A Tale of Two Cities - Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

Wine/Blood

Dickens isn’t exactly placing this metaphor delicately into his readers’ hands. He’s shoving it down our throats. If you missed the part where he warns us that blood will soon spill in the streets like wine, check out most of Volume One again. We promise you, it’s easy to find.

Using the wine that spills into the streets early in the novel as a metaphor for the blood spilled in the revolution serves a practical purpose: the Defarges run a wine shop. The Defarges are the hub of revolutionary activity. It all fits together neatly.

More important, however, allowing wine to stand in for blood allows Dickens to hint at the fatal flaws in the revolutionaries’ plans: too much wine makes people drunk and often more than a little crazy. A few glasses too many, and suddenly you’re not thinking nearly as well as you probably should be.

Similarly, spilling a little blood makes people hunger for more. Suddenly, it’s not enough to kill the people who’ve wronged the poor. It’s also pretty fun to kill their wives, their sons, their daughters, and that guy that people once saw standing next to them. See how things can get out of control? La Guillotine becomes a glutton, demanding more and more wine to satiate her ever-growing thirst. Revolution may be a great idea theoretically. According to Dickens, however, it just gets you too drunk too fast. Violence, folks, is not the answer.

Golden thread

Lucie is the "golden-haired doll" who charms just about everyone she meets with her beauty. She’s got yellow hair, as you’ve probably guessed. More interestingly, however, Dickens uses her hair color as an image that binds her family together. She becomes the "golden thread" that unites her father with his present, not allowing him to dwell too much in the horrors of the past.

A golden thread almost sounds like some sort of magical power; in fact, the Manettes lead a "charmed" life in Soho. Lucie may not be the character that gets the most screen time in this novel, but Dickens makes sure that we all know she’s its heart. Lucie unites Carton to Darnay, Dr. Manette to Darnay, and Mr. Lorry to the family in general. Lucie becomes the reason that Charles escapes the grasp of the Republic’s "justice."

In one terrifying moment of the novel, Jacques Three speculates about how wonderful it would be to see her golden hair on the chopping block of La Guillotine. The charm of Lucie’s influence, however, makes this an impossibility. Mr. Lorry and Sydney are determined to save her at any cost. Guess being a blonde has some good points, after all.

Monseigneur

Monseigneur is a character. He’s also an allegory.

Wait, how can a character be both a character and an allegory? Well, Dickens describes Monseigneur as a member of the aristocracy. It becomes pretty clear, however, that "Monseigneur" also becomes a shorthand way for Dickens to refer to the aristocracy as a class.

For example, when the narrator spends a good portion of a chapter describing how Monseigneur takes his hot chocolate, we could be reading about one man. When we read, however, that "Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from the phenomenon of his not being appreciated," it seems fairly self-evident that we’re reading about more than one individual. In fact, we’re reading about an entire class of people (2.24.3).

Why the blurring between individual and class? Well, for one thing, it allows Dickens to describe an entire group of people rather quickly. Once we know how picky and self-satisfied Monseigneur is when he drinks his chocolate in the morning, we’re probably pretty ready to hate on him for the rest of the novel.

In some ways, that’s not a fair analysis. Charles Darnay is a monseigneur, if we get right down to it. But maybe the allegory becomes as important for the ways that it doesn’t fit as for the ways that it does. We’re ready to hate all aristocrats. They’re all bad. But that makes us…rather like Madame Defarge. Scary, huh?

The Tell-Tale Heart - Detailed Summary Character Analysis Themes Symbolism Imagery Allegory Questions

The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allan Poe

A nameless person explains that he is and was extremely nervous, but is not and was not insane. Rather, the narrator has a "disease" which makes all his senses, especially his hearing, very sensitive. To prove that he isn't insane, the narrator shares an event from his past.
The narrator has an idea that he can't shake. The narrator's story begins with an "idea," an idea that turns into an obsession. He loves the old man and has nothing against him. Except… His horrible eye, which is "pale blue […] with a film over it" . The narrator hates the eye and decides to kill the old man to be free of it.
To that end, the narrator goes to the old man's room every night at 12am, for seven days. Each night the narrator opens the man's door and puts in a lantern. After the lantern, the narrator puts his head through the doorway, extremely slowly, and then opens the lantern so a tiny beam of light shines on the old man's eye. Each night the old man doesn't open his eye, so the narrator feels that he can't kill him.
On the eighth night, the old man hears the narrator at the door and wakes up. The narrator hangs out there in the dark for a long time, then, with a scream, plunges into the totally dark room, opening the lantern, and shining light on the old man's eye. The narrator drags the old man, who has only screamed once, off the bed, and then pulls the bed on top of the man. When the narrator hears the man's heart stop beating, he removes the bed and checks to make sure the old man is really dead, which he is. So the narrator cuts him up and hides his remains under the floor.
Then three policemen come. A neighbor had heard a scream and called them. The narrator says he screamed while sleeping, and claims that the old man is out of town. After convincing the cops nothing bad is going down, the narrator brings them into the old man's bedroom, and they all sit down to chat. While they are all shooting the breeze, the narrator starts hearing a terrible ticking noise, which gets louder and louder until the narrator freaks out, confesses, and points the police to the old man's body, stating that the sound is coming from the old man's heart.

Character Analysis

The Narrator

Our narrator is such a wreck, it's hard not to feel sorry for him. He's nervous ("very dreadfully nervous"), paranoid, and physically and mentally ill. He doesn't know the difference between the "real" and the "unreal," and seems to be completely alone and friendless in the world. We suspect that he rarely sleeps. He's also a murderer.

