A Tale of Two Cities

Buckle up folks, because I've got a lot to say about this one. Wow. Where to begin? Prior to this, I had only read one Dickens novel: Great Expectations. Reading that book was not the best experience for me. You could say that, ironically, it left me with poor expectations for future Dickens works. A large part of my dislike for Great Expectations was that it was mandatory summer reading, which of course no high school student enjoys. Beyond that aspect, however, was the issue of Dickens being too wordy. I can't blame the man. He was a product of his time, and in that time, writers were paid for quantity and not for quality. Thus, it was to his advantage to use as many words as possible to say as little as possible. And did he ever take said advantage. The book dragged on and on and on, and plot points and character development seemed sparse. It was only after we analyzed the book in class once school began that I even began to understand the full scope of the story and all of the clever character intertwining Dickens had done. Beneath all of his superfluous language was a very solid story. But the book was forever tarnished in my mind because reading it had been so laborious. Flash forward to the past couple of weeks. When I took on A Tale of Two Cities, I was committed to not allowing Dickens' style get in the way of my enjoyment of his story again. I only partially succeeded. I certainly was more patient with Dickens this time around, but once again, I couldn't help but feel upset with him at times for absolutely unloading pointless sentences on me. Examples included multi-page setting descriptions, characters asking each other to repeat what they had just said, and, in my opinion, far too much focus on events that did nothing to advance the plot, set a mood, or develop a character or conflict. I made it about halfway into the book before once again falling victim to skimming for details that I thought were relevant. I confess that I even had to look up chapter summaries online at a few points, fearing I had missed something important. Now, all of this having been said, there was plenty about A Tale of Two Cities that I enjoyed. The title is sort of a misnomer, as the story is really unquestionably about Paris and the first French Revolution. The other city, London, really only came into play because some of the characters affected by the revolution lived there. Not surprisingly, it was the French "half" of the story, where all of the action was, that I found most entertaining. It was here, too, where I thought Dickens was at his best, depicting not only the cruelty of the French nobility toward the lower class but also the mob mentality and unwavering madness that broke out once the French revolted. He managed to examine both sides of the coin while championing neither cause, thus in a way somewhat saying that the nature of man is a dark one indeed. Behind all of the wordy fluff and extemporaneous characters - and both abound in this book, in true Dickens fashion - there lies a beautiful tale of redemption. Unfortunately, it's really only focused upon in the final chapters of the book; in general, I found the rest of the story to fall short of being worthy of all the praise it has received. It was really only the last three chapters or so that gripped me on an emotional level, drew me in, and and made me empathise with the characters and all of the Terror's victims for which they stood. The final pages of the last chapter made for one of the greatest and most bittersweet and beautiful finales I have ever seen, read, or heard of. So in the end, I'm kind of torn, not just with how to view this book, but also with how to regard Dickens after having read two of his most famous works and being largely unimpressed by the majority of them both. On the one hand, Dickens is one of the greatest writers I've ever read, when he wanted to be. On the other hand, what Dickens wanted most of all appears to have been his paycheck. How else could such a good writer allow himself to drawl on and on about such mundane details in all of his works? It's tough to blame Dickens for wanting to make a living, and I won't go as far as to call him a "sell-out" or anything similarly pejorative; that would imply that his greatest works came before, and not during, his long-winded phase. It just seems that when it came to editing for brevity, he was the literary equivalent of Peter Jackson or Judd Apatow. How do you rate a movie that had one of your favorite five-minute scenes of all time, but also two hours of forgettable nothingness? This book was both more enjoyable to read and also an all-around better story, in my opinion, than Great Expectations was. Still, I don't think I'll ever be able to think of Dickens as one of the all-time greatest English authors unless he shakes his garrulous ways in some other works of his that I may someday read. Until then, he'll always have that fatal flaw, in my eyes. But I should end on a note that gives credit where credit is due: regardless of its tedious language, I absolutely recommend A Tale of Two Cities, even to fellow Dickens skeptics. It's a classic, it's an adventure, it contains numerous memorable characters, and it boasts one of the most powerful endings in story-telling history.