As the reader proceeds in A Tale of Two Cities, the reader is again introduced into foreshadowing of the upcoming Revolution. In the beginning of “Knitting”, people enter the Defarge’s wine shop and view people as they perform tedious activities such as “card games”, drawing “figures on the tables with spilt drops of wine,” and “dominoes.” Dickens uses the simplicity of pastimes within the wine shop to foreshadow the upcoming Revolution. The “towers” of “dominoes” symbolizes the building up of the country, only to see a chain reaction of the country fall and crumble piece by piece. Also the “figures on the tables” drawn from “spilt drops of wine” foreshadow the blood that will soon be painted on the country.
Gaspard, brutally executed by “soldiers” and “workmen” who gladly built a “gallows forty feet high”, was hung above the fountain, “poisoning the water.” Previously in the book, the fountain symbolized purity and the fate of the people as the fountain “ran” the “day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death” symbolizing how the fountain was a token of fate for the people. However, after Gaspard was hung and the fountain was stained with crimson blood, the fountain now symbolizes the impureness and vindictiveness that was exhibited during the time period along with the fate that will soon become of the people- violence and war.
Previously in the book, the mention of stone faces was seen in the Marquis home. In chapter 16, the reader again sees imagery of the stone figures. This time, the people who pass by the stone figures see that the “expressions” have been “altered.” It was said that when the Marquis was struck with the knife, the faces changed from “faces of pride” to faces of “anger and pain.” Also, when the “tall man” was hauled up “forty feet above the fountain” the stone faces transformed again, and bore “a cruel look of being avenged.” The stone figure by the bedroom where the Marquis was killed, now mysteriously has “two fine dints” chiseled into the “sculptured nose.” The stone faces on the Chateau symbolize the people that have experienced death by the Jacques, and are now “stone” as they look upon the town. Although the Marquis had a “stone” personality- one lacking compassion and altruism, the people metaphorically turning into stone also symbolizes the personality of the Jacques that killed the Marquis.
“Judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day” a metaphor used by Dickens to portray how the Defarge’s wish for the Mender of Roads to become a part of the Jacques. If the Defarge’s let the Mender of Roads meet the King and Queen and see what they are truly like, he will wish to “hunt” them down with the Jacques. Madame Defarge then asks the Mender of Roads questions, as to if he were “shown a great heap of dolls”, if he would “pick out the richest and gayest” and if “shown a flock of birds” the Mender of Roads admitted he would “set upon the birds of the finest feathers” conveying how the Mender of Roads will fit in perfectly with the Jacques, as he is willingly to execute the richest and finest items if he was given the choice.
Knitting has been a recurring motif throughout the story, and in chapter 15, the reader finally begins to discover the true meaning of Madame Defarge’s stealthy habit. The knitting that Madame Defarge does is a “registry” of names that is “doomed to destruction.” All of the names that Madame Defarge knits includes people from “the chateau and all the race” along with all of the “spies” that are against the Jacques. When John Barsad, a spy, enters the wine shop, Madame Defarge knits his name upon her registry, foreshadowing the killing of John Barsad, along with the others sewn upon the registry. The cruel needlework of Madame Defarge conveys the treacherous outcome of her adversaries as she knits their fate. Ironically, Madame Defarge says that she knits “shrouds” a garment that dead people are buried in.
Imagery is used in chapter 16 to equate flies to the people of the country. The “heaps of flies” that were “extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near Madame, fell dead at the bottom." The “decease made no impression on the other flies” who looked at the other flies “in the coolest manner until they met the same fate” those flies being the nobility of the human race, who are “oblivious” and do not concern themselves with the pain of others, until they, too, “meet the same fate.”
Confident that the Jacques will have an impact on the country, Madame Defarge reassures Mr. Defarge by metaphorically comparing their task to that of an earthquake. Although it takes “a long time” for an earthquake to form, when an earthquake is ready, it “grinds to pieces everything before it” its strike is vengeful, and so will the Jacques when the Revolution finally breaks out.
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