Darkness and Light in “A Tale of Two Cities”, by Charles Dickens

The theme of light and dark runs throughout the novel, to great effect

Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities” is a story about contrasts, as is evident from the very title. We are shown the two cities, namely London and Paris, in very different lights, with Paris being the city of revolution and danger and London as the place of peace and sanctuary. Along with this contrast are the themes of night and day, darkness and light, running through the book.

The tale begins at night, with Mr Lorry making his journey to Dover to catch the ferry to France, where he is to rescue Dr Manette. It ends in daylight, with the death by guillotine of the hero, Sydney Carton. However, to equate darkness with evil and light with good is to make too facile a judgment, and Dickens is far too clever a writer to make so obvious a distinction. In the examples given above, a good deed is performed at night and an evil one in daylight.

That said, Dickens is happy to make use of the conventional approach when it suits him. At the end of Chapter 16, darkness falls in Paris just before the Revolution starts. He writes:

“Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the…