On the comparison between the foil characters in Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
Tale of Two Cities: Darnay vs. Carton
by Katy Z.
In
every well written novel there exists two opposing forces of personalities. This
allows the reader to fully understand and grasp the characteristics of each
individual-by learning his or her counterpart. In Tale of Two Cities, the
characters Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are very different in their nature
and background. As the story progresses, similarities begin to surface as well.
Locating similarities induces the reader to analyze further in depth. In the
novel Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, Sydney Carton is the
opposite reflection of Charles Darnay’s life and personality traits.
Charles
Darnay, a successful business man and husband, appears as though he has the
ideal life that every man, especially Carton himself, would want. He proposed
to the woman of Carton’s dreams and successfully won her hand in marriage. His
quick nature to forgive and forget has, in the novel, offended Carton. “’On the drunken
occasion in question, I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you.
I wish you would forget it.’ ‘I forgot it long ago’ ‘Fashion of speech again!
But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion is not so easy to me, as you represent it to be to
you. I have by no means forgotten it, and a light answer does not help me to
forget it” (Dickens 205). Darnay,
however, has a deadly secret that relates back to his father-in-law’s past and
may ultimately be the cause of his death.
Sydney Carton, on the other hand, is a waste
of life and talent, drinks alcohol fervently and works under a lawyer who takes
all the credit. He despised Darnay because he was all he could have been. “Why should you particularly like a man who
resembles you…he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might
have been!” (Dickens 87). His pessimistic behavior shrouds a cloud of
negativity over him; he, himself, believes he is a hopeless cause. “[I am a]
self-flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse as you know him to
be” (Dickens 150). He loved Miss Manette, Darnay’s later wife, with a burning
passion that Darnay never portrayed, “let me carry through the rest of my
misdirected life, the remembrance that I opened my heart top you, last of all
the world; and that there was something left in me at this time which you could
deplore and pity” (Dickens 151). Besides the incessant alcoholic problems he
lives a fairly honest life of assisting an aspiring lawyer.
These two characters are not from the same
background and live very different lives but have their points of similarity.
Both Darnay and Carton love Miss Manette dearly and would do any service for
her, but Carton to a further extent of sacrifice and devotion, to the possibility
of obsession. One interesting similarity is their appearance, which largely resembles
each other’s. “they were sufficiently
like each other to surprise, not only the witness, but everybody present, when
they were thus brought into comparison” (Dickens 76). These peculiar
resemblances of the two characters’ appearances contradict their obvious
differences in personality.
Both
characters, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, possess very strikingly similar
appearances but they in their character could not be any more different. Comparing
these differences allows the reader to better understand the significance and
personalities of the two individuals. The contrast between the passion-stricken
Carton and the blandness of Darnay creates diverse characters. This ultimately
results in a fantastic story.
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