‘A Tale of Two Cities’: On Revolution and Redemption
A review of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, by Charles Dickens; Chapman & Hall, 1859.
The ‘infinite monkey theorem’ states that if a monkey were to hit keys at random on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time, he will almost surely type a given text, such as Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. There is a hilarious clip in The Simpsons in which Mr. Burns, the evil and devious owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, shows Homer around:
‘This is a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters. Soon, they’ll have written the greatest novel known to man. Let’s see… ‘It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times?’ You stupid monkey!’
Those opening lines, among the most famous in all of English literature, are:
‘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.’
‘It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.’
It sets the tone, for A Tale of Two Cities is a novel of dualities. It is a love story and political commentary, a drama of personal sacrifice and critique of social upheaval. Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, it explores the chasm between wealth and poverty, the violence that springs from such division and the faint, flickering hope for renewal even at a time of chaos.
The story opens in 1775. Jarvis Lorry, a manager at Tellson’s Bank, goes to france to get Alexandre Manette, a French physician, who has been ‘recalled to life’—freed from the Bastille after 18 years. Lorry takes Manette to England where he is reunited with his daughter. Lucie, who thought her father dead, resolves to help him rebuild his life and regain his sense of self.
Lorry takes Manette to England where he is reunited with his daughter. Lucie, who thought her father dead, resolves to help him rebuild his life.
In London, we meet Charles Darnay. He is a French aristocrat who has disowned his family, renounced his title and moved to England. But now he finds himself on trial for treason against the Crown. Thanks to his defence by Sydney Carton, a bitter, cynical, hard-drinking and brilliant lawyer, he is spared; but their relationship is complicated by their shared, unspoken feelings for a woman. As the French Revolution intensifies, the story shifts to Paris, where the clash between the people and the nobles causes violence, trials, and executions. The characters are swept up in the chaos, with some trying to bring justice and others seeking revenge. All the while, the revolution is sliding into terror.
I have said that the story is about dualities, and that is true. But its central theme is the breakdown of societies. Dickens depicts revolution not as a noble ideal, rooted in the thought of les philosophes, but the natural, ineluctable response to grave and unending oppression. Darnay’s uncle, the Marquis St. Evrémonde, stands for the casual tyranny of the French upper class, dismissing the value of life with the same cool indifference with which he throws coins to peasants. The uprising is inevitable, grim and indiscriminate, an explosion of feeling that sweeps away not just the guilty by anyone standing in the way. And yet, even as societies falter and unwind, Dickens says, individuals offer redemption. Throughout the story we encounter people whose actions give us hope. He seems to ask whether small acts of goodness can ever be enough to counteract the cruelty of the world.
Dickens depicts revolution not as a noble ideal, rooted in the thought of les philosophes, but the natural, ineluctable response to grave and unending oppression.
The prose in Two Cities veers between the raw and the poetic. There is an almost gluttonous lyricism, first evinced in the opening sentence, but also bolder, more vivid description. It is due to his richly wrought scenes of mob violence — the storming of the Bastille, the September Massacres—that Dickens has done more to shape the English consciousness of the Revolution than any other writer, though the picture he paints is misleading, for it suggests the Massacres followed the Bastille’s storming, when three years in fact passed between them. Still, Dickens ambivalence is striking. He cannot decide if the Revolution were unforgivable or a necessary evil. He is surer that it was inevitable: when justice is denied, he seems to say, revolution soon follows.
There is a love story at the heart of A Tale of Two Cities, unfolding amid the sound of collapsing social structures and savage cries of vengeance, which resound throughout. A personal human drama takes place within the grand sweep of history, showing how love can endure even when the world starts to crumble. This is the root of its power: the contrast between the brutality of the revolution and the resilience of hope. The characters are swept up in forces beyond their control, yet cling all the same to their humanity. They form close connections, hold onto their ideals. In an ocean of blood, the values of family, friendship and faith in a better future endure.
