Sea Imagery in Charles Dickens’s a Tale of Two Cities

Gft. World Lit. -4 22 April 2012 Sea Imagery in Charles devils A drool of Two Cities In Charles fiends Book A Tale of Two Cities, he illustrates the french Revolution and its effect on the masses. Through the stories of revolutionaries, property-owning, and press down-class citizens he creates a duality between Paris, France, and London, England, to admonish England some what leave al one and only(a) happen if their giving medication continues to run as Frances does. Dickens uses imagery of the ocean to warn that a hellacious governing body leads to an equ all toldy hellacious revolt. The focus of Dickenss book centers on the hellacious governance that precepts France.Aristocracy and upper-class society work the puppet of the countrys presidency. Cover to cover, The apologue actually begins and ends with a description of the nobilitys abuses of the poor. (Gonzalez-Posse 347). The books original words form a dichotomy between the lives of each class. Then in the fin al lines, Sydney Carton remarks on his sacrifice as he awaits the guillotine pressed on him by the wrath of the politics. In the book, Darnay battles with his uncle, Monsieur de Marquis, about the unfair treatment from the nob slighte and that because of it France in all such(prenominal) things is changed for the worse (Dickens 127).Darnays concern about the manipulation and use of lower classes to socially raise hoi polloi, like his uncle, heightens as they discuss the treatment, lack of ack right offledgment, and to admit their neglect. Dickens uses this to prove the governments dreadfulness. Most any peasant before 1775 experienced hardships, but without attention it worsens. Government has no disregard during this time as to how they treated their spate and most provocatively essay it In by chance the novels cruelest thought, soldiers play upon a common taboo and allow an executed mans blood to run into a village well, knowing that the community leave behind be obliterat ed. (Rosen 94). Darnay continues to press his command on his uncle about aristocracys abuses protesting that Even in my fathers time we did a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came between us and our pleasure whatever it was. (Dickens 128). Darnays disagrees with how people utilize silver and status to tyrannize those lower than them to achieve even their smallest goals. On a less violent note, whatsoever just refuse to recognize the problem with Frances people. Dickens demonstrates how the aristocracy ives the blue life by showing how one Monseigneur could swallow a great umteen things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France. (Dickens 109). Upper-class citizens indulging in luxuries consecrate no mind to the poor around them who made up the great majority of the country. They choose money to eat and swallow any food they pleased while others sc avenge daily for a likely dinner. Looking back at the history of events leading up to the Revolution, There is, no doubt a great deal of truth in this view of the matter, (Stephen 155).The hellacious government oppresses the people of France. Devastation did not rule France before the cruel wrath of the aristocracy reigned over. In Dickenss book, he displays a scene of Mr. Lorry when he first meets Lucie Manette and a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a nestling whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very channel on frore time when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high. (29). Lucie lost her family as a baby, her father to the Bastille and her mother to death, so Mr. Lorry takes her a sort from France to grow in England.Times have not yet reached the peak of pain the peoples spirits run high with hope. Dickens uses sea imagery without the book to demonstrate the intersections between social classes who had cerebrated themselves to live as parallels before. Now things have changed, The centuries of arist ocratic rule have left(p) France a waste land. (Rosen 93). Nothing in France lives anymore, death, depression, and oppression have left France desecrated. The French lose all hope as they prepare to storm the Bastille, Every living creature there held life as of no account, and was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it. (Dickens 221). No lone soul in the crowd troubles with what might become of them or those around them. The ability to reason a life hard situation over survival has lost them and the mob prepares to lay their lives down. Oppression consumes the nation and even the rot of friendship befalls them. Successful lawyer Mr. Stryver differs very much from his assistant and friend Sydney Carton in Dickenss book. Stryver treats Carton as below him and conveys himself as, dragging his useful friend in his wake, like a boat towed astern. (Dickens 211). Stryver uses Carton to accomplish his drive to excel socially, pulling Carton by the rough waves of busted that he creates. As a whole, the people of France find joy in watching the brutal executions of others hoping that it will satisfy