Tale Of Two Cities Analysis

Seeds of Death Napoleon Bonaparte once said that, “Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily,” (Napoleon). Before a revolution people are living in their own unglorified and defeated state that kills them inside until they cannot stand another second of their oppressed lives and they rise up to take control of their fate. Sometimes this is for the better, sometimes for the worse. In the case of the French Revolution, the people rose up but ended up changing the lives of others for the worse as they bettered theirs. In A Tale of Two Cities, the author, Charles Dickens reveals this truth that the spiritual lives of all people depend upon the hope of renewal through the events of the murder of the Monseigneur, the
Antoine storm the Bastille. Dickens says that the battle ended with “Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes…” (209). The archetype of seven represents the completion of a cycle, and the violent and cruel cycle of accusing and incriminating the innocent ends with the peasants taking over the Bastille. The people in the prison had no hope that they would be released as long as the aristocracy reigned over them causing them to immediately point blame to the guards. The citizens also had little hope that they would ever be free of this oppressive reign so they did the only thing they had the power to do, they revolted. The effect of this revolt however, as seen with the storming of the Bastille, was a violent bloodlust that turned the citizens of France into the oppressors they fought so hard to free themselves from. They arrest and sentence people to death without trial, just as the aristocracy did to them for all of those
It is up to the person to take control of their lives because death rarely comes when he is wanted. People can continue to sit on the sidelines or they can choose to give their life meaning and purpose. Death is both the hero and villain of every story. However, which side he takes depends on the actions of the