“A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens scrutinizes the aristocracy by telling tales of injustice during the French Revolution. Dickens employs this notion through a few quintessential events such as, the death of Gaspard’s son, Foulon’s escape and through the French treatment of the impecunious.
In the second book, “A Golden Thread,” the Marquis St. Evrémonde runs over a peasant child when racing his carriage through a town. To absolve himself of his own crime, he throws out a few coins to the child’s father. Unsurprisingly, the father doesn’t accept this “heartfelt apology” instead he becomes hysterical and he throws the coins back. This frustrates the Marquis despite the fact that his carriage killed the boy. Alas, the Marquis is apathetic …show more content…
Dickens shows how far people are willing to go to attain justice, which often breeds injustice. Beyond this, the novel also probes into the horrors of the French Revolution and in turn shows the injustice that lies in the way the French aristocracy served justice. The judicial system in both England and France acted as a source of entertainment rather than a system looking to find actual justice. Because of this ineffective system, men like Charles Darnay and Dr. Manette were imprisoned for long periods of time in the deadly Bastille. The poor were treated with the utmost disrespect and were disregarded as people (as seen with how the Marquis treated Gaspard and his son). Accompanying this, people would heckle during the trials and gather around when someone was being guillotined. For the French aristocracy, justice was just a game, but with that, the Revolutionaries took justice into their own hands. They offered justice to those who needed it, to women like Madame Defarge and killed people like the Marquis and Foulon. Granted, the way the revolutionaries went about serving comeuppance, they actually bred injustice. With that being said, one must realize that there might just not be a fine line between attaining justice and getting
In the second book, “A Golden Thread,” the Marquis St. Evrémonde runs over a peasant child when racing his carriage through a town. To absolve himself of his own crime, he throws out a few coins to the child’s father. Unsurprisingly, the father doesn’t accept this “heartfelt apology” instead he becomes hysterical and he throws the coins back. This frustrates the Marquis despite the fact that his carriage killed the boy. Alas, the Marquis is apathetic …show more content…
Dickens shows how far people are willing to go to attain justice, which often breeds injustice. Beyond this, the novel also probes into the horrors of the French Revolution and in turn shows the injustice that lies in the way the French aristocracy served justice. The judicial system in both England and France acted as a source of entertainment rather than a system looking to find actual justice. Because of this ineffective system, men like Charles Darnay and Dr. Manette were imprisoned for long periods of time in the deadly Bastille. The poor were treated with the utmost disrespect and were disregarded as people (as seen with how the Marquis treated Gaspard and his son). Accompanying this, people would heckle during the trials and gather around when someone was being guillotined. For the French aristocracy, justice was just a game, but with that, the Revolutionaries took justice into their own hands. They offered justice to those who needed it, to women like Madame Defarge and killed people like the Marquis and Foulon. Granted, the way the revolutionaries went about serving comeuppance, they actually bred injustice. With that being said, one must realize that there might just not be a fine line between attaining justice and getting