the aristocracys thirst for blood. Oppression drives them to the point where trials rush and every sentence reaps death. In the event of Darnays trial, Dickens renders the justice system as, the public current of the time set in addition strong and too fast for him. (270).The jury and the spectators press for a quick trial ending in death. Darnay frets he will not get the chance to defend his self. This behavior is only a consequent of the governments oppression, epoch a great part of the novel is spent detailing the force-out surrounding the storming of the Bastille and the beginnings of the Reign of Terror, the narrative is punctuated by reminders of the kind of violent abuses that instigated this anger in the first place. (Gonzalez-Posse 347). Terrors of the government send the people into frenzy they want to take an eye for an eye.This only pro ves Dickenss point, that abandon and oppression only lead to more of the same. (Gonzalez-Posse 347). The evidence indicates that the government leaves the people of France with only one choice, to harvesting the violent acts that have devastated them. When presented with a life threatening situation, human instinct leaves one with two choices affair or evasion. Threat of life though will usually end in strive for survival. The ladened in Dickenss book choose to fight for their survival through violence.One critic discusses this choice, there are two possible ways in which violence may be exorcised first, as a spontaneous arc from slavishness through self-regardless violence second, as a calculated retreat from self-abandonment toward the use of violence against others in an take on to make ones transcendent liberation endure in the world. (Kucich 101). The people have the ability to unleash themselves on the government without warning or organization. These instances would be each individual lash out at the government but they would not ensure liberty.Their second possible choice of violence downs rebellion in companys such as the storming of the Bastille where everyone gives up everything to achieve one common goal. Trouble arises for more than just the aristocracy though, For both men, the Revolution is a tumultuous sea with spinning whirlpools. Innately violent Mother Nature replaces the civilized cast (Bloom 22). Hardships and trials arise for all social classes, confusion runs wild amongst the people brought on by nature make the Revolution inevitable. The crowd surrounding Monsieur Defarge compels him to fight during the torming of the Bastille, So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing on him, (Dickens 251). The strength of passion in the mass of angry people around Defarge raises a feeling inwardly him, mob mentality, to fight as well. Dickens uses the word resistless to illustrate that fighting back this feeling, the unwieldy u rge to do as those around him, cannot be done. Fighting as a unified group derives from the human instincts when ladened, It follows the Revolutions progression as the downtrodden peasants unite to overthrow their oppressors, (Gonzalez-Posse 345).Naturally, struggle for survival pushes one to destroy or vanquish whatever puts them at risk. The French peasants as a whole effect that this brute force presents itself as their only way to save themselves. Blood flows like small streams through the cobblestone streets in every violent scene of Dickenss book. The government brings it on first when a cask of wine breaks in the streets and people are on their hands and knees lapping it up like dogs because they are so starved from poverty.A man writes BLOOD on the walls and the wine stains lips and hands as if it truly were. As the book progresses, the peasants bring out the bloodshed. In the beginning, Mr. Lorry takes a walk on the beach. While looking at the rocks and other things brou ght to the surface by the waves, now tumbling around, Dickens portrays it for his readers, the sea did what it liked, and what it like was destruction. (Dickens 27-28). Up until this point Dickens has not had enough time to make too many references to the people French as the sea.Instead of speaking of them directly he foreshadows the upcoming revolution about to strike and the devastation it will cause. After the scene where the cask splits, lamplighters illuminate the street with the dim bite of candles and here Dickens introduces, Indeed they were at sea and the ship and crew were in peril of tempest. (Dickens 39). The oppressed hold up the aristocracy because, after all, there would be no upper-class without a underclass to hold them up. Government can not exist without residents to govern.The word peril implies the imminent danger of a storm that cannot be avoided, the Revolution where peasants will rock and threaten the lives of those they uphold. Storms like the one Dicken s predicts bring decease and ruin in the most upsetting of ways. Those who were once civilized humans are now raging, When the mob turns homicidal, its impulse is plainly cannibalistic, with its victims often torn limb from limb. (Rosen 95). Primitive aspects of human nature