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all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_3_part_1.txt

Babbitt.chapter xi

chapter xi

{"name": "Chapter XI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xi-xiv", "summary": "During their layover in New York, Paul wants to see the Aquitania, declaring that he \"Always wanted to go to Europe\". As they stare at the line, Paul becomes so tense and agitated that they have to leave. In Maine, George and Paul spend their time relaxing and sitting at the edge of a wharf. For the week before their families arrive, the men indulge themselves by sleeping late, chewing tobacco, playing poker late into the night, and not bathing every day. They view the vacation as a chance to get \"a good rest. and start over again\". Over the course of the week, Paul becomes increasingly relaxed and cheerful, whereas George becomes increasingly weary and overwrought. When his family arrives, he is agitated again and reminded of his troublesome sense of obligation, though he is able to enjoy spending time with Ted and feels somewhat rejuvenated", "analysis": "In Maine, a more intimate dynamic emerges between Babbitt and Paul. They feel a genuine sense of contentment together, wishing that they could spend the rest of their lives alone in the woods with just each other. Standing by the wharf, Babbitt winks at Paul, and they chew tobacco together. The language in this section is erotic: they spit solemnly together in the \"placid water,\" stretch \"voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs,\" and sigh in unison . Their friendship seems platonic, but Lewis gives it a homosexual air. There is no other whom Babbitt prefers to be with, and though he is attracted to women, this particular relationship is the most fulfilling and meaningful one in his life. These feelings are never directly and unequivocally stated in the novel, but Lewis alludes to them several times. Later in the novel, Babbitt truly feels that his days are meaningless if they do not include Paul, and this suggests a level of intimacy that may have been unusual among American males at the time. Although Babbitt is convinced that his trip to Maine will propel him into a healthier and happier lifestyle, he almost immediately reverts to his former habits. Moreover, his fixation on social status becomes more pronounced as his career as a recognized orator evolves. In fact, the rise of his prestige marks his rapid moral decline. He is overcome with pride and bigheadedness at this sudden acknowledgment, and he extends his trip in order to stay in Monarch, flirt with Mrs. Sassburger, drink too much alcohol, and visit a brothel, where he presumably has sex with one of the girls. For a man so outwardly focused on morality and propriety, this trip marks a significant turning point for Babbitt. The event is \"not officially recognized even by himself\" , but it suggests that something in Babbitt has suddenly changed and that he is now capable of severing some of the chains that have bound him to his life as a respectable Republican family man. In light of his recent transgressions, Babbitt's address to the Zenith Real Estate Board is rendered extremely ironic and hypocritical. In this self-serving and narrow-minded speech, Babbitt offers an image of the Ideal Citizen . This man, according to Babbitt, is productive, hard-working, and an exemplary husband and father. He is \"a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time\" . He goes on to argue that Zenith holds a monopoly on these men, and the implication is, of course, that Babbitt himself is the paragon of this Ideal Citizen. It seems as though, on some level, this is actually the view of himself that he nurtures and maintains, yet because this speech immediately follows an account of moral debauchery and a disregard for fundamental family values, his speech becomes a biting commentary on his own declining moral integrity. Even aside from these obvious moral ironies, the speech is a powerful work of satire that exposes the prejudices of such persons in middle-class, postwar America. In comparison to Zenith, Babbitt describes the European population as \"moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps\" . He also appropriates the work of talented Europeans, claiming that the United States is responsible for \"the best operas, such as Verdi\" . With every sentence, Babbitt reveals even greater depths of ignorance and intolerance, and this speech serves as a compact version of the novel's overall satiric agenda."}

I THEY had four hours in New York between trains. The one thing Babbitt wished to see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built since his last visit. He stared up at it, muttering, "Twenty-two hundred rooms and twenty-two hundred baths! That's got everything in the world beat. Lord, their turnover must be--well, suppose price of rooms is four to eight dollars a day, and I suppose maybe some ten and--four times twenty-two hundred-say six times twenty-two hundred--well, anyway, with restaurants and everything, say summers between eight and fifteen thousand a day. Every day! I never thought I'd see a thing like that! Some town! Of course the average fellow in Zenith has got more Individual Initiative than the fourflushers here, but I got to hand it to New York. Yes, sir, town, you're all right--some ways. Well, old Paulski, I guess we've seen everything that's worth while. How'll we kill the rest of the time? Movie?" But Paul desired to see a liner. "Always wanted to go to Europe--and, by thunder, I will, too, some day before I past out," he sighed. From a rough wharf on the North River they stared at the stern of the Aquitania and her stacks and wireless antenna lifted above the dock-house which shut her in. "By golly," Babbitt droned, "wouldn't be so bad to go over to the Old Country and take a squint at all these ruins, and the place where Shakespeare was born. And think of being able to order a drink whenever you wanted one! Just range up to a bar and holler out loud, 'Gimme a cocktail, and darn the police!' Not bad at all. What juh like to see, over there, Paulibus?" Paul did not answer. Babbitt turned. Paul was standing with clenched fists, head drooping, staring at the liner as in terror. His thin body, seen against the summer-glaring planks of the wharf, was childishly meager. Again, "What would you hit for on the other side, Paul?" Scowling at the steamer, his breast heaving, Paul whispered, "Oh, my God!" While Babbitt watched him anxiously he snapped, "Come on, let's get out of this," and hastened down the wharf, not looking back. "That's funny," considered Babbitt. "The boy didn't care for seeing the ocean boats after all. I thought he'd be interested in 'em." II Though he exulted, and made sage speculations about locomotive horse-power, as their train climbed the Maine mountain-ridge and from the summit he looked down the shining way among the pines; though he remarked, "Well, by golly!" when he discovered that the station at Katadumcook, the end of the line, was an aged freight-car; Babbitt's moment of impassioned release came when they sat on a tiny wharf on Lake Sunasquam, awaiting the launch from the hotel. A raft had floated down the lake; between the logs and the shore, the water was transparent, thin-looking, flashing with minnows. A guide in black felt hat with trout-flies in the band, and flannel shirt of a peculiarly daring blue, sat on a log and whittled and was silent. A dog, a good country dog, black and woolly gray, a dog rich in leisure and in meditation, scratched and grunted and slept. The thick sunlight was lavish on the bright water, on the rim of gold-green balsam boughs, the silver birches and tropic ferns, and across the lake it burned on the sturdy shoulders of the mountains. Over everything was a holy peace. Silent, they loafed on the edge of the wharf, swinging their legs above the water. The immense tenderness of the place sank into Babbitt, and he murmured, "I'd just like to sit here--the rest of my life--and whittle--and sit. And never hear a typewriter. Or Stan Graff fussing in the 'phone. Or Rone and Ted scrapping. Just sit. Gosh!" He patted Paul's shoulder. "How does it strike you, old snoozer?" "Oh, it's darn good, Georgie. There's something sort of eternal about it." For once, Babbitt understood him. III Their launch rounded the bend; at the head of the lake, under a mountain slope, they saw the little central dining-shack of their hotel and the crescent of squat log cottages which served as bedrooms. They landed, and endured the critical examination of the habitues who had been at the hotel for a whole week. In their cottage, with its high stone fireplace, they hastened, as Babbitt expressed it, to "get into some regular he-togs." They came out; Paul in an old gray suit and soft white shirt; Babbitt in khaki shirt and vast and flapping khaki trousers. It was excessively new khaki; his rimless spectacles belonged to a city office; and his face was not tanned but a city pink. He made a discordant noise in the place. But with infinite satisfaction he slapped his legs and crowed, "Say, this is getting back home, eh?" They stood on the wharf before the hotel. He winked at Paul and drew from his back pocket a plug of chewing-tobacco, a vulgarism forbidden in the Babbitt home. He took a chew, beaming and wagging his head as he tugged at it. "Um! Um! Maybe I haven't been hungry for a wad of eating-tobacco! Have some?" They looked at each other in a grin of understanding. Paul took the plug, gnawed at it. They stood quiet, their jaws working. They solemnly spat, one after the other, into the placid water. They stretched voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs. From beyond the mountains came the shuffling sound of a far-off train. A trout leaped, and fell back in a silver circle. They sighed together. IV They had a week before their families came. Each evening they planned to get up early and fish before breakfast. Each morning they lay abed till the breakfast-bell, pleasantly conscious that there were no efficient wives to rouse them. The mornings were cold; the fire was kindly as they dressed. Paul was distressingly clean, but Babbitt reveled in a good sound dirtiness, in not having to shave till his spirit was moved to it. He treasured every grease spot and fish-scale on his new khaki trousers. All morning they fished unenergetically, or tramped the dim and aqueous-lighted trails among rank ferns and moss sprinkled with crimson bells. They slept all afternoon, and till midnight played stud-poker with the guides. Poker was a serious business to the guides. They did not gossip; they shuffled the thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity menacing to the "sports;" and Joe Paradise, king of guides, was sarcastic to loiterers who halted the game even to scratch. At midnight, as Paul and he blundered to their cottage over the pungent wet grass, and pine-roots confusing in the darkness, Babbitt rejoiced that he did not have to explain to his wife where he had been all evening. They did not talk much. The nervous loquacity and opinionation of the Zenith Athletic Club dropped from them. But when they did talk they slipped into the naive intimacy of college days. Once they drew their canoe up to the bank of Sunasquam Water, a stream walled in by the dense green of the hardhack. The sun roared on the green jungle but in the shade was sleepy peace, and the water was golden and rippling. Babbitt drew his hand through the cool flood, and mused: "We never thought we'd come to Maine together!" "No. We've never done anything the way we thought we would. I expected to live in Germany with my granddad's people, and study the fiddle." "That's so. And remember how I wanted to be a lawyer and go into politics? I still think I might have made a go of it. I've kind of got the gift of the gab--anyway, I can think on my feet, and make some kind of a spiel on most anything, and of course that's the thing you need in politics. By golly, Ted's going to law-school, even if I didn't! Well--I guess it's worked out all right. Myra's been a fine wife. And Zilla means well, Paulibus." "Yes. Up here, I figure out all sorts of plans to keep her amused. I kind of feel life is going to be different, now that we're getting a good rest and can go back and start over again." "I hope so, old boy." Shyly: "Say, gosh, it's been awful nice to sit around and loaf and gamble and act regular, with you along, you old horse-thief!" "Well, you know what it means to me, Georgie. Saved my life." The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed a little, to prove they were good rough fellows; and in a mellow silence, Babbitt whistling while Paul hummed, they paddled back to the hotel. V Though it was Paul who had seemed overwrought, Babbitt who had been the protecting big brother, Paul became clear-eyed and merry, while Babbitt sank into irritability. He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness. At first he had played nimble jester to Paul and for him sought amusements; by the end of the week Paul was nurse, and Babbitt accepted favors with the condescension one always shows a patient nurse. The day before their families arrived, the women guests at the hotel bubbled, "Oh, isn't it nice! You must be so excited;" and the proprieties compelled Babbitt and Paul to look excited. But they went to bed early and grumpy. When Myra appeared she said at once, "Now, we want you boys to go on playing around just as if we weren't here." The first evening, he stayed out for poker with the guides, and she said in placid merriment, "My! You're a regular bad one!" The second evening, she groaned sleepily, "Good heavens, are you going to be out every single night?" The third evening, he didn't play poker. He was tired now in every cell. "Funny! Vacation doesn't seem to have done me a bit of good," he lamented. "Paul's frisky as a colt, but I swear, I'm crankier and nervouser than when I came up here." He had three weeks of Maine. At the end of the second week he began to feel calm, and interested in life. He planned an expedition to climb Sachem Mountain, and wanted to camp overnight at Box Car Pond. He was curiously weak, yet cheerful, as though he had cleansed his veins of poisonous energy and was filling them with wholesome blood. He ceased to be irritated by Ted's infatuation with a waitress (his seventh tragic affair this year); he played catch with Ted, and with pride taught him to cast a fly in the pine-shadowed silence of Skowtuit Pond. At the end he sighed, "Hang it, I'm just beginning to enjoy my vacation. But, well, I feel a lot better. And it's going to be one great year! Maybe the Real Estate Board will elect me president, instead of some fuzzy old-fashioned faker like Chan Mott." On the way home, whenever he went into the smoking-compartment he felt guilty at deserting his wife and angry at being expected to feel guilty, but each time he triumphed, "Oh, this is going to be a great year, a great old year!"

Chapter XI

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xi-xiv

During their layover in New York, Paul wants to see the Aquitania, declaring that he "Always wanted to go to Europe". As they stare at the line, Paul becomes so tense and agitated that they have to leave. In Maine, George and Paul spend their time relaxing and sitting at the edge of a wharf. For the week before their families arrive, the men indulge themselves by sleeping late, chewing tobacco, playing poker late into the night, and not bathing every day. They view the vacation as a chance to get "a good rest. and start over again". Over the course of the week, Paul becomes increasingly relaxed and cheerful, whereas George becomes increasingly weary and overwrought. When his family arrives, he is agitated again and reminded of his troublesome sense of obligation, though he is able to enjoy spending time with Ted and feels somewhat rejuvenated

In Maine, a more intimate dynamic emerges between Babbitt and Paul. They feel a genuine sense of contentment together, wishing that they could spend the rest of their lives alone in the woods with just each other. Standing by the wharf, Babbitt winks at Paul, and they chew tobacco together. The language in this section is erotic: they spit solemnly together in the "placid water," stretch "voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs," and sigh in unison . Their friendship seems platonic, but Lewis gives it a homosexual air. There is no other whom Babbitt prefers to be with, and though he is attracted to women, this particular relationship is the most fulfilling and meaningful one in his life. These feelings are never directly and unequivocally stated in the novel, but Lewis alludes to them several times. Later in the novel, Babbitt truly feels that his days are meaningless if they do not include Paul, and this suggests a level of intimacy that may have been unusual among American males at the time. Although Babbitt is convinced that his trip to Maine will propel him into a healthier and happier lifestyle, he almost immediately reverts to his former habits. Moreover, his fixation on social status becomes more pronounced as his career as a recognized orator evolves. In fact, the rise of his prestige marks his rapid moral decline. He is overcome with pride and bigheadedness at this sudden acknowledgment, and he extends his trip in order to stay in Monarch, flirt with Mrs. Sassburger, drink too much alcohol, and visit a brothel, where he presumably has sex with one of the girls. For a man so outwardly focused on morality and propriety, this trip marks a significant turning point for Babbitt. The event is "not officially recognized even by himself" , but it suggests that something in Babbitt has suddenly changed and that he is now capable of severing some of the chains that have bound him to his life as a respectable Republican family man. In light of his recent transgressions, Babbitt's address to the Zenith Real Estate Board is rendered extremely ironic and hypocritical. In this self-serving and narrow-minded speech, Babbitt offers an image of the Ideal Citizen . This man, according to Babbitt, is productive, hard-working, and an exemplary husband and father. He is "a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time" . He goes on to argue that Zenith holds a monopoly on these men, and the implication is, of course, that Babbitt himself is the paragon of this Ideal Citizen. It seems as though, on some level, this is actually the view of himself that he nurtures and maintains, yet because this speech immediately follows an account of moral debauchery and a disregard for fundamental family values, his speech becomes a biting commentary on his own declining moral integrity. Even aside from these obvious moral ironies, the speech is a powerful work of satire that exposes the prejudices of such persons in middle-class, postwar America. In comparison to Zenith, Babbitt describes the European population as "moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps" . He also appropriates the work of talented Europeans, claiming that the United States is responsible for "the best operas, such as Verdi" . With every sentence, Babbitt reveals even greater depths of ignorance and intolerance, and this speech serves as a compact version of the novel's overall satiric agenda.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_3_part_2.txt

Babbitt.chapter xii

chapter xii

{"name": "Chapter XII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xi-xiv", "summary": "Returning from Maine, George is convinced that he is \"a changed man\" and that he is \"converted to serenity\". He vows to pursue interests and hobbies, such as baseball and movies, and to stop smoking. But he can never remember not to smoke, and he stops attending baseball games within one week. He becomes entangled, once again, with the hustle of life in Zenith", "analysis": "In Maine, a more intimate dynamic emerges between Babbitt and Paul. They feel a genuine sense of contentment together, wishing that they could spend the rest of their lives alone in the woods with just each other. Standing by the wharf, Babbitt winks at Paul, and they chew tobacco together. The language in this section is erotic: they spit solemnly together in the \"placid water,\" stretch \"voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs,\" and sigh in unison . Their friendship seems platonic, but Lewis gives it a homosexual air. There is no other whom Babbitt prefers to be with, and though he is attracted to women, this particular relationship is the most fulfilling and meaningful one in his life. These feelings are never directly and unequivocally stated in the novel, but Lewis alludes to them several times. Later in the novel, Babbitt truly feels that his days are meaningless if they do not include Paul, and this suggests a level of intimacy that may have been unusual among American males at the time. Although Babbitt is convinced that his trip to Maine will propel him into a healthier and happier lifestyle, he almost immediately reverts to his former habits. Moreover, his fixation on social status becomes more pronounced as his career as a recognized orator evolves. In fact, the rise of his prestige marks his rapid moral decline. He is overcome with pride and bigheadedness at this sudden acknowledgment, and he extends his trip in order to stay in Monarch, flirt with Mrs. Sassburger, drink too much alcohol, and visit a brothel, where he presumably has sex with one of the girls. For a man so outwardly focused on morality and propriety, this trip marks a significant turning point for Babbitt. The event is \"not officially recognized even by himself\" , but it suggests that something in Babbitt has suddenly changed and that he is now capable of severing some of the chains that have bound him to his life as a respectable Republican family man. In light of his recent transgressions, Babbitt's address to the Zenith Real Estate Board is rendered extremely ironic and hypocritical. In this self-serving and narrow-minded speech, Babbitt offers an image of the Ideal Citizen . This man, according to Babbitt, is productive, hard-working, and an exemplary husband and father. He is \"a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time\" . He goes on to argue that Zenith holds a monopoly on these men, and the implication is, of course, that Babbitt himself is the paragon of this Ideal Citizen. It seems as though, on some level, this is actually the view of himself that he nurtures and maintains, yet because this speech immediately follows an account of moral debauchery and a disregard for fundamental family values, his speech becomes a biting commentary on his own declining moral integrity. Even aside from these obvious moral ironies, the speech is a powerful work of satire that exposes the prejudices of such persons in middle-class, postwar America. In comparison to Zenith, Babbitt describes the European population as \"moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps\" . He also appropriates the work of talented Europeans, claiming that the United States is responsible for \"the best operas, such as Verdi\" . With every sentence, Babbitt reveals even greater depths of ignorance and intolerance, and this speech serves as a compact version of the novel's overall satiric agenda."}

