Tale of Two C ities Book Two C hapter Ten Two Promises

1. Tale of Two CitiesBook Two Chapter Ten Two Promises Caroline Seseri

2. Significance of Title: Two Promises • As Doctor Manette and Charles Darnay are talking about Lucie, Darnay basically asks Manette to promise to vouch for what he has said should Lucie ever ask. Manette agrees. (page 140) • Darnay begins to tell Manette who he really is but Manette stops him. He asks Darnay to promise that he will tell him, should Lucie love him, on the day of their wedding. Darnay agrees. (page 142)

3. Plot • Charles Darnay visits Doctor Manette and tells him that he is devotedly in love with his daughter, Lucie. He explains to him that he does truly love her and Doctor Manette believes him. Darnay says that he does not want to disturb the bond between the two should he and Lucie ever get married. • Darnay begins to open up. He starts saying who he really is but Manette stops him. He says that he does not want to know until the day of Lucie and his marriage. He asks him to promise that he will tell him and Darnay does so. • Darnay leaves before Lucie comes home. • Once she comes home, she cannot find the Doctor and she freaks out. She hears a faint hammering sound coming from his bedroom. She looks in and becomes overwhelmed with fear, yelling, ‘What shall I do! What shall I do!’. This only lasts a moment once she finds him again heavily asleep.

4. Literary Devices • Allusion~ “In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses; if he had had any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered.’ This shows allusion because it is based off of a tale by Dick Whittington and Christopher Marlowe. (page 135) • Repetition~ ‘No, dear Doctor Manette. Like you, a voluntary exile from France; like you, driven from it by its distractions, oppressions, and miseries; like you, striving to live away from it by my own exertions, and trusting in a happier future…’ He constantly repeats ‘like you,’ for emphasis and this shows repetition. (page 139) • Imagery~ ‘He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his danger. He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear as the sound of her compassionate voice; he had never see n a face so tenderly beautiful, as hers when it was comforted with his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug for him.’ Darnay is using imagery to describe Lucie. (page 135)

5. Essential Quote ‘I know,’ said Darnay, respectfully, ‘how can I fail to know, Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together from day to day, that between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and child. I know, Doctor Manette – how I can fail to know – that mingled with the affection and duty of a daughter who has become a woman, there is, in her heart towards you, all the love and reliance of infancy itself. I know that, as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is now devoted to you with all the constancy and fervour of her present years and character, united to the trustfulness and attachment of the early years in which you were lost to her. I know perfectly well that if you had been restored to her from the world beyond this life, you could hardly be invested, in her sight, with a more sacred character than that in which you are always with her. I know that she is clinging to you, the hands of a baby, girl, and woman, all in one, are around your neck. I know that in loving you she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted, loves you through your dreadful trial and in your blessed restoration. I have know this, night and day, since I have known you in your home.’ (page 138)