The Book Club: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens with Allen Estrin | The Book Club

Welcome to the Prager U Book Club. I'm Michael Knowles, and today we're talking about A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, one of the biggest novels ever written, in so many senses of that word. I am joined by my friend Alan Estrin, executive director of Prager U, because A Tale of Two Cities is too big for just me to cover. There's no way I can do it. I'm here to help you with the lift. You need to be here to help me with this lift, because it's very, very big. You brought up an interesting point. It's one of the most famous books ever written. It has probably the most famous introduction to a novel ever, and it has one of the most famous closings of all time. I think it is the most famous opening to any novel, and it's the most famous closing of any novel in one novel. In one novel. A lot of pages, but one novel. So that should give you some idea of how important this is in the history of literature, to Victorian literature, and why I consider The Tale of Two Cities as the gateway to Victorian literature. If someone is going to start on Victorian literature, I can't think of a better place to start than Tale of Two Cities. The thing about this introduction is, even for people who have never read the book, everybody knows the introduction. The introduction is, 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 for evil in the superlative degree of comparison only. That is all one sentence. That is one drag-on sentence. It encompasses everything in these big contrasts, and it's led to a very popular myth that Charles Dickens was paid by the word, because he easily could have said, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, moving on. It was a big period, it was an era of contradiction, moving on, but he doesn't, and it's actually not true, he was not paid by the word. He was paid by the installment, and this book was released in a series of installments throughout the year 1859, and it was released, people were waiting, weekly installments. It's hard, it's impossible for us to imagine. Well, maybe it's not impossible, it's like Game of Thrones, you're waiting for the next episode. People were so enthralled with Dickens' work. Now, Dickens, we should note, was the most popular novelist of his age. He actually became a wealthy man, was the first, he may have been the first, not positive about this, but I think, I'm pretty sure, he may have been the first wealthy writer. Yeah, one of the few throughout history. The first person who really became wealthy as a result of his writing, and also as a result of his lecturing, he went on these amazing lecture tours. Right. But on the installment idea, people waited with bated breath, literally, for each installment. Now, you can imagine what it was like in England, where he wrote the book, the installment would come out on a regular basis, but what was it like in America, where he was even more popular than he was in England? Right. You had to wait for the ship to arrive in New York Harbor. The question of America actually brings up another one of the differences in the book, one of the contrasts, which is, the whole book is about the French Revolution, and what the French Revolution means for Paris, and what it means for London. Is this revolutionary fervor going to catch on in England? The French Revolution is sparked by the American Revolution, but the American Revolution and the French Revolution, completely different. What is the story? The story begins with the imprisonment of a French doctor. Now, he's a wonderful human being who is pulled into a murder. He doesn't witness the murder itself, but he witnesses the product of the murder, the death of a woman and her brother. As a result, we'd say in modern terms, mafia fashion, the French noblemen who are responsible for this murder put him in prison because they don't want anybody to know about their crime. They put him in the most famous prison, the Bastille. There's Bastille Day. When the French Revolution comes, they storm the Bastille. They empty out all the prisoners, and that's where he languishes. He's there for 18 years. 18 years. And then he is released from that prison and is reunited with his daughter, who he thought probably was dead. He really, he's never seen her. And she certainly thought he was dead. They return to England. Their life develops. They have a very good life in England. She gets married to a Frenchman who's emigrated to England. His name is Charles Darnay. He's left France. He's gone to England. He's totally adopted an English identity and lifestyle. Right. And then the French Revolution happens, and he is also such a good human being that when he learns of someone who has served his noble house, because that's his background, and who has been wrongly imprisoned in the Bastille, he decides he must go there to help this person. Really out of a sense of guilt, family guilt. But once he gets to France, and it's so interesting, he goes to France thinking, I'm a Frenchman. I'm going to be able to negotiate this situation. And when he arrives, almost the moment he arrives in France, he realizes he is in something that is well, well beyond his control and is almost immediately himself imprisoned in the Bastille. Right. He's brought in, they call it La Force prison, and he's locked there. So then his family, who's in England now, his family being his wife, Lucy, his daughter, little Lucy, and his father-in-law, Dr. Manette, the prisoner for 18 years, they all go over to try to get him released because Dr. Manette is very, very popular with these French revolutionaries. Because he is a former prisoner of the Bastille. This gives him special status. Right. And he works diligently to release his son-in-law. And in fact, does succeed in releasing his son-in-law. But the trouble with mob violence, the trouble with the will of the people, is it's a fickle thing. So they release him, then they re-imprison him. But there's one person, the character of Sidney Carton. Sidney Carton, one of the great characters, because he's pretty much a nobody. He's a very smart lawyer, but he's in the back office. He's doing all the work. And another character, Mr. Stryver, who's this big, boastful, larger-than-life character, he's taking