I ALL the way home from Maine, Babbitt was certain that he was a changed man. He was converted to serenity. He was going to cease worrying about business. He was going to have more "interests"--theaters, public affairs, reading. And suddenly, as he finished an especially heavy cigar, he was going to stop smoking. He invented a new and perfect method. He would buy no tobacco; he would depend on borrowing it; and, of course, he would be ashamed to borrow often. In a spasm of righteousness he flung his cigar-case out of the smoking-compartment window. He went back and was kind to his wife about nothing in particular; he admired his own purity, and decided, "Absolutely simple. Just a matter of will-power." He started a magazine serial about a scientific detective. Ten miles on, he was conscious that he desired to smoke. He ducked his head, like a turtle going into its shell; he appeared uneasy; he skipped two pages in his story and didn't know it. Five miles later, he leaped up and sought the porter. "Say, uh, George, have you got a--" The porter looked patient. "Have you got a time-table?" Babbitt finished. At the next stop he went out and bought a cigar. Since it was to be his last before he reached Zenith, he finished it down to an inch stub. Four days later he again remembered that he had stopped smoking, but he was too busy catching up with his office-work to keep it remembered. II Baseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby. "No sense a man's working his fool head off. I'm going out to the Game three times a week. Besides, fellow ought to support the home team." He did go and support the team, and enhance the glory of Zenith, by yelling "Attaboy!" and "Rotten!" He performed the rite scrupulously. He wore a cotton handkerchief about his collar; he became sweaty; he opened his mouth in a wide loose grin; and drank lemon soda out of a bottle. He went to the Game three times a week, for one week. Then he compromised on watching the Advocate-Times bulletin-board. He stood in the thickest and steamiest of the crowd, and as the boy up on the lofty platform recorded the achievements of Big Bill Bostwick, the pitcher, Babbitt remarked to complete strangers, "Pretty nice! Good work!" and hastened back to the office. He honestly believed that he loved baseball. It is true that he hadn't, in twenty-five years, himself played any baseball except back-lot catch with Ted--very gentle, and strictly limited to ten minutes. But the game was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called "patriotism" and "love of sport." As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering, "Guess better hustle." All about him the city was hustling, for hustling's sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another trolley a minute behind, and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop across the sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food which cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, "Jus' shave me once over. Gotta hustle." Men were feverishly getting rid of visitors in offices adorned with the signs, "This Is My Busy Day" and "The Lord Created the World in Six Days--You Can Spiel All You Got to Say in Six Minutes." Men who had made five thousand, year before last, and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year; and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered. Among them Babbitt hustled back to his office, to sit down with nothing much to do except see that the staff looked as though they were hustling. III Every Saturday afternoon he hustled out to his country club and hustled through nine holes of golf as a rest after the week's hustle. In Zenith it was as necessary for a Successful Man to belong to a country club as it was to wear a linen collar. Babbitt's was the Outing Golf and Country Club, a pleasant gray-shingled building with a broad porch, on a daisy-starred cliff above Lake Kennepoose. There was another, the Tonawanda Country Club, to which belonged Charles McKelvey, Horace Updike, and the other rich men who lunched not at the Athletic but at the Union Club. Babbitt explained with frequency, "You couldn't hire me to join the Tonawanda, even if I did have a hundred and eighty bucks to throw away on the initiation fee. At the Outing we've got a bunch of real human fellows, and the finest lot of little women in town--just as good at joshing as the men--but at the Tonawanda there's nothing but these would-be's in New York get-ups, drinking tea! Too much dog altogether. Why, I wouldn't join the Tonawanda even if they--I wouldn't join it on a bet!" When he had played four or five holes, he relaxed a bit, his tobacco-fluttering heart beat more normally, and his voice slowed to the drawling of his hundred generations of peasant ancestors. IV At least once a week Mr. and Mrs. Babbitt and Tinka went to the movies. Their favorite motion-picture theater was the Chateau, which held three thousand spectators and had an orchestra of fifty pieces which played Arrangements from the Operas and suites portraying a Day on the Farm, or a Four-alarm Fire. In the stone rotunda, decorated with crown-embroidered velvet chairs and almost medieval tapestries, parrakeets sat on gilded lotos columns. With exclamations of "Well, by golly!" and "You got to go some to beat this dump!" Babbitt admired the Chateau. As he stared across the thousands of heads, a gray plain in the dimness, as he smelled good clothes and mild perfume and chewing-gum, he felt as when he had first seen a mountain and realized how very, very much earth and rock there was in it. He liked three kinds of films: pretty bathing girls with bare legs; policemen or cowboys and an industrious shooting of revolvers; and funny fat men who ate spaghetti. He chuckled with immense, moist-eyed sentimentality at interludes portraying puppies, kittens, and chubby babies; and he wept at deathbeds and old mothers being patient in mortgaged cottages. Mrs. Babbitt preferred the pictures in which handsome young women in elaborate frocks moved through sets ticketed as the drawing-rooms of New York millionaires. As for Tinka, she preferred, or was believed to prefer, whatever her parents told her to. All his relaxations--baseball, golf, movies, bridge, motoring, long talks with Paul at the Athletic Club, or at the Good Red Beef and Old English Chop House--were necessary to Babbitt, for he was entering a year of such activity as he had never known.

Chapter XII

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xi-xiv

Returning from Maine, George is convinced that he is "a changed man" and that he is "converted to serenity". He vows to pursue interests and hobbies, such as baseball and movies, and to stop smoking. But he can never remember not to smoke, and he stops attending baseball games within one week. He becomes entangled, once again, with the hustle of life in Zenith

In Maine, a more intimate dynamic emerges between Babbitt and Paul. They feel a genuine sense of contentment together, wishing that they could spend the rest of their lives alone in the woods with just each other. Standing by the wharf, Babbitt winks at Paul, and they chew tobacco together. The language in this section is erotic: they spit solemnly together in the "placid water," stretch "voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs," and sigh in unison . Their friendship seems platonic, but Lewis gives it a homosexual air. There is no other whom Babbitt prefers to be with, and though he is attracted to women, this particular relationship is the most fulfilling and meaningful one in his life. These feelings are never directly and unequivocally stated in the novel, but Lewis alludes to them several times. Later in the novel, Babbitt truly feels that his days are meaningless if they do not include Paul, and this suggests a level of intimacy that may have been unusual among American males at the time. Although Babbitt is convinced that his trip to Maine will propel him into a healthier and happier lifestyle, he almost immediately reverts to his former habits. Moreover, his fixation on social status becomes more pronounced as his career as a recognized orator evolves. In fact, the rise of his prestige marks his rapid moral decline. He is overcome with pride and bigheadedness at this sudden acknowledgment, and he extends his trip in order to stay in Monarch, flirt with Mrs. Sassburger, drink too much alcohol, and visit a brothel, where he presumably has sex with one of the girls. For a man so outwardly focused on morality and propriety, this trip marks a significant turning point for Babbitt. The event is "not officially recognized even by himself" , but it suggests that something in Babbitt has suddenly changed and that he is now capable of severing some of the chains that have bound him to his life as a respectable Republican family man. In light of his recent transgressions, Babbitt's address to the Zenith Real Estate Board is rendered extremely ironic and hypocritical. In this self-serving and narrow-minded speech, Babbitt offers an image of the Ideal Citizen . This man, according to Babbitt, is productive, hard-working, and an exemplary husband and father. He is "a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time" . He goes on to argue that Zenith holds a monopoly on these men, and the implication is, of course, that Babbitt himself is the paragon of this Ideal Citizen. It seems as though, on some level, this is actually the view of himself that he nurtures and maintains, yet because this speech immediately follows an account of moral debauchery and a disregard for fundamental family values, his speech becomes a biting commentary on his own declining moral integrity. Even aside from these obvious moral ironies, the speech is a powerful work of satire that exposes the prejudices of such persons in middle-class, postwar America. In comparison to Zenith, Babbitt describes the European population as "moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps" . He also appropriates the work of talented Europeans, claiming that the United States is responsible for "the best operas, such as Verdi" . With every sentence, Babbitt reveals even greater depths of ignorance and intolerance, and this speech serves as a compact version of the novel's overall satiric agenda.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_3_part_3.txt

Babbitt.chapter xiii

chapter xiii

{"name": "Chapter XIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xi-xiv", "summary": "Cecil Rountree convinces Babbitt to write and present a paper at the State Association of Real Estate Boards's annual convention in Monarch, Zenith's rival city. After much toiling, he is finally able to complete the paper, and he presents it to Ira Runyon. The delegates and their wives arrive at the station for the midnight train to Monarch wearing badges and buttons and singing songs about the superiority of Zenith. Babbitt is \"stirred to hysteric patriotism\" , feeling proud, important, and eager to tout all of Zenith's charms. The convention meetings take place in the Allen House ballroom, but \"the real convention of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in groups\". The delegates are entertained by a continuous stream of entertainment, such as banquets and teas. Though Babbitt is nervous about presenting his paper, it is well received by everyone, and the Advocate-Times deems it a sensation. Babbitt is appointed a member of the Committee on Torrens Titles. Babbitt decides to stay one final evening in Monarch with W. A. Rogers in order to have tea with Jered and Mrs. Sassburger. After tea, they drink excessive amounts of alcohol and go to see a burlesque with strippers. Babbitt dances with a woman and feels a \"hot raw desire for more brutal amusements\". He returns to Zenith, and his family never learns of the excursion", "analysis": "In Maine, a more intimate dynamic emerges between Babbitt and Paul. They feel a genuine sense of contentment together, wishing that they could spend the rest of their lives alone in the woods with just each other. Standing by the wharf, Babbitt winks at Paul, and they chew tobacco together. The language in this section is erotic: they spit solemnly together in the \"placid water,\" stretch \"voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs,\" and sigh in unison . Their friendship seems platonic, but Lewis gives it a homosexual air. There is no other whom Babbitt prefers to be with, and though he is attracted to women, this particular relationship is the most fulfilling and meaningful one in his life. These feelings are never directly and unequivocally stated in the novel, but Lewis alludes to them several times. Later in the novel, Babbitt truly feels that his days are meaningless if they do not include Paul, and this suggests a level of intimacy that may have been unusual among American males at the time. Although Babbitt is convinced that his trip to Maine will propel him into a healthier and happier lifestyle, he almost immediately reverts to his former habits. Moreover, his fixation on social status becomes more pronounced as his career as a recognized orator evolves. In fact, the rise of his prestige marks his rapid moral decline. He is overcome with pride and bigheadedness at this sudden acknowledgment, and he extends his trip in order to stay in Monarch, flirt with Mrs. Sassburger, drink too much alcohol, and visit a brothel, where he presumably has sex with one of the girls. For a man so outwardly focused on morality and propriety, this trip marks a significant turning point for Babbitt. The event is \"not officially recognized even by himself\" , but it suggests that something in Babbitt has suddenly changed and that he is now capable of severing some of the chains that have bound him to his life as a respectable Republican family man. In light of his recent transgressions, Babbitt's address to the Zenith Real Estate Board is rendered extremely ironic and hypocritical. In this self-serving and narrow-minded speech, Babbitt offers an image of the Ideal Citizen . This man, according to Babbitt, is productive, hard-working, and an exemplary husband and father. He is \"a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time\" . He goes on to argue that Zenith holds a monopoly on these men, and the implication is, of course, that Babbitt himself is the paragon of this Ideal Citizen. It seems as though, on some level, this is actually the view of himself that he nurtures and maintains, yet because this speech immediately follows an account of moral debauchery and a disregard for fundamental family values, his speech becomes a biting commentary on his own declining moral integrity. Even aside from these obvious moral ironies, the speech is a powerful work of satire that exposes the prejudices of such persons in middle-class, postwar America. In comparison to Zenith, Babbitt describes the European population as \"moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps\" . He also appropriates the work of talented Europeans, claiming that the United States is responsible for \"the best operas, such as Verdi\" . With every sentence, Babbitt reveals even greater depths of ignorance and intolerance, and this speech serves as a compact version of the novel's overall satiric agenda."}

