A Tale of Two Cities

Everybody's heard the first line of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It's possible that these are the best opening lines to any novel, ever. I can't think of any that are more famous anyways. It's in the lines that follow that the theme of Dickens' book become evident.

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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

A Tale of Two Cities was published in 1859 about a period of time that starts around the mid 1700s and ends about 30 years later, based in London and Paris. The opening lines make clear that things have not changed that much in the years that have passed, and one of the reasons this book has held up so well is that things haven't really changed all that much in the years between then and now. The overriding themes involve a ruling class that ignores basic human rights, criminal proceedings that are unnecessarily cruel, oh, and human doppelgangers. Other than that last one, sound familiar?

Ultimately, the social injustice Dickens writes of lead to the French Revolution, and the decapitation of many, many French nobles. I'm not saying I think that's a good thing, but it's too bad that our fearless leader in Shrubbery wasn't an English major or a History major at Yale. If he was, I'm sure he would have read that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

Anyways, this is Dickens at his best, with plot twists, nobility and evil, strong characterizations. Like most Dickens, it was a serial novel that came out periodically in newspapers, much like a tv series of today. Probably due to this, A Tale of Two Cities is a book that ebbs and flows nicely, and there are the equivalent of cliff hangers periodically, where you can imagine 19th century readers rushing to get the newspapers to find out what happened to their favorite characters.

I've read A Tale of Two Cities some years ago, it stood with Great Expectations as one of my favorite Dickens. This time around I'm listening to it, downloaded for free at Librivox. (The serial nature of the book actually lends itself nicely to audio format.) For those unfamiliar, Librivox is a public domain site, where people volunteer to read books/works in the public domain and upload them for public consumption. The readers are hit and miss, as is the quality of the readings. This one is excellent so far all around, but not all are. They are free though, and their selection is really pretty impressive. Anybody who likes audio books should check it out. Plus Goody, you don't have to actually read the words yourself. No pictures though, sorry.