One of the features of A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens is his duality of identity in several of his characters.
One minor character who is pivotal to the plot of the novel is the spy who testifies in
Chapter 2 of Book the Second. "The virtuous servant" as he is ironically termed by
Dickens is named as Roger Cly. He is the "forger and false swearer" who claims that
Charles Darnay has spoken against the King of England and is guilty of
treason.
Later in the novel, Jerry Cruncher witnesses the
"funeral" of this Roger Cly, an incident that creates misinformation. This witnessing
by Jerry Cruncher and his later discovery that there is no body in the grave makes Jerry
a lever in the plot when his knowledge of Cly's fake burial enables Sydney Carton to
blackmail John Barsad effectively. John Barsad is the spy for the French whom Carton is
able to manipulate into allowing himself to be switched in Charles Darnay's place at the
prison in which the aristocrats are kept before being
guillotined.
But, to add further to the misinformation
about Roger Cly/John Basard, as well as the mystery, neither of these names are real.
In actuality, this man is Solomon Pross, the brother of Miss Pross, nurse to Lucie
Manette. To add to the misinformation surrounding her brother, Miss Pross believes that
her brother is a decent and admirable person when Mr. Lorry in Chapter of Book II has
discovered
the
fact that her brother Solomon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of
everything she possessed,...and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with no
touch of compunction.
Another
example of misinformation about a character is in the descriptions of Sydney Carton as
the "jackal." For, a jackal is a scavenger who feeds from prey that other animals have
already killed or that have already died. However, in truth it is C.J. Stryver who
preys upon Carton and feeds from the brillance of Carton's mind in their legal cases.
He has Carton sit for hours figuring the best way to win. When Carton arrives at his
place, Stryver refers to him as "Memory" and orders him to get to work. This "idlest
and most unpromising of men," as Dickens writes is truly the brillance behind Stryver's
legal arguments.
Still another misinformation is Dickens's
use of hyperbole to suggest other ideas. In Chapter 6, for example, Miss Pross complains
to Mr. Lorry that "Hundreds" of people have come to visit her "Ladybird" that are not
worthy of "the pet." In reality the house in Soho is on the end of a quiet street and
only a few visitors come to visit. However, Dickens uses the figurative "hundreds of
people" to foreshadow the true marching of hundreds in the revolution that will
soon come to pass in France.
Finally, the misinformation
about Madame Defarge as merely one of the revolutionaries adds much to the mystery of
the novel. For, she is the link to the persecution of Charles Darnay, ne
Evremonde, and, later Lucie. Because her entire family perished as a result of the
cruelty of the twin Evremonde brothers, she has vowed to exact revenge upon this family
as well as the entire race of French aristocrats, serving as a symbolic character to the
intensity and bloodlust behind the French Revolution.
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