I IT was by accident that Babbitt had his opportunity to address the S. A. R. E. B. The S. A. R. E. B., as its members called it, with the universal passion for mysterious and important-sounding initials, was the State Association of Real Estate Boards; the organization of brokers and operators. It was to hold its annual convention at Monarch, Zenith's chief rival among the cities of the state. Babbitt was an official delegate; another was Cecil Rountree, whom Babbitt admired for his picaresque speculative building, and hated for his social position, for being present at the smartest dances on Royal Ridge. Rountree was chairman of the convention program-committee. Babbitt had growled to him, "Makes me tired the way these doctors and profs and preachers put on lugs about being 'professional men.' A good realtor has to have more knowledge and finesse than any of 'em." "Right you are! I say: Why don't you put that into a paper, and give it at the S. A. R. E. B.?" suggested Rountree. "Well, if it would help you in making up the program--Tell you: the way I look at it is this: First place, we ought to insist that folks call us 'realtors' and not 'real-estate men.' Sounds more like a reg'lar profession. Second place--What is it distinguishes a profession from a mere trade, business, or occupation? What is it? Why, it's the public service and the skill, the trained skill, and the knowledge and, uh, all that, whereas a fellow that merely goes out for the jack, he never considers the-public service and trained skill and so on. Now as a professional--" "Rather! That's perfectly bully! Perfectly corking! Now you write it in a paper," said Rountree, as he rapidly and firmly moved away. II However accustomed to the literary labors of advertisements and correspondence, Babbitt was dismayed on the evening when he sat down to prepare a paper which would take a whole ten minutes to read. He laid out a new fifteen-cent school exercise-book on his wife's collapsible sewing-table, set up for the event in the living-room. The household had been bullied into silence; Verona and Ted requested to disappear, and Tinka threatened with "If I hear one sound out of you--if you holler for a glass of water one single solitary time--You better not, that's all!" Mrs. Babbitt sat over by the piano, making a nightgown and gazing with respect while Babbitt wrote in the exercise-book, to the rhythmical wiggling and squeaking of the sewing-table. When he rose, damp and jumpy, and his throat dusty from cigarettes, she marveled, "I don't see how you can just sit down and make up things right out of your own head!" "Oh, it's the training in constructive imagination that a fellow gets in modern business life." He had written seven pages, whereof the first page set forth: {illustration omitted: consists of several doodles and "(1) a profession (2) Not just a trade crossed out (3) Skill & vision (3) Shd be called "realtor" & not just real est man"} The other six pages were rather like the first. For a week he went about looking important. Every morning, as he dressed, he thought aloud: "Jever stop to consider, Myra, that before a town can have buildings or prosperity or any of those things, some realtor has got to sell 'em the land? All civilization starts with him. Jever realize that?" At the Athletic Club he led unwilling men aside to inquire, "Say, if you had to read a paper before a big convention, would you start in with the funny stories or just kind of scatter 'em all through?" He asked Howard Littlefield for a "set of statistics about real-estate sales; something good and impressive," and Littlefield provided something exceedingly good and impressive. But it was to T. Cholmondeley Frink that Babbitt most often turned. He caught Frink at the club every noon, and demanded, while Frink looked hunted and evasive, "Say, Chum--you're a shark on this writing stuff--how would you put this sentence, see here in my manuscript--manuscript now where the deuce is that?--oh, yes, here. Would you say 'We ought not also to alone think?' or 'We ought also not to think alone?' or--" One evening when his wife was away and he had no one to impress, Babbitt forgot about Style, Order, and the other mysteries, and scrawled off what he really thought about the real-estate business and about himself, and he found the paper written. When he read it to his wife she yearned, "Why, dear, it's splendid; beautifully written, and so clear and interesting, and such splendid ideas! Why, it's just--it's just splendid!" Next day he cornered Chum Frink and crowed, "Well, old son, I finished it last evening! Just lammed it out! I used to think you writing-guys must have a hard job making up pieces, but Lord, it's a cinch. Pretty soft for you fellows; you certainly earn your money easy! Some day when I get ready to retire, guess I'll take to writing and show you boys how to do it. I always used to think I could write better stuff, and more punch and originality, than all this stuff you see printed, and now I'm doggone sure of it!" He had four copies of the paper typed in black with a gorgeous red title, had them bound in pale blue manilla, and affably presented one to old Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the Advocate-Times, who said yes, indeed yes, he was very glad to have it, and he certainly would read it all through--as soon as he could find time. Mrs. Babbitt could not go to Monarch. She had a women's-club meeting. Babbitt said that he was very sorry. III Besides the five official delegates to the convention--Babbitt, Rountree, W. A. Rogers, Alvin Thayer, and Elbert Wing--there were fifty unofficial delegates, most of them with their wives. They met at the Union Station for the midnight train to Monarch. All of them, save Cecil Rountree, who was such a snob that he never wore badges, displayed celluloid buttons the size of dollars and lettered "We zoom for Zenith." The official delegates were magnificent with silver and magenta ribbons. Martin Lumsen's little boy Willy carried a tasseled banner inscribed "Zenith the Zip City--Zeal, Zest and Zowie--1,000,000 in 1935." As the delegates arrived, not in taxicabs but in the family automobile driven by the oldest son or by Cousin Fred, they formed impromptu processions through the station waiting-room. It was a new and enormous waiting-room, with marble pilasters, and frescoes depicting the exploration of the Chaloosa River Valley by Pere Emile Fauthoux in 1740. The benches were shelves of ponderous mahogany; the news-stand a marble kiosk with a brass grill. Down the echoing spaces of the hall the delegates paraded after Willy Lumsen's banner, the men waving their cigars, the women conscious of their new frocks and strings of beads, all singing to the tune of Auld Lang Syne the official City Song, written by Chum Frink: Good old Zenith, Our kin and kith, Wherever we may be, Hats in the ring, We blithely sing Of thy Prosperity. Warren Whitby, the broker, who had a gift of verse for banquets and birthdays, had added to Frink's City Song a special verse for the realtors' convention: Oh, here we come, The fellows from Zenith, the Zip Citee. We wish to state In real estate There's none so live as we. Babbitt was stirred to hysteric patriotism. He leaped on a bench, shouting to the crowd: "What's the matter with Zenith?" "She's all right!" "What's best ole town in the U. S. A.?" "Zeeeeeen-ith!" The patient poor people waiting for the midnight train stared in unenvious wonder--Italian women with shawls, old weary men with broken shoes, roving road-wise boys in suits which had been flashy when they were new but which were faded now and wrinkled. Babbitt perceived that as an official delegate he must be more dignified. With Wing and Rogers he tramped up and down the cement platform beside the waiting Pullmans. Motor-driven baggage-trucks and red-capped porters carrying bags sped down the platform with an agreeable effect of activity. Arc-lights glared and stammered overhead. The glossy yellow sleeping-cars shone impressively. Babbitt made his voice to be measured and lordly; he thrust out his abdomen and rumbled, "We got to see to it that the convention lets the Legislature understand just where they get off in this matter of taxing realty transfers." Wing uttered approving grunts and Babbitt swelled--gloated. The blind of a Pullman compartment was raised, and Babbitt looked into an unfamiliar world. The occupant of the compartment was Lucile McKelvey, the pretty wife of the millionaire contractor. Possibly, Babbitt thrilled, she was going to Europe! On the seat beside her was a bunch of orchids and violets, and a yellow paper-bound book which seemed foreign. While he stared, she picked up the book, then glanced out of the window as though she was bored. She must have looked straight at him, and he had met her, but she gave no sign. She languidly pulled down the blind, and he stood still, a cold feeling of insignificance in his heart. But on the train his pride was restored by meeting delegates from Sparta, Pioneer, and other smaller cities of the state, who listened respectfully when, as a magnifico from the metropolis of Zenith, he explained politics and the value of a Good Sound Business Administration. They fell joyfully into shop-talk, the purest and most rapturous form of conversation: "How'd this fellow Rountree make out with this big apartment-hotel he was going to put up? Whadde do? Get out bonds to finance it?" asked a Sparta broker. "Well, I'll tell you," said Babbitt. "Now if I'd been handling it--" "So," Elbert Wing was droning, "I hired this shop-window for a week, and put up a big sign, 'Toy Town for Tiny Tots,' and stuck in a lot of doll houses and some dinky little trees, and then down at the bottom, 'Baby Likes This Dollydale, but Papa and Mama Will Prefer Our Beautiful Bungalows,' and you know, that certainly got folks talking, and first week we sold--" The trucks sang "lickety-lick, lickety-lick" as the train ran through the factory district. Furnaces spurted flame, and power-hammers were clanging. Red lights, green lights, furious white lights rushed past, and Babbitt was important again, and eager. IV He did a voluptuous thing: he had his clothes pressed on the train. In the morning, half an hour before they reached Monarch, the porter came to his berth and whispered, "There's a drawing-room vacant, sir. I put your suit in there." In tan autumn overcoat over his pajamas, Babbitt slipped down the green-curtain-lined aisle to the glory of his first private compartment. The porter indicated that he knew Babbitt was used to a man-servant; he held the ends of Babbitt's trousers, that the beautifully sponged garment might not be soiled, filled the bowl in the private washroom, and waited with a towel. To have a private washroom was luxurious. However enlivening a Pullman smoking-compartment was by night, even to Babbitt it was depressing in the morning, when it was jammed with fat men in woolen undershirts, every hook filled with wrinkled cottony shirts, the leather seat piled with dingy toilet-kits, and the air nauseating with the smell of soap and toothpaste. Babbitt did not ordinarily think much of privacy, but now he reveled in it, reveled in his valet, and purred with pleasure as he gave the man a tip of a dollar and a half. He rather hoped that he was being noticed as, in his newly pressed clothes, with the adoring porter carrying his suit-case, he disembarked at Monarch. He was to share a room at the Hotel Sedgwick with W. A. Rogers, that shrewd, rustic-looking Zenith dealer in farm-lands. Together they had a noble breakfast, with waffles, and coffee not in exiguous cups but in large pots. Babbitt grew expansive, and told Rogers about the art of writing; he gave a bellboy a quarter to fetch a morning newspaper from the lobby, and sent to Tinka a post-card: "Papa wishes you were here to bat round with him." V The meetings of the convention were held in the ballroom of the Allen House. In an anteroom was the office of the chairman of the executive committee. He was the busiest man in the convention; he was so busy that he got nothing done whatever. He sat at a marquetry table, in a room littered with crumpled paper and, all day long, town-boosters and lobbyists and orators who wished to lead debates came and whispered to him, whereupon he looked vague, and said rapidly, "Yes, yes, that's a fine idea; we'll do that," and instantly forgot all about it, lighted a cigar and forgot that too, while the telephone rang mercilessly and about him men kept beseeching, "Say, Mr. Chairman--say, Mr. Chairman!" without penetrating his exhausted hearing. In the exhibit-room were plans of the new suburbs of Sparta, pictures of the new state capitol, at Galop de Vache, and large ears of corn with the label, "Nature's Gold, from Shelby County, the Garden Spot of God's Own Country." The real convention consisted of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in groups amid the badge-spotted crowd in the hotel-lobby, but there was a show of public meetings. The first of them opened with a welcome by the mayor of Monarch. The pastor of the First Christian Church of Monarch, a large man with a long damp frontal lock, informed God that the real-estate men were here now. The venerable Minnemagantic realtor, Major Carlton Tuke, read a paper in which he denounced cooperative stores. William A. Larkin of Eureka gave a comforting prognosis of "The Prospects for Increased Construction," and reminded them that plate-glass prices were two points lower. The convention was on. The delegates were entertained, incessantly and firmly. The Monarch Chamber of Commerce gave them a banquet, and the Manufacturers' Association an afternoon reception, at which a chrysanthemum was presented to each of the ladies, and to each of the men a leather bill-fold inscribed "From Monarch the Mighty Motor Mart." Mrs. Crosby Knowlton, wife of the manufacturer of Fleetwing Automobiles, opened her celebrated Italian garden and served tea. Six hundred real-estate men and wives ambled down the autumnal paths. Perhaps three hundred of them were quietly inconspicuous; perhaps three hundred vigorously exclaimed, "This is pretty slick, eh?" surreptitiously picked the late asters and concealed them in their pockets, and tried to get near enough to Mrs. Knowlton to shake her lovely hand. Without request, the Zenith delegates (except Rountree) gathered round a marble dancing nymph and sang "Here we come, the fellows from Zenith, the Zip Citee." It chanced that all the delegates from Pioneer belonged to the Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks, and they produced an enormous banner lettered: "B. P. O. E.--Best People on Earth--Boost Pioneer, Oh Eddie." Nor was Galop de Vache, the state capital, to be slighted. The leader of the Galop de Vache delegation was a large, reddish, roundish man, but active. He took off his coat, hurled his broad black felt hat on the ground, rolled up his sleeves, climbed upon the sundial, spat, and bellowed: "We'll tell the world, and the good lady who's giving the show this afternoon, that the bonniest burg in this man's state is Galop de Vache. You boys can talk about your zip, but jus' lemme murmur that old Galop has the largest proportion of home-owning citizens in the state; and when folks own their homes, they ain't starting labor-troubles, and they're raising kids instead of raising hell! Galop de Vache! The town for homey folks! The town that eats 'em alive oh, Bosco! We'll--tell--the--world!" The guests drove off; the garden shivered into quiet. But Mrs. Crosby Knowlton sighed as she looked at a marble seat warm from five hundred summers of Amalfi. On the face of a winged sphinx which supported it some one had drawn a mustache in lead-pencil. Crumpled paper napkins were dumped among the Michaelmas daisies. On the walk, like shredded lovely flesh, were the petals of the last gallant rose. Cigarette stubs floated in the goldfish pool, trailing an evil stain as they swelled and disintegrated, and beneath the marble seat, the fragments carefully put together, was a smashed teacup. VI As he rode back to the hotel Babbitt reflected, "Myra would have enjoyed all this social agony." For himself he cared less for the garden party than for the motor tours which the Monarch Chamber of Commerce had arranged. Indefatigably he viewed water-reservoirs, suburban trolley-stations, and tanneries. He devoured the statistics which were given to him, and marveled to his roommate, W. A. Rogers, "Of course this town isn't a patch on Zenith; it hasn't got our outlook and natural resources; but did you know--I nev' did till to-day--that they manufactured seven hundred and sixty-three million feet of lumber last year? What d' you think of that!" He was nervous as the time for reading his paper approached. When he stood on the low platform before the convention, he trembled and saw only a purple haze. But he was in earnest, and when he had finished the formal paper he talked to them, his hands in his pockets, his spectacled face a flashing disk, like a plate set up on edge in the lamplight. They shouted "That's the stuff!" and in the discussion afterward they referred with impressiveness to "our friend and brother, Mr. George F. Babbitt." He had in fifteen minutes changed from a minor delegate to a personage almost as well known as that diplomat of business, Cecil Rountree. After the meeting, delegates from all over the state said, "Hower you, Brother Babbitt?" Sixteen complete strangers called him "George," and three men took him into corners to confide, "Mighty glad you had the courage to stand up and give the Profession a real boost. Now I've always maintained--" Next morning, with tremendous casualness, Babbitt asked the girl at the hotel news-stand for the newspapers from Zenith. There was nothing in the Press, but in the Advocate-Times, on the third page--He gasped. They had printed his picture and a half-column account. The heading was "Sensation at Annual Land-men's Convention. G. F. Babbitt, Prominent Ziptown Realtor, Keynoter in Fine Address." He murmured reverently, "I guess some of the folks on Floral Heights will sit up and take notice now, and pay a little attention to old Georgie!" VII It was the last meeting. The delegations were presenting the claims of their several cities to the next year's convention. Orators were announcing that "Galop de Vache, the Capital City, the site of Kremer College and of the Upholtz Knitting Works, is the recognized center of culture and high-class enterprise;" and that "Hamburg, the Big Little City with the Logical Location, where every man is open-handed and every woman a heaven-born hostess, throws wide to you her hospitable gates." In the midst of these more diffident invitations, the golden doors of the ballroom opened with a blatting of trumpets, and a circus parade rolled in. It was composed of the Zenith brokers, dressed as cowpunchers, bareback riders, Japanese jugglers. At the head was big Warren Whitby, in the bearskin and gold-and-crimson coat of a drum-major. Behind him, as a clown, beating a bass drum, extraordinarily happy and noisy, was Babbitt. Warren Whitby leaped on the platform, made merry play with his baton, and observed, "Boyses and girlses, the time has came to get down to cases. A dyed-in-the-wool Zenithite sure loves his neighbors, but we've made up our minds to grab this convention off our neighbor burgs like we've grabbed the condensed-milk business and the paper-box business and--" J. Harry Barmhill, the convention chairman, hinted, "We're grateful to you, Mr. Uh, but you must give the other boys a chance to hand in their bids now." A fog-horn voice blared, "In Eureka we'll promise free motor rides through the prettiest country--" Running down the aisle, clapping his hands, a lean bald young man cried, "I'm from Sparta! Our Chamber of Commerce has wired me they've set aside eight thousand dollars, in real money, for the entertainment of the convention!" A clerical-looking man rose to clamor, "Money talks! Move we accept the bid from Sparta!" It was accepted. VIII The Committee on Resolutions was reporting. They said that Whereas Almighty God in his beneficent mercy had seen fit to remove to a sphere of higher usefulness some thirty-six realtors of the state the past year, Therefore it was the sentiment of this convention assembled that they were sorry God had done it, and the secretary should be, and hereby was, instructed to spread these resolutions on the minutes, and to console the bereaved families by sending them each a copy. A second resolution authorized the president of the S.A.R.E.B. to spend fifteen thousand dollars in lobbying for sane tax measures in the State Legislature. This resolution had a good deal to say about Menaces to Sound Business and clearing the Wheels of Progress from ill-advised and shortsighted obstacles. The Committee on Committees reported, and with startled awe Babbitt learned that he had been appointed a member of the Committee on Torrens Titles. He rejoiced, "I said it was going to be a great year! Georgie, old son, you got big things ahead of you! You're a natural-born orator and a good mixer and--Zowie!" IX There was no formal entertainment provided for the last evening. Babbitt had planned to go home, but that afternoon the Jered Sassburgers of Pioneer suggested that Babbitt and W. A. Rogers have tea with them at the Catalpa Inn. Teas were not unknown to Babbitt--his wife and he earnestly attended them at least twice a year--but they were sufficiently exotic to make him feel important. He sat at a glass-covered table in the Art Room of the Inn, with its painted rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce sandwiches, and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as smooth and large-eyed as a cloak-model. Sassburger and he had met two days before, so they were calling each other "Georgie" and "Sassy." Sassburger said prayerfully, "Say, boys, before you go, seeing this is the last chance, I've GOT IT, up in my room, and Miriam here is the best little mixelogist in the Stati Unidos like us Italians say." With wide flowing gestures, Babbitt and Rogers followed the Sassburgers to their room. Mrs. Sassburger shrieked, "Oh, how terrible!" when she saw that she had left a chemise of sheer lavender crepe on the bed. She tucked it into a bag, while Babbitt giggled, "Don't mind us; we're a couple o' little divvils!" Sassburger telephoned for ice, and the bell-boy who brought it said, prosaically and unprompted, "Highball glasses or cocktail?" Miriam Sassburger mixed the cocktails in one of those dismal, nakedly white water-pitchers which exist only in hotels. When they had finished the first round she proved by intoning "Think you boys could stand another--you got a dividend coming" that, though she was but a woman, she knew the complete and perfect rite of cocktail-drinking. Outside, Babbitt hinted to Rogers, "Say, W. A., old rooster, it comes over me that I could stand it if we didn't go back to the lovin' wives, this handsome ABEND, but just kind of stayed in Monarch and threw a party, heh?" "George, you speak with the tongue of wisdom and sagashiteriferousness. El Wing's wife has gone on to Pittsburg. Let's see if we can't gather him in." At half-past seven they sat in their room, with Elbert Wing and two up-state delegates. Their coats were off, their vests open, their faces red, their voices emphatic. They were finishing a bottle of corrosive bootlegged whisky and imploring the bell-boy, "Say, son, can you get us some more of this embalming fluid?" They were smoking large cigars and dropping ashes and stubs on the carpet. With windy guffaws they were telling stories. They were, in fact, males in a happy state of nature. Babbitt sighed, "I don't know how it strikes you hellions, but personally I like this busting loose for a change, and kicking over a couple of mountains and climbing up on the North Pole and waving the aurora borealis around." The man from Sparta, a grave, intense youngster, babbled, "Say! I guess I'm as good a husband as the run of the mill, but God, I do get so tired of going home every evening, and nothing to see but the movies. That's why I go out and drill with the National Guard. I guess I got the nicest little wife in my burg, but--Say! Know what I wanted to do as a kid? Know what I wanted to do? Wanted to be a big chemist. Tha's what I wanted to do. But Dad chased me out on the road selling kitchenware, and here I'm settled down--settled for LIFE--not a chance! Oh, who the devil started this funeral talk? How 'bout 'nother lil drink? 'And a-noth-er drink wouldn' do 's 'ny harmmmmmmm.'" "Yea. Cut the sob-stuff," said W. A. Rogers genially. "You boys know I'm the village songster? Come on now--sing up: Said the old Obadiah to the young Obadiah, 'I am dry, Obadiah, I am dry.' Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah, 'So am I, Obadiah, so am I.'" X They had dinner in the Moorish Grillroom of the Hotel Sedgwick. Somewhere, somehow, they seemed to have gathered in two other comrades: a manufacturer of fly-paper and a dentist. They all drank whisky from tea-cups, and they were humorous, and never listened to one another, except when W. A. Rogers "kidded" the Italian waiter. "Say, Gooseppy," he said innocently, "I want a couple o' fried elephants' ears." "Sorry, sir, we haven't any." "Huh? No elephants' ears? What do you know about that!" Rogers turned to Babbitt. "Pedro says the elephants' ears are all out!" "Well, I'll be switched!" said the man from Sparta, with difficulty hiding his laughter. "Well, in that case, Carlo, just bring me a hunk o' steak and a couple o' bushels o' French fried potatoes and some peas," Rogers went on. "I suppose back in dear old sunny It' the Eyetalians get their fresh garden peas out of the can." "No, sir, we have very nice peas in Italy." "Is that a fact! Georgie, do you hear that? They get their fresh garden peas out of the garden, in Italy! By golly, you live and learn, don't you, Antonio, you certainly do live and learn, if you live long enough and keep your strength. All right, Garibaldi, just shoot me in that steak, with about two printers'-reams of French fried spuds on the promenade deck, comprehenez-vous, Michelovitch Angeloni?" Afterward Elbert Wing admired, "Gee, you certainly did have that poor Dago going, W. A. He couldn't make you out at all!" In the Monarch Herald, Babbitt found an advertisement which he read aloud, to applause and laughter: Old Colony Theatre Shake the Old Dogs to the WROLLICKING WRENS The bonniest bevy of beauteous bathing babes in burlesque. Pete Menutti and his Oh, Gee, Kids. This is the straight steer, Benny, the painless chicklets of the Wrollicking Wrens are the cuddlingest bunch that ever hit town. Steer the feet, get the card board, and twist the pupils to the PDQest show ever. You will get 111% on your kale in this fun-fest. The Calroza Sisters are sure some lookers and will give you a run for your gelt. Jock Silbersteen is one of the pepper lads and slips you a dose of real laughter. Shoot the up and down to Jackson and West for graceful tappers. They run 1-2 under the wire. Provin and Adams will blow the blues in their laugh skit "Hootch Mon!" Something doing, boys. Listen to what the Hep Bird twitters. "Sounds like a juicy show to me. Let's all take it in," said Babbitt. But they put off departure as long as they could. They were safe while they sat here, legs firmly crossed under the table, but they felt unsteady; they were afraid of navigating the long and slippery floor of the grillroom under the eyes of the other guests and the too-attentive waiters. When they did venture, tables got in their way, and they sought to cover embarrassment by heavy jocularity at the coatroom. As the girl handed out their hats, they smiled at her, and hoped that she, a cool and expert judge, would feel that they were gentlemen. They croaked at one another, "Who owns the bum lid?" and "You take a good one, George; I'll take what's left," and to the check-girl they stammered, "Better come along, sister! High, wide, and fancy evening ahead!" All of them tried to tip her, urging one another, "No! Wait! Here! I got it right here!" Among them, they gave her three dollars. XI Flamboyantly smoking cigars they sat in a box at the burlesque show, their feet up on the rail, while a chorus of twenty daubed, worried, and inextinguishably respectable grandams swung their legs in the more elementary chorus-evolutions, and a Jewish comedian made vicious fun of Jews. In the entr'actes they met other lone delegates. A dozen of them went in taxicabs out to Bright Blossom Inn, where the blossoms were made of dusty paper festooned along a room low and stinking, like a cow-stable no longer wisely used. Here, whisky was served openly, in glasses. Two or three clerks, who on pay-day longed to be taken for millionaires, sheepishly danced with telephone-girls and manicure-girls in the narrow space between the tables. Fantastically whirled the professionals, a young man in sleek evening-clothes and a slim mad girl in emerald silk, with amber hair flung up as jaggedly as flames. Babbitt tried to dance with her. He shuffled along the floor, too bulky to be guided, his steps unrelated to the rhythm of the jungle music, and in his staggering he would have fallen, had she not held him with supple kindly strength. He was blind and deaf from prohibition-era alcohol; he could not see the tables, the faces. But he was overwhelmed by the girl and her young pliant warmth. When she had firmly returned him to his group, he remembered, by a connection quite untraceable, that his mother's mother had been Scotch, and with head thrown back, eyes closed, wide mouth indicating ecstasy, he sang, very slowly and richly, "Loch Lomond." But that was the last of his mellowness and jolly companionship. The man from Sparta said he was a "bum singer," and for ten minutes Babbitt quarreled with him, in a loud, unsteady, heroic indignation. They called for drinks till the manager insisted that the place was closed. All the while Babbitt felt a hot raw desire for more brutal amusements. When W. A. Rogers drawled, "What say we go down the line and look over the girls?" he agreed savagely. Before they went, three of them secretly made appointments with the professional dancing girl, who agreed "Yes, yes, sure, darling" to everything they said, and amiably forgot them. As they drove back through the outskirts of Monarch, down streets of small brown wooden cottages of workmen, characterless as cells, as they rattled across warehouse-districts which by drunken night seemed vast and perilous, as they were borne toward the red lights and violent automatic pianos and the stocky women who simpered, Babbitt was frightened. He wanted to leap from the taxicab, but all his body was a murky fire, and he groaned, "Too late to quit now," and knew that he did not want to quit. There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on the way. A broker from Minnemagantic said, "Monarch is a lot sportier than Zenith. You Zenith tightwads haven't got any joints like these here." Babbitt raged, "That's a dirty lie! Snothin' you can't find in Zenith. Believe me, we got more houses and hootch-parlors an' all kinds o' dives than any burg in the state." He realized they were laughing at him; he desired to fight; and forgot it in such musty unsatisfying experiments as he had not known since college. In the morning, when he returned to Zenith, his desire for rebellion was partly satisfied. He had retrograded to a shamefaced contentment. He was irritable. He did not smile when W. A. Rogers complained, "Ow, what a head! I certainly do feel like the wrath of God this morning. Say! I know what was the trouble! Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze last night." Babbitt's excursion was never known to his family, nor to any one in Zenith save Rogers and Wing. It was not officially recognized even by himself. If it had any consequences, they have not been discovered.

