A TALE OF June 1st 1859

OVERVIEW: Written against the backdrop of the French Revolution, has become one the most promoted literary works in human history. In the fictional tale, author Charles Dickens focuses primarily on the themes of resurrection and social justice. ------BOOK ONE: At the outset, Dickens portends to the book’s overarching plot: “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 incredulity, 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 direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

In 1775, a man flags down the nightly mail-coach on its route from London to Dover. The man is , an employee of Tellson's Bank in London; he carries a message for , a passenger and one of the bank's managers. Mr. Lorry sends Jerry back to deliver a cryptic response to the bank: "Recalled to Life." The message refers to , a French physician who has been released from the Bastille after an 18-year imprisonment. Once Mr. Lorry arrives in Dover, he meets with Dr. Manette's daughter Lucie and her governess, . Lucie has believed her father to be dead, and faints at the news that he is alive. Mr. Lorry takes her to France to reunite with him. In the Paris neighborhood of Saint Antoine, Dr. Manette has been given lodgings by his former servant Ernest Defarge and his wife Therese, owners of a wine shop. Mr. Lorry and Lucie find him in a small garret, where he spends much of his time making shoes – a skill he learned in prison – which he uses to distract himself from his thoughts and which has become an obsession for him. He does not recognize Lucie initially but does soon see the resemblance to her mother through her blue eyes and golden hair, a strand of which he found on his sleeve when he was imprisoned. Mr. Lorry and Lucie take him back to England. ------BOOK TWO: In 1780, French émigré is on trial for treason against Britain. The witnesses against him are two British spies, John Barsad and Roger Cly, who claim that Darnay gave information about British troops in North America to the French. Barsad states that he would recognize Darnay anywhere, at which point Darnay's defense counsel, , directs attention to , a barrister present who looks almost identical to him. With Barsad's testimony discredited, Darnay is acquitted. NOTABLE QUOTES

At the same time, in Paris, the hated and abusive Marquis St. Evrémonde orders his carriage driven recklessly fast through the “Death may beget life, but crowded streets, hitting and killing the child of a man named Gaspard in Saint Antoine. The Marquis throws a coin to Gaspard to compensate him for his loss. Defarge, having observed the incident, comes forth to comfort the distraught father, saying the oppression can beget nothing child would be worse off alive. This piece of wisdom pleases the Marquis, who throws a coin to Defarge also. As the Marquis other than itself.” departs, a coin is flung back into his carriage. Arriving at his country château, the Marquis meets with his nephew and heir, ------Darnay. Out of disgust with his aristocratic family, Darnay has shed his real surname and adopted an anglicized version of his mother's maiden name, D'Aulnais. That night, Gaspard, who followed the Marquis to his château by grabbing hold of the “Of little worth as life is when we underside of the carriage, stabs and kills him in his sleep. After a year on the run as an outlaw, he is caught and hanged. misuse it, it is worth that effort. It

Back in London, Darnay gets Dr. Manette's permission to wed Lucie, but Carton confesses his love to Lucie as well. Knowing she would cost nothing to lay down if will not love him in return, Carton promises to “embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you.” Stryver, whom Carton has a working relationship, considers proposing marriage to Lucie, but Mr. Lorry talks him out of the idea. On the morning of it were not.” the marriage, Darnay reveals his real name and family lineage to Dr. Manette, a detail he had been asked to withhold until that day. As a consequence, Dr. Manette reverts to his obsessive shoemaking after the couple departs for their honeymoon. However, he returns to sanity before their return, and the whole incident is kept a secret from Lucie. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross destroy the shoemaking bench and tools, which Dr. Manette had brought with him from Paris. As time passes in England, Lucie and Charles begin to raise a family with a son (who dies in childhood) and a daughter that they name little Lucie. Mr. Lorry finds a second home and a sort of family with the Darnays. Stryver marries a rich widow with three children and becomes even more insufferable as his ambitions are realized. Although he seldom visits, Carton is well-received as a close friend of the family.

In July of 1789, the Defarges help to lead the storming of the Bastille, a symbol of royal tyranny. Defarge enters Dr. Manette's former cell and searches it thoroughly. Throughout the countryside, local officials of the aristocracy are dragged from their homes to be killed, and the St. Evrémonde château is burned to the ground. In 1792, Mr. Lorry decides to travel to Paris to collect important documents from the Tellson's branch in that city and bring them to London for safekeeping against the chaos of the French Revolution. Darnay intercepts a letter written by Gabelle, one of his uncle's servants who has been imprisoned by the revolutionaries, pleading for him to help secure his release. Without telling Lucie or his family, Darnay sets out for Paris. ------BOOK THREE: Soon after Darnay arrives in Paris, he is denounced for being an emigrated aristocrat from France and jailed in La Force Prison. Dr. Manette, Lucie, little Lucie, Jerry, and Miss Pross travel to Paris and meet Mr. Lorry to try to free Darnay. A year and three months pass, and Darnay is finally tried. Dr. Manette, viewed as a hero for his previous imprisonment in the Bastille, testifies on Darnay's behalf at his trial. Vouching for his shedding of his aristocratic roots, Dr. Manette helps Darnay gain his release, only to be arrested again later that day. A new trial begins on the following day, under new charges brought by the Defarges and a third individual who is soon revealed as Dr. Manette. During his imprisonment, he had written an account of how he arrived in the Bastille at the hands of Darnay's father and uncle, and hidden the scrawled note in his cell; Defarge found it while searching the cell during the storming of the Bastille.

