A Tale of Two Cities is obviously a great novel, but has nobody else ever pointed out the absurdity that almost the entire thing could've been derailed by page 75 were it not for the fact that Darnay and Carton
JUST HAPPENED to look so much alike? I mean, really? Isn't that one step away from a
Scooby Doo episode? Strange to me...
"And so Darnay was convicted, and drawn and quartered and...well, I guess that's it, really...I mean, no real way to tie everything else together at this point...hmm. Well. This is awkward. MEANwhile, nobody wanted to rent any rooms in the Bastille because of ghosts..."
3 comments:
Teachers have always pointed at ToTC as Dickens' most liberal use of allegory, metaphor, symbolism, etc-all those things we learned about in grade 9 (is that how the limeys say it?). I'm not sure if this is true, since I definitely haven't read entire the Dickens' canon. Tale, Great Expectations, Christmas Carol and half of Bleak House and that's it.
Regardless, the Carton/Darnay duo is a pretty obvious "dichotomy of man" pairing: For every virtue, a sin; a time to reap, a time to sow; Hilton ass/Kardashian ass, etc.
I suppose, as far as narrative, it falls into the "probable impossibility" vs. "improbable possibility" thing that Aristotle and Aaron Sorkin like to wank about. But I could never keep that shit straight.
Whether, on second and third reads, ToTC becomes more or less believable, given the nuerous dominoes of coincidence and seredipity that lead to the final moment of the book, perhaps depends upon you're philosophy of free will versus predetermined destiny. Was Carton destined to die so that someone more worthy could live? Was it all just a series of fateful events already written that culminated in the only truly redeeming act of his life. Or was it that Carton, in the face of a series of wild connections and intersections of people and events--which might have led him to be able to have Lucy, if for only a moment, but never actual get his love requited--chose to reject a momentarily satisfying, but ultimately ugly fate, and make the sacrifice, do of his own free will, the "far far better thing"? Is free will and self-determination, the thing that the French Revolution was initially fighting for, before it devolved into the Reign of Terror, the only that keeps us from being victims to the violence of Fate? Does Carton, the derelict doppleganger, by choosing to sacrifice himself to the violence in order to save another, subvert fate and achieve a moment of Love on Earth that might indeed surpass the eternity of the "far far better place"? I'd like to think that even if there is a heaven and he received angelic bliss for eternity, he'd probably still find himself thinking about the last look from Ms. Manette before he met the guillotine.
that Damon Bailey sure could play some ball, couldn't he?
STICK WITH WHAT'S IMPORTANT!!!
;)
nice insight
Saw Bailey single-handedly win the state championship. Handled the ball, drove against four guys at a time, rebounded over everybody, ran past everyone but looked like he was moving without exerting an ounce of effort. It was awe-inspiring.
Then his knees gave out and either his stubbornness or Knight's belief that winning at the college level was more noble than surgery and leaving early for the pros fucked up any chance he had at being a Paxson or Craig Hodges.
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