A Tale Of Two Cities: Savagery

In the novel, A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens views the French Revolution controversially. Prior to the French Revolution, Charles Darnay attempts to escape his noble French heritage and unite his English family. During the Revolution, the French peasantry reverses roles with the French nobility and condemns all French aristocrats, including Charles Darnay. While Dickens sympathizes the Revolutionary’s struggle for liberation, he opposes the evil nature of the Revolutionary’s mob mentality. Through the controversial representation of the savage yet celebratory nature of mobs appearing in front of Monsieur Defarge’s wine shop, and at the Carmagnole, Dickens criticizes the French Revolution as a whole. The Carmagnole, a ghastly French promenade,

A large wine cask lay spilled flowing through an inanimate street of Sainte Antoine, yet: “A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices—voices of men, women, and children—resounded in the street while this wine game lasted” (35). Men, women, and children all, enthusiastically delay their business, to run to the spot and join in on the wine game. Dickens constructs a joyous game from Mr. Defarge’s mishap to display how the French peasantry comes together for the greater benefit of their social class. Similarly, in the French Revolution, the French Peasantry joyously celebrates their victories over the French nobility, exhibiting their companionship. Controversially, Saint Antoine’s mob also emits the trait of savagery. As the wine game diminishes and the pain returns to Saint Antoine’s citizen’s cadaverous faces, Dickens exclaims: “The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there” (36). In time, blood-shed will emerge on the streets of Saint Antoine and yield its citizens with a red stain. The citizens of Saint Antoine act like savage animals as they swarm to the spilled wine, scooping up “the blood”, and smearing it on their faces. In a larger sense, Dickens correlates this scene to foreshadow the Revolutionary’s ravenous hunger for noble blood, which will be shed during the