A Masterpiece Teacher's Guide
A Tale of Two Cities A MASTERPIECE TEACHER’S GUIDE ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN MCLENAN, 1859 INTRODUCTION his Teacher’s Guide is a resource for educators to be used with the Masterpiece Tfilm,A Tale of Two Cities. The film, which Masterpiece originally aired in 1989 on PBS, is available for purchase from shopPBS.org. Starring James Wilby, Xavier Deluc, and Serena Gordon, and directed by Philippe Monnier, the film is a detailed adaptation of Dickens’s complex story of the lives of English and French characters caught up in the turmoil preceding and during the French Revolution. Written in 1859, A Tale of Two Cities explores issues also associated with other works of Charles Dickens: poverty, oppression, cruelty, social disruption, justice, personal redemption, and class struggle. As scenes in the story shift between the cities of Paris and London, Dickens explores these themes in both locations. The circumstances that provoked the revolution, as well as the chaotic consequences of the revolutionaries’ victory, serve as a warning directed at unaddressed and unresolved social concerns in England. Everywhere, poverty and oppression stand in sharp contrast to justice and love. Through the lives of characters drawn from many class levels in both England and France, Dickens weaves his intricate plot. A master of dramatic narrative full of vivid scenes and coincidences, Dickens is able to link the lives of diverse characters who represent the competing forces of that memorable era. To this day, Madame Defarge personifies revenge, just as the Marquis St. Evrémonde stands for corruption and cruelty. Sydney Carton represents the extremes to which one might go to salvage a wasted life.
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