all the credit. And Sidney Carton is there, and he's kind of a lush, and he just goes about his life. Very charismatic character. Right. But has led, by his own admission, a dissolute life, and a life that is going nowhere. He recognizes that. But he has a plan to save Charles Darnay, the husband. There's a strange coincidence. Sidney Carton saved Charles Darnay at the beginning of the book, because Darnay is being accused of treason, and he's in England. And Sidney Carton is able to get him off the hook, because he calls into question the eyewitness testimony of the accusers, because Sidney Carton looks exactly like Charles Darnay, the husband of Lucy Manette. And yet, they're like two sides of the same coin in characters. Charles Darnay, noble, has a purpose, has this beautiful wife, has a good life. Sidney Carton, dissolute, calls himself worthless, doesn't have anybody to love him, doesn't have any close associations. And yet, they have something in common. They both love Lucy Manette. They're both devoted to this woman. Yes, and they've professed their love to this woman. So it's a very complex plot, but it's very tightly woven, beautifully set up and paid off, as you just illustrated. It's fully engaging. You're totally pulled in, can't stop reading. One of the reasons why that opening is so fantastic, in addition to being so poetic, is that you can use it in almost any era. We live in the best of times and in the worst of times. Right. An age that seems paradoxical, or almost, I mean, just in our own times. We're hyper-scientific, we're hyper-into our use of reason, and everything's got to be reasonable. And then we believe in some pretty crazy stuff, too. We believe that men can really be women. We believe the world is going to end in 10 years because of the weather. We believe in a lot of things that don't have a ton of basis in reason and science and facts. And both of those things are true at the same time. We live in the age of hyper-computers, we live in the age of total fantasy. And at the moment that this book is written, this book spans the time just before the French Revolution, during, and just afterward, it's not like it's a totally different era. It's like it just gets turned up to 11. Everything is so intense, everything is so dramatic, and so alive. And this is, I think, the biggest theme of the book are these contrasts. I mean, it opens with that, you see it throughout, the contrasts of Sidney Carton and Charles Darnay, the contrasts of the two cities, Paris and London, the contrasts of free will, what I can do to choose to take control of my fate, and the role of fate itself, and destiny. And then you get the theme, which is in a contrast of resurrection, because the biggest contrast is life and death. And the first part of the story, the first book of the book, is called Recalled to Life. The old banker who's friends with the Manette family, kind of takes care of their business affairs, Jarvis Lorry, in this early scene when he's riding in to bring Lucie Manette to her father, he receives a message and he sends a message back, and the message is recalled to life. And then, at the very end of the book, you have Sidney Carton, the only man who can possibly solve this situation and get Charles Darnay out of prison, and the only way he can do it is by sacrificing his own life. And in so doing, he gains himself this life. He's going throughout the book, at the very end, he just keeps repeating to himself the words of Christ, I am the resurrection and the life. I am the resurrection of the life. It's not like this guy's going to church throughout the whole book. There's no evidence of that. But he understands this in this last moment. He sacrifices himself. And it's not just soft soap and sentiment. It's not just a nice thing that a kind of schmucky guy does. He really does give himself a great life because of this. If he did not sacrifice his life, he would go on, he'd drink a lot of port every night, he'd do some cases that no one cares about, and he would die alone, forgotten, no one cares about him. And by doing this, he makes his life worthwhile. He says in it, he says, this woman that I love, Lucy, she will cry on this day every year thinking of this. And the daughter, the generations later, they'll name their children after me, and they'll bring them to Paris after Paris is so much better off, and once it's a good city again. And they will tell them about what I did. And the husband and wife lying in bed after a good long life together, they will hold each other in such love in their hearts. And they will hold me with such love in each of their hearts, no less so for what I did for them. His sacrifice actually does give him this beautiful life. And it prompts the most famous final lines probably in any, certainly in any English novel, which is Sidney Carton facing the guillotine. It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known. That is the last line in the book. And it is absolutely true. It's an amazing, even just the contrast of Sidney Carton, he's kind of a minor character in the book. You know, he loves this woman, Lucy, and she kind of thinks he's a nice guy. Right, and he is, I mean, to the extent that he's a minor character, he's the greatest minor character in the history of literature. Right. He's such, he's so compelling. Whenever Sidney is on the page, as it were, you're drawn in even further. And he, so he begins as this sort of minor character, and then he is the crucial, literally the crucial character in the book. He sacrifices himself like the crucifixion. And all of these characters are so great. I mean, this is something that Dickens does so unbelievably well. You've got, I think of Jerry Cruncher. Jerry Cruncher. One of the greatest names in fiction. But also one of the greatest characters. And a great character. And a sort of side point, I mean, we're talking about these very heavy themes. Yeah. Dickens is a great humorist. Yes. He writes for people, he writes so that people will be entertained. He's very, very conscious of that. And he always creates characters that you just, you have to laugh at the way they talk, what they do, how they do it. Jerry Cruncher, he screams at his wife, he hits his wife because she prays for him. Because she's praying for her husband. He says, stop flopping on the floor. And