Chapter XIII

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xi-xiv

Cecil Rountree convinces Babbitt to write and present a paper at the State Association of Real Estate Boards's annual convention in Monarch, Zenith's rival city. After much toiling, he is finally able to complete the paper, and he presents it to Ira Runyon. The delegates and their wives arrive at the station for the midnight train to Monarch wearing badges and buttons and singing songs about the superiority of Zenith. Babbitt is "stirred to hysteric patriotism" , feeling proud, important, and eager to tout all of Zenith's charms. The convention meetings take place in the Allen House ballroom, but "the real convention of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in groups". The delegates are entertained by a continuous stream of entertainment, such as banquets and teas. Though Babbitt is nervous about presenting his paper, it is well received by everyone, and the Advocate-Times deems it a sensation. Babbitt is appointed a member of the Committee on Torrens Titles. Babbitt decides to stay one final evening in Monarch with W. A. Rogers in order to have tea with Jered and Mrs. Sassburger. After tea, they drink excessive amounts of alcohol and go to see a burlesque with strippers. Babbitt dances with a woman and feels a "hot raw desire for more brutal amusements". He returns to Zenith, and his family never learns of the excursion

In Maine, a more intimate dynamic emerges between Babbitt and Paul. They feel a genuine sense of contentment together, wishing that they could spend the rest of their lives alone in the woods with just each other. Standing by the wharf, Babbitt winks at Paul, and they chew tobacco together. The language in this section is erotic: they spit solemnly together in the "placid water," stretch "voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs," and sigh in unison . Their friendship seems platonic, but Lewis gives it a homosexual air. There is no other whom Babbitt prefers to be with, and though he is attracted to women, this particular relationship is the most fulfilling and meaningful one in his life. These feelings are never directly and unequivocally stated in the novel, but Lewis alludes to them several times. Later in the novel, Babbitt truly feels that his days are meaningless if they do not include Paul, and this suggests a level of intimacy that may have been unusual among American males at the time. Although Babbitt is convinced that his trip to Maine will propel him into a healthier and happier lifestyle, he almost immediately reverts to his former habits. Moreover, his fixation on social status becomes more pronounced as his career as a recognized orator evolves. In fact, the rise of his prestige marks his rapid moral decline. He is overcome with pride and bigheadedness at this sudden acknowledgment, and he extends his trip in order to stay in Monarch, flirt with Mrs. Sassburger, drink too much alcohol, and visit a brothel, where he presumably has sex with one of the girls. For a man so outwardly focused on morality and propriety, this trip marks a significant turning point for Babbitt. The event is "not officially recognized even by himself" , but it suggests that something in Babbitt has suddenly changed and that he is now capable of severing some of the chains that have bound him to his life as a respectable Republican family man. In light of his recent transgressions, Babbitt's address to the Zenith Real Estate Board is rendered extremely ironic and hypocritical. In this self-serving and narrow-minded speech, Babbitt offers an image of the Ideal Citizen . This man, according to Babbitt, is productive, hard-working, and an exemplary husband and father. He is "a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time" . He goes on to argue that Zenith holds a monopoly on these men, and the implication is, of course, that Babbitt himself is the paragon of this Ideal Citizen. It seems as though, on some level, this is actually the view of himself that he nurtures and maintains, yet because this speech immediately follows an account of moral debauchery and a disregard for fundamental family values, his speech becomes a biting commentary on his own declining moral integrity. Even aside from these obvious moral ironies, the speech is a powerful work of satire that exposes the prejudices of such persons in middle-class, postwar America. In comparison to Zenith, Babbitt describes the European population as "moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps" . He also appropriates the work of talented Europeans, claiming that the United States is responsible for "the best operas, such as Verdi" . With every sentence, Babbitt reveals even greater depths of ignorance and intolerance, and this speech serves as a compact version of the novel's overall satiric agenda.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_3_part_4.txt

Babbitt.chapter xiv

chapter xiv

{"name": "Chapter XIV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xi-xiv", "summary": "During the local election, Babbitt becomes a popular orator, advocating for Lucas Prout for mayor. Prout is a mattress manufacturer who supports \"the banks, the Chamber of Commerce, all the decent newspapers, and George F. Babbitt\". Babbitt speaks out against Seneca Doane, a lawyer and fellow graduate of the State University, who is running on an \"alarming labor ticket\". When Prout defeats Doane, Babbitt's reputation as an effective orator is established. He thus is invited to give the annual address at the dinner of the Zenith Real Estate Board. In this speech, he paints a portrait of the ideal American citizen as a humble and hard-working family man who contributes to \"the prosperity of the city and to his own bank-account\" and has extensive knowledge of politics and religion. Liberals, he explains, are the \"worst menace to sound government\". He goes on to explain that Zenith, in addition to being statistically impressive and very modern, has the greatest population of these ideal men, and he applauds the commercial standardization among cities as highly beneficial. He is determined to become a recognized orator and is greatly admired by his wife and friends", "analysis": "In Maine, a more intimate dynamic emerges between Babbitt and Paul. They feel a genuine sense of contentment together, wishing that they could spend the rest of their lives alone in the woods with just each other. Standing by the wharf, Babbitt winks at Paul, and they chew tobacco together. The language in this section is erotic: they spit solemnly together in the \"placid water,\" stretch \"voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs,\" and sigh in unison . Their friendship seems platonic, but Lewis gives it a homosexual air. There is no other whom Babbitt prefers to be with, and though he is attracted to women, this particular relationship is the most fulfilling and meaningful one in his life. These feelings are never directly and unequivocally stated in the novel, but Lewis alludes to them several times. Later in the novel, Babbitt truly feels that his days are meaningless if they do not include Paul, and this suggests a level of intimacy that may have been unusual among American males at the time. Although Babbitt is convinced that his trip to Maine will propel him into a healthier and happier lifestyle, he almost immediately reverts to his former habits. Moreover, his fixation on social status becomes more pronounced as his career as a recognized orator evolves. In fact, the rise of his prestige marks his rapid moral decline. He is overcome with pride and bigheadedness at this sudden acknowledgment, and he extends his trip in order to stay in Monarch, flirt with Mrs. Sassburger, drink too much alcohol, and visit a brothel, where he presumably has sex with one of the girls. For a man so outwardly focused on morality and propriety, this trip marks a significant turning point for Babbitt. The event is \"not officially recognized even by himself\" , but it suggests that something in Babbitt has suddenly changed and that he is now capable of severing some of the chains that have bound him to his life as a respectable Republican family man. In light of his recent transgressions, Babbitt's address to the Zenith Real Estate Board is rendered extremely ironic and hypocritical. In this self-serving and narrow-minded speech, Babbitt offers an image of the Ideal Citizen . This man, according to Babbitt, is productive, hard-working, and an exemplary husband and father. He is \"a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time\" . He goes on to argue that Zenith holds a monopoly on these men, and the implication is, of course, that Babbitt himself is the paragon of this Ideal Citizen. It seems as though, on some level, this is actually the view of himself that he nurtures and maintains, yet because this speech immediately follows an account of moral debauchery and a disregard for fundamental family values, his speech becomes a biting commentary on his own declining moral integrity. Even aside from these obvious moral ironies, the speech is a powerful work of satire that exposes the prejudices of such persons in middle-class, postwar America. In comparison to Zenith, Babbitt describes the European population as \"moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps\" . He also appropriates the work of talented Europeans, claiming that the United States is responsible for \"the best operas, such as Verdi\" . With every sentence, Babbitt reveals even greater depths of ignorance and intolerance, and this speech serves as a compact version of the novel's overall satiric agenda."}

