Book Review: A Tale of Two Cities

By Monica Bean

Everyone quotes the first lines of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, but has anyone ever stopped to think about what the words actually mean? “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” My four-year-old cousin probably knows these famous words, so common are they in our society. What makes this part of Dickens’s tale so memorable? It is easy to start reading A Tale of Two Cities and skip over sections that seem superfluous or unrelated. However, from the beginning Dickens warns the reader that there is more than one side to the events in this time period, and more subtly, to the events in his novel.

A Tale of Two Cities is the story of two men living during the tumultuous French Revolution. Charles Darnay is the classic good guy, Dickens’s original version of Disney’s Aladdin, who is wrongly charged with treason and eventually marries the pure and loving Lucie Manette. Darnay displays great moralistic honor when he renounces his infamous family of Evrémonde, and later when he risks his life to return to Paris to rescue a former servant of his father’s.

Sydney Carton becomes lost within the heroic acts of Darnay, described as “careless and slovenly, if not debauched” the first time they are compared. He is an insolent alcoholic, and the only direction that his life ever appears to take is when he falls in love with Lucie Manette. He is, in short, pathetic and a nuisance to the reader. But “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” and true to his introduction, Dickens proves that life is multi-faceted in the end when Carton surpasses Darnay’s own moral character and becomes the hero in a selfless act that gives meaning to his existence.

Dickens successfully takes the historical events during the French Revolution and transforms them into a modern-day tale of love, virtue and sacrifice. If you’re looking for a novel with as many pieces as a puzzle, a story that jumps around like an intense game of table tennis and a plot that contains as many surprises and heart-wrenching moments as a reality television show, try reading A Tale of Two Cities and remember that life is full of contrasts.