A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Published 1859 · 504 pages · 136,743 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Romance

How hard is A Tale of Two Cities to read?

A Tale of Two Cities scores 50 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 52 out of 100
Accessible Victorian prose; French phrases are translated or contextualized.
Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
Shorter sentences than typical Dickens; compressed style for weekly serialization.
Abstraction: 48 out of 100
Historical and moral themes are embodied in dramatic action rather than philosophical discourse.
Information density: 52 out of 100
Faster pace than typical Dickens; less digression, more concentrated plotting.
Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
Third-person narration guides interpretation clearly; suspense comes from plot rather than narrative withholding.
Symbolic density: 58 out of 100
The guillotine, the knitting, the echoing footsteps all carry heavy symbolic weight.
Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
Less satirical than typical Dickens; the tone is earnest and theatrical.
Resolution withholding: 42 out of 100
Mystery elements create suspense, but the climax is clearly prepared and fully resolved.
Structural complexity: 48 out of 100
Three-book structure with parallel plots in London and Paris; doubles motif adds complexity.

How A Tale of Two Cities is regarded

A Tale of Two Cities holds a literary regard score of 85 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where A Tale of Two Cities sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (266 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, A Tale of Two Cities scores 56 out of 100. A second mythos, irony, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort.
Symbol: Mythical (archetypal)
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live
Mythos: Tragedy iii (tragedy iii)
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
Genre: Novel + Romance
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years.

Where the story of A Tale of Two Cities takes place

  • London and Paris, the French Revolution, 1775-1793 (1775 to 1793), the main setting
  • Dr Manette's Bastille narrative, 1757-1767 (1757 to 1767)
  • Dover road, London and Paris, 1775-1780 (1775 to 1780)
  • Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1793 (Bastille, September Massacres, Terror) (1789 to 1793)

5 things that are true of A Tale of Two Cities, with the passage for each

  1. Mr Lorry's coded reply to the message sent after him on the Dover mail is the three words 'Recalled to Life'.

    Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE.

  2. A cask of wine breaks in the Paris street, and a man scrawls the word BLOOD with wine-lees on a wall.

    scrawled upon a wall with his fingers dipped in muddy wine-lees—BLOOD.

  3. Dr Manette's relapse into shoemaking lasts nine days.

    The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days, six days, seven days, eight days, nine days.

  4. Fifty-two prisoners are due to be guillotined on the day Carton takes Darnay's place.

    Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless everlasting sea.

  5. Madame Defarge is killed when her own pistol goes off in a struggle with Miss Pross.

    Miss Pross looked up, saw what it was, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and stood alone—blinded with smoke.

Scenes in A Tale of Two Cities that Frye would name

54 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, untitled
“It is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!” Manette recognises his wife's golden hair in his daughter's, the pivot of his recall to life.
Sparagmos, untitled
she put her foot upon his neck, and with her cruel knife—long ready—hewed off his head. The Bastille governor is torn apart by the crowd.
Sparagmos, untitled
then, the rope was merciful, and held him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of. Foulon is lynched and mutilated.
Sparagmos, untitled
what with dropping blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks struck out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and fire. The September massacre at the grindstone.
Agon, untitled
Madame Defarge made at the door. Miss Pross, on the instinct of the moment, seized her round the waist in both her arms, and held her tight. The decisive physical contest between Madame Defarge and Miss Pross.
Katabasis, untitled
He was on his way to dig some one out of a grave. Lorry's journey to Paris is framed as a descent to exhume the buried man.

Books that share these scenes with A Tale of Two Cities

About the author

Charles Dickens