No.  Keeping in mind that Dickens's novel, A
            Tale of Two Cities, is a narrative of parallels and doubles, the trial of
            Darnay in Paris parallels that of his trial in England.  For, just as Stryver has played
            to the crowd in creating doubt regarding the identity of Charles Darnay as the man who
            passed treasonous papers, so, too, does Darnay play to the sympathies crowd of French as
            he aligns himself with the prisoner of the Bastille, Manette, and as the loyal friend
            who returns to save a citizen's life.  Of course, both these instances illustrate the
            corruption of the justice systems before and after the revolution, pointing to the
            underlying problem as that in human nature, a problem that will
            continue. 
Therefore, because of the fickleness of human
            nature, as well as the vengeful force of Madame Defarge, who has knitted the name
            of Evremonde and all relatives into her death cloth, Charles Darnay will surely answer
            for "the sins of the father" and be retried again by the fickle tribunal of
            the bonnets rouges the Jacques) that also seek
            redress for all the injustices dealt them by the aristocracy.  As another parallel, in
            Chapter II of Book the Third, there is an incident that recalls the metaphoric Chapter V
            of Book the First that presages the French Revolution's bloodbath as the grindstone that
            sharpens the blades of the guillotine emerges with the hideous and frenzied faces of
            those who turn it madly drink much as the frenzied residents of Saint Antoine drank
            the spilled cask of wine,
readability="22">
As these ruffians turned and turned, their
            matted locks now flung forward over their eyes, now flung backward over their necks,
            some women held wine to their mouths that they might drink; and what with dropping
            blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks struck out of the
            stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and fire. The eye could not detect one
            creature in the group free from the smear of blood. Shouldering one another to get next
            at the sharpening-stone were men stripped to the waist, with the stain all over their
            limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of rags, with the stain upon those rags; men
            devilishly set off with spoils of women’s lace and silk and ribbon, with the stain
            dyeing those trifles through and through. Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all
            brought to be sharpened, were all red with
            it.
This parallel to the
            spilling of the wine casket in Book the First in the company of the other parallels
            mentions suggests very strongly that Charles Darnay will, as his mother feared, have to
            answer for the crimes of the family Evremonde.
No comments:
Post a Comment