A Tale of Two CitiesA Tale of Two CitiesChapter 1Chapter 1

Case High SchoolEnglish 9(1)Ms. Botelho

Ms. Janson

Mr. Gorman

Core Value: Higher Order Thinking SkillsStandard 12.5: Locate and analyze such elements in fiction as point of view, foreshadowing, and irony.

Monday 1/10 AgendaMonday 1/10 Agenda

1) Vocab Warm-Up2) Notes on Setting3) Opening Notes4) Read Chapter 15) Watch Movie

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Vocab Warm-UpVocab Warm-Up

1. Epoch (page 1, line 2)A. “… it was the epoch of belief…”B. The years of the Italian Renaissance were an epoch of great creativity and progress in both the arts and sciences.a. period of time c. failureb. opposite d. good example

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2. Incredulity (page 1, line 3)A. “… it was the epoch of incredulity…”B. The theories of Columbus were looked on by many with incredulity, but he was finally proved right.a. confidence c. disbeliefb. unusual happenings d. previous inexperience

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3. Humane (page 2, line 8)A.“… She entertained herself, besides,

with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive.”

B.Nursing is a humane profession, dedicated to attending to the care and comfort of people in need of such attention.a. merciful b. commonc. technical d. well-paid

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4. Rustic (page 2, line 20)A. “…There were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire…”B. Many of the Dutch artists preferred to paint country landscapes, with rustic cottages and majestic windmills.a. sophisticated c. lowly but dignifiedb. belonging to the country d. poorly cared

for

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5. Myriads (page 3, line 25)A. “Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures– the creatures of this chronicle among the rest– along the road that lay before them.”B. Myriads of black flies buzzed around us as we trudged through the wet woods.a. excellent examples c. great numbersb. miracles d. relatives

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SettingSettingCore Value: Higher Order Thinking Skills

LondonLondon

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Core Value: Higher Order Thinking Skills

Charles Darnay’s first trial in London: a whole crowd of drunken ruffians gathers to see the "condemned" man sentenced to death. How does this compare to France where the French Revolution is going on?

 Everyone thinks Darnay’s guilty before he even goes to trial, so the lawyers just spend a lot of time listening to the sounds of their own voices. The court is nothing more that a hall of mirrors. In fact, it’s literally a hall of mirrors: they hang big mirrors in front of the accused so that the folks in the audience can watch the accused squirm. Fortunately, of course, Charles gets acquitted – but it’s really not because justice works so well in England.

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Tellson’s BankTellson’s Bank

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If the court is an extension of British government, then Tellson’s Bank is representative of British culture and economics. Tellson’s lives up to just about every stereotype of stodgy, tweed-wearing British businessmen that you’ve ever gotten from watching the BBC. Here’s a sample of how Dickens describes it:Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. (2.1.1)

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That brings us to our last stop in this whirlwind tour of London: the Manette’s house in Soho…

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It’s a perfect haven from the noise and bustle of the city. It’s even more perfect because Lucie makes it such a very homey home. Everyone’s happy there. Even Sydney Carton is happy there. And believe us, that’s saying something.

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FranceFrance

Like England but worse…

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French Revolution Basics: Poor people were very, very poor. Rich people were very, very rich. Rich people were often very rich because they exploited

the very, very poor. Eventually, the poor got tired of being beaten, starved,

raped, and killed. The King, Luis XVI, wasn’t doing too much to help alleviate

the suffering of the poor. On July 14, 1789, mobs stormed the Bastille, the prison

where many political prisoners were held. Several factions (the aristocrats, the middle class, and the

peasants) vie for power. Dickens tends to blur these transitions in A Tale of Two Cities.

The new French Republic is formed. It also quickly dissolves – but that’s beyond the scope of

our story.Core Value: Higher Order Thinking Skills

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 evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Anaphora- the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of lines

Paradox- a statement that appears to contradict but holds some truth

Euphemism- a less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word or phrase

Antithesis- the direct opposite or a contrast of ideas

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Core Value: Higher Order Thinking SkillsStandard 12.5: Locate and analyze such elements in fiction as point of view, foreshadowing, and irony.

The MonarchsThe Monarchs

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.

Core Value: Higher Order Thinking SkillsStandard 12.5: Locate and analyze such elements in fiction as point of view, foreshadowing, and irony.

Dickens suggests the historical inevitability of the French Revolution, illustrating that despite the monarchs' complacency in their divine right, discontentment was growing in the countryside.

The comparison between the monarchies concerns shallow details of appearance because that is all they represent to the people.

The kings are said to have large jaws because it is describing the harsh, authoritative rule.

ToneTone It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven

hundred and seventy- five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and- twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.

Core Value: Higher Order Thinking SkillsStandard 12.5: Locate and analyze such elements in fiction as point of view, foreshadowing, and irony.

Derisive- contemptuous; mocking

Concede- to acknowledge or admit

Sublime- elevated, inspiring awe

Cock-Lane Ghost- news spread that there was a ghost at 33 Cock Lane, people flocked to witness the phenomena.

Suggests the

American Revolutio

n

Mrs. Southcott- claimed to be a prophet later on in life

PersonificationPersonification France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister

of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrels of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

Core Value: Higher Order Thinking SkillsStandard 12.5: Locate and analyze such elements in fiction as point of view, foreshadowing, and irony.

Woodman personifies Fate (Suggests the construction of the guillotine)Farmer personifies Death (Suggests use of farmers’ carts to bring prisoners to the guillotine)

Excessive spending

and extreme violence

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mire-marsh land

Inevitability and magnitude of the French

Revolution

The people dared not acknowledge signs of coming unrest.

The Justice System in The Justice System in EnglandEngland In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to

justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mall was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:" after which the mall was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.

Core Value: Higher Order Thinking SkillsStandard 12.5: Locate and analyze such elements in fiction as point of view, foreshadowing, and irony.

Waylay- to attack in order to rob

Potentate- one who possesses power

Turnham Green was originally a village on the main road between London and the west.

Retinue- a body of aides and retainers attending an important person

Gaol- jail

Blunderbus- a short musket

Newgate- a London prison

Westminster hall- a gothic church

Sixpence- a sum of six pennies

Litote- (little tee) – a form of understatement that involves making an affirmative point by denying its opposite. Litote is the opposite of hyperbole.FYI: Chiasmus- reversal of the order of words in the second of two parallel phrases: he came in triumph and in defeat departs Add to your

notes

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Westminster Hall

Capital Punishment- Newgate Prison

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures -- the creatures of this chronicle among the rest -- along the roads that lay before them.

Core Value: Higher Order Thinking SkillsStandard 12.5: Locate and analyze such elements in fiction as point of view, foreshadowing, and irony.

Events are not

attributed or caused

by the year itself but by Fate, Death,

the monarchs and the common people.

Environ(enVAYern)-surroud, envelop

myr·i·ad (MIR e ud)- a great number

   

POINT OF VIEWPOINT OF VIEW

Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

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Third Person Third Person OmniscientOmniscient Dickens likes to play the Voice of God. His narrator

tends to know it all. Not in a bad way – it’s more like the voice of your favorite high school teacher and Oprah all rolled into one.

See, for example, the sweeping statements of the first chapter of the book:

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 [...]. (1.1.1)

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As you can probably tell from his opening foray, Dickens’s narrator is a big-picture sort of guy. We’re going to get the whole world packed into one novel, which is why it’s lucky that our narrator seems to know exactly what’s going on. All the time.

Core Value: Higher Order Thinking Skills