Tale Of Two Cities Dialectical Journal Essay

Dialectical Journal: Book Three

A Tale of Two Cities Book The Third: “The Track of a Storm”
1. “Every town gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them ad laid them in hold” (chapter 1, page 245).
Setting/ Characterization of society as a whole:

This is intriguing as it portrays the occurring chaos in France. It demonstrates how strict and revolting the peasants have become by stationing on the border of France ready to kill whoever crosses their path. This is a great representation

“‘As a wife and mother,’ cried Lucie, most earnestly, ‘I implore you to have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against my innocent husband, but do use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me as a wife and a mother!’ Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said, turning to her friend The Vengeance: ‘The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known their husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All of our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression, and neglect of all kinds?” (chapter 3, page 267).
Characterization/ Attitude:

This is interesting for it reveals Madame Defarge’s motives have shifted from the aristocracy itself, to killing the entire bloodline of the Evermonde family. Madame Defarge makes it very clear when she confesses to Lucie that she is hungry for obtaining revenge for the unbearable crime committed. Madame Defarge is looking to justify and punish the responsible by taking matters into her own hands in her attempt to right the wrongs.
6. “Scarcely noticing, as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical way Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on his hat, and they went down into the court-yard” (chapter 3, page 264-265).
Characterization/

7. “For the first time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door of his daughter’s husband, and deliver him” (chapter 4, page 270-271).
Characterization/