Tale Of Two Cities Inhumanity Analysis

The French Revolution was a time period of rebellion in the late 1700s throughout France. Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities roughly sixty years after the French Revolution, starting as installments in a magazine then publishing his works into a book. The French Revolution was a time when man was extremely inhumane to his fellow man. This inhumanity is seen throughout Dickens’ novel in many ways. He proves that the cycle of man’s inhumanity to man is never ending when people come to watch Darnay’s trial for entertainment, the Marquis kills Gaspard’s child, and the Evermonde brothers kill Madame Defarge’s family.
The townspeople gather to watch Darnay’s trial for inhumane reasons, such as entertainment, eager for him to be found guilty …show more content…
The imagery of inhumanity is seen in the Marquis’s selfish and destructive behavior, specifically when he recklessly runs over the child in his carriage. Dickens depicts how the peasants are completely overshadowed when the Marquis only stops to check on his horses, as he says, “But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on and leave their wounded behind…and there were twenty hands at the horses’ bridles” (83). The Marquis has no sympathy for his actions, but only cares that his horses are in pristine conditions. The Marquis tries to make the situation right by throwing out money to the peasants, only enraging them even more, especially the child’s father, Gaspard. After this act of inhumanity towards the peasants and Gaspard, Gaspard has the urge to take revenge on the Marquis for killing his child as seen when Dickens recounts the downfall of the Marquis, “In the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned…At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with opened mouth and dropped under jaw, looked awe-stricken”(97). The water in the fountain symbolically represents life throughout the novel, and in this scene the water turns to …show more content…
The inhumanity towards man from his fellow man, seen in this novel, is unjustifiable and takes a new spin on revenge. Each family or person wants to avenge a wrongdoing of another, only taking the way they were treated to whole new level of inhumanity. Inhumanity is a result of how one chooses to treat his fellow man; if he choses to treat his brother with hate, then his brother will treat him with hate. Inhumanity is one of man’s greatest flaws and cannot be avoided, but can be overcome with