A Tale of Two Cities - Themes, Mofits, Symbols

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Ever-Present Possibility of Resurrection

With A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens asserts his belief in the possibility of resurrection and transformation, both on a personal level and on a societal level. The narrative suggests that Sydney Carton’s death secures a new, peaceful life for Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay, and even Carton himself. By delivering himself to the guillotine, Carton ascends to the plane of heroism, becoming a Christ-like figure whose death serves to save the lives of others. His own life thus gains meaning and value. Moreover, the final pages of the novel suggest that, like Christ, Carton will be resurrected—Carton is reborn in the hearts of those he has died to save. Similarly, the text implies that the death of the old regime in France prepares the way for the beautiful and renewed Paris that Carton supposedly envisions from the guillotine. Although Carton spends most of the novel in a life of indolence and apathy, the supreme selflessness of his final act speaks to a human capacity for change. Although the novel dedicates much time to describing the atrocities committed both by the aristocracy and by the outraged peasants, it ultimately expresses the belief that this violence will give way to a new and better society.

Dickens elaborates his theme with the character of Doctor Manette. Early on in the novel, Lorry holds an imaginary conversation with him in which he says that Manette has been “recalled to life.” As this statement implies, the doctor’s eighteen-year imprisonment has constituted a death of sorts. Lucie’s love enables Manette’s spiritual renewal, and her maternal cradling of him on her breast reinforces this notion of rebirth.

The Necessity of Sacrifice

Connected to the theme of the possibility of resurrection is the notion that sacrifice is necessary to achieve happiness. Dickens examines this second theme, again, on both a national and personal level. For example, the revolutionaries prove that a new, egalitarian French republic can come about only with a heavy and terrible cost—personal loves and loyalties must be sacrificed for the good of the nation. Also, when Darnay is arrested for the second time, in Book the Third, Chapter 7, the guard who seizes him reminds Manette of the primacy of state interests over personal loyalties. Moreover, Madame Defarge gives her husband a similar lesson when she chastises him for his devotion to Manette—an emotion that, in her opinion, only clouds his obligation to the revolutionary cause. Most important, Carton’s transformation into a man of moral worth depends upon his sacrificing of his former self. In choosing to die for his friends, Carton not only enables their happiness but also ensures his spiritual rebirth.

The Tendency Toward Violence and Oppression in Revolutionaries

Throughout the novel, Dickens approaches his historical subject with some ambivalence. While he supports the revolutionary cause, he often points to the evil of the revolutionaries themselves. Dickens deeply sympathizes with the plight of the French peasantry and emphasizes their need for liberation. The several chapters that deal with the Marquis Evrémonde successfully paint a picture of a vicious aristocracy that shamelessly exploits and oppresses the nation’s poor. Although Dickens condemns this oppression, however, he also condemns the peasants’ strategies in overcoming it. For in fighting cruelty with cruelty, the peasants effect no true revolution; rather, they only perpetuate the violence that they themselves have suffered. Dickens makes his stance clear in his suspicious and cautionary depictions of the mobs. The scenes in which the people sharpen their weapons at the grindstone and dance the grisly Carmagnole come across as deeply macabre. Dickens’s most concise and relevant view of revolution comes in the final chapter, in which he notes the slippery slope down from the oppressed to the oppressor: “Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.” Though Dickens sees the French Revolution as a great symbol of transformation and resurrection, he emphasizes that its violent means were ultimately antithetical to its end.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Doubles

The novel’s opening words (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .”) immediately establish the centrality of doubles to the narrative. The story’s action divides itself between two locales, the two cities of the title. Dickens positions various characters as doubles as well, thus heightening the various themes within the novel. The two most important females in the text function as diametrically opposed doubles: Lucie is as loving and nurturing as Madame Defarge is hateful and bloodthirsty. Dickens then uses this opposition to make judgments and thematic assertions. Thus, for example, while Lucie’s love initiates her father’s spiritual transformation and renewal, proving the possibility of resurrection, Madame Defarge’s vengefulness only propagates an infinite cycle of oppression, showing violence to be self-perpetuating.

Dickens’s doubling technique functions not only to draw oppositions, but to reveal hidden parallels. Carton, for example, initially seems a foil to Darnay; Darnay as a figure reminds him of what he could have been but has failed to become. By the end of the novel, however, Carton transforms himself from a good-for-nothing to a hero whose goodness equals or even surpasses that of the honorable Darnay. While the two men’s physical resemblance initially serves only to underscore Carton’s moral inferiority to Darnay, it ultimately enables Carton’s supremely self-elevating deed, allowing him to disguise himself as the condemned Darnay and die in his place. As Carton goes to the guillotine in his double’s stead, he raises himself up to, or above, Darnay’s virtuous status.

