In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens’s tone toward death is satirical. Any crime committed in England results in death. When the narrator says that “the hangman, [was] ever busy and ever worse than useless”, Dickens shows his judgment (5). He comments on how there are so many crimes punishable by death that it makes it less impactful. Dickens believes that the death sentence is ineffective on all crimes. He mocks the fact that so many people were hanged but it did nothing to stop the crimes from happening. Dickens also shares his belief on the price of lives. Madame Defarge asks to Lucie about her husband, “is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be so much to us now” (273). She believes that one life is worthless, because one