The Old Man

The old man is even more of a mystery than the narrator, partly because we only see him through the narrator's perspective. We know he has money). We also know he has a blue eye that the narrator is afraid of, and which fits the description of a corneal ulser. According to the narrator, the old man suspects nothing because the narrator was super nice to him the week before he killed him. We can't prove the old man wasn't suspicious, but because he leaves his bedroom door unlocked we can assume it. But, it seems he does trust the narrator enough to give him the run of the house while he sleeps.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

The Old Man's Eye

The old man's eye is blue with a "film" or "veil" covering it. This could be a medical condition, like a corneal ulser, but symbolically it means that the characters have issues with their "inner vision" The narrator is fixated on the "vulture eye" aspect of the old man's eye. He brings it up three times. Vultures prey on the sick or dead. Whether or not the old man is a vulture-like person, we can't know. But that's what he symbolizes to the narrator. If vultures prey on the dead and almost dead, and the narrator is afraid of the "vulture eye," does this mean the narrator is dead or almost dead? Do you think that it's possible that the narrator is a slave and the old man his owner?
We assume that the old man is white. This is the one bit of color in the story, and the only detail we are given as to any character's physical appearance. If the narrator is a slave, this blue eye might have looked on him with an air of possession, dominance, superiority, and perhaps even disgust.
This interpretation would also explain the narrator's nervousness. As a slave, this sensitive guy could have been exposed to all kinds of horrors and would have lived in fear. It could also explain why the narrator took so much pleasure in violating the man's privacy.

The Tell-Tale Heart Questions

1.Why do you think the name of the story is ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ ?

2.What’s the relation between Poe’s two stories; The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat?

3.Was the narrator angry with the old man or his eye?

4.What does the eye symbolize?

5.What’s his plan to get rid of the man’s eye?

6.What’s the narrator’s illness? Whose illnesses are the same in the book?

7.How long did it take to put his head into the room? Why couldn’t he finish his work on the first day?

8.What did the narrator do after he killed the old man?

9.Why did the narrator confess his crime?

William Wilson - Detailed Summary Character Analysis Themes Symbolism Imagery Allegory Questions

William Wilson - Edgar Allan Poe

“William Wilson” begins with a narrator introducing himself with a fake name: William Wilson. He doesn’t want to tell you his real name. He would like you to sit and listen to his story, the story of his fall into true and terrible evil, and if you wouldn’t mind, try to feel some sympathy for him, as he was the victim of fated circumstances beyond his control.
William’s story begins in his childhood; he always had an overactive imagination and a strong will and a propensity for vice. When he was in school, he dominated all of the other boys – except for one, another young lad who also had the name William Wilson, who was the same age and looked exactly the same as our narrator. The two boys competed in every way, and the second William Wilson often stopped the first from doing anything immoral. One night, truly horrified by the identical nature of this other boy to himself, our narrator flees the schoolhouse.
He ends up next at Eton, but before long finds himself tormented by a masked and cloaked figure whom he knows to be the second William Wilson. He goes on to Oxford and engages in vice to no end, only to find that the masked double is behind him once again. One night, after winning an exorbitant amount at cards, William’s double shows up and reveals that he has been cheating.
William travels all over the world but cannot escape the second William Wilson. One night, at a masquerade ball, he decides to finally put an end to this. He takes his double into a private room and stabs him fatally – only to find that, rather than facing a second William Wilson, he faces only his own reflection in a mirror. His reflection tells him that he only lived through his double, and that now he has murdered himself.

Themes:

Identity

“William Wilson” explores the theme of the doppelganger, or ghostly double. Poe’s inspiration for the story was the horror one feels when discovering another person shares your name. In this story, this horror is magnified by the exact identical appearance, age, and manner of the double.

Freedom and Confinement

“William Wilson” is the story of a man trapped by his own conscience and victim to his own overactive imagination. All of his attempts at escaping are necessarily doomed from the start; man cannot run from his alter ego, nor rid himself of conscience, nor break free of his own imagination.

Character Analysis:

The Narrator

‘William Wilson” explores the theme of the doppelganger, or ghostly double. The second William Wilson is the doppelganger of the first William Wilson; he looks just like him, talks just like him, has the same name, birthday, and tags along behind him all across the world. Poe has taken the internal struggle we all feel when we want to do something bad but know we ought to resist and played it out externally. The little angel on William’s shoulder has come to life –at least in his imagination, which in a first-person narrated story is as good as reality.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

The Doppelganger's Shielded Face

The doppelganger is a product of the narrator’s overactive imagination, then his face is hidden because William subconsciously wants it to be hidden. This makes sense; he was horrified the last time he looked at his double up close – why would he want to do it again? For one reason or another, William’s subconscious doesn’t want his conscious self to know that his doppelganger is really his alter ego.

William Wilson

1.Why did the writer use a nickname?
2.How was the narrator’s life when he was a child?
3.Who was the other William Wilson? What’s so strange about him?
4.In what aspects the two Wilsons are different and same? Why was the narrator frustrated with him?
5.Who visited the narrator at Eton college? What did he tell him?
6. Who visited the narrator at Oxford University? What did he tell the narrator’s friends?
7.Why do you think the second Wilson follow the first one? What’s not normal with his clothes?
8.Why did the narrator leave Oxford University?
9.What happened in Duke Di Broglio’s palace? Why did he fight against his double?
10.Who was the second William Wilson? Why do you think he spoke in whisper?