Great Expectations And A Tale Of Two

Cities Essay, Research Paper

Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities are two of the greatest English novels ever written. One chronicles the twists and turns of the life of a young man named Pip while the other serves as an account of the story of one family during the French Revolution. In both novels, there are contrasts between characters that are representative of the themes of the novels. In Great Expectations, the themes are good vs. evil and guilt vs. innocence, while in A Tale of Two Cities the main themes are resurrection and revolution. However, the theme of good vs. evil is a theme common to the two books and there are contrasts between characters in both books that represent this theme. The characters include Madame Defarge and Miss Pross, and Carton and Darnay, from A Tale of Two Cities, Orlick and Joe, and Magwitch and Miss Havisham, from Great Expectations.

A Tale of Two Cities is set in France during the 1780’s, a very tumultuous time in the history of the French nation, when the lower classes were rebelling against the oppression, and unfair rights and privileges of the upper classes. It was during this time that France was transformed from a divine right monarchy into a republic, following the execution of King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette.

Dickens gives his own impressions of French society at the time through his narration of the story. His distaste for the extravagance and greed of the French upper-class is apparent in his description of the powerful aristocrat entertaining other aristocrats. He depicts the wastefulness of the aristocrats, and their use of servants, while the poor lack even a means of subsistence.

Although Dickens gives compassionate descriptions of the poor, such as when the Marquis is passing through his town, and the deplorable conditions in which they lived in Saint Antoine, he nevertheless also displays his aversion to the mobs of Paris. In his description of the courtroom that Darnay was being tried in, Dickens portrayed the crowd to be “blueflies” – flies that feed on dead bodies. This simile implies that the mob finds joy in death, regardless of the innocence or guilt of the person being hanged. His view of mobs is also evident when Jerry Cruncher joins a mob of people following Roger Cly’s body, and riots with them for fun.

Through these various portrayals of French life, Dickens illustrates his own opinion on the French Revolution, which is that because of the incredible oppression of the French lower-class by the French upper-class, the revolution was inevitable.

It is in this way that revolution, order, and the conflict between the two are major themes of A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens personifies the revolution in the form of Madame Defarge, the wife of a storeowner in the poor Saint Antoine section of Paris. She is described as a cold, malevolent woman who knits the names of people she wishes to see die when the revolution comes, into her register. Defarge also represents revenge and the mob mentality. This is apparent in the lines of Dickens where he says “So much was closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that their very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting, couting dropping heads.”

Miss Pross, on the other hand, is the personification of order, justice, and peace; she is the antithesis to Madame Defarge. Pross was the caretaker of Lucie, and the one who single-handedly raised her. She is described, through the eyes of Lorry, to be a tough woman who is devoted to Lucie.

The conflict between Pross and Defarge towards the end of the novel represents the conflict between order and revolution. When Madame Defarge goes to the Manette’s Paris apartment in order to catch Lucie in the act of mourning a convict, she encounters Pross, alone, there. A fight ensues and Defarge draws her gun. During the struggle, Pross is able to overpower Defarge, and Defarge accidentally kills herself. Through this battle, Dickens represents his idea of the conflict between order, represented by Pross, and revolution, represented by Defarge. Although revolution is feral, order is firm, and in the end, Dickens demonstrates, it is order that wins over.

These two characters can also be seen to represent the theme of good vs. evil in A Tale of Two Cities. In this conflict, good is represented by the kindly Miss Pross, and the conniving Madame Defarge represents evil. The clash between the two, much like the fight between Joe and Orlick in Great Expectations, is a depiction of a battle between good and evil, a battle in which Dickens believes good will win.

Another major theme of A Tale of Two Cities is resurrection. Dr. Manette is a doctor in A Tale of Two Cities, who was imprisoned in the Bastille in France for eighteen years. The first major event of the novel is his extrication from the prison, followed by his reuniting with Lucie, his daughter, and other loved ones. Lorry, who conveys the message that Dr. Manette was in fact alive to Lucie, has a dream where he asks Dr. Manette how many years he has been “buried.” He also considers his mission, to bring Dr. Manette out of prison, to be a “recall to life.” Thus, when the Doctor is finally brought out of prison, the event is similar to a resurrection, since he was assumed to be dead for all those years.

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