THIS autumn a Mr. W. G. Harding, of Marion, Ohio, was appointed President of the United States, but Zenith was less interested in the national campaign than in the local election. Seneca Doane, though he was a lawyer and a graduate of the State University, was candidate for mayor of Zenith on an alarming labor ticket. To oppose him the Democrats and Republicans united on Lucas Prout, a mattress-manufacturer with a perfect record for sanity. Mr. Prout was supported by the banks, the Chamber of Commerce, all the decent newspapers, and George F. Babbitt. Babbitt was precinct-leader on Floral Heights, but his district was safe and he longed for stouter battling. His convention paper had given him the beginning of a reputation for oratory, so the Republican-Democratic Central Committee sent him to the Seventh Ward and South Zenith, to address small audiences of workmen and clerks, and wives uneasy with their new votes. He acquired a fame enduring for weeks. Now and then a reporter was present at one of his meetings, and the headlines (though they were not very large) indicated that George F. Babbitt had addressed Cheering Throng, and Distinguished Man of Affairs had pointed out the Fallacies of Doane. Once, in the rotogravure section of the Sunday Advocate-Times, there was a photograph of Babbitt and a dozen other business men, with the caption "Leaders of Zenith Finance and Commerce Who Back Prout." He deserved his glory. He was an excellent campaigner. He had faith; he was certain that if Lincoln were alive, he would be electioneering for Mr. W. G. Harding--unless he came to Zenith and electioneered for Lucas Prout. He did not confuse audiences by silly subtleties; Prout represented honest industry, Seneca Doane represented whining laziness, and you could take your choice. With his broad shoulders and vigorous voice, he was obviously a Good Fellow; and, rarest of all, he really liked people. He almost liked common workmen. He wanted them to be well paid, and able to afford high rents--though, naturally, they must not interfere with the reasonable profits of stockholders. Thus nobly endowed, and keyed high by the discovery that he was a natural orator, he was popular with audiences, and he raged through the campaign, renowned not only in the Seventh and Eighth Wards but even in parts of the Sixteenth. II Crowded in his car, they came driving up to Turnverein Hall, South Zenith--Babbitt, his wife, Verona, Ted, and Paul and Zilla Riesling. The hall was over a delicatessen shop, in a street banging with trolleys and smelling of onions and gasoline and fried fish. A new appreciation of Babbitt filled all of them, including Babbitt. "Don't know how you keep it up, talking to three bunches in one evening. Wish I had your strength," said Paul; and Ted exclaimed to Verona, "The old man certainly does know how to kid these roughnecks along!" Men in black sateen shirts, their faces new-washed but with a hint of grime under their eyes, were loitering on the broad stairs up to the hall. Babbitt's party politely edged through them and into the whitewashed room, at the front of which was a dais with a red-plush throne and a pine altar painted watery blue, as used nightly by the Grand Masters and Supreme Potentates of innumerable lodges. The hall was full. As Babbitt pushed through the fringe standing at the back, he heard the precious tribute, "That's him!" The chairman bustled down the center aisle with an impressive, "The speaker? All ready, sir! Uh--let's see--what was the name, sir?" Then Babbitt slid into a sea of eloquence: "Ladies and gentlemen of the Sixteenth Ward, there is one who cannot be with us here to-night, a man than whom there is no more stalwart Trojan in all the political arena--I refer to our leader, the Honorable Lucas Prout, standard-bearer of the city and county of Zenith. Since he is not here, I trust that you will bear with me if, as a friend and neighbor, as one who is proud to share with you the common blessing of being a resident of the great city of Zenith, I tell you in all candor, honesty, and sincerity how the issues of this critical campaign appear to one plain man of business--to one who, brought up to the blessings of poverty and of manual labor, has, even when Fate condemned him to sit at a desk, yet never forgotten how it feels, by heck, to be up at five-thirty and at the factory with the ole dinner-pail in his hardened mitt when the whistle blew at seven, unless the owner sneaked in ten minutes on us and blew it early! (Laughter.) To come down to the basic and fundamental issues of this campaign, the great error, insincerely promulgated by Seneca Doane--" There were workmen who jeered--young cynical workmen, for the most part foreigners, Jews, Swedes, Irishmen, Italians--but the older men, the patient, bleached, stooped carpenters and mechanics, cheered him; and when he worked up to his anecdote of Lincoln their eyes were wet. Modestly, busily, he hurried out of the hall on delicious applause, and sped off to his third audience of the evening. "Ted, you better drive," he said. "Kind of all in after that spiel. Well, Paul, how'd it go? Did I get 'em?" "Bully! Corking! You had a lot of pep." Mrs. Babbitt worshiped, "Oh, it was fine! So clear and interesting, and such nice ideas. When I hear you orating I realize I don't appreciate how profoundly you think and what a splendid brain and vocabulary you have. Just--splendid." But Verona was irritating. "Dad," she worried, "how do you know that public ownership of utilities and so on and so forth will always be a failure?" Mrs. Babbitt reproved, "Rone, I should think you could see and realize that when your father's all worn out with orating, it's no time to expect him to explain these complicated subjects. I'm sure when he's rested he'll be glad to explain it to you. Now let's all be quiet and give Papa a chance to get ready for his next speech. Just think! Right now they're gathering in Maccabee Temple, and WAITING for us!" III Mr. Lucas Prout and Sound Business defeated Mr. Seneca Doane and Class Rule, and Zenith was again saved. Babbitt was offered several minor appointments to distribute among poor relations, but he preferred advance information about the extension of paved highways, and this a grateful administration gave to him. Also, he was one of only nineteen speakers at the dinner with which the Chamber of Commerce celebrated the victory of righteousness. His reputation for oratory established, at the dinner of the Zenith Real Estate Board he made the Annual Address. The Advocate-Times reported this speech with unusual fullness: "One of the livest banquets that has recently been pulled off occurred last night in the annual Get-Together Fest of the Zenith Real Estate Board, held in the Venetian Ball Room of the O'Hearn House. Mine host Gil O'Hearn had as usual done himself proud and those assembled feasted on such an assemblage of plates as could be rivaled nowhere west of New York, if there, and washed down the plenteous feed with the cup which inspired but did not inebriate in the shape of cider from the farm of Chandler Mott, president of the board and who acted as witty and efficient chairman. "As Mr. Mott was suffering from slight infection and sore throat, G. F. Babbitt made the principal talk. Besides outlining the progress of Torrensing real estate titles, Mr. Babbitt spoke in part as follows: "'In rising to address you, with my impromptu speech carefully tucked into my vest pocket, I am reminded of the story of the two Irishmen, Mike and Pat, who were riding on the Pullman. Both of them, I forgot to say, were sailors in the Navy. It seems Mike had the lower berth and by and by he heard a terrible racket from the upper, and when he yelled up to find out what the trouble was, Pat answered, "Shure an' bedad an' how can I ever get a night's sleep at all, at all? I been trying to get into this darned little hammock ever since eight bells!" "'Now, gentlemen, standing up here before you, I feel a good deal like Pat, and maybe after I've spieled along for a while, I may feel so darn small that I'll be able to crawl into a Pullman hammock with no trouble at all, at all! "'Gentlemen, it strikes me that each year at this annual occasion when friend and foe get together and lay down the battle-ax and let the waves of good-fellowship waft them up the flowery slopes of amity, it behooves us, standing together eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder as fellow-citizens of the best city in the world, to consider where we are both as regards ourselves and the common weal. "'It is true that even with our 361,000, or practically 362,000, population, there are, by the last census, almost a score of larger cities in the United States. But, gentlemen, if by the next census we do not stand at least tenth, then I'll be the first to request any knocker to remove my shirt and to eat the same, with the compliments of G. F. Babbitt, Esquire! It may be true that New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia will continue to keep ahead of us in size. But aside from these three cities, which are notoriously so overgrown that no decent white man, nobody who loves his wife and kiddies and God's good out-o'doors and likes to shake the hand of his neighbor in greeting, would want to live in them--and let me tell you right here and now, I wouldn't trade a high-class Zenith acreage development for the whole length and breadth of Broadway or State Street!--aside from these three, it's evident to any one with a head for facts that Zenith is the finest example of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere. "'I don't mean to say we're perfect. We've got a lot to do in the way of extending the paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it's the fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the wheels of progress go round! "'That's the type of fellow that's ruling America to-day; in fact, it's the ideal type to which the entire world must tend, if there's to be a decent, well-balanced, Christian, go-ahead future for this little old planet! Once in a while I just naturally sit back and size up this Solid American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction. "'Our Ideal Citizen--I picture him first and foremost as being busier than a bird-dog, not wasting a lot of good time in day-dreaming or going to sassiety teas or kicking about things that are none of his business, but putting the zip into some store or profession or art. At night he lights up a good cigar, and climbs into the little old 'bus, and maybe cusses the carburetor, and shoots out home. He mows the lawn, or sneaks in some practice putting, and then he's ready for dinner. After dinner he tells the kiddies a story, or takes the family to the movies, or plays a few fists of bridge, or reads the evening paper, and a chapter or two of some good lively Western novel if he has a taste for literature, and maybe the folks next-door drop in and they sit and visit about their friends and the topics of the day. Then he goes happily to bed, his conscience clear, having contributed his mite to the prosperity of the city and to his own bank-account. "'In politics and religion this Sane Citizen is the canniest man on earth; and in the arts he invariably has a natural taste which makes him pick out the best, every time. In no country in the world will you find so many reproductions of the Old Masters and of well-known paintings on parlor walls as in these United States. No country has anything like our number of phonographs, with not only dance records and comic but also the best operas, such as Verdi, rendered by the world's highest-paid singers. "'In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent business man; and I, for one, am only too glad that the man who has the rare skill to season his message with interesting reading matter and who shows both purpose and pep in handling his literary wares has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year, to mingle with the biggest executives on terms of perfect equality, and to show as big a house and as swell a car as any Captain of Industry! But, mind you, it's the appreciation of the Regular Guy who I have been depicting which has made this possible, and you got to hand as much credit to him as to the authors themselves. "'Finally, but most important, our Standardized Citizen, even if he is a bachelor, is a lover of the Little Ones, a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time, and the thing that most distinguishes us from the decayed nations of Europe. "'I have never yet toured Europe--and as a matter of fact, I don't know that I care to such an awful lot, as long as there's our own mighty cities and mountains to be seen--but, the way I figure it out, there must be a good many of our own sort of folks abroad. Indeed, one of the most enthusiastic Rotarians I ever met boosted the tenets of one-hundred-per-cent pep in a burr that smacked o' bonny Scutlond and all ye bonny braes o' Bobby Burns. But same time, one thing that distinguishes us from our good brothers, the hustlers over there, is that they're willing to take a lot off the snobs and journalists and politicians, while the modern American business man knows how to talk right up for himself, knows how to make it good and plenty clear that he intends to run the works. He doesn't have to call in some highbrow hired-man when it's necessary for him to answer the crooked critics of the sane and efficient life. He's not dumb, like the old-fashioned merchant. He's got a vocabulary and a punch. "'With all modesty, I want to stand up here as a representative business man and gently whisper, "Here's our kind of folks! Here's the specifications of the Standardized American Citizen! Here's the new generation of Americans: fellows with hair on their chests and smiles in their eyes and adding-machines in their offices. We're not doing any boasting, but we like ourselves first-rate, and if you don't like us, look out--better get under cover before the cyclone hits town!" "'So! In my clumsy way I have tried to sketch the Real He-man, the fellow with Zip and Bang. And it's because Zenith has so large a proportion of such men that it's the most stable, the greatest of our cities. New York also has its thousands of Real Folks, but New York is cursed with unnumbered foreigners. So are Chicago and San Francisco. Oh, we have a golden roster of cities--Detroit and Cleveland with their renowned factories, Cincinnati with its great machine-tool and soap products, Pittsburg and Birmingham with their steel, Kansas City and Minneapolis and Omaha that open their bountiful gates on the bosom of the ocean-like wheatlands, and countless other magnificent sister-cities, for, by the last census, there were no less than sixty-eight glorious American burgs with a population of over one hundred thousand! And all these cities stand together for power and purity, and against foreign ideas and communism--Atlanta with Hartford, Rochester with Denver, Milwaukee with Indianapolis, Los Angeles with Scranton, Portland, Maine, with Portland, Oregon. A good live wire from Baltimore or Seattle or Duluth is the twin-brother of every like fellow booster from Buffalo or Akron, Fort Worth or Oskaloosa! "'But it's here in Zenith, the home for manly men and womanly women and bright kids, that you find the largest proportion of these Regular Guys, and that's what sets it in a class by itself; that's why Zenith will be remembered in history as having set the pace for a civilization that shall endure when the old time-killing ways are gone forever and the day of earnest efficient endeavor shall have dawned all round the world! "'Some time I hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination to win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in every land and clime, wherever condensed milk and pasteboard cartons are known! Believe me, the world has fallen too long for these worn-out countries that aren't producing anything but bootblacks and scenery and booze, that haven't got one bathroom per hundred people, and that don't know a loose-leaf ledger from a slip-cover; and it's just about time for some Zenithite to get his back up and holler for a show-down! "'I tell you, Zenith and her sister-cities are producing a new type of civilization. There are many resemblances between Zenith and these other burgs, and I'm darn glad of it! The extraordinary, growing, and sane standardization of stores, offices, streets, hotels, clothes, and newspapers throughout the United States shows how strong and enduring a type is ours. "'I always like to remember a piece that Chum Frink wrote for the newspapers about his lecture-tours. It is doubtless familiar to many of you, but if you will permit me, I'll take a chance and read it. It's one of the classic poems, like "If" by Kipling, or Ella Wheeler Wilcox's "The Man Worth While"; and I always carry this clipping of it in my note-book: "When I am out upon the road, a poet with a pedler's load I mostly sing a hearty song, and take a chew and hike along, a-handing out my samples fine of Cheero Brand of sweet sunshine, and peddling optimistic pokes and stable lines of japes and jokes to Lyceums and other folks, to Rotarys, Kiwanis' Clubs, and feel I ain't like other dubs. And then old Major Silas Satan, a brainy cuss who's always waitin', he gives his tail a lively quirk, and gets in quick his dirty work. He fills me up with mullygrubs; my hair the backward way he rubs; he makes me lonelier than a hound, on Sunday when the folks ain't round. And then b' gosh, I would prefer to never be a lecturer, a-ridin' round in classy cars and smoking fifty-cent cigars, and never more I want to roam; I simply want to be back home, a-eatin' flap jacks, hash, and ham, with folks who savvy whom I am! "But when I get that lonely spell, I simply seek the best hotel, no matter in what town I be--St. Paul, Toledo, or K.C., in Washington, Schenectady, in Louisville or Albany. And at that inn it hits my dome that I again am right at home. If I should stand a lengthy spell in front of that first-class hotel, that to the drummers loves to cater, across from some big film theayter; if I should look around and buzz, and wonder in what town I was, I swear that I could never tell! For all the crowd would be so swell, in just the same fine sort of jeans they wear at home, and all the queens with spiffy bonnets on their beans, and all the fellows standing round a-talkin' always, I'll be bound, the same good jolly kind of guff, 'bout autos, politics and stuff and baseball players of renown that Nice Guys talk in my home town! "Then when I entered that hotel, I'd look around and say, "Well, well!" For there would be the same news-stand, same magazines and candies grand, same smokes of famous standard brand, I'd find at home, I'll tell! And when I saw the jolly bunch come waltzing in for eats at lunch, and squaring up in natty duds to platters large of French Fried spuds, why then I'd stand right up and bawl, "I've never left my home at all!" And all replete I'd sit me down beside some guy in derby brown upon a lobby chair of plush, and murmur to him in a rush, "Hello, Bill, tell me, good old scout, how is your stock a-holdin' out?" Then we'd be off, two solid pals, a-chatterin' like giddy gals of flivvers, weather, home, and wives, lodge-brothers then for all our lives! So when Sam Satan makes you blue, good friend, that's what I'd up and do, for in these States where'er you roam, you never leave your home sweet home." "'Yes, sir, these other burgs are our true partners in the great game of vital living. But let's not have any mistake about this. I claim that Zenith is the best partner and the fastest-growing partner of the whole caboodle. I trust I may be pardoned if I give a few statistics to back up my claims. If they are old stuff to any of you, yet the tidings of prosperity, like the good news of the Bible, never become tedious to the ears of a real hustler, no matter how oft the sweet story is told! Every intelligent person knows that Zenith manufactures more condensed milk and evaporated cream, more paper boxes, and more lighting-fixtures, than any other city in the United States, if not in the world. But it is not so universally known that we also stand second in the manufacture of package-butter, sixth in the giant realm of motors and automobiles, and somewhere about third in cheese, leather findings, tar roofing, breakfast food, and overalls! "'Our greatness, however, lies not alone in punchful prosperity but equally in that public spirit, that forward-looking idealism and brotherhood, which has marked Zenith ever since its foundation by the Fathers. We have a right, indeed we have a duty toward our fair city, to announce broadcast the facts about our high schools, characterized by their complete plants and the finest school-ventilating systems in the country, bar none; our magnificent new hotels and banks and the paintings and carved marble in their lobbies; and the Second National Tower, the second highest business building in any inland city in the entire country. When I add that we have an unparalleled number of miles of paved streets, bathrooms vacuum cleaners, and all the other signs of civilization; that our library and art museum are well supported and housed in convenient and roomy buildings; that our park-system is more than up to par, with its handsome driveways adorned with grass, shrubs, and statuary, then I give but a hint of the all round unlimited greatness of Zenith! "'I believe, however, in keeping the best to the last. When I remind you that we have one motor car for every five and seven-eighths persons in the city, then I give a rock-ribbed practical indication of the kind of progress and braininess which is synonymous with the name Zenith! "'But the way of the righteous is not all roses. Before I close I must call your attention to a problem we have to face, this coming year. The worst menace to sound government is not the avowed socialists but a lot of cowards who work under cover--the long-haired gentry who call themselves "liberals" and "radicals" and "non-partisan" and "intelligentsia" and God only knows how many other trick names! Irresponsible teachers and professors constitute the worst of this whole gang, and I am ashamed to say that several of them are on the faculty of our great State University! The U. is my own Alma Mater, and I am proud to be known as an alumni, but there are certain instructors there who seem to think we ought to turn the conduct of the nation over to hoboes and roustabouts. "'Those profs are the snakes to be scotched--they and all their milk-and-water ilk! The American business man is generous to a fault. But one thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers and journalists: if we're going to pay them our good money, they've got to help us by selling efficiency and whooping it up for rational prosperity! And when it comes to these blab-mouth, fault-finding, pessimistic, cynical University teachers, let me tell you that during this golden coming year it's just as much our duty to bring influence to have those cusses fired as it is to sell all the real estate and gather in all the good shekels we can. "'Not till that is done will our sons and daughters see that the ideal of American manhood and culture isn't a lot of cranks sitting around chewing the rag about their Rights and their Wrongs, but a God-fearing, hustling, successful, two-fisted Regular Guy, who belongs to some church with pep and piety to it, who belongs to the Boosters or the Rotarians or the Kiwanis, to the Elks or Moose or Red Men or Knights of Columbus or any one of a score of organizations of good, jolly, kidding, laughing, sweating, upstanding, lend-a-handing Royal Good Fellows, who plays hard and works hard, and whose answer to his critics is a square-toed boot that'll teach the grouches and smart alecks to respect the He-man and get out and root for Uncle Samuel, U.S.A.!'" IV Babbitt promised to become a recognized orator. He entertained a Smoker of the Men's Club of the Chatham Road presbyterian Church with Irish, Jewish, and Chinese dialect stories. But in nothing was he more clearly revealed as the Prominent Citizen than in his lecture on "Brass Tacks Facts on Real Estate," as delivered before the class in Sales Methods at the Zenith Y.M.C.A. The Advocate-Times reported the lecture so fully that Vergil Gunch said to Babbitt, "You're getting to be one of the classiest spellbinders in town. Seems 's if I couldn't pick up a paper without reading about your well-known eloquence. All this guff ought to bring a lot of business into your office. Good work! Keep it up!" "Go on, quit your kidding," said Babbitt feebly, but at this tribute from Gunch, himself a man of no mean oratorical fame, he expanded with delight and wondered how, before his vacation, he could have questioned the joys of being a solid citizen.

Chapter XIV

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xi-xiv

During the local election, Babbitt becomes a popular orator, advocating for Lucas Prout for mayor. Prout is a mattress manufacturer who supports "the banks, the Chamber of Commerce, all the decent newspapers, and George F. Babbitt". Babbitt speaks out against Seneca Doane, a lawyer and fellow graduate of the State University, who is running on an "alarming labor ticket". When Prout defeats Doane, Babbitt's reputation as an effective orator is established. He thus is invited to give the annual address at the dinner of the Zenith Real Estate Board. In this speech, he paints a portrait of the ideal American citizen as a humble and hard-working family man who contributes to "the prosperity of the city and to his own bank-account" and has extensive knowledge of politics and religion. Liberals, he explains, are the "worst menace to sound government". He goes on to explain that Zenith, in addition to being statistically impressive and very modern, has the greatest population of these ideal men, and he applauds the commercial standardization among cities as highly beneficial. He is determined to become a recognized orator and is greatly admired by his wife and friends

In Maine, a more intimate dynamic emerges between Babbitt and Paul. They feel a genuine sense of contentment together, wishing that they could spend the rest of their lives alone in the woods with just each other. Standing by the wharf, Babbitt winks at Paul, and they chew tobacco together. The language in this section is erotic: they spit solemnly together in the "placid water," stretch "voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs," and sigh in unison . Their friendship seems platonic, but Lewis gives it a homosexual air. There is no other whom Babbitt prefers to be with, and though he is attracted to women, this particular relationship is the most fulfilling and meaningful one in his life. These feelings are never directly and unequivocally stated in the novel, but Lewis alludes to them several times. Later in the novel, Babbitt truly feels that his days are meaningless if they do not include Paul, and this suggests a level of intimacy that may have been unusual among American males at the time. Although Babbitt is convinced that his trip to Maine will propel him into a healthier and happier lifestyle, he almost immediately reverts to his former habits. Moreover, his fixation on social status becomes more pronounced as his career as a recognized orator evolves. In fact, the rise of his prestige marks his rapid moral decline. He is overcome with pride and bigheadedness at this sudden acknowledgment, and he extends his trip in order to stay in Monarch, flirt with Mrs. Sassburger, drink too much alcohol, and visit a brothel, where he presumably has sex with one of the girls. For a man so outwardly focused on morality and propriety, this trip marks a significant turning point for Babbitt. The event is "not officially recognized even by himself" , but it suggests that something in Babbitt has suddenly changed and that he is now capable of severing some of the chains that have bound him to his life as a respectable Republican family man. In light of his recent transgressions, Babbitt's address to the Zenith Real Estate Board is rendered extremely ironic and hypocritical. In this self-serving and narrow-minded speech, Babbitt offers an image of the Ideal Citizen . This man, according to Babbitt, is productive, hard-working, and an exemplary husband and father. He is "a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time" . He goes on to argue that Zenith holds a monopoly on these men, and the implication is, of course, that Babbitt himself is the paragon of this Ideal Citizen. It seems as though, on some level, this is actually the view of himself that he nurtures and maintains, yet because this speech immediately follows an account of moral debauchery and a disregard for fundamental family values, his speech becomes a biting commentary on his own declining moral integrity. Even aside from these obvious moral ironies, the speech is a powerful work of satire that exposes the prejudices of such persons in middle-class, postwar America. In comparison to Zenith, Babbitt describes the European population as "moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps" . He also appropriates the work of talented Europeans, claiming that the United States is responsible for "the best operas, such as Verdi" . With every sentence, Babbitt reveals even greater depths of ignorance and intolerance, and this speech serves as a compact version of the novel's overall satiric agenda.

