Essay:  “Two sides of the same coin”

A Tale of Two Cities” (1859), by Charles Dickens, is a novel set in London and Paris before the onset of the French Revolution. Throughout the plot, and though the story of the different characters, the author described the situation and events of these two countries (England and France) in these years. It can be seen clearly, that the setting in which these fictional characters are placed, describes the real events that took place since 1775 until some years after the French Revolution broke out.

There are several reasons that led to the French Revolution. In the first place, the lower classes were very poor and they were immersed in terrible misery, poverty and hunger. “The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees-blood.” (Book the first, Chapter 5, pages 37-38). The author narrates in the novel how a casket of wine was dropped in the streets of Paris. He described how the miserable lower classes desperately reacted to this, and made as well a description of their appearance.

In the second place, another reason that led to revolution was that these poor peasants from the lower classes were contrasted with the rich high classes in France. The lower classes were forced to pay for high taxes, while the rich high classes were corrupted and refused to pay them. This clear differences created tension and hatred between them, being this another reason for the French Revolution, which was led by this poor, oppressed and resentful lower classes. “It is extraordinary to me that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is forever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done to my horses? See!” (Book the second, Chapter 7, page 116). The quote was said by the Marquis, a character who belonged to the aristocracy, after having killed with his carriage a young peasant boy. This scene, and specially this quote, show, show the contrast between the classes  and the hatred they had for each other. It is a perfect example of the rage that unchained, together with other things, the revolution.

Lastly, the revolution broke out. Peasants and lower classes took over power and fought for the revolution ideals. To maintain this power and defend themselves against the counter-revolutionaries, revolutionary groups began a regime of terror. The Jacobins executed every person they considered a possible enemy, and throughout the time, the executions went out of their hands and thousands of people were killed. “Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrels carry the the day’s wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, and fused in one realization, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow the maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror, Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.” (Book the third, Chapter 15, page 362). After justifying the causes of the revolution throughout the novel, the author finally states his point of view of how the goodness of the lower classes has been perverted by the terrible conditions under which the aristocracy has forced them to live. The quotation shows clearly a harsh criticism to the reign of terror the revolution ended up in.

As a conclusion, the novel seems to be a constant contrast between good and evil. There is a juxtaposition between the first part of the novel, were sympathy for the revolutionaries can be felt by the reader and the ending, in which the author shows the cruelty the revolution led to. At first, the narration leads readers to feel sympathy towards the low classes, oppressed by the aristocracy and in the ending, the reader is led to be against such cruelty and terror this same oppressed people became capable of.