Shadows and Darkness

Shadows dominate the novel, creating a mood of thick obscurity and grave foreboding. An aura of gloom and apprehension surrounds the first images of the actual story—the mail coach’s journey in the dark and Jerry Cruncher’s emergence from the mist. The introduction of Lucie Manette to Jarvis Lorry furthers this motif, as Lucie stands in a room so darkened and awash with shadows that the candlelight seems buried in the dark panels of the walls. This atmosphere contributes to the mystery surrounding Lorry’s mission to Paris and Manette’s imprisonment. It also manifests Dickens’s observations about the shadowy depths of the human heart. As illustrated in the chapter with the appropriate subheading “The Night Shadows,” every living person carries profound secrets and mysteries that will never see the light of day. Shadows continue to fall across the entire novel. The vengeful Madame Defarge casts a shadow on Lucie and all of her hopes, as emphasized in Book the Third, Chapter 5. As Lucie stands in the pure, fresh snow, Madame Defarge passes by “like a shadow over the white road.” In addition, the letter that Defarge uses to condemn Darnay to death throws a crippling shadow over the entire family; fittingly, the chapter that reveals the letter’s contents bears the subheading “The Substance of the Shadow.”

Imprisonment

Almost all of the characters in A Tale of Two Cities fight against some form of imprisonment. For Darnay and Manette, this struggle is quite literal. Both serve significant sentences in French jails. Still, as the novel demonstrates, the memories of what one has experienced prove no less confining than the walls of prison. Manette, for example, finds himself trapped, at times, by the recollection of life in the Bastille and can do nothing but revert, trembling, to his pathetic shoemaking compulsion. Similarly, Carton spends much of the novel struggling against the confines of his own personality, dissatisfied with a life that he regards as worthless.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Broken Wine Cask

With his depiction of a broken wine cask outside Defarge’s wine shop, and with his portrayal of the passing peasants’ scrambles to lap up the spilling wine, Dickens creates a symbol for the desperate quality of the people’s hunger. This hunger is both the literal hunger for food—the French peasants were starving in their poverty—and the metaphorical hunger for political freedoms. On the surface, the scene shows the peasants in their desperation to satiate the first of these hungers. But it also evokes the violent measures that the peasants take in striving to satisfy their more metaphorical cravings. For instance, the narrative directly associates the wine with blood, noting that some of the peasants have acquired “a tigerish smear about the mouth” and portraying a drunken figure scrawling the word “blood” on the wall with a wine-dipped finger. Indeed, the blood of aristocrats later spills at the hands of a mob in these same streets.

Throughout the novel, Dickens sharply criticizes this mob mentality, which he condemns for perpetrating the very cruelty and oppression from which the revolutionaries hope to free themselves. The scene surrounding the wine cask is the novel’s first tableau of the mob in action. The mindless frenzy with which these peasants scoop up the fallen liquid prefigures the scene at the grindstone, where the revolutionaries sharpen their weapons (Book the Third, Chapter 2), as well as the dancing of the macabre Carmagnole (Book the Third, Chapter 5).

Madame Defarge’s Knitting

Even on a literal level, Madame Defarge’s knitting constitutes a whole network of symbols. Into her needlework she stitches a registry, or list of names, of all those condemned to die in the name of a new republic. But on a metaphoric level, the knitting constitutes a symbol in itself, representing the stealthy, cold-blooded vengefulness of the revolutionaries. As Madame Defarge sits quietly knitting, she appears harmless and quaint. In fact, however, she sentences her victims to death. Similarly, the French peasants may appear simple and humble figures, but they eventually rise up to massacre their oppressors.

Dickens’s knitting imagery also emphasizes an association between vengefulness and fate, which, in Greek mythology, is traditionally linked to knitting or weaving. The Fates, three sisters who control human life, busy themselves with the tasks of weavers or seamstresses: one sister spins the web of life, another measures it, and the last cuts it. Madame Defarge’s knitting thus becomes a symbol of her victims’ fate—death at the hands of a wrathful peasantry.

The Marquis

The Marquis Evrémonde is less a believable character than an archetype of an evil and corrupt social order. He is completely indifferent to the lives of the peasants whom he exploits, as evidenced by his lack of sympathy for the father of the child whom his carriage tramples to death. As such, the Marquis stands as a symbol of the ruthless aristocratic cruelty that the French Revolution seeks to overcome.