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Babbitt.chapter xv

chapter xv

{"name": "Chapter XV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xv-xviii", "summary": "Despite Babbitt's fame as an orator, he and Myra do not achieve the social advancement that they believe they deserve. At a dinner for the State University class of 1896, Babbitt tries desperately to win the favor of Mr. McKelvey, who represents the apex of the Zenith social hierarchy. After a few invitations, McKelvey agrees to have dinner at the Babbitts' home. After rescheduling the dinner, the McKelveys arrive late to the house, where several other guests have gathered. Despite his energetic attempts, Babbitt cannot launch the dinner conversation, and the evening is laborious and \"without soul\". The McKelveys leave early, casually suggesting that they meet for lunch sometime. The Babbitts are extremely disappointed with the dinner, but they are further disappointed later when the McKelveys do not invite them over for a meal, even when they host a party for Sir Gerald Doak. Babbitt is depressed and embittered, yet he finds himself in the position of snubbing Ed Overbrook, who is socially inferior to Babbitt, in a way that directly parallels the behavior of the McKelveys", "analysis": "In Chapter XV, Lewis establishes a satiric parallel that is, in effect, so blatantly mocking that it almost overrides the novel's standard of realism. The fact that Babbitt now worships the McKelveys with their wealth and influence indicates that his morals and values have undergone a change. He sticks by Charles McKelvey at the reunion dinner, feeling \"slight and adoring\" at his side. After he tosses George a quick and empty compliment about his recent speeches, \"Babbitt would have followed him through fire\" . This attitude lies in sharp contrast with the one that Babbitt expressed to Myra at the beginning of the novel, when they discussed \"Charley McKelvey and all that booze-hoising set of his.\" Babbitt once suggested that McKelvey cares so much about appearances that he buys nice dress suits--but \"'hasn't got a decent set of underwear'' . The greatest irony centers around Babbitt's original assertion that he \"wouldn't want to go there with dinner with that gang of, of highbinders'\" , because he now spends the entire reunion heartily attempting to charm McKelvey into inviting him. This change indicates that, with his recent \"fame,\" Babbitt has shed some of this resentful insecurity beside those who are more prosperous than he is and that he now sees himself as capable of entrance into their ivory towers. This change also indicates Lewis's skillful critique of people like Babbitt. The irony here is vast and nuanced in that it requires the conjunction of two very distant moments in the novel. Lewis's next satirical brushstroke, however, is an example of a two-part character condemnation that occurs in quick succession. Lewis draws the parallels between the dinner with the McKelveys and the dinner with the Overbrooks in a way that borders on heavy-handed and unartistic. He presents a scenario where one socially superior couple tolerates and then snubs a socially inferior couple , and then he creates a virtually identical situation between the Babbitts and the Overbrooks that occurs immediately afterwards. Lewis describes the pathetic hopefulness of both inferior couples as they await an invitation and their crestfallen resentment when this invitation never comes. In order to be sure that the reader has not possibly missed this parallel, both sections end with the sentence, \"They did not speak of the again\" . Of course, this is not only a merciless criticism of the boot-kissing, social-climbing Babbitts and Overbrooks, but also a negative portrayal of a society that creates such a hierarchy of social class. Lewis then turns his criticism to the entirely unreligious religion in Zenith society. The first sentence on this topic alerts the reader to the hypocrisy that will pervade not only Babbitt's personal experience of religion, but also the institution as it exists in Zenith: \"Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School\" . Here, Lewis ironically joins and almost equates the concepts of purification and publicity, which clearly are intended to contrast sharply--and which often obstruct each other. There is nothing pure or purifying about publicity as it occurs in this novel. In fact, publicity has emerged as a contaminating force that is closely related to a lack of moral and professional integrity. At the outset, we are informed that Babbitt's devotion is about to suffer a serious attack. Lewis describes Babbitt's rudimentary and ill-considered version of religion in the scene where he tries to convince himself that he will not go to Hell. In fact, his religion is \"rarely pondered\" . For Babbitt, religion becomes not directly about God or spirituality but about business and money making. Reverend Drew's two honorary degrees and editorials explaining \"The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity\" subject him to the same unfavorable scrutiny, yet Babbitt devises a plan to initiate \"a real virile hustling religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated\" . He cannot stay awake in Sunday School classes, and he is clueless about what happens between the Bible's covers, but he has a brilliant plan to completely and shamelessly commercialize an institution that ought to bear no resemblance to a real estate company and that should be free from Babbitt's scheming salesmanship. Religion in Zenith is no less polluted by social ills than by the broader social patterns of business and politics."}

HIS march to greatness was not without disastrous stumbling. Fame did not bring the social advancement which the Babbitts deserved. They were not asked to join the Tonawanda Country Club nor invited to the dances at the Union. Himself, Babbitt fretted, he didn't "care a fat hoot for all these highrollers, but the wife would kind of like to be Among Those Present." He nervously awaited his university class-dinner and an evening of furious intimacy with such social leaders as Charles McKelvey the millionaire contractor, Max Kruger the banker, Irving Tate the tool-manufacturer, and Adelbert Dobson the fashionable interior decorator. Theoretically he was their friend, as he had been in college, and when he encountered them they still called him "Georgie," but he didn't seem to encounter them often, and they never invited him to dinner (with champagne and a butler) at their houses on Royal Ridge. All the week before the class-dinner he thought of them. "No reason why we shouldn't become real chummy now!" II Like all true American diversions and spiritual outpourings, the dinner of the men of the Class of 1896 was thoroughly organized. The dinner-committee hammered like a sales-corporation. Once a week they sent out reminders: TICKLER NO. 3 Old man, are you going to be with us at the livest Friendship Feed the alumni of the good old U have ever known? The alumnae of '08 turned out 60% strong. Are we boys going to be beaten by a bunch of skirts? Come on, fellows, let's work up some real genuine enthusiasm and all boost together for the snappiest dinner yet! Elegant eats, short ginger-talks, and memories shared together of the brightest, gladdest days of life. The dinner was held in a private room at the Union Club. The club was a dingy building, three pretentious old dwellings knocked together, and the entrance-hall resembled a potato cellar, yet the Babbitt who was free of the magnificence of the Athletic Club entered with embarrassment. He nodded to the doorman, an ancient proud negro with brass buttons and a blue tail-coat, and paraded through the hall, trying to look like a member. Sixty men had come to the dinner. They made islands and eddies in the hall; they packed the elevator and the corners of the private dining-room. They tried to be intimate and enthusiastic. They appeared to one another exactly as they had in college--as raw youngsters whose present mustaches, baldnesses, paunches, and wrinkles were but jovial disguises put on for the evening. "You haven't changed a particle!" they marveled. The men whom they could not recall they addressed, "Well, well, great to see you again, old man. What are you--Still doing the same thing?" Some one was always starting a cheer or a college song, and it was always thinning into silence. Despite their resolution to be democratic they divided into two sets: the men with dress-clothes and the men without. Babbitt (extremely in dress-clothes) went from one group to the other. Though he was, almost frankly, out for social conquest, he sought Paul Riesling first. He found him alone, neat and silent. Paul sighed, "I'm no good at this handshaking and 'well, look who's here' bunk." "Rats now, Paulibus, loosen up and be a mixer! Finest bunch of boys on earth! Say, you seem kind of glum. What's matter?" "Oh, the usual. Run-in with Zilla." "Come on! Let's wade in and forget our troubles." He kept Paul beside him, but worked toward the spot where Charles McKelvey stood warming his admirers like a furnace. McKelvey had been the hero of the Class of '96; not only football captain and hammer-thrower but debater, and passable in what the State University considered scholarship. He had gone on, had captured the construction-company once owned by the Dodsworths, best-known pioneer family of Zenith. He built state capitols, skyscrapers, railway terminals. He was a heavy-shouldered, big-chested man, but not sluggish. There was a quiet humor in his eyes, a syrup-smooth quickness in his speech, which intimidated politicians and warned reporters; and in his presence the most intelligent scientist or the most sensitive artist felt thin-blooded, unworldly, and a little shabby. He was, particularly when he was influencing legislatures or hiring labor-spies, very easy and lovable and gorgeous. He was baronial; he was a peer in the rapidly crystallizing American aristocracy, inferior only to the haughty Old Families. (In Zenith, an Old Family is one which came to town before 1840.) His power was the greater because he was not hindered by scruples, by either the vice or the virtue of the older Puritan tradition. McKelvey was being placidly merry now with the great, the manufacturers and bankers, the land-owners and lawyers and surgeons who had chauffeurs and went to Europe. Babbitt squeezed among them. He liked McKelvey's smile as much as the social advancement to be had from his favor. If in Paul's company he felt ponderous and protective, with McKelvey he felt slight and adoring. He heard McKelvey say to Max Kruger, the banker, "Yes, we'll put up Sir Gerald Doak." Babbitt's democratic love for titles became a rich relish. "You know, he's one of the biggest iron-men in England, Max. Horribly well-off.... Why, hello, old Georgie! Say, Max, George Babbitt is getting fatter than I am!" The chairman shouted, "Take your seats, fellows!" "Shall we make a move, Charley?" Babbitt said casually to McKelvey. "Right. Hello, Paul! How's the old fiddler? Planning to sit anywhere special, George? Come on, let's grab some seats. Come on, Max. Georgie, I read about your speeches in the campaign. Bully work!" After that, Babbitt would have followed him through fire. He was enormously busy during the dinner, now bumblingly cheering Paul, now approaching McKelvey with "Hear, you're going to build some piers in Brooklyn," now noting how enviously the failures of the class, sitting by themselves in a weedy group, looked up to him in his association with the nobility, now warming himself in the Society Talk of McKelvey and Max Kruger. They spoke of a "jungle dance" for which Mona Dodsworth had decorated her house with thousands of orchids. They spoke, with an excellent imitation of casualness, of a dinner in Washington at which McKelvey had met a Senator, a Balkan princess, and an English major-general. McKelvey called the princess "Jenny," and let it be known that he had danced with her. Babbitt was thrilled, but not so weighted with awe as to be silent. If he was not invited by them to dinner, he was yet accustomed to talking with bank-presidents, congressmen, and clubwomen who entertained poets. He was bright and referential with McKelvey: "Say, Charley, juh remember in Junior year how we chartered a sea-going hack and chased down to Riverdale, to the big show Madame Brown used to put on? Remember how you beat up that hick constabule that tried to run us in, and we pinched the pants-pressing sign and took and hung it on Prof. Morrison's door? Oh, gosh, those were the days!" Those, McKelvey agreed, were the days. Babbitt had reached "It isn't the books you study in college but the friendships you make that counts" when the men at head of the table broke into song. He attacked McKelvey: "It's a shame, uh, shame to drift apart because our, uh, business activities lie in different fields. I've enjoyed talking over the good old days. You and Mrs. McKelvey must come to dinner some night." Vaguely, "Yes, indeed--" "Like to talk to you about the growth of real estate out beyond your Grantsville warehouse. I might be able to tip you off to a thing or two, possibly." "Splendid! We must have dinner together, Georgie. Just let me know. And it will be a great pleasure to have your wife and you at the house," said McKelvey, much less vaguely. Then the chairman's voice, that prodigious voice which once had roused them to cheer defiance at rooters from Ohio or Michigan or Indiana, whooped, "Come on, you wombats! All together in the long yell!" Babbitt felt that life would never be sweeter than now, when he joined with Paul Riesling and the newly recovered hero, McKelvey, in: Baaaaaattle-ax Get an ax, Bal-ax, Get-nax, Who, who? The U.! Hooroo! III The Babbitts invited the McKelveys to dinner, in early December, and the McKelveys not only accepted but, after changing the date once or twice, actually came. The Babbitts somewhat thoroughly discussed the details of the dinner, from the purchase of a bottle of champagne to the number of salted almonds to be placed before each person. Especially did they mention the matter of the other guests. To the last Babbitt held out for giving Paul Riesling the benefit of being with the McKelveys. "Good old Charley would like Paul and Verg Gunch better than some highfalutin' Willy boy," he insisted, but Mrs. Babbitt interrupted his observations with, "Yes--perhaps--I think I'll try to get some Lynnhaven oysters," and when she was quite ready she invited Dr. J. T. Angus, the oculist, and a dismally respectable lawyer named Maxwell, with their glittering wives. Neither Angus nor Maxwell belonged to the Elks or to the Athletic Club; neither of them had ever called Babbitt "brother" or asked his opinions on carburetors. The only "human people" whom she invited, Babbitt raged, were the Littlefields; and Howard Littlefield at times became so statistical that Babbitt longed for the refreshment of Gunch's, "Well, old lemon-pie-face, what's the good word?" Immediately after lunch Mrs. Babbitt began to set the table for the seven-thirty dinner to the McKelveys, and Babbitt was, by order, home at four. But they didn't find anything for him to do, and three times Mrs. Babbitt scolded, "Do please try to keep out of the way!" He stood in the door of the garage, his lips drooping, and wished that Littlefield or Sam Doppelbrau or somebody would come along and talk to him. He saw Ted sneaking about the corner of the house. "What's the matter, old man?" said Babbitt. "Is that you, thin, owld one? Gee, Ma certainly is on the warpath! I told her Rone and I would jus' soon not be let in on the fiesta to-night, and she bit me. She says I got to take a bath, too. But, say, the Babbitt men will be some lookers to-night! Little Theodore in a dress-suit!" "The Babbitt men!" Babbitt liked the sound of it. He put his arm about the boy's shoulder. He wished that Paul Riesling had a daughter, so that Ted might marry her. "Yes, your mother is kind of rouncing round, all right," he said, and they laughed together, and sighed together, and dutifully went in to dress. The McKelveys were less than fifteen minutes late. Babbitt hoped that the Doppelbraus would see the McKelveys' limousine, and their uniformed chauffeur, waiting in front. The dinner was well cooked and incredibly plentiful, and Mrs. Babbitt had brought out her grandmother's silver candlesticks. Babbitt worked hard. He was good. He told none of the jokes he wanted to tell. He listened to the others. He started Maxwell off with a resounding, "Let's hear about your trip to the Yellowstone." He was laudatory, extremely laudatory. He found opportunities to remark that Dr. Angus was a benefactor to humanity, Maxwell and Howard Littlefield profound scholars, Charles McKelvey an inspiration to ambitious youth, and Mrs. McKelvey an adornment to the social circles of Zenith, Washington, New York, Paris, and numbers of other places. But he could not stir them. It was a dinner without a soul. For no reason that was clear to Babbitt, heaviness was over them and they spoke laboriously and unwillingly. He concentrated on Lucille McKelvey, carefully not looking at her blanched lovely shoulder and the tawny silken bared which supported her frock. "I suppose you'll be going to Europe pretty soon again, won't you?" he invited. "I'd like awfully to run over to Rome for a few weeks." "I suppose you see a lot of pictures and music and curios and everything there." "No, what I really go for is: there's a little trattoria on the Via della Scrofa where you get the best fettuccine in the world." "Oh, I--Yes. That must be nice to try that. Yes." At a quarter to ten McKelvey discovered with profound regret that his wife had a headache. He said blithely, as Babbitt helped him with his coat, "We must lunch together some time, and talk over the old days." When the others had labored out, at half-past ten, Babbitt turned to his wife, pleading, "Charley said he had a corking time and we must lunch--said they wanted to have us up to the house for dinner before long." She achieved, "Oh, it's just been one of those quiet evenings that are often so much more enjoyable than noisy parties where everybody talks at once and doesn't really settle down to-nice quiet enjoyment." But from his cot on the sleeping-porch he heard her weeping, slowly, without hope. IV For a month they watched the social columns, and waited for a return dinner-invitation. As the hosts of Sir Gerald Doak, the McKelveys were headlined all the week after the Babbitts' dinner. Zenith ardently received Sir Gerald (who had come to America to buy coal). The newspapers interviewed him on prohibition, Ireland, unemployment, naval aviation, the rate of exchange, tea-drinking versus whisky-drinking, the psychology of American women, and daily life as lived by English county families. Sir Gerald seemed to have heard of all those topics. The McKelveys gave him a Singhalese dinner, and Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, society editor of the Advocate-Times, rose to her highest lark-note. Babbitt read aloud at breakfast-table: 'Twixt the original and Oriental decorations, the strange and delicious food, and the personalities both of the distinguished guests, the charming hostess and the noted host, never has Zenith seen a more recherche affair than the Ceylon dinner-dance given last evening by Mr. and Mrs. Charles McKelvey to Sir Gerald Doak. Methought as we--fortunate one!--were privileged to view that fairy and foreign scene, nothing at Monte Carlo or the choicest ambassadorial sets of foreign capitals could be more lovely. It is not for nothing that Zenith is in matters social rapidly becoming known as the choosiest inland city in the country. Though he is too modest to admit it, Lord Doak gives a cachet to our smart quartier such as it has not received since the ever-memorable visit of the Earl of Sittingbourne. Not only is he of the British peerage, but he is also, on dit, a leader of the British metal industries. As he comes from Nottingham, a favorite haunt of Robin Hood, though now, we are informed by Lord Doak, a live modern city of 275,573 inhabitants, and important lace as well as other industries, we like to think that perhaps through his veins runs some of the blood, both virile red and bonny blue, of that earlier lord o' the good greenwood, the roguish Robin. The lovely Mrs. McKelvey never was more fascinating than last evening in her black net gown relieved by dainty bands of silver and at her exquisite waist a glowing cluster of Aaron Ward roses. Babbitt said bravely, "I hope they don't invite us to meet this Lord Doak guy. Darn sight rather just have a nice quiet little dinner with Charley and the Missus." At the Zenith Athletic Club they discussed it amply. "I s'pose we'll have to call McKelvey 'Lord Chaz' from now on," said Sidney Finkelstein. "It beats all get-out," meditated that man of data, Howard Littlefield, "how hard it is for some people to get things straight. Here they call this fellow 'Lord Doak' when it ought to be 'Sir Gerald.'" Babbitt marvelled, "Is that a fact! Well, well! 'Sir Gerald,' eh? That's what you call um, eh? Well, sir, I'm glad to know that." Later he informed his salesmen, "It's funnier 'n a goat the way some folks that, just because they happen to lay up a big wad, go entertaining famous foreigners, don't have any more idea 'n a rabbit how to address 'em so's to make 'em feel at home!" That evening, as he was driving home, he passed McKelvey's limousine and saw Sir Gerald, a large, ruddy, pop-eyed, Teutonic Englishman whose dribble of yellow mustache gave him an aspect sad and doubtful. Babbitt drove on slowly, oppressed by futility. He had a sudden, unexplained, and horrible conviction that the McKelveys were laughing at him. He betrayed his depression by the violence with which he informed his wife, "Folks that really tend to business haven't got the time to waste on a bunch like the McKelveys. This society stuff is like any other hobby; if you devote yourself to it, you get on. But I like to have a chance to visit with you and the children instead of all this idiotic chasing round." They did not speak of the McKelveys again. V It was a shame, at this worried time, to have to think about the Overbrooks. Ed Overbrook was a classmate of Babbitt who had been a failure. He had a large family and a feeble insurance business out in the suburb of Dorchester. He was gray and thin and unimportant. He had always been gray and thin and unimportant. He was the person whom, in any group, you forgot to introduce, then introduced with extra enthusiasm. He had admired Babbitt's good-fellowship in college, had admired ever since his power in real estate, his beautiful house and wonderful clothes. It pleased Babbitt, though it bothered him with a sense of responsibility. At the class-dinner he had seen poor Overbrook, in a shiny blue serge business-suit, being diffident in a corner with three other failures. He had gone over and been cordial: "Why, hello, young Ed! I hear you're writing all the insurance in Dorchester now. Bully work!" They recalled the good old days when Overbrook used to write poetry. Overbrook embarrassed him by blurting, "Say, Georgie, I hate to think of how we been drifting apart. I wish you and Mrs. Babbitt would come to dinner some night." Babbitt boomed, "Fine! Sure! Just let me know. And the wife and I want to have you at the house." He forgot it, but unfortunately Ed Overbrook did not. Repeatedly he telephoned to Babbitt, inviting him to dinner. "Might as well go and get it over," Babbitt groaned to his wife. "But don't it simply amaze you the way the poor fish doesn't know the first thing about social etiquette? Think of him 'phoning me, instead of his wife sitting down and writing us a regular bid! Well, I guess we're stuck for it. That's the trouble with all this class-brother hooptedoodle." He accepted Overbrook's next plaintive invitation, for an evening two weeks off. A dinner two weeks off, even a family dinner, never seems so appalling, till the two weeks have astoundingly disappeared and one comes dismayed to the ambushed hour. They had to change the date, because of their own dinner to the McKelveys, but at last they gloomily drove out to the Overbrooks' house in Dorchester. It was miserable from the beginning. The Overbrooks had dinner at six-thirty, while the Babbitts never dined before seven. Babbitt permitted himself to be ten minutes late. "Let's make it as short as possible. I think we'll duck out quick. I'll say I have to be at the office extra early to-morrow," he planned. The Overbrook house was depressing. It was the second story of a wooden two-family dwelling; a place of baby-carriages, old hats hung in the hall, cabbage-smell, and a Family Bible on the parlor table. Ed Overbrook and his wife were as awkward and threadbare as usual, and the other guests were two dreadful families whose names Babbitt never caught and never desired to catch. But he was touched, and disconcerted, by the tactless way in which Overbrook praised him: "We're mighty proud to have old George here to-night! Of course you've all read about his speeches and oratory in the papers--and the boy's good-looking, too, eh?--but what I always think of is back in college, and what a great old mixer he was, and one of the best swimmers in the class." Babbitt tried to be jovial; he worked at it; but he could find nothing to interest him in Overbrook's timorousness, the blankness of the other guests, or the drained stupidity of Mrs. Overbrook, with her spectacles, drab skin, and tight-drawn hair. He told his best Irish story, but it sank like soggy cake. Most bleary moment of all was when Mrs. Overbrook, peering out of her fog of nursing eight children and cooking and scrubbing, tried to be conversational. "I suppose you go to Chicago and New York right along, Mr. Babbitt," she prodded. "Well, I get to Chicago fairly often." "It must be awfully interesting. I suppose you take in all the theaters." "Well, to tell the truth, Mrs. Overbrook, thing that hits me best is a great big beefsteak at a Dutch restaurant in the Loop!" They had nothing more to say. Babbitt was sorry, but there was no hope; the dinner was a failure. At ten, rousing out of the stupor of meaningless talk, he said as cheerily as he could, "'Fraid we got to be starting, Ed. I've got a fellow coming to see me early to-morrow." As Overbrook helped him with his coat, Babbitt said, "Nice to rub up on the old days! We must have lunch together, P.D.Q." Mrs. Babbitt sighed, on their drive home, "It was pretty terrible. But how Mr. Overbrook does admire you!" "Yep. Poor cuss! Seems to think I'm a little tin archangel, and the best-looking man in Zenith." "Well, you're certainly not that but--Oh, Georgie, you don't suppose we have to invite them to dinner at our house now, do we?" "Ouch! Gaw, I hope not!" "See here, now, George! You didn't say anything about it to Mr. Overbrook, did you?" "No! Gee! No! Honest, I didn't! Just made a bluff about having him to lunch some time." "Well.... Oh, dear.... I don't want to hurt their feelings. But I don't see how I could stand another evening like this one. And suppose somebody like Dr. and Mrs. Angus came in when we had the Overbrooks there, and thought they were friends of ours!" For a week they worried, "We really ought to invite Ed and his wife, poor devils!" But as they never saw the Overbrooks, they forgot them, and after a month or two they said, "That really was the best way, just to let it slide. It wouldn't be kind to THEM to have them here. They'd feel so out of place and hard-up in our home." They did not speak of the Overbrooks again.

