A Tale of Two Cities

Analysis
Charles Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities, uses many symbols and literary devices to describe events that are taking place with great detail. One major literary device would be the foreshadowing with the spilled wine all over the streets. When the wine gets dumped all over the streets the peasants immediately start drinking the wine right off the ground. They do not care that it is dirty and now contaminated from the ground, their only concern is how hungry they are. The wine represents both hunger for food and hunger for political freedom. The time period is a time of starvation and struggle so the second the peasants spotted something to eat they frantically scooped it up. The way the peasants fell to the ground and quickly started to drink the wine foreshadows how a revolution and mob is going to occur. Since the wine was red it stained many of the hands, faces, and even bare feet of all the people and made them in a way look "blood thirsty". These people wanted both freedom and for the hunger to go away, and that is just what this scene portrayed, the desperation of the people.
There were also many other accounts of literary devices such as the repetition of the word hunger on page 22. The descriptions and repetition is used to show just how hungry the people were.

Quote:
"Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine," said the Marquis throwing him another gold coin, "and spend it as you will. The horses there; are they right" (85).
This quote shows just how much of a terrible person Marquis is. When he discovers that his carriage has ran over a young boy the only thing he takes the time to do it flip the boys father a gold coin. He dragged the young boy down the road and killed him but there was no remorse nor did he care the slightest bit. He wanted to pay off the father for killing his son and keep on his way and that is exactly what he did. He did not even have the courtesy to ask if the boy was alright but instead was concerned if his horses were okay. Marquis was even offended when the coin he through to the man was thrown back at him. He had just killed a young boy and yet he was offended when the father did not except his measly money. In the following pages it also describes everything concerning Marquis to stone which represents the cold heart the man has. This passage shows just how terrible Marquis really is.

Opinion
I thought A Tale of Two Cities was hard to get through due to all the heavy descriptions. Once I started to read into some of them it became clear how good of a writer Dickens really is, such as the beginning paragraph starting with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." I thought that passage was the best in the whole book and written very well.

The topic of the novel was very boring and I personally did not enjoy reading it but the end surprised me. When Carton dies instead of Darnay I was very surprised. I thought it was pretty brave of him and showed just how good of a person Carton was. He believed he was doing the proper thing by dying for Darnay. I did not enjoy this book but I believe that Dickens has a very unique writing style and uses a lot of detail.