¶ … Tale of Two Cities An Analysis of Duty and Sacrifice in Dickens' a Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens' 1859 A Tale of Two Cities deals with the dichotomous nature of man: the good and the bad, the selfish and the selfless. These two natures are observed in the two (ironically look-alike) characters, the dutiful Charles Darnay and the derelict Sydney Carton. Yet, just as the novel embodies a dichotomy, shown in its opening statement that "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times," (3) Sydney Carton also embodies a dichotomy: selfish and destructive throughout the tale, he performs one heroic deed in the novel's climax by sacrificing his life for Darnay's. Dickens, here, appears to be sending the message that one good action (such as Carton's) can make up for a lifetime of bad ones. He also appears to be following the Christian ethic that states that no greater love exists than that a man lay down his life for his neighbor. This paper will show Dickens' theme is employed through the characters of Darnay, who demonstrates duty and Carton, who demonstrates sacrifice in A Tale of Two Cities.

In a sense, the antagonist of Dickens' Tale is a kind of menace, whose effects are noted in two ways: in the bloody, violent revolution underway in Paris, and in the unbloody but drunken antics of the lawyer Sydney Carton. The novel begins with the return of Miss Manette's father, who has been unjustly imprisoned in France. The Manettes are represented as kind, humble, virtuous people,...

Both Darnay and Carton profess their love for Miss Manette, but having chosen the former, she rejects the latter. Carton, who understands that he is not worthy of her love anyway, still vows to be true to her -- despite his unseemliness: "In the hour of my death, I shall hold sacred the one good remembrance…that my last avowal of myself was made to you" (191). In this respect, there is something inside Carton that mirrors the good nature of the dutiful Darnay.
Because Darnay is so dutiful, however, his life is thrown into danger. The duty that Darnay shows is to a servant of his father's. The servant has been imprisoned by the mob in Paris, and Darnay, out of loyalty, returns to his home to set the servant free. The extent of Darnay's attitude toward duty is revealed to its fullest here: Darnay knowingly walks into a trap that has been set for him by the revolutionary, blood-thirsty, anti-aristocratic mob, best represented by the Defarges -- especially Madame Defarge, aka The Vengeance. His life being sought, Darnay is himself imprisoned and sentenced to death on the guillotine. His new wife Lucie Manette is grief-stricken. And what seems like a new opportunity for Carton to pursue his love interest actually becomes an opportunity for Dickens to unravel the fullness of his theme: which is that love cannot exist without duty and sacrifice, a fact that Carton will now come to realize.

Carton, who leading up to the novel's…