Chapter XV

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xv-xviii

Despite Babbitt's fame as an orator, he and Myra do not achieve the social advancement that they believe they deserve. At a dinner for the State University class of 1896, Babbitt tries desperately to win the favor of Mr. McKelvey, who represents the apex of the Zenith social hierarchy. After a few invitations, McKelvey agrees to have dinner at the Babbitts' home. After rescheduling the dinner, the McKelveys arrive late to the house, where several other guests have gathered. Despite his energetic attempts, Babbitt cannot launch the dinner conversation, and the evening is laborious and "without soul". The McKelveys leave early, casually suggesting that they meet for lunch sometime. The Babbitts are extremely disappointed with the dinner, but they are further disappointed later when the McKelveys do not invite them over for a meal, even when they host a party for Sir Gerald Doak. Babbitt is depressed and embittered, yet he finds himself in the position of snubbing Ed Overbrook, who is socially inferior to Babbitt, in a way that directly parallels the behavior of the McKelveys

In Chapter XV, Lewis establishes a satiric parallel that is, in effect, so blatantly mocking that it almost overrides the novel's standard of realism. The fact that Babbitt now worships the McKelveys with their wealth and influence indicates that his morals and values have undergone a change. He sticks by Charles McKelvey at the reunion dinner, feeling "slight and adoring" at his side. After he tosses George a quick and empty compliment about his recent speeches, "Babbitt would have followed him through fire" . This attitude lies in sharp contrast with the one that Babbitt expressed to Myra at the beginning of the novel, when they discussed "Charley McKelvey and all that booze-hoising set of his." Babbitt once suggested that McKelvey cares so much about appearances that he buys nice dress suits--but "'hasn't got a decent set of underwear'' . The greatest irony centers around Babbitt's original assertion that he "wouldn't want to go there with dinner with that gang of, of highbinders'" , because he now spends the entire reunion heartily attempting to charm McKelvey into inviting him. This change indicates that, with his recent "fame," Babbitt has shed some of this resentful insecurity beside those who are more prosperous than he is and that he now sees himself as capable of entrance into their ivory towers. This change also indicates Lewis's skillful critique of people like Babbitt. The irony here is vast and nuanced in that it requires the conjunction of two very distant moments in the novel. Lewis's next satirical brushstroke, however, is an example of a two-part character condemnation that occurs in quick succession. Lewis draws the parallels between the dinner with the McKelveys and the dinner with the Overbrooks in a way that borders on heavy-handed and unartistic. He presents a scenario where one socially superior couple tolerates and then snubs a socially inferior couple , and then he creates a virtually identical situation between the Babbitts and the Overbrooks that occurs immediately afterwards. Lewis describes the pathetic hopefulness of both inferior couples as they await an invitation and their crestfallen resentment when this invitation never comes. In order to be sure that the reader has not possibly missed this parallel, both sections end with the sentence, "They did not speak of the again" . Of course, this is not only a merciless criticism of the boot-kissing, social-climbing Babbitts and Overbrooks, but also a negative portrayal of a society that creates such a hierarchy of social class. Lewis then turns his criticism to the entirely unreligious religion in Zenith society. The first sentence on this topic alerts the reader to the hypocrisy that will pervade not only Babbitt's personal experience of religion, but also the institution as it exists in Zenith: "Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School" . Here, Lewis ironically joins and almost equates the concepts of purification and publicity, which clearly are intended to contrast sharply--and which often obstruct each other. There is nothing pure or purifying about publicity as it occurs in this novel. In fact, publicity has emerged as a contaminating force that is closely related to a lack of moral and professional integrity. At the outset, we are informed that Babbitt's devotion is about to suffer a serious attack. Lewis describes Babbitt's rudimentary and ill-considered version of religion in the scene where he tries to convince himself that he will not go to Hell. In fact, his religion is "rarely pondered" . For Babbitt, religion becomes not directly about God or spirituality but about business and money making. Reverend Drew's two honorary degrees and editorials explaining "The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity" subject him to the same unfavorable scrutiny, yet Babbitt devises a plan to initiate "a real virile hustling religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated" . He cannot stay awake in Sunday School classes, and he is clueless about what happens between the Bible's covers, but he has a brilliant plan to completely and shamelessly commercialize an institution that ought to bear no resemblance to a real estate company and that should be free from Babbitt's scheming salesmanship. Religion in Zenith is no less polluted by social ills than by the broader social patterns of business and politics.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/16.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_4_part_2.txt

Babbitt.chapter xvi

chapter xvi

{"name": "Chapter XVI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xv-xviii", "summary": "Following a service at the Chatham Road Presbyterian church, Reverend John Jennison Drew invites Babbitt into his office with Chum Frink and William Eathorne. He asks them to devise a plan to make money for the Sunday School in order to make it the largest in Zenith. Babbitt is not interested in any of the truly pious aspects of religion, and he takes this opportunity to turn it fully into a business ) by consulting practical Sunday School journals and learning tips on scouting and signing up prospects", "analysis": "In Chapter XV, Lewis establishes a satiric parallel that is, in effect, so blatantly mocking that it almost overrides the novel's standard of realism. The fact that Babbitt now worships the McKelveys with their wealth and influence indicates that his morals and values have undergone a change. He sticks by Charles McKelvey at the reunion dinner, feeling \"slight and adoring\" at his side. After he tosses George a quick and empty compliment about his recent speeches, \"Babbitt would have followed him through fire\" . This attitude lies in sharp contrast with the one that Babbitt expressed to Myra at the beginning of the novel, when they discussed \"Charley McKelvey and all that booze-hoising set of his.\" Babbitt once suggested that McKelvey cares so much about appearances that he buys nice dress suits--but \"'hasn't got a decent set of underwear'' . The greatest irony centers around Babbitt's original assertion that he \"wouldn't want to go there with dinner with that gang of, of highbinders'\" , because he now spends the entire reunion heartily attempting to charm McKelvey into inviting him. This change indicates that, with his recent \"fame,\" Babbitt has shed some of this resentful insecurity beside those who are more prosperous than he is and that he now sees himself as capable of entrance into their ivory towers. This change also indicates Lewis's skillful critique of people like Babbitt. The irony here is vast and nuanced in that it requires the conjunction of two very distant moments in the novel. Lewis's next satirical brushstroke, however, is an example of a two-part character condemnation that occurs in quick succession. Lewis draws the parallels between the dinner with the McKelveys and the dinner with the Overbrooks in a way that borders on heavy-handed and unartistic. He presents a scenario where one socially superior couple tolerates and then snubs a socially inferior couple , and then he creates a virtually identical situation between the Babbitts and the Overbrooks that occurs immediately afterwards. Lewis describes the pathetic hopefulness of both inferior couples as they await an invitation and their crestfallen resentment when this invitation never comes. In order to be sure that the reader has not possibly missed this parallel, both sections end with the sentence, \"They did not speak of the again\" . Of course, this is not only a merciless criticism of the boot-kissing, social-climbing Babbitts and Overbrooks, but also a negative portrayal of a society that creates such a hierarchy of social class. Lewis then turns his criticism to the entirely unreligious religion in Zenith society. The first sentence on this topic alerts the reader to the hypocrisy that will pervade not only Babbitt's personal experience of religion, but also the institution as it exists in Zenith: \"Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School\" . Here, Lewis ironically joins and almost equates the concepts of purification and publicity, which clearly are intended to contrast sharply--and which often obstruct each other. There is nothing pure or purifying about publicity as it occurs in this novel. In fact, publicity has emerged as a contaminating force that is closely related to a lack of moral and professional integrity. At the outset, we are informed that Babbitt's devotion is about to suffer a serious attack. Lewis describes Babbitt's rudimentary and ill-considered version of religion in the scene where he tries to convince himself that he will not go to Hell. In fact, his religion is \"rarely pondered\" . For Babbitt, religion becomes not directly about God or spirituality but about business and money making. Reverend Drew's two honorary degrees and editorials explaining \"The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity\" subject him to the same unfavorable scrutiny, yet Babbitt devises a plan to initiate \"a real virile hustling religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated\" . He cannot stay awake in Sunday School classes, and he is clueless about what happens between the Bible's covers, but he has a brilliant plan to completely and shamelessly commercialize an institution that ought to bear no resemblance to a real estate company and that should be free from Babbitt's scheming salesmanship. Religion in Zenith is no less polluted by social ills than by the broader social patterns of business and politics."}

