A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Composed on the 08th of July in the year 2016, at 17:22PM. It was Friday.

At I first I found this book incredibly depressing. I considered summing

up the overall message of the book with "people are shitty" as that was the general thrust of the story.

Wikipedia sums up the story as follows: A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same period.

Yes that's the general arc of the story but it certainly doesn't cover off the gravity of the situation. Basically the story starts off in a time when any of the Aristocracy could have any peasant locked up for no clear reason; was able to murder or rape them at will and where human life (when it came to the lower classes) was worthless. During this time you follow the story of a group of people who were victims in one way or another of the aforementioned atrocities.

Over time civil unease and distress grows until it reaches a tipping point and the French Revolution begins. Now the tables are turned and it's time for the Aristocracy to get their come-uppins - which they do, in spades. There are numerous "trials" with the outcome generally the same for all of them - guilty under penalty of death. At first death looks like public massacre. After some engineering the Guillotine is born. Death happens with an unprecedented swiftness; though with a brutality similar to the earlier time.

With this backdrop many of the victims from the first half of the story should have ended up victorious by the second. Incredulously circumstance manages to twist here and there and they are again victimized though more pointedly and cruelly than before.

If it weren't for the hope generated by a couple of characters in the book doing what was right and good this book would paint a portrait of humanity without redemption. Fortunately that is not the case. There is some light generated and made all the more poignant by the darkness and misery that surrounds.

All in all this was a good read. The characters were interesting and believable. The plot had enough twists and turns to keep the reader entertained. If you are going to let a story depress you you could do it in worse ways than this.

Good Times!

© Jason Clarke 2014 All rights reserved.