Tale Of Two Cities Man's Inhumanity Analysis

Corruption of Man’s Inhumanity to His Fellow Man The French Revolution began in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille on July 14th. In fact, the setting of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is during the French Revolution. Charles Dickens writes about many themes in this novel. One of the many themes that are evident throughout the novel is man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. Furthermore, man’s inhumanity to his fellow man corrupts the people involved, such as the revolutionaries, the wood sawyer, and Madame Defarge. Man’s inhumanity to his fellow man is shown to be corrupting the revolutionaries throughout the French Revolution. The La Guillotine is a machine that beheads people during the revolution, and many jokes were made about it, such as “it was the best cure for headache,
The National Razor is a metaphor for the guillotine, because the guillotine is used to behead all of the people that were to be beheaded. Also, the purpose of the guillotine makes the jokes not as funny and makes the people who are making the jokes seem inhumane. Another instance is at the guillotine where there is a crowd of spectators watching the beheading of people. When the beheading of people at the guillotine starts, Dickens says that “A head is held up, and the knitting- women who scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could think and speak, count One. And the knitting women, never faltering or pausing in their work, count Two.” (290, 291, 292). On this day, fifty-two people are going to be beheaded, so the spectators refer to the people being beheaded by numbers instead of their names. The counting of people by numbers is inhumane because the people do not feel pity or care