A Tale of Two Cities - Detailed Themes, All Themes, Questions, Chew on This

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

THEMES

Family

This is a novel about war. But it’s also a novel about devotion. How much will you sacrifice to ensure that your family survives? Can you shoulder the blame for the actions of the past? Even if you can, should you? These questions and others like them become central to the workings of A Tale of Two Cities. Various types of family ties thread through this novel, offering multiple opportunities to compare the ways that families deal with difficult situations. Because the aristocracy in France passed on power through inherited titles and lands, entire families became the targets of the revolutionary uprisings which sparked the new regime. Of course, this quickly becomes a novel about how families fall apart, as well. But that’s another story.

Questions About Family

A Tale of Two Cities is largely a story about families. The Manettes, the Evrémondes, and the Defarges all play central roles in the novel. More specifically, however, the novel seems to focus on parent-child relationships (Lucie and Doctor Manette, Charles and the Marquis, etc). In this light, why might it be important that the Defarges have no children?

Is it reasonable or realistic to expect that Lucie should give up her life to care for her father?

The Manettes seem to have constructed an extended family which includes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry. How does this change our understanding of the way that families function in this novel?

How does Dickens’s depiction of the Crunchers contribute to the novel as a whole?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Because Lucie is the "golden thread" that links her family together, she never becomes a character in her own right.

Lucie’s central role in the lives of all of the other characters in the novel makes her one of the most complex characters in A Tale of Two Cities.

Warfare

The French Revolution. The Storming of the Bastille. The formation of the New Republic. Sound like multiple choice answers to your next history test? Well, yes. But they’re also all important topics that work their ways into the center of A Tale of Two Cities. As the poor and downtrodden of France take to the streets, they spark a bloody and violent revolution. Blood runs through the streets of Paris, entire families hang in the balance of new (and often unjust) laws, and no one can be sure of their future in the first years of the New Republic. Dickens’s novel explores the complicated relationship that emerges between the political and the social consequences of revolution.

Questions About Warfare

What justifies the French citizens’ revolt? At what point does it become unjustifiable?

Are there forms of violence in the novel which Dickens critiques? Do you agree with his critique?

Are there moments when the novel seems to think violence is an appropriate course of action? Do you agree? Why or why not?

Are the executions at the end of the novel a continuance of warfare?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Although the violence depicted in A Tale of Two Cities is horrible, it’s also the only way that a new form of government can emerge.

The senseless violence of the revolutionaries quickly undercuts any moral authority they had to create a new social order.

Loyalty

War seems to test the limits of all sorts of ties. Loyalty to family, friends, and even the institutions in which you believe suddenly comes into question. Just how much are you willing to sacrifice for the good of the nation? Does the nation come before your family? Before your own life? In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens forces his characters into situations which demand answers to exactly these questions. As we see, there aren’t ever any simple answers – and, in massive social uproar, there’s rarely a time when anyone emerges unharmed. Characters learn how to honor the promises and the relationships which matter to them, even when those promises seem impossible to uphold.

Questions About Loyalty

Is Miss Pross’ die-hard loyalty believable?

Why does Mr. Lorry devote himself to Tellson’s?

Is Mrs. Cruncher actually disloyal to her husband? Why or why not?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Mr. Lorry’s refusal to be completely devoted to business becomes an allegory for the good-heartedness of the British people as a whole.

In A Tale of Two Cities, religion becomes nothing more than a punch line for Dickens’s jokes: economics, not morality, will prevent a revolution in England.

Suffering

If you’re looking for suffering, A Tale of Two Cities is the novel for you. The poor of England have it pretty bad. The poor of France have it really, really bad. There’s no food, the noblemen press rural peasants to give up every cent they earn to fund exorbitant parties for the rich. And folks get locked up for decades without ever getting to go to trial. Though this is France in the 1780s, Dickens doesn't expect this sort of suffering to remain in the past: the causes of suffering, he claims, aren’t historical. In fact, the prime cause of human suffering might just be human nature itself.

Questions About Suffering

Why does Sydney Carton seem determined to believe that his life will never improve?

Doctor Manette’s status as a former prisoner eventually gives him political power in France. Does this suggest that his suffering might be worth it in the long run?

Lucie seems to be the one character whose suffering the novel often overlooks. Why do you think this is the case?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Because Sydney Carton believes from the beginning of the novel that his life will be full of suffering, his death is not really a change in the status quo.

