A Tale of Two Cities “Kid Who Die”, by Langston Hughes explores the effects of indifference on the lives of children, who are unable to escape the confines of society. In “Kids Who Die”, the concept of forced division is echoed through Charles Dickens’, A Tale of Two Cities. The struggles of the French peasants before the Revolution mirrors a majority of the obstacles faced by the youth of the early twentieth century. One major struggle faced by the victims within both works is the unfair circumstances provided to them by life. In the poem, the children face a much more prepared enemy. This enemy takes the form of adults, who are ironically described as, “ ...the wise and the learned”. As yet despite their knowledgeable rational, many of
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In A Tale of Two Cities, a majority of the nobles are completely apathetic towards the lower class. In one important turning point within the story, the Marquis run over the child of a peasant with his carriage. Rather than truly atone for the murder, the Marquis merely responds with, “It is extraordinary to me,’ said he, ‘that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way.” (Dickens 102). The Marquis as evidenced by his declaration seems to only view the peasant as a roadblock, instead of human beings. In the poem, “Kids Who Die”, the adults who control high positions are described as content to believe in the false peace created by corruption. Rather than support human freedom they are described as using, “laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets / To frighten the people---”. In both works, the powerful are too content to worry about the troubles of the less fortunate. The poem, “Kids Who Die”, and the novel, A Tale of Two Cities, uses their similarity oppressed individuals to bring focus to the divide between the fortunate and the less-fortunate. Hughes does this by symbolically representing the problems in his own time period through the effects it has on children. While Dickens incites the bloody French Revolution as his method of voicing his warnings to
In A Tale of Two Cities, a majority of the nobles are completely apathetic towards the lower class. In one important turning point within the story, the Marquis run over the child of a peasant with his carriage. Rather than truly atone for the murder, the Marquis merely responds with, “It is extraordinary to me,’ said he, ‘that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way.” (Dickens 102). The Marquis as evidenced by his declaration seems to only view the peasant as a roadblock, instead of human beings. In the poem, “Kids Who Die”, the adults who control high positions are described as content to believe in the false peace created by corruption. Rather than support human freedom they are described as using, “laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets / To frighten the people---”. In both works, the powerful are too content to worry about the troubles of the less fortunate. The poem, “Kids Who Die”, and the novel, A Tale of Two Cities, uses their similarity oppressed individuals to bring focus to the divide between the fortunate and the less-fortunate. Hughes does this by symbolically representing the problems in his own time period through the effects it has on children. While Dickens incites the bloody French Revolution as his method of voicing his warnings to