Tale Of Two Cities: Morality

In the novel, A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, the author’s personal life can be seen influencing the society he establishes in the novel, and its types of morals and ethics. Morality is the principle concerning the distinction between right and wrong behavior, while ethics is one’s behavior guided by their own moral principles. Dickens conveys his views on morality and ethics by reinforcing important moments in his life into the novel’s society when he portrays and describes the ideas of hunger, social class, and the corrupt justice system.
At a young age, Dickens’ father was sent to jail for debt. In the novel, a character named Lucie, finds out that her father is alive, but has wasted eighteen years of his life rotting in jail.

One of the most important and influential problems being hunger. Dickens uses hunger repeatedly to emphasize the presence of starvation found everywhere, while also displaying the effect the impoverished conditions have on the inhabitants’ behavior. When Dickens first introduces the poor people of France, he describes that they are savagely drinking wine from a muddy road. The author characterizes them as animals and conveys their barbaric ethics in their actions. Not only that, but there is a myth that says Marie Antoinette tells the poor, “Let them eat cake!”. In the novel, a character named Foulon says, “Let them eat grass!”. Seeing how animal-like the French poor people are, they will not sit back and let others talk about them like that. The poor people revolt; Foulon’s phrase costs him his life and also the image of the wealthy French people. The poor do not have food to eat, let alone bread. Dickens’ views on the infamous myth of Marie Antoinette determined the morality of the wealthy French people, since not everyone has four people to mouth feed them hot chocolate. Additionally, towards the beginning of the novel, Dickens characterizes the poor French people as crows, while the rich were identified as “birds of song and feather”. When the author was uncovering the traits of these birds, he exposes the idea of the birds of song and feather relishing in their own