In dying, Sydney Carton transcends all the expectations he had for himself and becomes a sublime figure of mercy.

Society and Class

In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens loves to demonstrate how rich the rich actually are. One guy even needs four servants (count them: FOUR) to make his hot chocolate every morning. It’s exactly this sort of excess that breeds discontent…especially when the poor are on their hands and knees in the street to lick up drops of spilled wine. The French Revolution began as a critique of the aristocracy; as Dickens demonstrates, however, the "classless" formation of the new French Republic becomes yet another form of class violence. Someone’s always in power. And the powerless always suffer.

Questions About Society and Class

How different are class relations in England from those of France? Why do the citizens of France revolt?

Why does the novel shuttle between France and England? How does that contribute to our understanding of the revolution?

Is Madame Defarge’s accusation of Charles Darnay retaliation for the role of the aristocracy in France? Why or why not?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

A Tale of Two Cities may be set in France, but it’s actually a moral warning for the people of England.

Because the poor in France are never realistically depicted in A Tale of Two Cities, our understanding of the revolution is limited at best.

Justice and Judgment

Dickens exploits the hypocrisies and idiosyncrasies of the justice system in A Tale of Two Cities. As French citizens take to the streets, demanding justice for themselves and their families, they also construct a justice system that becomes anything but fair and impartial. To keep us from blaming the French too much, however, Dickens also gives us a good look at the justice system in England. Complete with magic mirrors and smoke-and-dagger tricks, the English can't brag about their courts, either. So how does justice get rendered? That is one of the questions this novel explores.

Questions About Justice and Judgment

Which is more corrupt: the justice system in France or the justice system in England?

The English court establishes that Sydney and Charles's physical similarity is reason enough to assume that it wouldn’t be just to hang Charles for treason. Does this make sense to you?

Doctor Manette only gets his day in court when the Defarges include his letter in Darnay’s trial in France. In some ways, isn’t this actually a just thing for the Defarges to do? Why or why not?

How does Sydney Carton develop his sense of justice (and why does he insist on working in the legal system)?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Dickens inserts two court cases (one French and one English) into A Tale of Two Cities in order to demonstrate the unsettling similarities between the two countries.

The English court, for all its failings, is still able to hand down good verdicts; by incorporating Darnay’s English court case into the novel, Dickens proves that the English justice system can never be corrupted in the ways that the French one will be.

Politics

When an entire country decides to revolt against the ruling class, a couple of conversations about politics are certainly going to have to happen along the way. Unfortunately, too much of what passes for "politics" in France during the decades before the revolution seems to be "whatever the rich can get away with." When the poor of the nation decide that they can become political players as well, violence erupts. As the central characters of A Tale of Two Cities find out, no one can really escape playing a political role when a nation’s in turmoil.

Questions About Politics

Is Sydney’s vision for France one that’s based on the events that have occurred in the novel?

The political records of the revolutionaries are kept in Madame Defarge’s knitting. How does the novel depict women’s role in politics?

Are national politics separable from family politics in this novel?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

A woman’s place is in the home: women who enter into political action in A Tale of Two Cities transform into inhuman, savage creatures.

The complicated relationship between family life and political life in A Tale of Two Cities makes the women who engage in revolutionary activities the most interesting characters in the novel.

Morals and Ethics

Things aren’t always what they seem. Disreputable, lazy good-for-nothings turn out to be saviors. Righteous, justice-seeking people turn out to be bloodthirsty thugs. In other words, war tends to confound most people’s expectations. Once blood starts spilling in the streets, telling the difference between right and wrong becomes extremely difficult. When the world turns upside-down, how do you decide what to believe? More important, whom can you trust? A Tale of Two Cities explores the agonizing consequences of revolution, such as how "freedom" can too easily become another tagline for fanaticism. Sure, revolution can bring freedom – but at what cost?

Questions About Morals and Ethics

Dickens tends to discuss entire populations as if they were single characters: "Monseigneur" stands in for the aristocracy, "Saint Antoine" for the poor. How does this affect the way that we read about the different sides of the revolution?

Is it fair that Darnay should go back to France? Why or why not?

How effective are Tellson’s ethics? Why does Mr. Lorry deviate from them so often?

What do you think of Mr. Cruncher’s rationalization of his "profession" as a grave-digger?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Because Charles Darnay’s sense of morality is completely fully-formed (and never troubled) at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities, he never becomes a truly interesting character.

In the turmoil of political upheaval, characters whose morals remain constant become the only ones on which we can rely. That’s why we like Charles Darnay so much.

