Free Essays - Love and Hate in A Tale of Two Cities :: Tale Two Cities Essays

Love and hate are both emotions that are used in our attempt to express ourselves to certain people. Like it or not, although hate is more sinister of the two, without hate, the scales would be upset. We cannot always get the best of everything. However, in the novel " A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens, hate only adds to the story's appeal. In the novel, both emotions are displayed by the characters in the book through the actions they carry out and the words that they speak, even though it can be justified that there are more examples of love than hate. The love between Lucie Manette and her father, as well as that of Charles Darney and Lucie and indeed many other characters are just some of the many examples of love. The more baleful emotion of hate is also revealed many times in the novel, by the French commoners and especially by Madame Defarge when it came to Charles Darney being an aristocrat and the suffering of her own family. The first strong example of love we read about in the novel is that of Lucie Manette and her father, Dr Manette who has been kept in the Bastille for eighteen years. Lucie meets him with the help of another character, Mr Javis Lorry, and tells her father that his agony is over and that she'll bring him to London and away from his previous sufferings. Later in the story, the night before Lucie is to be wedded to Charles Darney, we learn that Lucie has saved her last day as a single woman to be with her father and to reassure him that she'll still be with him even though she is to be married. "Lucie was to be married tomorrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father, and they sat alone under the plane-tree."( Pg 174 ) Throughout the whole conversation with her father that evening, it is evident that her love for her father prevails even that between Charles and herself. "If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite happy with you."( Pg 175 ) The affection for her father does not go only one way. Her father's for Lucie is also clear as we can see by the following quote: "Quite sure my darling! More than that, my future is far brighter, Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it could have been - nay, than it ever