This section of the reading started off talking of people who were put to death. Dickens' states many people in different situations who were put to death such as for stealing, someone with a bad note, a forgerer, and many others. This struck me as being an important part of the book, such as how even the smallest thing done wrong will proceed in someones fate. This is in a way what Dickens himself went through with his family and his fathers debt. I wonder if this is where he got this information from. The guitine is what is described as the importance to everyones death and how it is achieved.
Mr. Cruncher, who comes up in this section, is an angry man who has odd views on religion and life in general. When his wife is praying he gets mad at her for it and yells at her for this. What is the point in this? Is there a reason the woman, his wife, can't be her own self and do what she wants? This made me think of what we talked about in class about the kings and the queens and how the kings are powerful and the queen has no say in the matter and she also pretty much has no say in their life. Thinking about the movie Marie Antoinette, all that the woman was good for was having children in the growing of a family of royalty...she had no say in anything not even who she wanted to marry. She only had one duty and that was to marry this man, make him look good, and produce the next generation of children. Mr. Cruncher just relates in this way with how he is controling his wife and son.
Then the book goes into the long process of the trial and the crime this young man, Mr. Darnay, commited. It is said he committed treason but from the way he seems and how Miss Manette describes him he seems to possibly innocent unless she is testifying on his behalf for other purposes which you never know. The trial kind of confused me but it was pretty interesting in the way that I was able to get the feel of how these people lived and thought and how they seemed to get some pleasure from these criminals deaths.
In the end of this section it is talking about Mr. Carton and two other men who are drinking and are supposedly friends even though they don't really seem like it which is a lot like people now-a-days. But they are talking of Mr. Darney and I was curious as to why???
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2 comments:
I think you made a great parallel between the Crunchers and the Kings and Queens of that time period. The men feel they have the most power, and the women are not suppose to express their own ideas and opinions.
The part where Mr. Darney was drinking with the men in the bar also confused me :)
I think that it was important also how the people at that time were put to death for the smallest things. Did they not take life as something sacred? I think that the only people who were put to death for such small things as this were the lower class who were poor and didn't have money anyway. So the higher class thought that they did have any use in society.
I like the way you thought of Cruncher that way, comparing him with the Kings and Queens. I thought that he was that way too. I would just call him sexist and a womanizer.
Yah! The people at the trial didn't even know who Darnay was, they just went to see if he would be put to death. I think that shows something about society at the time. The people found entertainment in watching someone else get hanged. They even felt disappointment when he was acquitted. Did those people not have a heart?
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