*Tale of Two Cities--Week Two.

As a Tale of Two Cities progresses, more secrets, clues, and mysteries begin to unravel. Commencing the plot of this week’s reading in a court room, a man named Charles Darnay is accused of treason in that he supposedly administered information from the English King onto the French King. Being a witness, both Miss Manette and Mr. Manette along with Mr. Lorry were questioned, and said that both had seen Mr. Darnay on the train. Was Mr. Darnay one of the passengers that was in the train in chapter one?

The court room provided a sort of “entertainment” for the town, as if it were a “play in the Old Bailey.” The violence and inhumanness that the town portrays is depicted through the description and imagery that Dickens uses when exemplifying the personality the people have towards court cases. Not only do the court cases serve as entertainment, but if the suspect was found innocent, or if there was any chance that the suspect “stood in peril of a less horrible sentence,” the onlookers lost interest. Each person was only there for the “ogreish” sentence to see someone “butchered and torn asunder.” Violence and the slaughter of mankind was a pastime, so to speak, for the English people, again reiterating the harsh crime and punishment which led England into a revolution.

Dickens expresses his opinion of the sadistic English behavior upon criminals with a “disease” that occurs within the courtroom. The diseases were claimed to have “came into the court with the prisoners” and affected the “Lord Chief Justice himself.” The whole courtroom was a “disease” along with the people in it- a contagious “morbid condition of the mind” that consisted of the pleasure society felt from the vulgar treatment—as if the “entertainment” the people had towards it fueled the disease as it soon started infecting everyone.

Continuing on, Darnay is found “acquitted” which is where chapter three gets its title “Disappointment”; disappointment that the “ogreish” society does not get to see someone be “quartered”, “butchered”, or torn apart, the people then had to go on as “baffled blue flies dispersing in search of other carrion.” One man testifying, Roger Cly, who had worked for Darnay, and also the other witness testifying had known Darnay, but was “merely a coincidence”, and not a “peculiar coincidence.” The obviousness the two men portray oddly represents mysteriousness- as if the two men worked with Darnay in whatever scheme he was a part of.

The reader soon starts speculating whether another man is in on Darnay’s plans, as the character of Sydney Carton is introduced. Sydney makes unusual comments such as “it’s not so long ago since you were pretty far advanced on your way to another “making it sound as if Carton has a part in Darnay’s past such as saving him from getting the death sentence previously. At the end of chapter 4, Carton speaks to himself in a mirror, pondering whether he is envious of Darnay since he reminds Carton of what he has “fallen away from, what [he] might have been!” The very last sentence creates an image of Carton with his “hair straggling over the table” and a “long winding-sheet in the candle dripping down upon him.” The winding sheet signifies the “death” that Carton feels towards himself, being unhappy with the choices he has made in his life and where he has ended up.

In Chapter 5, Sydney Carton is referred to as a “Jackal,” which refers to “a person who performs dishonest or base deeds as the follower or accomplice of another” (dictionary.com). The importance of Carton being referred to as a jackal belittles Carton’s reputation, illustrating how Carton caters to the wants of Mr. Stryver, a “lion.” Mr. Stryver being a “lion” attributes to the power that he obtains over Carton.

The “business” that Mr. Lorry always speaks of multiple times begins to make the reader wonder if perhaps he is covering up for alternative matters that he is involved with, especially in chapter 6. Mr. Lorry speaks of having “business” with Doctor Manette “many years ago.” In the middle of the night, the business that Dr. Manette was a part of is haunts him, for he “gets up in the dead of night” and will “walk up and down” in his room. The repetition of “walking up and down” adds effect to the anxiousness that Dr. Manette exhibits. The reader then unearths the discovery of the word “DIG” engraved upon a jail cell, in which the mere discussion of this makes Mr. Manette uncomfortable. Does Mr. Manette have something to do with the word inscribed upon the wall? Does the “business” spoken of from Mr. Lorry deal with more than what he is letting on?

In the conclusion of chapter 6, the reader understands a deeper meaning of the title “Hundreds of People.” As the “rain drops” fell, “large” and “heavy,” the drops sounded like “a multitude of people” that were “in a great hurry in the streets speeding away to get shelter before the storm broke.” Being that no one was truly there, the rain sounding like people scrambling about symbolizes the upcoming war. The question asked if the “footsteps destined to come to all of us, or are [they] to divide them among [themselves]” and the last sentence of depicting how the men might “see the great crowd of people with its rush and roar bearing upon them” makes the reader wonder if perhaps the war is because of this group of people? A remark was then made by Mr. Lorry that the night could have brought “the dead out of their graves” an evident foreshadowing and clue into the true “business” the men perform.