Lecture Notes: Tale of Two Cities

Lecture Notes: Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Notes provided by different people of our group:

Jenna Noce, MirandaNillo, and Lesther Valenzuela

• 3^rd city is Manchester other than London and Paris
• Dickens is inspired by the play he acted in “The Frozen Deep”
• The experience of performing inspired him
• Dickens experienced the occurrences that happened in the story in his own real life
• Self-Sacrifice played a big part
• The production of the play was performed in Manchester
• He thought it should be performed by professional actors and actresses
• He then fell in love with a woman named Ellen and left his wife
• Ellen also played a role in the play. She was Lucie
• Now the character, Lucie, in Tale of Two Cities, was inspired by Ellen and her role in “The Frozen Deep”
• One character in the story, Carlton, stood out to Dickens the most because of his selflessness and willingness to be there for the one that he loves
• Dickens publically announced his separation from his wife
• Also he left his publishing company and started a new one
• The suffering in London was depicted by Dickens’s experiences in London at a very young age
• “London is like a newspaper”
• “Everything is there & everything is disconnected”
• Evident connections between his writing and & London
• He then visited Paris in 1844 and was extremely inspired by it
• He was surrounded by progress
• Dickens was interested in the dark side of Paris
• Visited the morgue?
• “Sets us back in time while still writing like the present”
• A historical story that was written in the modern
• Story is set in the time period between the years of 1757-1793
• Story was publicly released as monthly columns
• Dickens states “Best story I have written”
• “impact comes from its inevitability

• the storm threatens the livelihood of London
• prisoners were broken free from the storm
• the seven personas
• Dickens was thorough in his research
• Novel has theme of creation of world in the 1700’s and the theme of history
• Based on several personal stories by Dickens
• Voice is direct from narrator
• “glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged”
• Recurring theme of death
• Depth of personality identifies another layer in the novel
• Characters become mysteries with each other
• “Pride, content, defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation succeeded one another”
• Dr. Mannette is recalled to life in the dream
• Lucie is born before Dr. M was put into prison
• Highly personal things in Dickens experiences forms the novel
• Last movement of novel-the guillotine
• Carlton sacrifices his life for Charles Darnay and Lucie Darnay because of his love for Lucie
• The child of the Darnay’s reflects Carlton