inhumed under years of manners from societys rules break free from hiding places and unfold on the aristocracy and government of France.Dickens fast forwards his readers though time when the revolution has not yet ended, -the libertine earth shaken by the rushes of an angry ocean which had no ebb, but was always on the flow, high and higher to the terror and wonder of the beholders on the shore- (Dickens 231). The Revolution has failed to die down. Instead it persistency in its go through holds the attention of the aristocracy and government who have not so far suffered from it and now await its arrival. While the Revolution wares on, those participating in it see it unravel only in a moment.In the grindsto ne scene, peasants work hurriedly to sharpen their weapons, to a viewer, All this was seen in the vision of a drowning man (Dickens 260). The adrenaline rush from the worship of the killings about to take place clutters the mind making the processing of this moment all too quick. The minds of unstoppable revolutionaries are not thinking, just the primal instinct to attack. Psychology explains it as, this yearning for the pure release of self-violence is set as the ultimate form of desire for freedom, (Kucich 101).The hellacious aggression exhibited by the oppressed people of France reflects the crimes done to them before. This immanent passion once repressed does not break out with such hate until a dreaded cause arises. Oppression leaves the people of France with two choices. Fighting confirms the only logical answer where as flight would have them run away to another oppressed county. Revolution supplies the only sufficient means of revenge, The novel presents two sources of violence, the heartless and reckless disdain of the nobility and the base savagery of the rebelling masses responding to it. (Gonzalez-Posse 347).The two way road here makes cruelty a give and take relationship between social classes. From the blue-collars point of view, the only fair way for revenge has the aristocracy undergo the same direct of pain as they do. Peasants suffer from starvation, disease, and death. While the wage-earning does not have the ability to deprive the upper-class of their money and lavish riches, they can however cause a violent uproar in bodily pain to meet the level of their own. So in essence, the Revolution lacks the unnecessary gore some believe it has, instead a reasonable reaction to the upper-classs malice government and, The people, says Mr.Dickens, in effect, had been spendthrift by long and gross misgovernment and acted like wild beasts in consequence. (Stephen 155). The oppressed French pardon their actions and choices because the gover nment inflicts pain on them first. The carefree government, practically run by the aristocracy, can be called undermine for their crimes against the people. Freedom must be obtained through violence and this can arguably be said to be moved by laudable motives, such as a desire to overturn OPPRESSION and avenge or protect their loved ones. (Gonzalez-Posse 347).Examples for justification of the lower-classs choices come in high absolute frequency in Dickenss book. Talking of an upper-classman, visual appearances show just how different the two classes are, his stockings, was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighboring beach, or the specs of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. (Dickens 27). To have enough money to be able to have garments as neat as Dickens describes them here has become unreal. Specifically, when around 97% of Frances population does not have money to buy daily bread.The sea imagery used here describes the small number of people who can afford to live this way. They come few and far between like droplets of water on a boats sail, or white caps of waves. Justice for the oppressed finds its way solitarily through violence making their choices for revolution feasible, The liberating intentions behind the lower classes violence, however, are only a response to the restrictive image of non-human freedom and the represented violence that defined the power of the class of Monseigneur. (Kucich 102). Upper-class, defined as having money, power, and influence, abuses of lower-classes and influences government to allow them to get away with it. Lower-class citizens require a violent revolution to gain freedom from their oppressors, without it they would be driven to ruin. The misgovernment of France leads to the oppression of its lower-class. Aristocracy abuses their power through violence and eventually pushes the lower-class into a position where they feel their lives threatened.Human instinct tells the oppressed t hat they must fight back in secernate to gain their safety and their freedom. The governments violent oppression causes the Revolution, Sow the same seed of raptorial license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind. (Dickens 381). Dickenss writes this book to warn England that if they continue to poorly govern their country as France does then they will inevitably have a revolution of their own on their hands.