Introduction:
The Book
It is a wonderful story, it is a terrible story, it is filled with love, honor, and valor, it is filled with hate, deceit, and cowardice, it is a story that encourages loyalty, it is a story that encourages rebellion, it is a book meant to entertain, it is a book meant to provoke, it is a of tale change, it is a tale of tradition, it brings understanding, it brings confusion—in short, it is so much like our current literature that our English teacher insisted we receive it, with like or dislike, in the educational degree of learning only.
After reading the first few pages of “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens my first impression was that it was a terrible book. It was very hard to understand Dickens style of writing and his plot seemed to advance at such a slow pace that is seemed as if he was trying to bore you to death.
It is a common saying “not to judge a book by its cover”, but in the case of “A Tale of Two Cities” it is important not to judge the book by the first several chapters. After finishing the story (though I admit I read most of it in summaries) I have come to appreciate Dickens writing style and even love the book. It turned out to be much more entertaining and than I first imagined and the constant plot twists kept me glued to the pages.
What interests me most about this novel is Charles Dickens background and inspiration for it, the love triangle between Charles Darnay, Sydney Carton, and Lucie Manette, and Dickens use of symbols.
Charles Dickens
His background, inspiration, and writing style
Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England in1812. He was the second of eight children and lived a difficult childhood in poverty which compels me to believe that when he writes about the poor people in France before the revolution he writes out of experience and fact and not out of creativity and second hand information.
Dickens stared in a play by Wilkie Collins called “The Frozen Deep” in which he played the...