Life, Consciousness, and Existence

Dickens the storyteller is closely linked to Dickens the philosopher. Sure, A Tale of Two Cities is a rollicking good story. More than that, though, it’s also a meditation on some of the most pressing existential questions which can trouble humankind. Do we really know anything at all about the people around us – even the people that we love? Can a single life make any difference in a world filled with hatred, rage, and violence? Times of strife make these questions all the more pressing to answer, but, as Dickens reminds us, that doesn’t mean that the answers are easy to find.

Questions About Life, Consciousness, and Existence

Is Sydney Carton a hero, or is his death just a continuance of his fatalistic logic?

Is Carton a Christ-like figure? Why or why not?

How does the young woman who dies with Carton change our understanding of his character?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Sydney Carton’s death is the ultimate example of his masochism.

Sydney Carton’s death might appear to be the ultimate example of his masochism, but it actually occurs because of a complete shift in his self-understanding.

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?

The Masque of the Red Death - Detailed Summary Character Analysis Themes Symbolism Imagery Allegory Questions

The Masque of the Red Death - Edgar Allan Poe

A terrible disease called the Red Death has struck the country. It's incredibly fatal, horribly gruesome, and it's already killed off half the kingdom. But the ruler of these parts, Prince Prospero, doesn't seem to care about his poor, dying subjects. Instead, he decides to let the kingdom take care of itself while he and a thousand of his favorite knights and ladies shut themselves up in a fabulous castle to have one never-ending party. Wine, women, music, dancing, fools – Prospero's castle has it all. After the last guest enters, no one else can get in – the Prince has welded the doors shut. That means no one can get out, either…
About five or six months into his stay, Prospero decides to have a spectacular masquerade ball (a ball where the guests where masks and costumes). The setup is weird and wild, just like the Prince who designs it. The ball takes place in a suite of seven rooms, each one dressed up in a different color: blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and black. The black room, which looks like death, is awfully creepy – it's got dark black walls, blood red windows, and big black clock which chimes so eerily every hour that everybody at the party stops dancing and laughs nervously. Most of the frolicking masqueraders are too weirded out to go into the black room.
Anyway, the party's in full swing and everybody's having a wild time when the clock strikes midnight. Everyone stops dancing and falls momentarily silent, as usual. Then some of the dancers notice a guest no one had seen before, wearing a scandalous costume. Whoever the new guest is, he's decided to dress as a corpse, a corpse who died of… the Red Death. He's so frighteningly lifelike (deathlike?) he freaks everybody out, and he slowly starts "stalking" through the frightened crowd. When Prince Prospero sees the ghostly guest, he's furious that someone would have the nerve to wear such a costume, and orders him to be seized and unmasked. But no one has the guts to do it, including Prospero himself.
The Red Death masquerader passes within a few feet of the Prince and starts to walk through the rooms, heading toward the black room. Prospero loses it and runs after him in a rage, drawing his dagger as he approaches. But just as Prospero reaches the edge of the black room, the corpselike guest suddenly whirls around to face him, and Prospero falls to the ground, dead. The shocked crowd throws itself at the guest, only to discover in horror that there's nothing underneath the mask and costume. The Red Death itself has come to the party. One by one the guests die, spilling their blood all over Prospero's lavish rooms. The candles go out, leaving only "darkness, decay, and the Red Death."

Themes:

Mortality

Death is everywhere in this story, from the opening description of the "Red Death" plague to the closing line about death's "dominion." Images and symbols of death practically drip from its pages, reminding the characters, and the reader, of death's inevitability. The characters in the story all try to ignore and escape death, preferring to stay focused on living life to its fullest. But mortality can't be avoided, as they are reminded when Death literally crashes their party.

Foolishness and Folly

Prince Prospero, the main character in "The Masque of the Red Death," lives mainly for pleasure, as do his friends. Better not to think, and not to grieve, they believe – just enjoy life and keep on laughing. They refuse to give death the time of day, and so when a plague strikes the kingdom, they retreat to a pleasure palace to keep on partying.

