The Poor In Charles Dickens A Tale Of Two Cities

Everyone deserves basic human rights, such as food and fair treatment. The way the poor are oppressed and deprived of basic human rights by the French aristocracy in Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”, justifies the need for the oncoming revolution. The luxuries that the rich have included that “ It took four men, all four men a-blaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulate even of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur’s lips” (Dickens 105). They were taking money that could be spent helping the poor and frittering it away on useless extravagances. The poor could barely afford enough food to keep themselves and their families alive, and they felt wronged by the disparity between the social classes. The anger

The reasons the people of France are so poor are “the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there” (114). The rich keep taking what the poor do not have. The poor are sacrificing everything they have in order for the rich to have extremely luxurious lives. The rich have an opportunity to fix the disparity between the classes, and instead they make it worse to better their own lives. The view of the Marquis is “Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, [...] will keep dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof [...] shuts out the sky” (124). Repression of the poor only makes their hatred for the Marquis grow. Keeping the people repressed has the opposite effect that the Marquis thinks it has. Fighting back against repression is a valid reason for a revolution. The poor are right in their grievances towards the rich because of the disparity between the classes and the treatment they receive from the