A Tale of Two Cities

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. 2004. 470p. ISBN 0-7434-8760-5. Available at FIC DIC on the library shelves as well as an audiobook from Overdrive.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Thus begins Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities, a story about the French Revolution and the impact it had on the world, as well as on two different families. The story begins in 1775, as Jarvis Lorry, one of the managers of Tellson’s Bank in London, is heading to Paris to collect a prisoner whom was secretly imprisoned in the Bastille, in Paris. That prisoner, Alexandre Manette, was a doctor who witnessed a horrific crime and was put away before he could share what he saw. His daughter, Lucie, always believed her father had perished, but when she is reunited with him she is relieved beyond belief.

Five years later, a French immigrant in London, Charles Darnay, is accused by the British Crown to provide material support to the American cause, as the Revolutionary War is in full swing. The prosecutor relies heavily on testimony from two men who find themselves discredited by Darnay’s lawyers, and Darnay is acquitted. In contact with Jarvis Lorry, Darnay meets Lucie Manette, and soon the two of them are wed.

France, meanwhile, undergoes its own bloody revolution. The Lafarge are revolutionaries who are connected to incidents involving Doctor Manette and which led ultimately to his imprisonment. Through circumstances, Darnay is tricked into returning to France, where he is arrested and put up in front of a revolutionary tribunal. He is saved by Doctor Manette’s impassionate speech, built on the strength of his imprisonment in the Bastille, but Darnay is soon arrested again. Assisted by his London lawyer, Darnay manages to escape Paris with his family and returns to London.

A condemnation of the terrors that follow revolutionary zeal, A Tale of Two Cities continue to be relevant in today’s fractured and violent world.