Character Analysis:

Prince Prospero

Prince Prospero is a terrible ruler. All he seems to care about is pleasure, which is what it means to be a "hedonist." He doesn't want to spend his time doing anything but drinking, dancing, and laughing, and generally having fun. That makes him an awful ruler, because when the going gets tough, Prospero gets going. It makes him seem selfish too: he just doesn't care about the suffering of his people. He doesn't even want to think about it. Prospero does not want to face death. He deliberately flees it with his followers and tries not to think about it at all, so he can revel in the good times. But his attempt to escape death is doomed to failure: everybody has to die eventually. Prospero's impossible attempt to ignore death and focus only on life's pleasures makes him a classic "fool" figure. Sadly, he learns his lesson the hard way at the end.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory:

The Seven Colored Rooms

The colors of the seven rooms are just too juicy a detail not to mean something, aren't they? The black and blood red room seems so obviously to represent death, shouldn't the other rooms mean something too? A lot of commentators have thought that, and there is something of a general agreement among many of them about the meaning of the rooms.
Supposedly, the suite is an allegory of human life. Each room, in other words, corresponds to a different "stage" of human life, which its color suggests. The first clue that the suite is allegorical is that the rooms are arranged from east to west. East is usually the direction associated with "beginnings," and birth, because the sun rises in the east; west (the direction of the sunset) is associated with endings, and death.
According to this reading, the blue room, which is furthest to the east, represents birth. The color suggests the "unknown" from which a human being comes into the world. The next room is purple, a combination of blue (birth) and red (associated with life, intensity) suggests the beginnings of growth. Green, the next color, suggests the "spring" of life (youth), orange the summer and autumn of life. White, the next color, suggests age – think white hair, and bones. Violet (a combination of purple and blue, or purple and grey) is a shadowy color, and represents darkness and death. And black, obviously, is death.
Also, notice how there's no red room? Why's that? You might think of red as a better color than orange for summer/autumn, or as a better color than purple for growth. But our guess is that Poe wanted to save the color red in this story especially for its association with blood, fear, and death. That means it's always goes with black, just like the Red Death and the darkness go together at the end of the story, and red and black go together in the seventh room. If there were a red room, it would confuse the color system and obscure the meaning of "red."

The Clock

The big, black, creep clock is located in the black room, so it's not that hard to guess that it's meant to be a symbol of death. More precisely, it's a symbol of the passing of "the Time that flies"  and the inevitability of death. Its eerie chiming on the hour is a regular reminder to the revelers that their lives are drifting away with the time, and that death is approaching. Of course, the effect is enhanced even more by that way the clock has of stopping all the dancing and music – in short, all the life – of the party, and making everyone laugh nervously.

The Masque of the Red Death

1.Why is the name of the disease called ‘the red death’ ?
2.What’s the Prince’s attitude to the red death?
3.How was the life inside the castle?
4.Why was Prince Prospero’s castle different from the other castles? Why were the rooms special?
5.What do the rooms symbolize?
6.What does the clock symbolize?
7.Why did the people avoid of entering the black room?
8.Why was the red death’s costume special?
9.What’s inside the red death’s mask?
10. What happened to the Prince and his friends at the end of the story?

The Black Cat - Detailed Summary Character Analysis Themes Symbolism Imagery Allegory Questions

The Black Cat - Edgar Allan Poe

From his prison cell, the unnamed narrator is writing the story of how everything in his life fell apart. Since he will die the next day, he wants to set the record straight, and tells us the story of his life…
From the day he is born, he is mild and kind. He loves animals and has lots of them. As he gets older up these qualities grow stronger. Taking care of his pets and hanging out with them is his favorite thing to do. His favorite animal companion is his dog.
Before long, he gets married. His wife loves animals too, and fills the house with a variety of them. One of these is a black, super-smart cat named Pluto. When the man starts drinking, his personality takes a turn for the worse. He starts physically and verbally abusing his wife and pets. One night, the narrator comes home from partying completely drunk. Thinking Pluto didn't want to hang out with him, he grabs the cat and cuts his eye out with a pen-knife.
One morning, not long after the eye-gouging, the narrator is overcome with a perverse impulse. He hangs Pluto from a tree in his garden, murdering him. Writing from his jail cell, the narrator claims he did it precisely because he knew it was wrong. That night, the night of the murder, the man's house catches fire and burns down. Only the man, his wife, and one servant are left alive. But, they lose all their money in the flames, along with the house. When the narrator returns the next day, there is a crowd in his bedroom, looking at his bedroom wall. On the wall is the slightly raised image of a "gigantic cat" with a rope around its neck.
Since he left the cat hanging all day and all night, he figures one of the neighbors cut it down and then threw it through his window to wake him up. Somehow it stuck in the plaster of the wall. This bothers the man for a long time.
One night when he's out drinking, another black cat appears on the scene. This cat looks just like Pluto, except for the little white spot on his chest. The man takes the cat home, and his wife is quite pleased.
When it is discovered that this cat is also missing an eye, the man begins to despise it, while the woman loves it all the more. After some time passes, the woman shows the man that the white spot on the cat's fur has grown. Oddly, the white spot now forms an image of "the GALLOWS!"
The man is too afraid of the cat to abuse it. The cat never leaves him alone for a moment, and even sits on his chest and breathes in his face when he is in bed. So, the man doesn't get any sleep. As his loathing of the cat increases, so does his physical and verbal abuse of his wife. One day he and his wife go down to the cellar of the crummy old house they live in now that they are poor. The cat follows them. In a fit of extreme irritation, the man tries to kill the cat with an axe. The woman stops him, and the man buries the axe in her brain, killing her.
The narrator wonders how best to conceal the body? After much deliberation, the man decides to hide the body in a space behind the cellar wall. That night, the man sleeps peacefully for the first time in ages. The cat is nowhere to be seen.
The cops come around, but the man has finesses them. No big deal. On the fourth day, still no cat. But, the police return and search the house again, especially the cellar. Right when they are about to leave, abandoning their search of the cellar, the narrator decides to start bragging about how well built the house is. He takes his cane and hits it against the spot in the wall where he's hidden his wife's body.
A noise answers his knock! It is a sad sound, like a kid crying. It sounds horrible and desperate, but also victorious. The police are on it. They take down the wall only to find the dead body, with the cat on top of its head. And that's why the narrator is in jail, sentenced to death by hanging. The narrator had accidentally shut the cat up in the wall with the body.

