His footsteps are steady. He walks up the stairs and across the stage, his last moments on earth placed before a crowd of angry and blood-thirsty people. Yet, unlike those who die at the Guillotine before him, there is something different in the way his life ends. Peace is etched in his features as he approaches his death. He leaves the world knowing that he has made a difference, that through his death the woman he loves and her family will be safe and forever happy.
I was never really read to before being tucked in, when I was a child. Yet, I would invent stories of love and magic within my own mind. It was not until high school when I read A Tale of Two Cities that I truly felt wise in the area of love.
Some argue that love is an imprisonment under the object of one's affections. However, I believe that, more often than not, love is a liberation. Sydney Carton's death transformed the way i viewed love. His death affected me by the idea that an anguished, ignoble soul could find meaning in love, regardless of the fact that it would end one's life. The image allowed me to believe that one could be liberated from one's demons through love, much like Sydney Carton was. Carton's sacrifice is exemplary of how human beings have no boundaries when in love.
Moreover, there are no earlier versions of A Tale of Two Cities; however, the chapters were, at first, weekly installments published in the magazine 'All the Year Round." Charles Dickens wrote the book but used facts from Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution: A History as inspiration. The novel took place in London and Paris during the years that led up to the French Revolution.
I have never read A Tale of Two Cities, however, this post has sparked my curiosity and desire to read the novel. The way you began grabbed my attention and made me want to read more and find out who was going to the guillotine, why, and why he was at peace. Throughout the post you touched on those answers, however not in a way that would give too much away.
ReplyDeleteI think that you did a great job of opening up the blog. I was interested from the very beginning up to the very end. I also feel that you did a good job of expressing how the last act of Carton changed your view of love. However I think that your last paragraph was somewhat rushed and last minute compared to the rest of your blog. It seemed like you spent a lot of time talking about how you felt and then remembered to add History at the end. Regardless, I thought that you did a great job otherwise
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