Tale Of Two Cities Revenge Quotes Essay

Author Charles Dickens innocently declares England and France as “the best of times and the worst of times.” However, this saying does not encapsulate the true vileness and radical beliefs in these countries. In the novel A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens uses the vengeful characters Madame Defarge and Gaspard to highlight the corruption of revenge.

Charles Dickens presents the altering of character via revenge through the character Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge’s seeking of justice turned to bloodlust whilst attempting to avenge her broken family emphasizes the corruption revenge causes. In the beginning of the novel, Madame Defarge is seen as an innocent woman who knits behind a counter in a wine shop. However, it promptly became clear

The Marquis once again committed a terrible act of violence and slaughtered Gaspard’s child in front of him. Gaspard’s yearning to avenge his murdered son being the cause of his death shows the danger of vengeance. A few chapters after Gaspard’s son was brutally murdered by the Marquis, he ended up killing him, shown in the quote, ““It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified” (Dickens 98). This quote highlights the aftermath of the Marquis’ murder. It was made known later in the novel that Gaspard was the one who killed the Marquis. The words Dickens uses in this excerpt, like “suddenly started”, “made angry”, etc. to describe his deceased face shows that the death was violent and brutal. Gaspard had never been described as a violent person prior, so the cruelty of the murder illustrates what revenge has done to Gaspard and his mind. While Gaspard’s crime could be justified because he did it for his son, it is still a crime that does not fix what happened. In fact, it leads to bigger issues. One issue is Gaspard’s execution one year after the death of the Marquis. The circumstances of his death were reported in the fragment, “On the top of the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the air. He is hanged there forty feet high” (Dickens 131). Gaspard is eventually murdered by hanging because he killed the Marquis. His death was especially brutal and cruel, as his corpse was left dangling over the water supply of France. This greatly shows the danger of revenge because Gaspard was so blinded by it, he ended up being executed. Revenge corrupts humanities minds to the point where they are unrecognizable, and terrible things end up happening to