Themes:

Transformation

Disturbing physical and psychological transformations – often for the worst – are characteristic of most horror and Gothic tales. In "The Black Cat" some form of transformation occurs in nearly every paragraph. For the narrator, these changes are psychological. After he gets married, his personality spirals deeper and deeper toward the dark side, cruelly abusing his pets and his wife. His initially happy home life is turned upside down, and everyone involved is adversely affected and changed for the worse.

Violence

In "The Black Cat" the unnamed narrator offers us a parade of violent acts. Eye gouging, hanging, axing – these are the gruesome highlights. And by the end of the story the narrator has completely destroyed his family, and perhaps, completely destroyed himself in the process.

Drugs and Alcohol

In some stories drinking has both positive and negative effects on the drinkers. Not so in "The Black Cat." The unnamed narrator of this grim tale claims he began abusing his wife and pets when his drinking got out of control, wrecking his personality. The narrator uses alcohol as an excuse for his bad behavior.

Freedom and Confinement

"The Black Cat," a claustrophobic tale of marital life gone wrong, offers a distinct movement from freedom to confinement. We meet the narrator already in his prison cell, writing, to free himself from his bonds How he became so trapped is the subject of his writing and the reason why he has taken the pen to the page. We learn how he traps his wife and pets in a cycle of violence and abuse. While the man's story begins in a house of wealth and comfort it ends in brick tomb in the cellar of a rundown building. The narrator of "The Black Cat" feels trapped in his marriage and kills his wife to get out of her.

Character Analysis:

The Narrator

The narrator has major issues. This unnamed character is an abusive bully and a murderer. He made home a living hell for his wife, pets, and himself. And he doesn't seem to be confessing out of a sense of guilt. Over the course of the story, the narrator provides several reasons for his various behaviors. But mostly he seems to be blaming the cat (or cats) for all his problems.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory:

The Rope, the Tree, the Gallows, the Cat

The second cat wears a symbol of Pluto's murder on its body. It becomes a symbol of the man's guilt and depravity, a visual reminder of his crime, and of his changing personality. It also foreshadows the man's own death by hanging.

The axe, the cellar

The axe has the potential to be used for violence. Most uses of the axe are violent, like chopping wood, for example. Firefighters use axes to save people, but the axe is still used violently to break things down. Here the axe is a symbol of the man's breakdown, and of the violent breakdown of his family.

The Black Cat

1.What was the narrator’s opnion about the animals at the beginning of the story?
2.Why did the narrator’s life change? How did he become a violent?
3.Why was the narrator so angry with Pluto? Why did he first punish him and then killed him?
4.What was the sign on the narrator’s wall? Why do you think it’s there? What did the narrator think about it?
5.What are the resemblances between the second cat and Pluto?
6.How did he hide his wife’s dead body?
7.How did the policemen realize that there’s something behind the wall?

