Highlights important parts of the novel with a colour-coded system to make it easier to understand and then write a comprehensive essay with quotations and reasoning for the quotations.
Guide
Before 1789
Blue – Poverty described
Yellow – Cruelty of aristocrats described
Green – Actions have consequences. Conflagration and echoes getting more insistent
Revolution starts (14 July 1789)
After 1789
Blue – Violence of revolution described
Yellow – Escalated cruelty of revolutionaries described
Green – Idea that only love redeems/ restores/ brings back life – break the cycle of violence
General
Notes on the passage
Outcomes
- Know how to read longer prose works (novels);
- Place in context and critically analyse any extract from a novel;
- Relate a given extract briefly to the novel as a whole, identifying the novel’s themes and strategies as they are
apparent in the extract;
- Comment on the narrative voice in the extract;
- Write a critical analysis of an extract from the novel, placing the extract in the context of the novel as a whole
and commenting on plot, characterization, themes, imagery and literary devices used in the extract
Background
- Story of French revolution
o Thomas Carlyle: The French Revolution (1837)
▪ Used by Charles Dickens
▪ Published in three parts
• The Bastille
o Prison of political prisoners were kept (Paris)
• The Constitution
o The constitution of the new Republic of France
• The Guillotine
o Named after the revolutionary, Dr Guillotine
o Tried to find a way to dispatch people quickly and painlessly
▪ Carlyle thought of the revolution as a divine punishment of the Ancien Régime
• The cruelty that the old regime metered out on the people of France
• Dickens comments on this cruelty
▪ Representatives of the French monarchy were King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette who were
beheaded in 1792
- Published in 1859
o Before it was published as a book
▪ Was published as a weekly journal
• Publish 3 or 4 chapters
▪ Made more money and then publishing it later in book form
o Journal
▪ All the Year Round
▪ April 30 1859 – Saturday
- End of instalment
o These are the instalments that were published weekly
- Dickens was one of the most popular authors of the Victorian era
, o Used to be clubs
o Bought in 200s from around the world
General
Middle of the novel in 1789
- The events and actions of the 1st half of the novel leading up to the storming of the Bastille (14th July 1789)
o Is echoed and reflected in the 2nd half of the novel
o The cruelty in the 1st part is reflected back at them at the cruelty of the revolutionaries
Important and fundamental concepts – echoes
- Actions have consequences
How does Dicken’s write? (His style)
- Writes metaphorically not literally
o Says things in an indirect way
▪ Physical description of settings and characters to express mood/ tone of the passage or the
psychology of his characters
o Shows us the characters’ physical appearance and physical setting and from the deduce what is going
on inside the characters’ heads
- He shows, rather than tells
o Has a dramatic style
- Mystery/ suspense or prolepsis/ foreshadowing
o The cliff-hanger in the weekly journal
o Echo – the event that is a foreshadowing of what is going on
o Chapter 3
▪ Does not name the characters
• He allows this mission to come out on a number of pages – draws us into the story
- Analepsis/ flashbacks
o Does not use as often
o Comes across in Dr Manette – thinking back to the prison, Bastille
- Repetition (of words, ideas, phrases, metaphors, even events and characters)
o Creates patterns and these in turn, generate significance and meaning
▪ Some of these patterns are very subtle and difficult to detect
▪ Charles Darnay looks exactly the same as Sydney Carton
o In order for something to be seen, it has to happen more than once
▪ “It was”
- Often makes use of sarcasm
o Irony that is intended to hurt/ criticize/ satirize
o Cannot be identified without context
o First half of the novel
▪ Everything he says about the Ancien Regime
- Verbs – no finite verbs in some passages; sometimes scenes come alive in an eternal present tense
o Present – big crowds such as storming of the Bastille
o Finite verb – verb with time
o Plays with time often to create eternal present
- Use dark humour to offset and accentuate the grimness of the story
o Nothing funny about social injustice
o He introduces humour into the darkness
▪ Jerry
▪ Miss Pross
▪ Jarvis Lorry
o Humour is used to make the darkness visible
- Uses French idiom translated directly into English
o Gives the sense of another language
o Reading in English but the sentence structure is in French
- Victorian paternalism and sentimentalism
o Victorian era was dominated by males
, o Women were considered to be children
▪ Lucie Manette
- Dicken’s style of characterization
o How he draws or evokes character
o We generalise from particulars to infer unstated but implicit information about character
o Physically characteristics are used to reflect inner character
o Names reveal character(istics)
▪ Lucie (Latin lux)
• Light – golden haired girl
▪ Darnay
• French damné: damned
• English euphemism “‘Darn it!”
• Chalres Darnay is damned by him inheritance as he is related to The Marquis De St
Evrémonde
▪ The Marquis de St Evrémonde
• Dévorer le monde
• To devour the world
▪ Miss Pross
• Prim & cross
• Upright and indignant
• Cross in protecting her dear Lucie
▪ Jerry Cruncher
• Bone cruncher
▪ Mr Lorry
• Worry
• Always wringing his hands
▪ Stryver
• Strive
▪ Sydney Carton
o Dickens uses the leitmotif
▪ Leitmotif
• A recurrent theme throughout a musical or literary composition, associated with a
particular person, idea, or situation.
▪ Jerry Cruncher
• She’s always ‘flopping’
• Fingers stained
o Because they have been digging in the dirt at night to steal dead bodies and
sell to medical places
• Spiky hair
• Eyes closed together (like two crooks conspiring)
▪ Lucie
• Golden-haired
• Doll
▪ Mr Lorry
• ‘Man of business’
• Great family friend of the Manette and is actually very involved in the family business
even when he says he is only there for business
▪ Madam Defarge
• Silent
• Knitting
o Put the criminal deeds into the knitted – secret code
o List of names – police looking for so they could be executed
• Sees nothing
o Means she sees everything
o She has a very good memory
- Often makes use of free indirect discourse
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