Simultaneously, while running errands with Jerry, Miss Pross is amazed to spot her long-lost brother Solomon, but he does not want to be recognized in public. Carton suddenly steps forward from the shadows and identifies Solomon as Barsad, one of the spies who tried to frame Darnay for treason at his trial in 1780. Jerry remembers that he has seen Solomon with Cly, the other key witness at the trial and that Cly had faked his death to escape England. By threatening to denounce Solomon to the tribunal as a Briton, Carton blackmails him into helping with a plan.

At the tribunal, Defarge identifies Darnay as the nephew of the dead Marquis St. Evrémonde and reads Dr. Manette's scrawled letter. Defarge had learned Darnay's lineage from Solomon during the latter's visit to the wine shop several years earlier. The letter describes Dr. Manette's imprisonment at the hands of Darnay's father and uncle for trying to report their crimes against a peasant family. Darnay's uncle had become infatuated with a girl, whom he had kidnapped and raped. Despite Dr. Manette's attempt to save her, she died. The uncle killed her husband by working him to death, and her father died from a heart attack on being informed of what had happened. Before he died defending the family honor, the brother of the raped peasant had hidden the last member of the family, his younger sister. The Evrémonde brothers imprisoned Dr Manette after he refused their bribe to keep quiet. He concludes his letter by condemning the Evrémondes, "Them and their descendants, to the last of their race.” Horrified, Dr. Manette is not allowed to retract his statement, and Darnay is sentenced to be guillotined the next day.

Carton wanders into the Defarge's wine shop, where he overhears talking about her plans to have both Lucie and little Lucie condemned. Carton discovers that Madame Defarge was the surviving sister of the peasant family savaged by the Evrémondes. At night, when Dr. Manette returns, shattered after spending the day in many failed attempts to save Darnay's life, he falls into an obsessive search for his shoemaking implements. Carton urges Lorry to flee Paris with Lucie, her father, and Little Lucie, asking them to leave as soon as he joins.

Shortly before the executions are to begin, Solomon sneaks Carton into the prison for a visit with Darnay. The two men trade clothes, and Carton drugs Darnay and has Solomon carry him out. Carton has decided to be executed in his place and has given his own identification papers to Mr. Lorry to present on Darnay's behalf. Following Carton's earlier instructions, the family and Mr. Lorry flee to England with the unconscious Darnay. Meanwhile, Madame Defarge, armed with a dagger and pistol, goes to the Manette residence, hoping to apprehend Lucie and little Lucie. However, the family is already gone, and Miss Pross, having stayed behind as to not draw too much attention to their escape, confronts Madame Defarge. As the two women struggle, Madame Defarge's pistol discharges, killing her in the process. The novel concludes with the guillotining of Carton. As he is waiting to board the tumbril, he is approached by a seamstress, who mistakes him for Darnay (with whom she had been imprisoned earlier) but realizes the truth once she sees him at close range. Awed by his unselfish courage, she asks to stay close to him. Upon their arrival at the guillotine, Carton comforts her, telling her that their ends will be quick but that there is no time or trouble "in the better land where... we will be mercifully sheltered.” ------THE THEME OF RESURRECTION: Resurrection is the primary idea underpinning the book, first exhibited early in Mr. Lorry's thoughts of Dr. Manette upon first encountering him. It is also the last theme: Carton's sacrifice by the guillotine, which atones for all his past wrongdoings. He even finds God during the last few days of his life, repeating Christ's soothing words, "I am the resurrection and the life." Additionally, Jerry Cruncher is also part of the recurring theme: he himself is involved in death and resurrection in ways the reader does not know early on. The first piece of foreshadowing comes in a mysterious remark to himself: "You'd be in a blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!" Five years later, in June 1780, Mr. Lorry reawakens the reader's interest in the mystery by telling Jerry it is "Almost a night... to bring the dead out of their graves". Jerry responds firmly that he has never seen the night do that. ------THE THEME OF SOCIAL JUSTICE: Dickens was a champion of the poor in his life and in his writings, and he illustrates such the brutal treatment of the poor in France and England alike. So riled is Dickens at the brutality of English law that he depicts some of its punishments with sarcasm: "The whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanizing and softening to behold in action." The reasons for revolution by the lower classes are clear – some of his characters, notably Madame Defarge, have no limit to their vengeance for crimes against them. But the novel’s warning is addressed not to the British lower classes, but to the aristocracy. He repeatedly uses the metaphor of sowing and reaping: “If the aristocracy continues to plant the seeds of a revolution through behaving unjustly, they can be certain of harvesting that revolution in time.” In this sense, it can be said that while Dickens sympathizes with the poor, he identifies with the rich: "Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind." As an example, in the first book, with the people starving and begging the Marquis for food, his uncharitable response is to let the people eat grass. More often than not, the people are left with nothing but onions to eat and are forced to starve while the nobles live lavishly upon the people's work.