The Fall of the Usher House - Detailed Summary Character Analysis Themes Symbolism Imagery Allegory Questions

The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allan Poe

Summary

The story begins with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. Although Poe wrote this short story before the invention of modern psychological science, Roderick's condition can be described according to its terminology. It includes a form of sensory overload known as hyperesthesia (hypersensitivity to light, sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria (an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness), and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cateleptic, deathlike trances. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him. Roderick tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be alive. Roderick later informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she will be entombed for two weeks in a vault (family tomb) in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. They inter her, but over the next week both Roderick and the narrator find themselves becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws open his window to the storm.
The narrator attempts to calm Roderick by reading aloud a novel. As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, cracking and ripping sounds are heard somewhere in the house. When the dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and hollow, can be heard. Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical, and eventually exclaims that these sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed and that Roderick Usher knew that she was alive. Roderick convinced him that she is dead and rushes to have her placed in the vault. When she wakes up, Madeline goes insane from being buried alive and breaks free with insanity-induced strength.  The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls on her brother, and both land on the floor as corpses. The narrator then flees the house, and, as he does so, notices a flash of light causing him to look back upon the House of Usher, in time to watch it break in two, the fragments sinking into the tarn. The story shows us the decay of the Usher family with the house "dies" along with the two Usher siblings. Poe creates a sensation of claustrophobia in this story.

Character Analysis:

Roderick Usher

Roderick Usher is not well. While parts of his affliction seem to manifest themselves physically, in his overly-acute senses, his illness is primarily a mental one. While his sister is cataleptic and wasting away, Roderick is tormented by, to be quite honest, his own fear. By his own admission, he doesn’t so much fear any particular thing as he fears his own fear. And one day, he predicts, this affliction will kill him.
 “The Fall of the House of Usher” as a psychological tale posit that Roderick and Madeline are actually two halves of the same person: male/female, mental/physical, worldly/other-worldly, natural/supernatural. If this is true, we can see why Roderick cannot live while Madeline is dead, which explains why she comes back for him. Alternatively, if Roderick may have been intentionally speeding up his own death by burying Madeline early, making her burial something of a suicide attempt.
We can also think about the spooky connection that Roderick shares with his house. He tells the narrator that he thinks it is sentient or conscious, and that the house is largely responsible for his feeling so dark and gloomy. Many of his artistic compositions revolve around his house.  It might be that Roderick’s very identity has somehow meshed with his house, much the same way his identity might be shared with his sister Madeline. Madeline dies and so Roderick dies, too. Similarly, Roderick falls dead to the ground, and so does his house.

THEMES:

Madness

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is the story of a sick man whose fears manifest themselves through his supernatural, sentient family estate. The story explores both physical and mental illness, and the effect that such afflictions have on the people closest to those who are sick.

Family

“Usher” explores a family so bizarre, so self-isolating, so removed from normalcy that their very existence has become eerie and supernatural. The bond between the featured brother and sister characters is intense and inexplicable. Their bond transcends even death. One interpretation of the tale is that the siblings are actually one person split in two; thus one is unable to survive without the other.

Isolation

This story explores a family so isolated from the rest of the world that they’ve developed their own supernatural barriers to interacting with it. The House of Usher exists in its own reality, governed by its own rules and with no interest in others. Such extreme isolation forces the family members closer and closer to each other, again to a supernatural degree, and inexplicable to any outsider.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory:

The Small Fissure, the house

The narrator observes a crack in the mansion upon his arrival to the Usher estate. Since he’s just mentioned that “The House of Usher” refers both to the family and the building, we should have an eye out for symbolic connections between the two. And indeed, we can see this small fissure as representative of a disruption in the unity of the family, more specifically, between Madeline and her brother. This is the disruption that ultimately tears the family – and the mansion – to pieces.

Doubling

We’ve seen that art mirrors reality in this story, but there are several other cases of “doubling” or “reflection” going on. Starting off the story is the inverted reflection of the House of Usher in the tarn that lies before the house. You’ve also got the inverted dichotomy between Madeline and Usher, twins, but male/female, mental/physical, alive/dead. Dichotomy means a division between two opposing things.

The Fall of the House of Usher

1.What’s the relationship between the narrator and Roderick Usher?
2.How did the narrator feel himself when he looked up the house of Usher?
3.What’s Roderick Usher’s illness? How do you describe him physically and mentally?
4.What’s Mr. Usher’s theory about the house?
5.Why did Mr. Usher decide to keep his sister’s dead body in one of the vaults under the house?
6.How did Lady Madeleine escape from her coffin?
7.What happened to the Ushers at the end of the story?
8.Explain the relation between the Ushers and the house? What happened to the house at the end?