Valentine's Day Reading: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

[Scheherazade]

This year we are reading A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens during the Valentine's Day week.

Please post your comments and questions here.

From amazon.com:

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are all drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror and soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.

Free Online Copy

[DickZ]

I would like to participate. Not only did I enjoy A Tale of Two Cities very much, I would like to learn how the book club works.

[manolia]

I have read the first 3 chapters..sadly enough i have managed to buy one of those editions without notes
Here's my first question (for anyone who has started reading)..
In the following paragraph, from the first chapter, D makes a parable (in lack of a better word) of the preparation of the Revolution (at least this is how i took it ). So what is monsieur Le Woodman making?

It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

sounds like a torturing device

[ntropyincarnate]

Sounds like a reference to the guillotine to me.

[manolia]

Yep i thought that too..but the "sack" bit confused me

[DickZ]

ntropyincarnate is precisely right in identifying the guillotine as the object being introduced very early in the story.

The sack has its own role - just like the knife that is also mentioned.

[manolia]

ntropyincarnate is precisely right in identifying the guillotine as the object being introduced very early in the story.

The sack has its own role - just like the knife that is also mentioned.

Hi DickZ
So what was the sack for?

[Niamh]

to be put over the head of the person sentenced to death

[manolia]

Ahhhh! Thanks

[Alexei]

I've finished the first chapter

Manolia, in the notes in my copy of the book (it's the wordsworth classics edition) this passage was explained with the following sentence:
"Sneez[ing] into the sack" was one of the macabre euphemisms which grew up around the guillotine.

[manolia]

Thanks Alexei
Funny..i have a Wordsworth copy myself but i have a huge volume with 4 Dickens' novels (Oliver Twist, Hard Times, A Tale of two cities, Great Expectations) and no notes
Hehehe Alexei i am ahead of you (but i bet that you'd have finished half the book by tomorrow ).

[Alexei]

Thanks Alexei
Funny..i have a Wordsworth copy myself but i have a huge volume with 4 Dickens' novels (Oliver Twist, Hard Times, A Tale of two cities, Great Expectations) and no notes
Hehehe Alexei i am ahead of you (but i bet that you'd have finished half the book by tomorrow ).

Yes, I've seen this edition in the bookstore, but I like the single edition. I've started collecting them. They have good introductions, take little space, it's easy to carry them around (I read mainly while I traveling) and they are cheap - perfect for me There is only one thing I don't like - they are with paper cover, so I have to be very careful with the book.

Don't count on it, my school term finished today and I am finally going to get some sleep, probably I'll sleep till Saturday

[manolia]

Heh same for me..i have filled 2 and a half shelves with little blue books The fact that they are so cheap is quite tempting

Here's the part that made me laugh

In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals;

and there's more in the second and third chapter but i am not sure how far in the book everyone is

[Hira]

Oooh, I so much wanted to read 'A Tale of Two Cities'. I just read an abridged version when I was a kid and I so much wanted to read it now. Wish I had a time turner! To just get a bit of time.

[Janine]

I have read the first 3 chapters..sadly enough i have managed to buy one of those editions without notes
Here's my first question (for anyone who has started reading)..
In the following paragraph, from the first chapter, D makes a parable (in lack of a better word) of the preparation of the Revolution (at least this is how i took it ). So what is monsieur Le Woodman making?



sounds like a torturing device

Hi manolia, glad to see you in here and I finally found the correct thread for the discussion. I am ahead of all of you, that is if my memory holds up with all you smart people. I have read the book twice now, and I saw a wonderful adaptation by Masterpiece Theater (very true to the book) two or even 3 times now. I also have the Sparks notes study guide, so maybe it has something in there referring to the sigificance of the sack and the knife. I believe the sack used to put the heads into, but it maybe they put sacks over their heads, before they are beheaded. The knife I am not too sure of. Maybe to further decaptitate the heads. The revolutionists were not too nice when they executed the prisoners, nor were they too neat. I recall the heads drop off into a woven basket. The knife might be needed if they did not do a good job with the guillotine. The wooden carts they are referring to transported the prisoners to the gallows - the guillotine. They were constructed of the wood from the forest and looked quite rustic and innocent. I think the passage you quoted indicates they are being made without, any one suspecting their true purposes. This was a good way to introduce the reader early one to the instrument of death, a huge symbol of the cruelity and revengefulness of the revolution.
You all won't regret reading this book - it is amazing!