In Secret

1. In Secret Sienna Christ

2. Significance “In Secret: Translation of the French phrase en secret, meaning solitary confinement.” Darnay is sentenced to imprisonment in secret. It is not clearly stated what it actually means to be “in secret” however the meaning can be inferred considering how Darnay is treated differently in the prison compared to the other ghostly, yet more privileged, prisoners.

3. Plot Constantly being delayed by revolutionaries, it is made clear to Darnay that traveling back home from Paris will be nearly impossible. At the dead of night, Darnay is confronted by a local functionary and three armed red caps who forcibly send Darnay on the roads to Paris with an escort. This ordeal ends up being beneficial because as Darnay enters Beauvais, he is treated as a criminal. • He is called “a cursed emigrant”, “a cursed aristocrat”, and a “trader” The next day, Darnay is presented before an officer and before long finds himself a convict in the Prison of La Force. Darnay tries (and fails) to explain how he willingly came to Paris in order to help a fellow-citizen and to clear himself. He believes that it is his right to be able to do so. But times have changed and emigrants have no rights. Darnay is arrested and is brought to his cell in the Prison of La Force. Defarge happens to be the one to bring him to his cell and Darnay recognizes him as the wine shop owner. He asks Defarge to tell Mr. Lorry that he is imprisoned. Defarge bluntly refuses on account of duty to his country. Darnay is confined to a small cell, left, as if he were dead.

4. Literary Devices Situational Irony Darnay willingly sets off to Paris to free Gabelle from the Prison of the Abbaye and is instead is locked up in prison because of “new laws” and “new offences” "I entreat you to observe that I have come here voluntarily, in response to that written appeal of a fellow-countryman which lies before you. I demand no more than the opportunity to do so without delay.” Pathos The response from the prisoner causes the reader to feel pity for Darnay "But I hope," said the gentleman…"that you are not in secret?" "I do not understand the meaning of the term, but I have heard them say so." "Ah, what a pity! We so much regret it!…"I grieve to inform the society- in secret."

5. Literary Devices cont. Hyperbole A comparison between the prisoners and ghosts is used to emphasis the effect that La Force has on even prestigious citizens “So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all!”

6. Essential Quote “Not a mean village closed upon him, not a common barrier dropped across the road behind him, but he knew it to be another iron door in the series that was barred between him and England.” This quote reveals the theme of imprisonment and also foreshadows it. • The revolutionaries are being equally as unjust to Darnay as the nobility were to Doctor Manette • Darnay feels like the further he goes to Paris, the harder it will be to get out and when he reaches his destination it is apparent that a return home in not an option

7. Questions