Tale of Two Cities One Pager-1^st book

            Aside from the world-renowned first paragraph of “A Tale of Two Cities,” the intricately symbolic introduction to chapter five that describes the spilt wine is perhaps the most interesting passage so far, with so many possible interpretations. It has already been concluded that the wine represents freedom and that the people running up to take a drink represent the freedom-starved public that jumps at the opportunity for revolution. However, far more symbolism can be found than just that.

 For one, the rough, irregular form of the road that “dammed it [the wine] into little pools” (Dickens 34) and created “little streams of wine that started away in new directions” (35) perhaps represent the unpredictable courses of revolution and human nature that sometimes cause freedom and revolutions themselves to turn in unsuspected and sometimes undesirable ways. An example of such unpredictability lies within France’s very own revolution. When the National Assembly took Bastille, created several new constitutions, and executed King Louis, the people hope for a more liberal society, only to find themselves in the mercy of the reign of terror and Napoleon not long after.

            The description of the women in the passage is also symbolical. It is described that some men “tried to help the women, who bent over the shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers” (34).  Women, for a long time, have been denied the right to relish the freedom men could. The freedoms of speech, press, and religion promised in the Declaration of the Rights of Man promised did not extend to women, as the freedom “had all run out between their fingers.”

            “There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it that there might’ve been a scavenger in the street...” (35). In this vital quotation, Charles is conceivably saying that there is no real way to completely stop the will of revolution as “there was no drainage to carry off the wine.” The French Revolution was extreme, with the people fighting against governments despite the efforts to control the people with strict laws and taxes. The mud, however, perhaps represents the abomination that many times appears in a revolution like the one described. The Reign of Terror and the violence of beheading King Louis and so many others, were impurities that could be seen as contaminating the revolution like mud, though people still relished it and “drank from the wine” of freedom. However, I cannot decipher either literally or symbolically the mentioning of scanvenger.

            Dickens was very heavy on symbolism in “A Tale of Two Cities,” and no passage is a better example than this one. With hidden messages about human and revolutionary nature, the rights of women, and both the power and hostility of revolution, there is not one sentence that is not a symbol, and every statement relates in concord with the idea of revolution.