Book I Chapter 2 “The Mail ”

1. Book I Chapter 2 “The Mail”

2. Plot Summary: • Setting: Friday night, late November, 1775. A mail coach travels from London to Dover. • The three passengers must dismount from the carriage and hike alongside it as it climbs a steep hill. • From the mist, a messenger on horseback appears and asks to speak to Jarvis Lorry of Tellson’s Bank. The travelers react warily, fearing that they have come upon a highwayman or robber. Mr. Lorry, however, recognizes the messenger’s voice as that of Jerry Cruncher, the odd-job man at Tellson’s, and accepts his message. The note that Jerry passes him reads: “Wait at Dover for Mam’selle.” Lorry instructs Jerry to return to Tellson’s with this reply: “Recalled to Life.” • Confused and troubled by the “blazing strange message,” Jerry rides on to deliver it.

3. Literary Devices: Mood:Everything from the mist and fog to the talk of robbery heightens the eerie feeling of suspense that Dickens is creating in this chapter. This novel was published serially, and Dickens needed to captivate his readers, so they would keep reading. : “There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.” (8). Foreshadowing: The answer that Mr. Lorry gives to Jerry Cruncher contributes to the mood of suspense that Dickens is creating in the early chapters of his serial novel.Mr. Lorry’s reply seems to be very vague, adding to the suspense, but it will come to have important meaning in the next few chapters when we meet Dr. Manette: “Jerry, say that my answer was, ‘RECALLED TO LIFE.’” (12).

4. Essential Quote “‘Did you hear the message?’‘I did, Joe.’‘What did you make of it, Tom?’‘Nothing at all, Joe.’‘That's a coincidence, too, for I made the same of it myself.’” (14)