A Tale Of Two Cities LA Essay Example For Students

A Tale Of Two Cities LA Essay Word Count: 1961A Tale of Two CitiesThis paper is a literary analysis over the book A Tale of Two Cities, written by Charles Dickens. It contains information about the author, plot, and characters in the story. Devices and styles used to complete the book are also in this paper. On February 7, 1812 in Portsea, Charles Dickens began his life. His father, John Dickens, spent little time with Charles. The family lived in poverty and John was in prison much of the time. When Charles was two, the family moved to London. At age twelve, Charles worked in a factory pasting labels on bottles of shoe polish. He only worked there for a few months, but it was a miserable experience that would remain with him his whole life. Dickens attended school until he was fifteen. He always enjoyed reading, and especially adventure stories, fairy tales, and novels. Authors like William Shakespeare, Tobias Smollet, and Henry Fielding greatly influenced his work. However, most of the knowledge he used as an author came from his environment around him. In the late 1820s, Dickens became a newspaper writer and reporter. Dickens= first book, Sketches by Boz, written in 1836, consisted of articles he wrote for the London Chronicles. After he married Catherine Hogarth in 1836, his first work printed in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. This was the beginning of his career. When Dickens was twenty-four, he became famous for the rest of his life. His first fame came with The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club with Dickens= adventure stories. Other works followed such as, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and Our Mutual Friend. In 1837, Catherine=s sister Mary, died. Dickens suffered much grief. This led some scholars to believe that Dickens loved Mary more than Catherine. Dickens and Catherine had ten children in all. In 1958 the couple separated. Through his life, Dickens was an actor, a conjurer, a poet, a lecturer, and an editor. Dickens had a remarkable mental and physical energy. This led to involvement in many organizations until 1865 when Dickens health started to decline. In 1870 Dickens died of a stroke. The world remembers him as one of the best authors in history. In two basic locations the story takes place. The main action is in England and France during the French revolution. The action begins in 1775 at Tellson=s bank in England, then it moves to France in a wine shop where the rebels have headquarters. Tellson=s bank in England is also a rebel base. The people in France are poor and the nobles keep getting richer. This leads to dirty streets and unhealthy people. This is the cause for the revolution. Doctor Manette is a main character in the story. He was a well-respected doctor that fell into trouble among nobility before the time of the story.The nobles put Manette in a prison for eighteen years. These years of solitary confinement drive him crazy. His only comfort in the dark are his tools and workbench that his uses to make imaginary shoes. During these years Manette has no sense of time or anything. Manette was in his fifty=s when he got out of prison. His hair was long and dirty. His well-built body wore thin in those eighteen years . Time and normal life helped to restore Manette=s body and also his mind. After the rebels break Manette out of the Bastille, he evolves back into the man he was before the imprisonment. This took almost three years. We found that Manette is a deeply caring and compassionate family man. He earns the respect and love of most everyone. It takes great strength of character and determination to overcome the horrors of eighteen years of confinement in the Bastille. Manette was a moral man. He knew that the French nobles were wrongfully stealing money and leaving the peasants in poverty. He was a shoemaker in his dreams and a scientist in real life. Manette loved his daughter very much and was happy to give her to Charles Darney in marriage. He knew Darney was a good man and loved his daughter very much. When Darney tried to tell Manette of his past, Manette would not allow him to speak until he and Lucie married. To show the great character that he was, Manette used his knowledge of the prison to return and help Darney escape, even after his terrible experience there. Manette was not without flaw though. At one point everyone has to crack. When Darney told Manette that he was Charles Evermond after the wedding, Manette went back to his solitary mentality. He went back to work with his tools on his shoes until his family buried the tools and bench. They did this and soon Manette had his health back. Pesticides EssayA Tale of Two Cities is a long and boring book. As I look back on the story, I find that the last 120 pages of the book were much more eventful than the first 270 pages. This causes lose of interest early in the story. Without interest, getting anything out of the pages is hard. Then, all of the sudden, the plot becomes exciting and the story is over. This is not the best way to write a story. For these reasons A Tale of Two Cities is not a book for people who are not die hard readers. Works Cited. Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. New York, New York: The New American Library of World Literature, Incl., 1936.