Dickens & the French Revolutio essays

Dickens & the French Revolutio essays A Tale of Two Cities and the French Revolution Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities, portrayed the French Revolution unfairly, and not entirely completely. I dont think that Dickens goal in writing A Tale of Two Cities was to portray the stability of England as a nation, but that was the main message I derived from the film. Also, some of the causes of the revolution seemed to fade into the background, leaving an incomplete picture of the French peoples suffering. Dickens does not do justice to the Revolution, as he portrays it as mostly meaningless violence and bitter revenge. In reality, the Revolution started a chain of events that would change France for the better. Though it may have taken some years for this to be fully realized, when Dickens wrote the novel, he should have known that the revolutions ends somehow justified the means. In my view, Dickens made it look as though no matter what the ends, the means could not be justified. The Terror was a very violent period, and it is true that a lot of the violence could have been completely avoided. I think that Dickens trivializes the struggle that the Third Estate went through before they ever resorted to violence. England, in comparison, is portrayed as the stable nation, a place where all are welcome, and none are judged. This was as true for England at that time as it was for France. I think that this fact unfairly biases the viewer, or reader, of A Tale of Two Cities. England had problems of its own at the time, but Dickens chose to gloss over that part of the story. In Dickens present, England was at a tender time. Some feared that revolution was coming, and Dickens only weapon against that was his fiction. In order to make the English realize that revolution was unnecessary, the French were made out to be savages and brutes. Their violence was made to look excessive and meaningless. By comparison, the British in A Tale were far mo ...