A Tale of Two Cities
Chapters 19 and 20 of Book the Second
1. What happens after Dr. Manette’s ninth day of making shoes?
2. How does Lorry approach Dr. Manette concerning his relapse?
3. What does Dr. Manette say about the cause of this relapse?
4. How does Lorry convince Manette to allow him to destroy the bench?
5. What is the symbolic nature of smashing the bench?
6. Who visits the couple upon their return from their honeymoon?
7. What do Carton and Darnay talk about?
8. What function does this serve?
9. What does Lucie ask her husband to do?
10. Why does she ask this of him?
Chapter 21 of Book the Second
1. How many children does Lucie have? What are their fates?
2. What does the death of the second child signify?
3. What else happens as six years pass?
4. What news does Mr. Lorry bring that marks the beginning of the end of normalcy?
5. What happens in Paris?
6. What does Ernest Defarge do in the midst of the storming of the Bastille?
7. Why is this important?
8. What does Madame Defarge do to the governor’s dead body?
9. What does the final paragraph of this chapter have to say about Lucie?
10. To what event does the final paragraph refer?
Chapters 22 and 23 of Book the Second
1. How does Chapter 22 open?
2. What does Ernest Defarge tell the crowd at the wine-shop?
3. What is the result of this news?
4. How are the women who join Madame Defarge described?
5. What has Foulon said to the peasants before?
6. What is his fate?
7. Who joins him in this fate?
8. How could this relate to Charles Darnay?
9. How does Madame Defarge react towards Foulon?
10. What do the peasants do next?
Chapter 24 of Book the Second
1. How many years have passed between chapters?
2. Why does Lorry decide to go to France?
3. Whom does he take with him?
4. What has happened to the French nobility?
5. What is Mr. Stryver’s opinion of the situation in France?
6. From whom does Charles Darnay receive a letter?
7. What decision does this letter lead Darnay to make?
8. Whom does he tell of his plans?
9. Why is this decision unbelievable?
10. What is the main function of this chapter?
Answers to Chapters 19 and 20 of Book the Second
1. He regains his composure and stops making shoes.
2. He tells Manette he wants to speak of “a curious case” that he knows of.
3. He says it is caused by an apprehension that the “subject” is unable to talk about.
4. He tells Manette that it should be done “for his daughter’s sake.”
5. It is symbolic of Dr. Manette’s attempt to put the past behind him.
6. Sydney Carton is their first visitor.
7. Carton and Darnay speak of the trial and the meal they shared afterwards.
8. It serves to clear the air concerning past events.
9. She asks him to be generous and kind to Carton and to not speak ill of him when he is not
present.
10. She says that she is aware of some deep wounds in Carton’s soul that he keeps hidden from
everybody else.
Answers to Chapter 21 of Book the Second
1. She has two children. The daughter lives and flourishes while her son dies at a young age.
2. His death shows that tragedy is always close by.
3. The six years pass calmly, and Lucie and her family build a quiet, uneventful domestic life.
4. Lorry tells them that there has been a run of confidence on Tellson’s because of the instability in
France.
5. The peasants storm the Bastille.
6. He makes a guard take him to “One Hundred and Five, North Tower.”
7. It reveals that Dr. Manette’s imprisonment has deeply affected him.
8. She cuts off his head.
9. It states a hope that the events in France do not affect her quiet life in England.
10. It refers to the wine that was spilled in St. Antoine many years ago.
Answers to Chapters 22 and 23 of Book the Second
1. Madame Defarge and The Vengeance are sitting in the wine-shop, knitting.
2. He tells them that Foulon has been captured.
3. A mob forms and proceeds to where Foulon is being imprisoned.
4. They are described as “mad” women who leave their children behind.
5. He has said of the starving peasants that they might eat grass.
6. His head winds up on a pike, with his mouth full of grass.
7. His son-in-law soon has his head on a pike, next to him.
8. It shows what may happen to Darnay, nephew of the Marquis, if he were to come to France.
9. She slowly kills him “as a cat might have done to a mouse.”
10. They burn down the Marquis’ chateau.
Answers to Chapter 24 of Book the Second
1. Three years have passed.
2. He is going to help out at the chaotic Paris branch of Tellson’s Bank.
3. He takes only Jerry Cruncher with him.
4. They are exiled in England, planning how to get their country back.
5. He thinks that the peasants should all be killed.
6. He receives a letter from Gabelle, the Marquis’ functionary in France. Gabelle is now in prison.
7. Darnay decides to go to France to help Gabelle.
8. He keeps his plan secret, telling no one.
9. Darnay would have to be aware of the incredible danger he was putting himself in.
10. It serves to set up the action that will unfold in the novel’s final section.