"Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickens Charles)

a living reminder of their oppression. They revere him for his
sufferings as a Bastille prisoner. During Darnay's imprisonment in
Paris, Dr. Manette uses the Revolutionaries' esteem to keep his
son-in-law alive. As a result, you watch him grow stronger,
regaining the sense of purpose he'd lost in the Bastille.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES: JARVIS LORRY

All through the story Jarvis Lorry protests that he's nothing more or
less than a man of business. "Feelings!" he exclaims, "I have no
time for them." Mr. Lorry's time belongs to Tellson's bank, "the
House," his employer for over 40 years. Yet behind his allegiance to
business, Lorry hides a kind heart. When Dr. Manette responds to
Lucie's marriage by falling into an amnesiac spell, Lorry deserts
Tellson's for nine full days to look after his friend.

How closely does Lorry conform to modern ideas about bankers and
businessmen? He admittedly values the bank above himself, an
attitude you might consider old fashioned. Readers have described
him as the sort of clerk Dickens saw passing in his own day, and
mourned. Lorry compares favorably with the two other men of business
in the story: Stryver, the pushing lawyer, and Jerry Cruncher, the
"honest tradesman" who digs up bodies and sells them to medical
science.

During the Revolution Tellson's in London becomes a haven for
emigrant French aristocrats, the same aristocrats found guilty, a few
chapters earlier, of squeezing their peasants dry. How should you
view Tellson's for sheltering an oppressing class? (Dickens has
already revealed that the cramped, dark bank resists change of any
sort.) More to the point, how should you judge Jarvis Lorry for
dedicating his life to such an establishment? Readers have suggested
that Dickens, despite his liberal politics, found the solidity of
institutions like Tellson's appealing; the old bank and its banker,
Jarvis Lorry, represent a kind of bastion against the new, aggressive
ways of men like Stryver--and against the frenzied violence of the
French mob.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES: MADAME DEFARGE

Dickens is famous for tagging his characters with a habit, trait, or
turn of phrase. Just as Jarvis Lorry's constant catchword is
"business," so Madame Defarge's defining activity is knitting.
Madame knits a register of those she's marked for death, come the
revolution. This hobby links her closely with the novel's theme of
fate. By referring to myth, we may interpret her as one of the
Fates--the Greek goddesses who first spin the thread of human life,
and then cut it off. But it's not necessary to go beyond the story
for other equivalents to Madame Defarge's fast-moving fingers.
Dickens implicitly contrasts her ominous craft with Lucie Manette's