A Tale of Two Cities Syndney
A Tale of Two Cities - SyndneySydney Carton dies on the guillotine to spare Charles Darnay. How
you interpret Carton's sacrifice- positively or negatively- will
affect your judgment of his character, and of Dickens' entire work.
Some readers take the positive view that Carton's act is a triumph
of individual love over the mob hatred of the Revolution. Carton and
the seamstress he comforts meet their deaths with great dignity. In
fulfilling his old promise to Lucie, Carton attains peace; those
watching see "the peacefullest man's face ever beheld" at the
guillotine. In a prophetic vision, the former "jackal" glimpses a
better world rising out of the ashes of revolution, and long life
for Lucie and her family- made possible by his sacrifice.
This argument also links Carton's death with Christian sacrifice and
love. When Carton makes his decision to die, the New Testament verse
beginning "I am the Resurrection and the Life" nearly becomes his
theme song. The words are repeated a last time at the moment Carton
dies. In what sense may we see Carton's dying in Darnay's place as
Christ-like? It wipes away his sin, just as Christ's death washed
clean man's accumulated sins.
For readers who choose the negative view, Carton's death seems an
act of giving up. These readers point out that Stryver's jackal has
little to lose. Never useful or happy, Carton has already succumbed to
the depression eating away at him. In the midst of a promising
youth, Carton had "followed his father to the grave"- that is, he's
already dead in spirit. For such a man, physical death would seem no
sacrifice, but a welcome relief.
Some readers even go so far as to claim that Carton's happy vision
of the future at the novel's close is out of place with his overall
gloominess. According to this interpretation, the bright prophecies of
better times ahead are basically Dickens' way of copping out, of
pleasing his audience with a hopeful ending.
If Sydney Carton's motives seem complicated to you, try stepping
back and viewing him as a man, rather than an influence on the
story. He's a complex, realistic character. We see him so clearly,
working early morning hours on Stryver's business, padding between
table and punch bowl in his headdress of sopping towels, that we're
able to feel for him. Have you ever known someone who's thrown away
his talent or potential, yet retains a spark of achievement, as well
as people's sympathy? That's one way of looking at Sydney Carton.
Dickens adds an extra dimension to Carton's portrait by giving him a
"double," Charles Darnay. For some readers, Carton is the more
memorable half of the Carton/Darnay pair. They argue that Dickens
found it easier to create a sympathetic bad character than an
interesting good one. Carton's own feelings toward his look-alike
waver between admiration and hostility. But see this for yourself,
by noticing Carton's rudeness to Darnay after the Old Bailey trial.
When Darnay has gone, Carton studies his image in a mirror,
realizing that the young Frenchman is everything he might have been-
and therefore a worthy object of hatred.
It's interesting that both Carton and Darnay can function in two
cultures, English and French. Darnay, miserable in France, becomes a
happy French teacher in England. In a kind of reversal, Carton, a
lowly jackal in London, immortalizes himself in Paris.
Carton and Darnay have one further similarity- the doubles may
represent separate aspects of Dickens. If we see Darnay as Dickens'
light side, then Carton corresponds to an inner darkness. The
unhappy lawyer is a man of prodigious intelligence gone to waste, a
man who fears he'll never find happiness. These concerns mirror
Dickens' own worries about the direction his career was taking in
the late 1850s, and about his disintegrating marriage. It's been
suggested that Dickens, though a spectacularly successful writer,
had no set place in the rigid English class system. Regarded from this
perspective, Dickens, like Carton, was a social outsider.