双城记读书报告英文

双城记读书报告英文

My Opinions About A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities was written by Charles Dickens, who was born in Portsmouth, England in 1812. As the second of eight children, Dickens had to go to work at the age of twelve to support his poor family, and he lived a difficult childhood. This troublesome time scarred him deeply and provided him with substantial material for such stories as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations. Though just accepted only little education, Dickens became a famous writer through his struggling self-learning and extremely hard work, and he was the representative writer of realism in the 19th century.

Charles Dickens lived in the period of transition between feudalism and capitalism, when the industrial revolution originated in England swept through Europe. As large numbers of workers invaded into urban centers to earn a living, the bourgeois took advantages of the surplus of labor by keeping wages low. The poor thus remained poor, and often lived in a narrow and filthy environment. Dickens’ writing depicted various directions about this society, and provided a keen, sympathetic chronicle of the plight of the urban poor.

A Tale of Two Cities mainly about the great atrocities of French aristocrats compelled the poor citizens to resist violently. Doctor Manette spent eighteen years as a prisoner in Bastille because he intended to expose the atrocity after learning that

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Marquis Evrémonde killed a beautiful farmwife and her younger brother because of his brother’s lust. After Doctor Manette was free again, his daughter Lucie got married with Charles Darnay, Marquis Evrémonde’s nephew, but chose to live in England because he could not accept the cruel injustices of the French social system and the snobbish and cruel values of his uncle. However, Marquis Evrémonde continued his atrocities. After his crazy carriage crushed over a farmer’s little baby as if nothing happen, he was killed at night. A revolutionary storm was brewing. Mr. and Mrs.Defarge were the revolutionaries in the poor Saint Antoine section of Paris. They wanted to kill all French aristocrats, including Charles Darnay. Mr.Defarge used to be Doctor Manette’s servant, so he was kind to Manettes, while his wife’s heart burned with longing for revenge. At last, Charles Darnay was judged to death, But Sydney Carton, a lawyer who loved Lucie deeply, willing to die instead of Darnay, as they had similar appearance.

From my personal point of view, the person A Tale of Two Cities described astounded me very much. Some of them were cruel, crazy and reasonless, while some of them were kind, moral and had own mind.

Sydney Carton was the person I thought the most. He was a smart attorney, without his help, Mr. Stryver could not solve any cases. But he was lazy, alcoholic, and cared nothing and nobody, he even could not find any interests in his own life, it seems that he lived just for wasting life. But he loved Lucie deeply. Finally, he

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became a hero, because he sacrificed his life to save Darnay. I didn’t know why the author spent so many words to form such a strange guy at frist, he used his life to love Lucie, after all. But now, I caught it. Perhaps the terrible Carton symbolized the terrible old France, and his change in the end shown that everything could change, including the old France, a new and fine society would replace the violence.

Then, Charles Darnay. He was worthy of esteem or respect. He displayed great virtue in his rejection of his uncle, Marquis Evrémonde. Money and power meant nothing to him, if they came from exploitation and oppression. Even though he had to inherit his uncle’s bequest, he left them to the poor and lived in London throught his own effort. When he realized that he must go back to Paris to help Gabelle, one of his servants, and make right the wrong his uncle had done, he acted without hesitation because he knew that was his duty. He even refused Carton’s help after he was judged to death. I thought, Charles Darnay was a shiny diamond in that cruel and violent society, and he was a hope, the hope of equality and peace.

Third, Mrs.Defarge. How crazy this woman was. Nobody could stop her steps toward revenge, except the death. Although it said that wherever there is oppression, there is resistance, I didn’t agree with Mrs.Defarge totally. Her resistance was inhumane, insensible and endless. For just as the aristocracy’s oppression had made an oppressor Mrs.Defarge herself, so will her oppression, in turn, make oppressors her victims. In the end of the novel, her death by a bullet from her own gun. It shown the

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author’s belief that inordinate retaliated lust would destroy one own self.

On the whole, A Tale of Two Cities is a successful novel. It shows us oppression and resistance, violence and terror, revolution and vengeance, love and friendship.

I am lucky enough to live in the 21st century, when peace and development are pursued all along. Nowadays, there also are many problems and dissensions among this world, but violence does not the best way problems are solved. Violence just creates more problems, something every sensible person knows. What we need are talks and communication. The time A Tale of Two Cities mentions has gone, we should do enough preparation to adapt the coming age.