A far, far, better thing: ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ by Charles Dickens – Book Recommendation

 This is, apparently, one of the best-selling books of all time. Yep, not Oliver Twist, not David Copperfield, not Great Expectations, and not A Christmas Carol. Bah, humbug. Dickens’ No. 1 is set in the shadow of the guillotine during the French Revolution. And, of course, it’s full of quotes you already know, even if you didn’t know where they were from. So, about time I read it, I thought.

Dickens’ tale of the best and worst of times is really about the best and worst of human nature. Peaceful London is juxtaposed with revolutionary Paris, and violence, savagery, and revenge are pitted against courage, sacrifice, love, and redemption. Dickens offers a warning from history borne out again and again since the novel was written in 1859: ‘Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms’. And yet, somehow, humanity will find itself ‘recalled to life’, to use another of Dickens’ phrases.

There’s an awful lot here concerning ideals—good and bad—and questions as to what life is really about, and even for. Perhaps most vividly of all, Dickens reminds us that sometimes our heroes are unlikely ones and that a ‘man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away’ may yet find some unforeseen purpose.

What seem to be extremes are, in fact, just constituent parts of flawed humanity, and in the best spirit of Dickens, A Tale confirms that wherever the deepest despair is to be found, a spark of hope may be kindled; that even in an end, there may be a beginning, and in forfeit, fulfilment: ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done’.

 

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens ISBN: 9780141439600 (this Penguin version includes original illustrations by Dickens’ regular collaborator, Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne).