What Two Cities Are Described in Thinking Through the Past, Chapter 8 Reading?
Book two, Chapter 9
Course Hero Literature Instructor Russell Jaffe provides an in-depth summary and analysis of Book 2, Chapter 9 of Charles Dickens's novel A Tale of Two Cities.
A Tale of Two Cities | Book 2, Chapter nine : The Gorgon's Head | Summary
Summary
The table has been ready for a late supper for two in a tower room at the chateau, but the Marquis's nephew has not yet arrived. The Marquis thinks he sees something outside, only when the servant opens the blinds, he tin can run across zippo. Not expecting his nephew to make it so late, the Marquis begins eating solitary. Halfway through his meal, the boyfriend arrives. It is Charles Darnay. In that location is tension between the 2 men: Darnay suspects his uncle of adding to the show against him—an accusation the Marquis denies.
Darnay says their family unit has washed great harm to the peasantry and to France in full general but, as his female parent would have wanted, he is committed to being merciful. The Marquis admits that things are irresolute in France: "Our not-remote ancestors held the correct of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged; in ... my sleeping accommodation ... i swain ... was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter ... We have lost many privileges; ... the assertion of our station ... might ... cause u.s.a. real inconvenience." Simply he besides says he "volition die, perpetuating the system under which [he has] lived." He recommends that Charles "accept [his] natural destiny." But Charles renounces his inheritance (the chateau and lands) and France: "If information technology passed to me from you, to-morrow ... I would abandon it, and alive otherwise and elsewhere. It is little to relinquish. What is it just a wilderness of misery and ruin!" The Marquis wants to know where Darnay is going to back up himself with his new peaceful attitude and no money. Darnay tells him he volition become to England and stay there, having found refuge with a French doctor and his daughter. The two say goodnight. The Marquis sends his servant with Darnay to light the way, adding nether his breath, "And burn Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you volition."
The Marquis goes to bed, thinking most the death of the kid at the fountain. The night passes quietly. The adjacent morning, the chateau bell begins ringing, and Gabelle gallops off on a horse. The mender of roads dashes to join the villagers who stand whispering at the village fountain, wondering what has happened. The Marquis is even so in his bed, with a pocketknife pinning this note to his chest: "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques."
Analysis
This affiliate reveals Charles Darnay'southward reasons for fleeing to England, the most important of which is his unwillingness to continue existence office of a family that oppresses and kills people. He is too suspicious that his uncle might be pleased to see him locked away in prison. The Marquis doesn't take any of this very seriously, but he should have, because by the cease of this affiliate, he is expressionless, an effect that is foreshadowed in their supper chat, when the Marquis talks near dying "perpetuating the system" he has e'er known, and after when they talk about the inheritance Darnay is renouncing.
Their supper chat likewise adds two more than specific crimes to the Marquis'south record. Non only did he run downward the child in Paris with his carriage, but he also had a man killed "for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter" and most likely raped the man's daughter. Readers will learn more than about these crimes later. In the aforementioned conversation, the Marquis shows an interest in Dr. Manette. By placing the Marquis'southward mention of the father–girl incident in the same conversation with his nephew'due south mention of a French doctor, Dickens links them in the reader's mind. The reason for this will get clear as the novel progresses.
The title of the chapter relates to the rock statues in the courtyard of the Marquis's house. At the end of the affiliate, the narrator says that information technology is as if the Gorgon had stared at someone and "added the one stone face wanting": the Marquis, who is rock cold in his bed. Dickens unremarkably gave his capacity titles that subtly referenced a metaphor or mythical allusion in the affiliate. In this way, he could let readers know what was happening in the chapter, and because each chapter was an installment in a magazine, each ane had to take its own championship.
The reader doesn't know yet who killed the Marquis, simply the note from "Jacques" reveals that information technology's a revolutionary, not Charles Darnay. Darnay hates his family unit, but he hasn't joined the band of revolutionaries calling themselves "Jacques." There are a lot of people who want to see the Marquis dead, merely Dickens referred to Gaspard earlier every bit a tall effigy, a inkling that Gaspard may have taken revenge for the death of his kid. Simply Defarge was with Gaspard when the child was killed. He might well have sent one of the Jacques or even committed the act himself. Once again, the theme of violence resurfaces: The solution to whatever problem in France seems to be violent expiry.
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