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I have heard about this book for a long time. And until last semester I finally read A Tale of Two City in English version. To be honest, its Chinese tiltle is typically the knid of classical literature work which i will not give a second glance on for my low level of getting the charm of those books. However, I am so so fasinated by A Tale of Two Cities that is awesome. A Tale of Two Cities is an 1859 historical novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie, whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
And our main female character, Lucie, the daughter of Dr. Manette, and Charles's wife. She just like the perfect role in the TV drama. She played an important role through the book. It may sounds weird. But everytime i read the plot involving her, she just remind me of being fidelity and lovely. With her qualities of innocence, devotion, and abiding love, Lucie has the power to resurrect, or recall her father back to life, after his long imprisonment. Lucie is the novel's central figure of goodness and, against the forces of history and politics, she weaves a "golden thread" that knits together the core group of characters. Lucie represents religious faith: when no one else believes in Sydney Carton, she does. Her pity inspires his greatest deed.
What appeals to me most is the characters in the book regardless of major or minor ones. First is Charles Darney, renouncing the terrible sins of his family, Mr. Darney abandons his position in the French aristocracy to make his own way in England. I think the affection on Lucy must be an important impulse for him to leave. Charles believes in the revolutionary ideal of liberty, but is not a radical revolutionary. Instead, he represents a rational middle ground between the self-satisfied exploitation practiced by the old aristocracy and the murderous rage exhibited by the revolutionaries. It can be judged from his personality that is too kind and innocent. And i am so bewildered by why he insisted of going back to France eventough henknew it is dangerous. And this journey draged almost everyone into troubles and leads to the misery of Carton. But his will was to save his old servant Gabelle but the whole thing impressed me a selfish and stubborn profile. But to be fair, Charles has a heroic sense of justice and obligation, as shown when he arranges to provide for the oppressed French peasantry, and later endangers himself in coming to Gabelle's aid. However, Charles is also deluded in thinking he can divert the force of history and change the Revolution for the better. Similarly, Charles constantly overlooks Sydney Carton's potential and must learn from his wife, Lucie, to have faith in Carton. Charles represents an imperfect but virtuous humanity in whose future we must trust.
Concering of Dr. Manette, an accomplished French physician who gets imprisoned in the Bastille, and loses his mind. In his madness, Manette embodies the terrible psychological trauma of persecution from tyranny. He was the profile of so many poor people suffering from the opress of governor. His former life was so derpressed and it is the destiny that show how uncertainty of an average person’s life in that epoch. Fortunatelly, Manette is eventually "resurrected"—saved from his madness—by the love of his daughter, Lucie. Manette also shows how suffering can become strength when he returns to Paris and gains a position of authority within the Revolution. He didn’t inhibit the marriage bewtten his daughter and Mr. Darney for the sake of their hapinness. But he shouldered all the pressure and suffocating memory which we can ananlyse from his abnormality during the honeymoon. Manette tries to return the favor of resurrection when he saves Charles Evrémonde at his trial. However, Manette is ultimately a tragic figure: his old letter from the Bastille seals Charles's fate. Falling once more into madness, Manette's story implies that individuals cannot escape the fateful pull of history.
And my favourite character of the whole book the role author put liitle words but really broke my heart. In his youth, Sydney Carton wasted his great potential and mysteriously lost a woman he loved. Now he's a drunk and a lawyer who takes no credit for his work. Carton has no hope for his life. Only Lucie understands his potential for goodness. Although under such circumstance, he just shed his pure love on Lucie and protected her with nobody knowing. Even when he knew Lucie was going to marry his friend. He just let it be. At the end of the story, he just saccrificed himself to replace Mr Darney so fearlessly and firmly. Reading about his talks with the little girl before the end of their life, I just can’t ignore how great he was. In his selfless dedication to her and her family, Carton represents the transformative power of love. His self-sacrifice at the end of the novel makes him a Christ figure. By saving Lucie's family, Carton redeems himself from sin and lives on in their grateful memory.
Now is the antagonist——the wife of Monsieur Defarge, Madame Defarge assists the revolutionaries by stitching the names of their enemies into her knitting. As old Chinese saying goes, the pathetic man certainly have something to be despised. Madame Defarge wants political liberty for the French people, but she is even more powerfully motivated by a bloodthirsty desire for revenge, hoping to exterminate anyone related to the Mr. Darney. Where Lucie Manette is the embodiment of pity and goodness, Madame Defarge is her opposite, a figure of unforgiving rage. Over the course of the novel she emerges as a kind of anti-Christ, completely devoid of mercy, and as such comes to symbolize the French Revolution itself, which soon spun out of control and descended into extreme violence.
I want to talk about two characters at hte same time for they are similar at some points. An older gentleman who works for Tellson's bank, Lorry is a model of loyalty and discretion. Lorry hides his emotions under the cover of "business," but he works hard to save the Manettes and to encourage Charles to become Lucie's husband. And Mr. Cruncher, another man in the book. By day, an odd-job man for Mr. Lorry. By night, a "resurrection man"—robbing graves to sell body parts to sketchy doctors. He complains about his wife's praying because it makes him feel guilty about his secret activities, but by the end of the novel he decides to give up his secret job and endorses praying, a sign that he hopes to be resurrected himself through the power of Christ. To be honest, I was a little bit confused about Mr. Crucher. I have a bad impression of him in the former but he seems as loyal and helpful as Mr. Lorry later in the book.
Here is an extract from the book so that we can undersatnd those characters more deeply. Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew her by this time to be, beneath the service of her eccentricity, one of those unselfish creature -- found only among women -- who will, for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bring hopes that never shoneupon their own sombre lives. Lucy survive Doctor Manette and brought him back to British, after testifying for Darney. And on onecertain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walk to their quiet lodgings. However Lucy and Doctor Manette went out,at that time Miss Pross showed up, described by Charles Dickens in the novel as strong of hand, the wild red woman whose character(dissociated from stature) was shortnes. She complained exaggeratedly to Mr. Lorry about dozens of people came and looking at her. Because she regarded Lucy as her darling, who those men are not at all worthy of and she was anxious that those men would take Lucy’s affection away from her. Then Mr. Lorry said words quoted in the question in his inner monologue. According to dictionary, jealousy has two essential meaning, one of which is feeling or showing an unhappy or angry desire to have what someone else has and the other is feeling or showing unhappiness or anger because you think that someone you love likes or is liked by someone else. Miss Prose’s jealousy was derived from her loyalty to Lucy that she didn’t want anyone take Lucy’s affection from her. However, the feeling of jealousy can occur in almost every type of human relationship——from sibling competing to parental attention to peers obtaining admiration for their better academic performance, from coworkers impressing a respected boss to spouse having close relationship with the friend of opposite sex. And usually we experience jealousy when the following three things happen simultaneously: 1. There’s something we want badly. 2. There’s someone who already has what we want. 3. We have doubts about our own ability to get that what we want. Sometimes jealousy can lead to success as it is a driving factor, but unwarranted jealousy often leadspeople to behave in ways that unreasonable or even dangerous. There is no instant cure for jealousy, but accepting that jealousy is normal and making efforts to see things in a new perspectives may help.
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