A Tale of Two Cities Book report

Miscellanea on
A Tale of Two Cities

E
VER since my finishing reading Charles Dickens’ A TALE OF TWO CITIES, approximately one month ago, my determination has been set to write something about it and express some innermost feelings on it, though vague and undescribable to me, but I haven’t materialized, until now, the brainchild relentlessly haunting my wretched and clumsy mind, after an entire month, because, during this very month, I have tried many a time to trim up my thoughts; have consulted the author’s biography and other works; have perused some particular paragraphs anew, only to find my thoughts congesting the narrow exit of my mind, fraught with sundry ideas, as thousands of bustling fish rushing into a confined debouchment for spawning, and my innocent tears slowly flowing and flushing out on my sensitive cheek, which I am incapable of holding back.
The background of the book is set in the epoch of the bloody French Revolution, which Dickens deemed it dialectically. Before this Revolution, French was a typical feudal country ruled by aristocrats, which means every single man or woman was bond to his or her innate class; lords to lords’ and peasants to peasants’ and sons to fathers’. Under the said hierarchical system, the ruthless French aristocrats, exercising nothing else save their noble potence to exploit the poor French peasants, easily considered their serfs no better than vermin or straw; with all their exertions, sucked out of their so-claimed human subjects every drop of blood and sweat and spirit and hope; heeded nothing of those wretches, live or dead. They, the so-called nobles, were so ignorant of the misfortunes befallen upon the toilers, that, in the book, when a fast carriage of a Monseigneur, on a crowded and cramped muddy street of Paris, rolls over an infant, dead, it will be imaginable for us of the Monseigneur’s not getting out of his noble carriage, not putting his noble shoes on the vulgar pavement and merely flipping out to the woeful infant’s father a gold coin as a gesture of equalization, not even as a compensation. How insolent and heartless!
And then, with the inevitable eruption of unendurable fury and growling wrath of the oppressed, came the French Revolution. As a dogging dreadful shadow, the inhumane massacre and revengeful carnage ensued, taking tons of aristocrats by the newly-invented killing contrivance, La Guillotine. To draw a sharp-cut contrast, the author deliberately described a scene, in which, before the revolution, in Saint Antoine, the district of Paris which the Bastille was located as well as the storm center of the Revolution, a mob of rascals, paupers and commoners in both sexes suck dry the wine from a broken vinous cask on the miry pavement, to compare with the later vision of the horrible revolution: Madame La Guillotine shaving off heaps of heads on guilty and innocent shoulders, feasting on this human red wine. Though this, Mr. Dickens didn’t show any pity on the guillotined aristocrats, because their death was necessary, but he was still astonished and scandalized at the cruelty and relentlessness of the devouring peasants and for this reason, he was against the brutal, therefore devastating, clamjamfry.
The characters are thrown into the said period of best and worst, of wisdom and foolishness, of belief and incredulity…and begin their stiff struggles for love, ideal, right and redemption. But, hither, I have no interest in listing and recording the tedious plot and will dwell on this novel's Christ figure whom I suppose to resemble myself somewhat. Though he, named Sydney Carton, whose countenance looks identical to that of the hero, Charles Darnay, is of great talent, he lives a life of a wastrel and only remains a jackal, described by the author in the novel, of Mr. Stryver, his superior and a mean person. Carton seems drunken all the time except once, he is reckless for everything but a miss and, above all, he is a strayed wanderer without caring and being cared. Notwithstanding those, his bosom still harbors pure and lofty things and he hates the perverted and lost self of him, but he is so reckless to change the situation, whereupon difficulties have accumulated too much for him to shrug off. However, his ardent love for Lucie Manette, the beautiful quiet and compassionate heroine, frets him, because he knows he is far from qualified for her and will definitely give no happiness to her, thus never behaving any admiration before her or others. He must be rejoiced, as well as tormented, in his heart when Lucie was happily betrothed to Charles Darnay. And later, Sydney Carton saves Darnay’s life from the guillotine, using their similarity of faces and he willingly substitutes and sacrifices his own life for Darnay’s survival, moreover, for the latent love of Lucie. This absolutely altruistic feat puts this book to an ending climax.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”, taken from the New Testament, is the last sublime murmur of Sydney Carton, the great altruist, when he finally steps onto the wood scaffold. This lection echoes in my mind to and fro, reminding me of the two most powerful things in this pathetic world, viz. Love and Faith. It is Love that kindles the candle of virtues in Carton’s cynical and profligate mind and lights up for him the way heading to redemption; it is Faith that drags him out of the swamp of lowness and eventually leads him to the paradise of greatness.
And, he dies. Paradoxically, I hoped he would die and begged him not to die at the same time. I hoped it because I believe it was better for him, for he would be free from the vexation of seeing his lover in other’s bosom, and, for he says “it is a far, far better thing (referred to his death) that I did, than I have ever done…”, wherein I am convinced that he found his relief. But, on the other side, I supplicated him to live and run away, because it was the tearing cry from the deep inside of my heart, which is the reason why I can’t be as great as he is…
Hithertofore, I regard A TALE OF TWO CITIES is the most splendid novel I have ever read and Sydney Carton is the greatest character of great characters. So I would very much like to represent a short piece of rhyme of mine for this great man.

He comes and goes with great endowment,
He lives and lingers as a haggard Bacchus alive.
Only to a fair She, He holds a strong attachment,
A fair she who shall ne’er be his wife.

He comes and goes like a reckless ghost,
But in fact, torments are hidden in his forlorn heart.
It is her supreme happiness that He cares most,
So He spontaneously split himself apart.

When the jeopardy is finally drawing near,
Beside her side does He unheededly appear,
Whispering “don’t be afraid” to his Ladybird,
“For I will readily fulfill my sacred word”

Here He goes to the nefariously reddened Guillotine,
With his reckless countenance on his face,
Clash! In his mind flashes what He has been,
And He knows He will go to a far, far better place.

By Joshua