Tale Of Two Cities Tone Analysis

Tone is a literary component of composition, which shows the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience suggested in a literary work. A plethora of authors use tone in order to show the reader the attitudes of the characters and subjects in a literary piece. Charles Dickens uses tone in A Tale of Two Cities, one of Dickens’s most widely read books, to show his critical attitude towards the richer, upper classes. Dickens was not the wealthiest, and even found himself in jail for debt in 1824, but he worked his way up from the bottom. This is why the tone is critical towards the aristocrats in the story, and empathizes with the peasants and Bourgeois, or middle class. Therefore, Dickens uses a critical tone towards the aristocrats in the story, such as the Monseigneur and Monsieur the Marquis . In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens uses tone to be critical over the aristocrats in the book. One aristocrat that Charles

He does this because he was very poor before he became a successful writer, and empathizes with them. Dickens idealizes people in the lower classes, such as Defarge. When writing about these two characters, Dickens portrays him as a likable and moral person. For example, when Gaspard was grieving over the peasant boy’s death, Marquis was very insensitive, but Defarge comforted the mourning man. “I know all, I know all. Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?”(pg 116) This quote demonstrates the caring nature of Defarge through his actions. It also shows that in A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens tends to glorify the lower class rather than the higher aristocrats. Through Dickens’s method of using a respecting tone with Defarge, Dickens shows that he idealizes the lower class over the upper