A TALE OF TWO CITIES
AND
DUALISM AND
DUALITIES
DICKENS BACKGROUND
• Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England in 1812.
• His family was lower-middle class. He began working at the
age of twelve because of his father’s imprisonment.
• Dickens used his experience working in the factory to inspire
some of his greatest fictional works.
• His happy school days and the misery of his life in the factory
gave him a strong sympathy for the poor.
• At the age of 15 Dickens was hired as a law clerk, a job he
hated. He studied during his spare time and ultimately
published Pickwick Papers in 1836.
DICKENS BACKGROUND
• Dickens’s early novels, such as Oliver Twist, were filled with
comic characters, gruesome villains, and chatty, rambling
narrators.
• The novels of his middle and late periods are much darker
versions of Victorian society and attack specific social
problems.
• Dickens died in 1869 and is buried in Poets’ Corner in
Westminster Abbey. He is celebrated as a national treasure in
England.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
• Dickens had grown increasingly dismayed at the social and
economic inequality of British society– the terrible living
conditions of the urban poor, an arrogant and uncaring ruling
class, and the ravages of the Industrial Revolution.
• While it was the “best of times” for England’s wealthy, with
their town homes and country estates, hebelieved that times
had never been worse for the nation’s poor.
• Hunger, disease, poverty, and ignorance characterized the daily
fabric of their lives.
• Dickens had little hope that a social upheaval, like the one that
shook France just half a century earlier, could be avoided.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
• The action of A Tale of Two Cities takes place during a period
of about eighteen years, beginning in 1775 and ending in 1793.
Some of the story takes place earlier, as told in a flashback.
• In A Tale of Two Cities, the key events take place just before
and during the French Revolution. The novel is set mostly in
London and Paris, with some chapters set in rural France and
the English port city of Dover.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
• Dickens hoped to make the wider historical events of the
French Revolution understandable by portraying the personal
struggles of one group of people.
• He called A Tale of Two Cities “the best story I have written.”
• Several of the characters are symbolic representations of ideas
rather than real-life individuals.
DUALISM AND DUALITY
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age
of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of
belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was
the winter of despair…” (Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.)
DUALISM AND DUALITY
• Virtually all of the major texts we have read this year examine
the relationship between opposites.
• Topics include:
Love and Hate
Fate and Free Will
Darkness and Lightness
Contrasting characters or customs
DUALITY AND DUALISM
*Pay attention to the relationship between opposites in A Tale of
Two Cities. This unit is organized around the concept of duality in
literature and the paradox of opposites even in our world today.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
What do opposites have to do with each other?
How does the study of opposites help develop how we
think about literature?
How does an author create meaning by using literary
devices?
BRAINSTORM
• Is it ever okay to seek revenge on someone? In what
circumstances? If no, why not?
• How far would you go for someone you love?
• What does the line “It was the best of times, it was the worst
of times” evoke for you? What instances can you think of that
could be both the best and worst of times?
WORKS CITED
"Discovering Dickens - A Community Reading Project. Stanford University,
2004.