A Tale of Hope in Two Cities- A Literary Essay

Like I said, I read Tale of Two Cities. It was for academic purposes, and usually when you read a book for such purposes, you're also forced to write words concering this book you've read. These are my words (with the help of Christy Chang of course).

Isaac Middleton

American Lit.

10/16/09

A Tale of Hope in Two Cities

“Hope begins in the dark.” Though Anne Lamott and Charles Dickens share few literary qualities, they both agree that there is hope even for those surrounded in darkness. In A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, hopelessness swarms around miserable characters. Yet by the use of theme, Dickens shows that there is hope for every man to improve, regardless of his present state.
Doctor Manette, an English physician who is “buried alive” (11) for eighteen years, is one of the most hopeless characters in the book. Before his imprisonment, he is a sharp man of understanding (297); but the slow years of incarceration distort him. Over time, his voice “looses the life and resonance of the human voice…like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain” (35). Having rarely interacted with other men, his conversation is absurdly limited, either forgetting what is asked him, or always responding in an ambiguous and unsure way (36). Through time, his life becomes one with his imprisonment. For example, when asked his name, he responds “One Hundred and Five, North Tower” (37), the name of his prison. He remembers nothing of his happier past outside the cell, and lives his confined life making shoes. “Everything but his shoemaking died out of him in that cell” (40). Doctor Manette becomes a creature of complete and hopeless transparency, floating in a void of helpless solitude.
Hope comes to Manette in the form of a “light of freedom shining on him” (41). Lucie Manette, his daughter, recalls him to life and takes him back to England. There, he slowly transforms into the man he was before. In time, he fully returns to his normal self; “he studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of fatigue with ease, and was equably cheerful” (120). On rare occasions, however, he returns to his shoe making (180), which represents a regression into his previous psychological state that maimed him in prison; but in the end, by the help of his daughter, he is fully restored and spends the rest of his life free from his mental confinement.
“As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to [life]. It has no good in it for me—except wine like this—nor I for it” (75). Thus is the existence of Sydney Carton. A heavy drinker, Carton carries himself in a careless, almost insolent manner, bringing himself to be nobody of consequence to anybody (73). He plainly states that he “cares for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for [him]” (78). Though Carton is aware of his faults, he believes that there is no hope for him to change: “I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew…But it is a dream that ends in nothing” (139). In the end, however, Carton turns out to be wrong. Pulled by his hopeless love for Lucie Manette, Carton rises from selfishness to selflessness by taking her husband’s spot on the guillotine. By sacrificing himself for Lucie’s loved one, Carton rises from his previous life of self-interest into that of courage and self-sacrifice.
France itself also represents the theme of hope in darkness. In the beginning, France is in a state of complete injustice and poverty, where it is a festival if a cask breaks and spills cheap wine over muddy streets for the serfs to lick up (25). Not only is France poor, but it is made up of wicked people. Before the revolution, the aristocrats have no mercy on the serfs. For instance, having “accidentally” run over a serf with his carriage, Monseigneur, an aristocrat, feels no pity or remorse (100). Yet, during the Revolution, the Revolutionists treat their former oppressors just as abominably, finding an aristocrat valuable only when his head is severed from his body (349). It is clear that France is in a restless state of wickedness. Yet, hope is not lost. As Carton is moments from his death, he pauses. “I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss” (351). Even Carton, a victim of the Revolution, has hope that the evil in France “will gradually make expiration for itself and wear out” (352).
“It is always darkest before the dawn.” In the cases of Doctor Manette, Carton, and France, it is darkest before their dawn; but dawn comes, nonetheless. By the use of these characters, Dickens expresses his theme of hope in A Tale of Two Cities. (748)

It's not very interesting. And there's some mistakes in it. And i absolutely loathe the technique we're forced to use to start out every paper. But there.