Beware Of Death

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Term Paper Title	Beware Of Death
# of Words	1331
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	5.32

Beware of Death
     "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death." Dickens repeatedly uses this famous Revolutionary slogan in his A Tale of Two Cities, a novel written about the evils of the French Revolution. However, this slogan does not reflect Dickens' attitude toward death. Although Dickens seems to sympathize with the Revolutionary cause, he condemns the mass executions and horrible crimes committed by the revolutionaries.
Living in England at a time when revolution loomed as an ominous possibility, Dickens
feared bloodshed in his country like that of the French Revolution. His fear of bloodshed magnifies his extreme obsession with death. Even his minute details vividly exhibit the obvious fear and terror he felt about death. Descriptions, events, and characterization clearly reveal this theme of death.
     Dickens' description of capital punishment displays his attitude toward death. Dickens criticizes his native England for the capital punishment that is practiced. He censures this practice which took the life of an "atrocious murderer" as well as the life of a "wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence"(5). He also condemns France for use of unnecessarily cruel punishments such as "sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongues torn out with pincer, 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"(4).
     Detailed descriptions distinctly convey Dickens' message of death. When Mr. Lorry meets Lucie for the first time, he takes note of a mirror frame behind her with "a hospital procession of Negro cupids, several headless and all cripples" that "were offering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit" (19-20). The headless cupids provide an image of the decapitation prevalent during this period while the black baskets refer to the baskets in which the heads would fall, thus foreshadowing the horror of the guillotine. An ambiance of death pervades the entire room in which this meeting takes place. The room, "furnished in a funereal manner" with "two tall candles on the table in the middle of the room ĄŚgloomily reflected on every leaf; as if they were buried" (19).
     A description of Tellson's Bank accentuates this theme of death and gloom. Tellson's depicts a place where "they took a young man" and "hid him somewhere till he was old"(53). Tellson's Bank, portrays a microcosm of outside society for "like greater places of business, its contempo...

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