he's this gruff, ugly character. But very, very funny. So you go from these profound, serious, somber themes of life and death and resurrection to Jerry Cruncher, whose job it is to, in the middle of the night, go out and literally dig up dead bodies. So he is actually, even, you see this grand theme even in these beautiful moments on the scaffold waiting for the guillotine. And in this funny character digging up dead bodies at the very end. Another great character who is both terrifying and hilarious, Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge. A little more terrifying. You wouldn't want to find her in a dark alley. Oh man, she's a very, I mean to say she's a tough cookie is truly to underestimate. She's a battle axe. Madame Defarge and her husband, Monsieur Defarge, have this wine shop. And they're revolutionaries. And they're out for blood. And they take care of Dr. Manette. Once he leaves the Bastille prison, they kind of look after him. And then Jarvis Laurie and Lucy come and take the doctor away from them. But they're caring after him. And they're both revolutionaries. And she is the real revolution. She's keeping a book of all the aristocrats that, once the revolution comes, she's going to do away with their heads. There's a great exchange between Madame Defarge and her husband, Monsieur Defarge, toward the end of the book when he, who has a sort of a tinge of conscience, says to her, when is this going to end? And she has a one word response. Extermination. That gives you an idea how much hate this woman holds. But to Dickens' credit, and it's another reason why it's such a wonderful novel, she actually has a motivation for her hate. She takes it well beyond where it should go. But it turns out that Madame Defarge is the sister of the woman who was murdered by the French nobleman whose nephew is Charles Darnay. So when I said earlier, this is all a very tightly woven plot, that's a really good example. It all comes back, and you see all of these parallels. Because Charles Dickens had great sympathy for the French peasants and the British peasants. He himself was raised really without any money. His father went to debtor's prison. He worked in a factory when he was a little kid. So he has this great sympathy for them. And then he shows how violent and bloody and terrible this thing goes on. And it brings up another contrast, which is, you have the French Revolution, and everyone's afraid that the French Revolution is going to infect England, and you're going to see the same thing there. Those cities at the beginning of the novel look very similar. One goes one way and one goes another. Look, even geographically, they're not very far away. The French Revolution was started, it was sparked, by the American Revolution. And yet, those two revolutions were completely different. Edmund Burke, an earlier writer, talked about how the American Revolution is a good revolution, and the French Revolution was such a bad revolution. You see those two split off. I mean, even speaking of Madame Defarge, one of the great scenes of the book is, they're about to kill Charles Darnay. They know they're about to kill Lucy. They're about to kill Little Lucy. Their heads are about to disappear. So, the Manettes, Dr. Manette and Little Lucy and Lucy, they're leaving France to go to England. This is a plot cooked up by Sydney Carton. It's all going to work out, unless Madame Defarge gets there first. And she's marching down the street, and she's going to find them and drag them and get their heads chopped off. And there is the answer to Madame Defarge, which is, the nurse, Miss Pross, the English nurse, Miss Pross, who took care of Little Lucy all her life, and she is waiting there. And she needs to stop Madame Defarge from realizing that the family has left. And they start yelling at each other in their own languages. And they don't understand a word they're saying. Right, they don't understand. Yeah. But they do. Yeah. They understand each other. And Madame Defarge knows that all the rooms are empty, except for this one that Miss Pross is guarding. If Madame Defarge finds out that that room is empty, she can call the patrol. She can pick up the minnets before they make it back to England. And Miss Pross holds her ground. You see this theme there, too, of fate and an act of will. The fate, the destiny is moving on, but Miss Pross can guard her little door. And they get into a fight. Doesn't turn out very well for Madame Defarge. All these huge, beautiful characters that all come in together. And there's so many more connections that, obviously, we would never have time to get When they get into a fight, you're talking, they get into a physical fight. I mean, they're really tearing at each other. Right. And this, the parallels between that and today. I mean, on the one hand, you realize, okay, we complain about politics because someone sent a tweet that we don't really like, and that's so bad. At least we don't have blood running in the streets like in revolutionary Paris. On the other hand, Paris was the height of civilization, the height of sophistication. And look what happened there. Look how fast that turned to chaos. Gives you a little bit of fear about our own times as well. Maybe that's why Dickens does not spare any details as to what the French Revolution embodied, what it existed. There are scenes in which the banker says to Lucy, don't, whatever you do, don't open the drapes, don't look at what's out there. Right. And then we get to look in, in A Tale of Two Cities, and you see all of that. You see so much light, so much darkness, so much tragedy, so much comedy, so much England, so much France. I think one of those there is more comedic, and one of those is a little bit more tragic. It's such a big book. That's why I needed you to come help me talk about it. We could talk about it for another 25 hours, but we just have run out of time on this episode. So you will have to come back next month. I look forward to seeing you. Unfortunately, Alan Estrin, the Executive Director of PragerU, won't be here, but I will be. So come back next month. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the PragerU Book Club. See you next time. Thank you so much for watching this episode of the Book Club on PragerU. 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