,
Even on a literal level, Madame Defarge’s knitting constitutes a whole network of symbols. Into her needlework she stitches a registry, or list of names, of all those condemned to die in the name of a new republic. But on a metaphoric level, the knitting constitutes a symbol in itself, representing the stealthy, cold-blooded vengefulness of the revolutionaries. As Madame Defarge sits quietly knitting, she appears harmless and quaint. In fact, however, she sentences her victims to death. Similarly, the French peasants may appear simple and humble figures, but they eventually rise up to massacre their oppressors.
sea,
A German writer named Hans Biedermann wrote that “water is the fundamental symbol of all the energy of the unconscious - an energy that can be dangerous when it overflows its proper limits.”
These frequent images of water represent the building of anger and frustration of the peasant mob. Dickens uses water to show that yes, these peasants are right to an extent, but the executions, the violence, the attacks, and the mobs are animalistic and savage
Madame Defarge,
A cruel revolutionary whose hatred of the aristocracy fuels her tireless crusade, Madame Defarge spends a good deal of the novel knitting a register of everyone who must die for the revolutionary cause. Unlike her husband, she proves unrelentingly blood-thirsty, and her lust for vengeance knows no bounds.
Symbolizes hatred and one of the sisters of fate.
, The Vengeance,
The short, plump wife of a thin, starving grocer and the mother of two children, she was like a lieutenant to Madame Defarge.
The character Vengeance is the personification of the retribution that the peasant revolutionaries exact from the French aristocracy under whose yoke they have suffered and starved. In Chapter XXII of Book the Second, Vengeance represents the senseless and savage turn that the revolution has taken, and as the chosen companion and double of Madame Defarge, her entire entity is that of revenge.
shoe bench,
- the imagery represents Dr. Manette’s past before he met Lucie while he was in jail
symbolizes both his strength and weakness.
-also represents how he passed time in his cell
fire,
“[T]he chateau was left to itself to flame and burn…in the roaring and raging on the conflagration, a red-hot wind…seemed to blow the edifice away…The nearest trees, laid hold of by the fire, scorched and shriveled; the illuminated village [was] guided by the beacon they had lighted.”
Book Two.
* “[T]he villagers darted into their houses…putting up candles in every dull pane of glass.”
Represents the fall of the noble class and the rise of the peasants.
Unlike how water is used to represent everything negative in the book, fire, on the other hand, is used to represent the negative and the positive sides of the revolution.
blue flies
In Chapter 3 of Book the Second of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, the symbolism attached to the simile of blue flies in the courtroom during the trial of Charles Darnay cannot be overlooked. Traditionally, the fly represents evil, death, destruction, and corruption–even Beelzebub himself. Thus, in this passage in which the flies swarm around the French aristocrat, Charles Darnay, foreshadows the other “blue flies” of the swarming revolutionaries in France who congregate to bring death and destruction to the aristocrats and Charles Evremonde after he returns to his country.
grindstone
Grindstone: The grindstone, used to sharpen weapons, symbolizes the growing maniacal blood thirst of the revolutionaries. As they sharpen their blood-soaked weapons, they become oppressors, just like those they fight against.
footsteps
The approaching revolution.
At her London home, Lucie hears the echoes of all the footsteps coming into their lives. These footsteps symbolize fate. Dr. Manette makes shoes in his madness. Notably, he always makes shoes in response to traumatic memories of tyranny, as when he learns Charles’s real name is Evrémonde. For this reason, shoes come to symbolize the inescapable past.
shadows.
Shadows dominate the novel, creating a mood of thick obscurity and grave foreboding. An aura of gloom and apprehension surrounds the first images of the actual story—the mail coach’s journey in the dark and Jerry Cruncher’s emergence from the mist. The introduction of Lucie Manette to Jarvis Lorry furthers this motif, as Lucie stands in a room so darkened and awash with shadows that the candlelight seems buried in the dark panels of the walls.
Bastille,
Medieval fortress that was converted to a prison stormed by peasants for ammunition during the early stages of the French Revolution.
Château,
The large house of the Marquis that was burned down shortly after his death leaving his servant Monseigneur de Grabielle unfortunately in his position.
Tellson’s Bank (in London and Paris),
The place where Lorry and Cruncher work. old-fashioned dull place. It is in both London and Paris, in which within London it is described as said dull and old, whereas in Paris it is described as Tellson’s Bank in Paris is in a wing of a large house. In front of it is a courtyard that is shut off from the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house had belonged to a nobleman who had fled France, running away from the troubles of his homeland.
Guillotine,
A machine for beheading people, used as a means of execution during the French Revolution.
Soho,
The peaceful and quiet neighborhood in which the Manettes live in, far away from any danger within the French Revolution.
Stryver’s Office,
The office in which Sydney and Stryver drink all night. Sydney does all the work while Stryver takes the credit for it. This comes up in the chapter the lion and the jackal.
Defarge’s Wine Shop,
The center of the revolution in St. Antoine where the wine(blood) spills. This is where the revolution begins with the code names of Jaques and where Dr. Manette lives shortly after being released from prison.
St. Antoine,
San Antoine, a character? Charles Dickens, a Victorian era author, had a very intricate and clever way of writing. In the novel, A Tale of Two Cities he creates the sense that San Antoine, the slums of Paris, is an active character in the novel.
Dover Road,
Road between France and England. Mr. Lorry is seen taking this road at the beginning of the book the first.
