Tale+of+Two+Cities+Final+Assessment

Answer **one** of the following questions in a multi-paragraph essay with an introduction and conclusion:
 * __A Tale of Two Cities__**
 * Multi-paragraph essay **

Option 1: Dickens uses a death, burial, and resurrection or “recalled to life” motif to explore the theme of rebirth in //A Tale of Two Cities//. While the nation sees the death and burial of the old way, no one is sure what type of new regime will arise in France. Nevertheless, against this backdrop of revolution, many individuals including Jerry Cruncher, Dr. Manetette, Charles Darnay, and Sydney Carton experience personal rebirth – either physically, emotionally, or morally. Discuss how three characters’ choices and experiences reinforce the idea that through sacrifice and/or suffering, humans can experience transformative rebirth.

Option 2: Miss Pross expresses, in the midst of the most intense conflict of her life, a belief in the “virtuous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate.” Do the characters in the novel uphold this theme?

Option 3: Sydney Carton lays down his life for another, casting him as an archetypal Christ figure. Why does Dickens use this archetype in a novel about revolution?

Option 4: Compare **and** contrast Madame Defarge and Sydney Carton. How does Dickens’ characterization of each reveal a truth about human nature?

Option 5: In antithetical portrayals of femininity, Lucie, Miss Pross, and Madame Defarge each represent unique images of women. Analyze the values glorified and demonized through their characterization.

Option 6: People tend to associate revolution with outward actions, often violent in nature, such as battles or the storming of the Bastille. However, others believe all revolution begins in the hearts and mind of human beings and perceive the inner nature of the enacting change. John Adams said in a letter to Thomas Jefferson on August 24th, 1815, “As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected ... before a drop of blood was shed.” Analyze Dickens’ portrayal of revolution in light of John Adams’ philosophy.

Option 7: Dickens repeatedly incorporates symbolic imagery including footsteps, shadows, wheels, light and dark imagery, thread and weaving imagery, and blood and wine imagery. Analyze how Dickens’ uses symbolic imagery work to reinforce central themes in the novel?


 * Consider __A Tale of Two Cities__ your principle text **

In your essay, you must also reference all of the following:
 * § An approved article by a reputable literary critic
 * § “Storm Warnings” or “The Second Coming” by Yeats (included below)
 * § A biblical passage or a classical myth or a passage from a Shakespeare play or sonnet

A full bibliography is required.


 * Use the following list of requirements, first to direct your approach, and later as an editing checklist. **
 * § Have your thesis approved before beginning to write.
 * § Use textual evidence (some quoted some paraphrased) to support your claims
 * § Use elevated, formal diction (bold face exceptional words).
 * § Use parallel structure.
 * § Use phrase openers, appositives, periodic sentences, or other methods for controlling the emphasis in each sentence.
 * § Use an original metaphor or simile to strengthen an interpretive point.
 * § Use single word transitions only within paragraphs and hooks or long-phrase transitions between paragraphs.
 * § Write in **present tense**, **avoiding passive voice** completely.
 * § Work all quotes into sentences and document (Last 9).
 * § Include an element of close reading where your interpretation refers to the specific meaning of a word or the effect of the author’s use of a literary device.
 * § Cross-reference when you can support a point better by using a second passage to corroborate the idea within your first choice of textual evidence.
 * § Each paragraph may present one, two, or three strands; you may use multiple examples (middle boxes) per strand. The number of paragraphs will be determined by the support requirements inherent in your thesis.
 * § Follow every example, whether presented as quote or paraphrase, with analysis and interpretation. Complete the paragraph with a more general concluding sentence that provides clear thesis support.

The Second Coming William Butler Yeats, 1919

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

By Adrienne Rich, contemporary
 * Storm Warnings **

The glass has been falling all the afternoon, And knowing better than the instrument What winds are walking overhead, what zone Of gray unrest is moving across the land, I leave the book upon a pillowed chair And walk from window to closed window, watching Boughs strain against the sky

And think again, as often when the air Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting, How with a single purpose time has traveled By secret currents of the undiscerned Into this polar realm. Weather abroad And weather in the heart alike come on Regardless of prediction.

Between foreseeing and averting change Lies all the mastery of elements Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter. Time in the hand is not control of time, Nor shattered fragments of an instrument A proof against the wind; the wind will rise, We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black And set a match to candles sheathed in glass Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine Of weather through the unsealed aperture. This is our sole defense against the season; These are the things that we have learned to do Who live in troubled regions.