How to Appreciate Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities

A glimpse of different people and human nature through "Twin Cities"

A long time ago, before I came into contact with this book, I was moved by the rhythmic and wise and thoughtful sentences at the beginning, but I never thought about the meaning behind it, let alone the so-called "Twin Cities". connotation. There are many translations of it, and my principle of choice is the choice of words at the beginning. However, in the final analysis, this is an English novel, so when citing the narrative characters and the original text, I tend to express in English.

This story is set in the French Revolution, so the whole background is dark and low, and the people's suffering and resistance are too furious and uncontrollable revenge makes people feel heavy. But like all classic stories without the theme of love, the most moving chapter here is paralegal Sydney Carton willing to die instead of Charles Darnay in order to fulfill Lucie Manette and Charles Darnay. At the end of the story, when Lucie ManetteCharles Darnay was old, they still remember the victim in their hearts, and the victim's weight in each other's hearts is heavier than love.

In addition to being moved, I had to calm down and think about the facts that the whole story was about to reflect. The Twin Cities, London and Paris, presented different contexts in those turbulent times. In my impression, London is a modest city, as suave as the English gentleman, advocating tradition. And Paris, sometimes very radical, surrounded by revolutionary trends, vigorous but inevitably out of control. It doesn't matter whether it is good or bad, because history has become inevitable, and I just want to see different human natures from the comparison of the two cities.

I don’t know when it started, I stopped rashly dividing people into two extremes, good and bad, good and evil, because I realized that human nature is complex, and there is no absolute boundary between good and evil. Defarge and his wife, Madame Defarge, are representatives of the suffering general public who endured

Despite the hardships of life and the oppression of the upper classes, they were able to rescue Dr. Manette at the very beginning, but when the Great Revolution swept through France, the fireworks of revenge blinded their minds, and they were determined to set aside those who had never done evil and had given up their noble titles. Charles Darnay, a descendant of the nobleman, died, turning a deaf ear to the explanations and requests of the kind and righteous Dr. Manette. In that extreme situation, the common people have been instigated, and that kind of radical behavior, the mentality of revenge will always lead people to extremes, and bring harm to the kind-hearted life and even themselves. Perhaps gentle reforms are a good way to avoid extreme destruction—perhaps causing eternal pain in the soul, or destroying those precious and priceless cultures

Legacy may be the fine spirit precipitated by the lost history...

Finally back to the opening "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope , it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short. The period was so far like the present

period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. "It is about that era, but it seems to apply to every era. Strong speculativeness echoes our era in my mind, and where should we go? I always believe that human nature plays a decisive role in the process of history, and the wheels of history are rolling, we can stay awake enough and not be Is it blinded by the frenzy and agitation of the moment? This is the thinking brought to me by Shuangcheng, but I can't give an answer...