A Tale of Two Cities- Quotes

A drool of Two Cities quotes & explanation 1. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of inc blood-redulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going straightaway to Heaven, we were all going direct the new(prenominal) way. . . commentary for Quotation 1 These famous lines, which open A Tale of Two Cities, hint at the fables primeval tension between love and family, on the one hand, and oppression and hatred, on the other(a). The transit makes marked use of anaphora, the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of consecutive clausesfor example, it was the age . . . it was the age and it was the epoch . . . it was the epoch. . . This technique, along with the passages steady rhythm, suggests that good and evil, wis dom and folly, and flow and darkness get equally matched in their struggle. The opposing pairs in this passage also rise one of the novels most prominent motifs and structural figuresthat of doubles, including capital of the United Kingdom and Paris, Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay, throw Pross and Madame Defarge, and Lucie and Madame Defarge. 2. A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is even outd to be that profound incomprehensible and closed book to every other.A solemn consideration, when I enter a great metropolis by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own dark that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts t present, is, in some of its imagin-ings, a secret to the heart nearest it Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. Explanation for Quotation 2 The fabricator makes this reflection at the beginning of check the First, Chapter 3, subsequently Jerry Cruncher delivers a cryptic message to Jarvis Lorry in the change mail coach.Lorrys missionto recover the long-imprisoned Doctor Manette and recall him to conductestablishes the essential dilemma that he and other characters face cognomenly, that human beings constitute perpetual mysteries to one another and al slipway remain somewhat locked away, neer fully reachable by outside minds. This fundamental inscrutability proves most sheer in the case of Manette, whose private sufferings force him to relapse throughout the novel into bouts of cobbling, an occupation that he first took up in prison.Throughout the novel, Manette mentally returns to his prison, retract to a greater extent by his own recollections than by any attempt of the other characters to recall him into the present. This passages reference to death also evokes the stocky secret revealed in Cartons self- move over at the break off of the novel. The exact profundity of his love and devotion for Lucie remains obscure until he commits to dying for her the selflessness of his death leaves the reader to wonder at the ways in which he might pay manifested this great love in life. . The wine was red wine, and had filthed the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained more hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again.Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth and one tall dud so besmirched, his head more out of a long shedy bag of a night-cap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger swayback in muddy wine-leesblood. Explanation for Quotation 3 This passage, feignn from demo the First, Chapter 5 , describes the scramble after a wine cask breaks outside Defarges wine shop. This episode opens the novels examination of Paris and acts as a potent depiction of the peasants hunger.These oppressed individuals are not lone(prenominal) physically starvedand thus exiting to slurp wine from the city streets exactly are also hungry for a new humanity order, for justice and freedom from misery. In this passage, hellion foreshadows the lengths to which the peasants desperation leave take them. This scene is echoed later in the novel when the revolutionariesnow similarly smeared with red, but the red of bloodgather around the grindstone to sharpen their weapons.The emphasis here on the idea of staining, as well as the scrawling of the word blood, furthers this connection, as does the appearance of the wood-sawyer, who later scares Lucie with his mock guillotine in Book the Third, Chapter 5. Additionally, the experience of the wine lapping against naked feet anticipates the final sh owdown between Miss Pross and Madame Defarge in Book the Third, Chapter 14 The basin fell to the ground broken, and the weewee flowed to the feet of Madame Defarge. By strange stern ways, and through much staining of blood, those feet had get hold to meet that water. 4.Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrels carry the days wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in one realization, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape erstwhile more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the uniform hagridden forms.Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will for certain yield the same fruit according t o its kind. Explanation for Quotation 4 In this concise and beautiful passage, which occurs in the final chapter of the novel, Dickens summarizes his unsure attitude toward the French Revolution. The author stops decidedly short of justifying the madness that the peasants use to overturn the social order, personifying La Guillotine as a sort of drunken lord who consumes human livesthe days wine. Nevertheless, Dickens shows a thorough understanding of how such violence and bloodlust can go in about. The cruel aristocracys oppression of the poor sows the same seed of rapacious license in the poor and compels them to persecute the aristocracy and other enemies of the revolution with equal brutality. Dickens perceives these revolutionaries as crushed . . . out of shape and having beenhammered . . . into . . . tortured forms. These depictions evidence his belief that the lower classes fundamental goodness has been perverted by the terrible conditions under which the aristocracy has f orced them to live. 5. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, piecemeal making expiation for itself and wearing out. . . I see that child who destroy upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man harming his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. . . . It is a 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. Explanation for Quotation 5 Though much debate has arisen regarding the value and meaning of Sydney Cartons sacrifice at the end of the novel, the surest key to interpretation rests in the thoughts contained in this passage, which the narrator attributes to Carton as he awaits his sacrificial death . This passage, which occurs in the final chapter, prophesies twain resurrections one personal, the other national. In a novel that seeks to examine the constitution of revolutionthe overturning of one way of life for anotherthe struggles of France and of Sydney Carton reverberate each other.Here, Dickens articulates the outcome of those struggles just as Paris will rise from the abyss of the French Revolutions chaotic and bloody violence, so too will Carton be reborn into glory after a virtually wasted life. In the prophecy that Paris will become a beautiful cityand that Cartons name will be made illustrious, the reader sees evidence of Dickenss faith in the essential goodness of humankind. The very last thoughts attributed to Carton, in their poetic use of repetition, register this faith as a settle and soothing certainty.