THE certainty that he was not going to be accepted by the McKelveys made Babbitt feel guilty and a little absurd. But he went more regularly to the Elks; at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon he was oratorical regarding the wickedness of strikes; and again he saw himself as a Prominent Citizen. His clubs and associations were food comfortable to his spirit. Of a decent man in Zenith it was required that he should belong to one, preferably two or three, of the innumerous "lodges" and prosperity-boosting lunch-clubs; to the Rotarians, the Kiwanis, or the Boosters; to the Oddfellows, Moose, Masons, Red Men, Woodmen, Owls, Eagles, Maccabees, Knights of Pythias, Knights of Columbus, and other secret orders characterized by a high degree of heartiness, sound morals, and reverence for the Constitution. There were four reasons for joining these orders: It was the thing to do. It was good for business, since lodge-brothers frequently became customers. It gave to Americans unable to become Geheimrate or Commendatori such unctuous honorifics as High Worthy Recording Scribe and Grand Hoogow to add to the commonplace distinctions of Colonel, Judge, and Professor. And it permitted the swaddled American husband to stay away from home for one evening a week. The lodge was his piazza, his pavement cafe. He could shoot pool and talk man-talk and be obscene and valiant. Babbitt was what he called a "joiner" for all these reasons. Behind the gold and scarlet banner of his public achievements was the dun background of office-routine: leases, sales-contracts, lists of properties to rent. The evenings of oratory and committees and lodges stimulated him like brandy, but every morning he was sandy-tongued. Week by week he accumulated nervousness. He was in open disagreement with his outside salesman, Stanley Graff; and once, though her charms had always kept him nickeringly polite to her, he snarled at Miss McGoun for changing his letters. But in the presence of Paul Riesling he relaxed. At least once a week they fled from maturity. On Saturday they played golf, jeering, "As a golfer, you're a fine tennis-player," or they motored all Sunday afternoon, stopping at village lunchrooms to sit on high stools at a counter and drink coffee from thick cups. Sometimes Paul came over in the evening with his violin, and even Zilla was silent as the lonely man who had lost his way and forever crept down unfamiliar roads spun out his dark soul in music. II Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School. His church, the Chatham Road Presbyterian, was one of the largest and richest, one of the most oaken and velvety, in Zenith. The pastor was the Reverend John Jennison Drew, M.A., D.D., LL.D. (The M.A. and the D.D. were from Elbert University, Nebraska, the LL.D. from Waterbury College, Oklahoma.) He was eloquent, efficient, and versatile. He presided at meetings for the denunciation of unions or the elevation of domestic service, and confided to the audiences that as a poor boy he had carried newspapers. For the Saturday edition of the Evening Advocate he wrote editorials on "The Manly Man's Religion" and "The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity," which were printed in bold type surrounded by a wiggly border. He often said that he was "proud to be known as primarily a business man" and that he certainly was not going to "permit the old Satan to monopolize all the pep and punch." He was a thin, rustic-faced young man with gold spectacles and a bang of dull brown hair, but when he hurled himself into oratory he glowed with power. He admitted that he was too much the scholar and poet to imitate the evangelist, Mike Monday, yet he had once awakened his fold to new life, and to larger collections, by the challenge, "My brethren, the real cheap skate is the man who won't lend to the Lord!" He had made his church a true community center. It contained everything but a bar. It had a nursery, a Thursday evening supper with a short bright missionary lecture afterward, a gymnasium, a fortnightly motion-picture show, a library of technical books for young workmen--though, unfortunately, no young workman ever entered the church except to wash the windows or repair the furnace--and a sewing-circle which made short little pants for the children of the poor while Mrs. Drew read aloud from earnest novels. Though Dr. Drew's theology was Presbyterian, his church-building was gracefully Episcopalian. As he said, it had the "most perdurable features of those noble ecclesiastical monuments of grand Old England which stand as symbols of the eternity of faith, religious and civil." It was built of cheery iron-spot brick in an improved Gothic style, and the main auditorium had indirect lighting from electric globes in lavish alabaster bowls. On a December morning when the Babbitts went to church, Dr. John Jennison Drew was unusually eloquent. The crowd was immense. Ten brisk young ushers, in morning coats with white roses, were bringing folding chairs up from the basement. There was an impressive musical program, conducted by Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A., who also sang the offertory. Babbitt cared less for this, because some misguided person had taught young Mr. Smeeth to smile, smile, smile while he was singing, but with all the appreciation of a fellow-orator he admired Dr. Drew's sermon. It had the intellectual quality which distinguished the Chatham Road congregation from the grubby chapels on Smith Street. "At this abundant harvest-time of all the year," Dr. Drew chanted, "when, though stormy the sky and laborious the path to the drudging wayfarer, yet the hovering and bodiless spirit swoops back o'er all the labors and desires of the past twelve months, oh, then it seems to me there sounds behind all our apparent failures the golden chorus of greeting from those passed happily on; and lo! on the dim horizon we see behind dolorous clouds the mighty mass of mountains--mountains of melody, mountains of mirth, mountains of might!" "I certainly do like a sermon with culture and thought in it," meditated Babbitt. At the end of the service he was delighted when the pastor, actively shaking hands at the door, twittered, "Oh, Brother Babbitt, can you wait a jiffy? Want your advice." "Sure, doctor! You bet!" "Drop into my office. I think you'll like the cigars there." Babbitt did like the cigars. He also liked the office, which was distinguished from other offices only by the spirited change of the familiar wall-placard to "This is the Lord's Busy Day." Chum Frink came in, then William W. Eathorne. Mr. Eathorne was the seventy-year-old president of the First State Bank of Zenith. He still wore the delicate patches of side-whiskers which had been the uniform of bankers in 1870. If Babbitt was envious of the Smart Set of the McKelveys, before William Washington Eathorne he was reverent. Mr. Eathorne had nothing to do with the Smart Set. He was above it. He was the great-grandson of one of the five men who founded Zenith, in 1792, and he was of the third generation of bankers. He could examine credits, make loans, promote or injure a man's business. In his presence Babbitt breathed quickly and felt young. The Reverend Dr. Drew bounced into the room and flowered into speech: "I've asked you gentlemen to stay so I can put a proposition before you. The Sunday School needs bucking up. It's the fourth largest in Zenith, but there's no reason why we should take anybody's dust. We ought to be first. I want to request you, if you will, to form a committee of advice and publicity for the Sunday School; look it over and make any suggestions for its betterment, and then, perhaps, see that the press gives us some attention--give the public some really helpful and constructive news instead of all these murders and divorces." "Excellent," said the banker. Babbitt and Frink were enchanted to join him. III If you had asked Babbitt what his religion was, he would have answered in sonorous Boosters'-Club rhetoric, "My religion is to serve my fellow men, to honor my brother as myself, and to do my bit to make life happier for one and all." If you had pressed him for more detail, he would have announced, "I'm a member of the Presbyterian Church, and naturally, I accept its doctrines." If you had been so brutal as to go on, he would have protested, "There's no use discussing and arguing about religion; it just stirs up bad feeling." Actually, the content of his theology was that there was a supreme being who had tried to make us perfect, but presumably had failed; that if one was a Good Man he would go to a place called Heaven (Babbitt unconsciously pictured it as rather like an excellent hotel with a private garden), but if one was a Bad Man, that is, if he murdered or committed burglary or used cocaine or had mistresses or sold non-existent real estate, he would be punished. Babbitt was uncertain, however, about what he called "this business of Hell." He explained to Ted, "Of course I'm pretty liberal; I don't exactly believe in a fire-and-brimstone Hell. Stands to reason, though, that a fellow can't get away with all sorts of Vice and not get nicked for it, see how I mean?" Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which "did a fellow good--kept him in touch with Higher Things." His first investigations for the Sunday School Advisory Committee did not inspire him. He liked the Busy Folks' Bible Class, composed of mature men and women and addressed by the old-school physician, Dr. T. Atkins Jordan, in a sparkling style comparable to that of the more refined humorous after-dinner speakers, but when he went down to the junior classes he was disconcerted. He heard Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A. and leader of the church-choir, a pale but strenuous young man with curly hair and a smile, teaching a class of sixteen-year-old boys. Smeeth lovingly admonished them, "Now, fellows, I'm going to have a Heart to Heart Talk Evening at my house next Thursday. We'll get off by ourselves and be frank about our Secret Worries. You can just tell old Sheldy anything, like all the fellows do at the Y. I'm going to explain frankly about the horrible practises a kiddy falls into unless he's guided by a Big Brother, and about the perils and glory of Sex." Old Sheldy beamed damply; the boys looked ashamed; and Babbitt didn't know which way to turn his embarrassed eyes. Less annoying but also much duller were the minor classes which were being instructed in philosophy and Oriental ethnology by earnest spinsters. Most of them met in the highly varnished Sunday School room, but there was an overflow to the basement, which was decorated with varicose water-pipes and lighted by small windows high up in the oozing wall. What Babbitt saw, however, was the First Congregational Church of Catawba. He was back in the Sunday School of his boyhood. He smelled again that polite stuffiness to be found only in church parlors; he recalled the case of drab Sunday School books: "Hetty, a Humble Heroine" and "Josephus, a Lad of Palestine;" he thumbed once more the high-colored text-cards which no boy wanted but no boy liked to throw away, because they were somehow sacred; he was tortured by the stumbling rote of thirty-five years ago, as in the vast Zenith church he listened to: "Now, Edgar, you read the next verse. What does it mean when it says it's easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye? What does this teach us? Clarence! Please don't wiggle so! If you had studied your lesson you wouldn't be so fidgety. Now, Earl, what is the lesson Jesus was trying to teach his disciples? The one thing I want you to especially remember, boys, is the words, 'With God all things are possible.' Just think of that always--Clarence, PLEASE pay attention--just say 'With God all things are possible' whenever you feel discouraged, and, Alec, will you read the next verse; if you'd pay attention you wouldn't lose your place!" Drone--drone--drone--gigantic bees that boomed in a cavern of drowsiness-- Babbitt started from his open-eyed nap, thanked the teacher for "the privilege of listening to her splendid teaching," and staggered on to the next circle. After two weeks of this he had no suggestions whatever for the Reverend Dr. Drew. Then he discovered a world of Sunday School journals, an enormous and busy domain of weeklies and monthlies which were as technical, as practical and forward-looking, as the real-estate columns or the shoe-trade magazines. He bought half a dozen of them at a religious book-shop and till after midnight he read them and admired. He found many lucrative tips on "Focusing Appeals," "Scouting for New Members," and "Getting Prospects to Sign up with the Sunday School." He particularly liked the word "prospects," and he was moved by the rubric: "The moral springs of the community's life lie deep in its Sunday Schools--its schools of religious instruction and inspiration. Neglect now means loss of spiritual vigor and moral power in years to come.... Facts like the above, followed by a straight-arm appeal, will reach folks who can never be laughed or jollied into doing their part." Babbitt admitted, "That's so. I used to skin out of the ole Sunday School at Catawba every chance I got, but same time, I wouldn't be where I am to-day, maybe, if it hadn't been for its training in--in moral power. And all about the Bible. (Great literature. Have to read some of it again, one of these days)." How scientifically the Sunday School could be organized he learned from an article in the Westminster Adult Bible Class: "The second vice-president looks after the fellowship of the class. She chooses a group to help her. These become ushers. Every one who comes gets a glad hand. No one goes away a stranger. One member of the group stands on the doorstep and invites passers-by to come in." Perhaps most of all Babbitt appreciated the remarks by William H. Ridgway in the Sunday School Times: "If you have a Sunday School class without any pep and get-up-and-go in it, that is, without interest, that is uncertain in attendance, that acts like a fellow with the spring fever, let old Dr. Ridgway write you a prescription. Rx. Invite the Bunch for Supper." The Sunday School journals were as well rounded as they were practical. They neglected none of the arts. As to music the Sunday School Times advertised that C. Harold Lowden, "known to thousands through his sacred compositions," had written a new masterpiece, "entitled 'Yearning for You.' The poem, by Harry D. Kerr, is one of the daintiest you could imagine and the music is indescribably beautiful. Critics are agreed that it will sweep the country. May be made into a charming sacred song by substituting the hymn words, 'I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.'" Even manual training was adequately considered. Babbitt noted an ingenious way of illustrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ: "Model for Pupils to Make. Tomb with Rolling Door.--Use a square covered box turned upside down. Pull the cover forward a little to form a groove at the bottom. Cut a square door, also cut a circle of cardboard to more than cover the door. Cover the circular door and the tomb thickly with stiff mixture of sand, flour and water and let it dry. It was the heavy circular stone over the door the women found 'rolled away' on Easter morning. This is the story we are to 'Go-tell.'" In their advertisements the Sunday School journals were thoroughly efficient. Babbitt was interested in a preparation which "takes the place of exercise for sedentary men by building up depleted nerve tissue, nourishing the brain and the digestive system." He was edified to learn that the selling of Bibles was a hustling and strictly competitive industry, and as an expert on hygiene he was pleased by the Sanitary Communion Outfit Company's announcement of "an improved and satisfactory outfit throughout, including highly polished beautiful mahogany tray. This tray eliminates all noise, is lighter and more easily handled than others and is more in keeping with the furniture of the church than a tray of any other material." IV He dropped the pile of Sunday School journals. He pondered, "Now, there's a real he-world. Corking! "Ashamed I haven't sat in more. Fellow that's an influence in the community--shame if he doesn't take part in a real virile hustling religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated, you might say. "But with all reverence. "Some folks might claim these Sunday School fans are undignified and unspiritual and so on. Sure! Always some skunk to spring things like that! Knocking and sneering and tearing-down--so much easier than building up. But me, I certainly hand it to these magazines. They've brought ole George F. Babbitt into camp, and that's the answer to the critics! "The more manly and practical a fellow is, the more he ought to lead the enterprising Christian life. Me for it! Cut out this carelessness and boozing and--Rone! Where the devil you been? This is a fine time o' night to be coming in!"

Chapter XVI

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xv-xviii

Following a service at the Chatham Road Presbyterian church, Reverend John Jennison Drew invites Babbitt into his office with Chum Frink and William Eathorne. He asks them to devise a plan to make money for the Sunday School in order to make it the largest in Zenith. Babbitt is not interested in any of the truly pious aspects of religion, and he takes this opportunity to turn it fully into a business ) by consulting practical Sunday School journals and learning tips on scouting and signing up prospects

In Chapter XV, Lewis establishes a satiric parallel that is, in effect, so blatantly mocking that it almost overrides the novel's standard of realism. The fact that Babbitt now worships the McKelveys with their wealth and influence indicates that his morals and values have undergone a change. He sticks by Charles McKelvey at the reunion dinner, feeling "slight and adoring" at his side. After he tosses George a quick and empty compliment about his recent speeches, "Babbitt would have followed him through fire" . This attitude lies in sharp contrast with the one that Babbitt expressed to Myra at the beginning of the novel, when they discussed "Charley McKelvey and all that booze-hoising set of his." Babbitt once suggested that McKelvey cares so much about appearances that he buys nice dress suits--but "'hasn't got a decent set of underwear'' . The greatest irony centers around Babbitt's original assertion that he "wouldn't want to go there with dinner with that gang of, of highbinders'" , because he now spends the entire reunion heartily attempting to charm McKelvey into inviting him. This change indicates that, with his recent "fame," Babbitt has shed some of this resentful insecurity beside those who are more prosperous than he is and that he now sees himself as capable of entrance into their ivory towers. This change also indicates Lewis's skillful critique of people like Babbitt. The irony here is vast and nuanced in that it requires the conjunction of two very distant moments in the novel. Lewis's next satirical brushstroke, however, is an example of a two-part character condemnation that occurs in quick succession. Lewis draws the parallels between the dinner with the McKelveys and the dinner with the Overbrooks in a way that borders on heavy-handed and unartistic. He presents a scenario where one socially superior couple tolerates and then snubs a socially inferior couple , and then he creates a virtually identical situation between the Babbitts and the Overbrooks that occurs immediately afterwards. Lewis describes the pathetic hopefulness of both inferior couples as they await an invitation and their crestfallen resentment when this invitation never comes. In order to be sure that the reader has not possibly missed this parallel, both sections end with the sentence, "They did not speak of the again" . Of course, this is not only a merciless criticism of the boot-kissing, social-climbing Babbitts and Overbrooks, but also a negative portrayal of a society that creates such a hierarchy of social class. Lewis then turns his criticism to the entirely unreligious religion in Zenith society. The first sentence on this topic alerts the reader to the hypocrisy that will pervade not only Babbitt's personal experience of religion, but also the institution as it exists in Zenith: "Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School" . Here, Lewis ironically joins and almost equates the concepts of purification and publicity, which clearly are intended to contrast sharply--and which often obstruct each other. There is nothing pure or purifying about publicity as it occurs in this novel. In fact, publicity has emerged as a contaminating force that is closely related to a lack of moral and professional integrity. At the outset, we are informed that Babbitt's devotion is about to suffer a serious attack. Lewis describes Babbitt's rudimentary and ill-considered version of religion in the scene where he tries to convince himself that he will not go to Hell. In fact, his religion is "rarely pondered" . For Babbitt, religion becomes not directly about God or spirituality but about business and money making. Reverend Drew's two honorary degrees and editorials explaining "The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity" subject him to the same unfavorable scrutiny, yet Babbitt devises a plan to initiate "a real virile hustling religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated" . He cannot stay awake in Sunday School classes, and he is clueless about what happens between the Bible's covers, but he has a brilliant plan to completely and shamelessly commercialize an institution that ought to bear no resemblance to a real estate company and that should be free from Babbitt's scheming salesmanship. Religion in Zenith is no less polluted by social ills than by the broader social patterns of business and politics.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_4_part_3.txt

Babbitt.chapter xvii

chapter xvii

{"name": "Chapter XVII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xv-xviii", "summary": "At the mansion of William Eathorne, where a Sunday School Advisory Committee meeting is being held, Babbitt is admiringly and reverently overwhelmed by the wealthy extravagance of Eathorne's lifestyle. As a money-making tactic, Babbitt proposes that the school be divided into four armies, with everyone being assigned a military rank, in order to motivate people to work harder. He also suggests that the school hire a \"real paid press-agent\" , and they eventually decide on Kenneth Scott, a reporter for the Advocate-Times. When Babbitt has Kenneth at his house for dinner, Kenneth and Verona discover that they share a passion for politics, and they spend the entire evening discussing their ideas. When Babbitt is unsuccessful at enticing Eathorne to have dinner at the Babbitts' home, he convinces Dr. Drew to host a dinner, knowing that Earthorne \"would not refuse his own pastor\". At the dinner, Babbitt and Eathorne become friends and join forces in unethical financial transactions", "analysis": "In Chapter XV, Lewis establishes a satiric parallel that is, in effect, so blatantly mocking that it almost overrides the novel's standard of realism. The fact that Babbitt now worships the McKelveys with their wealth and influence indicates that his morals and values have undergone a change. He sticks by Charles McKelvey at the reunion dinner, feeling \"slight and adoring\" at his side. After he tosses George a quick and empty compliment about his recent speeches, \"Babbitt would have followed him through fire\" . This attitude lies in sharp contrast with the one that Babbitt expressed to Myra at the beginning of the novel, when they discussed \"Charley McKelvey and all that booze-hoising set of his.\" Babbitt once suggested that McKelvey cares so much about appearances that he buys nice dress suits--but \"'hasn't got a decent set of underwear'' . The greatest irony centers around Babbitt's original assertion that he \"wouldn't want to go there with dinner with that gang of, of highbinders'\" , because he now spends the entire reunion heartily attempting to charm McKelvey into inviting him. This change indicates that, with his recent \"fame,\" Babbitt has shed some of this resentful insecurity beside those who are more prosperous than he is and that he now sees himself as capable of entrance into their ivory towers. This change also indicates Lewis's skillful critique of people like Babbitt. The irony here is vast and nuanced in that it requires the conjunction of two very distant moments in the novel. Lewis's next satirical brushstroke, however, is an example of a two-part character condemnation that occurs in quick succession. Lewis draws the parallels between the dinner with the McKelveys and the dinner with the Overbrooks in a way that borders on heavy-handed and unartistic. He presents a scenario where one socially superior couple tolerates and then snubs a socially inferior couple , and then he creates a virtually identical situation between the Babbitts and the Overbrooks that occurs immediately afterwards. Lewis describes the pathetic hopefulness of both inferior couples as they await an invitation and their crestfallen resentment when this invitation never comes. In order to be sure that the reader has not possibly missed this parallel, both sections end with the sentence, \"They did not speak of the again\" . Of course, this is not only a merciless criticism of the boot-kissing, social-climbing Babbitts and Overbrooks, but also a negative portrayal of a society that creates such a hierarchy of social class. Lewis then turns his criticism to the entirely unreligious religion in Zenith society. The first sentence on this topic alerts the reader to the hypocrisy that will pervade not only Babbitt's personal experience of religion, but also the institution as it exists in Zenith: \"Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School\" . Here, Lewis ironically joins and almost equates the concepts of purification and publicity, which clearly are intended to contrast sharply--and which often obstruct each other. There is nothing pure or purifying about publicity as it occurs in this novel. In fact, publicity has emerged as a contaminating force that is closely related to a lack of moral and professional integrity. At the outset, we are informed that Babbitt's devotion is about to suffer a serious attack. Lewis describes Babbitt's rudimentary and ill-considered version of religion in the scene where he tries to convince himself that he will not go to Hell. In fact, his religion is \"rarely pondered\" . For Babbitt, religion becomes not directly about God or spirituality but about business and money making. Reverend Drew's two honorary degrees and editorials explaining \"The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity\" subject him to the same unfavorable scrutiny, yet Babbitt devises a plan to initiate \"a real virile hustling religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated\" . He cannot stay awake in Sunday School classes, and he is clueless about what happens between the Bible's covers, but he has a brilliant plan to completely and shamelessly commercialize an institution that ought to bear no resemblance to a real estate company and that should be free from Babbitt's scheming salesmanship. Religion in Zenith is no less polluted by social ills than by the broader social patterns of business and politics."}

I THERE are but three or four old houses in Floral Heights, and in Floral Heights an old house is one which was built before 1880. The largest of these is the residence of William Washington Eathorne, president of the First State Bank. The Eathorne Mansion preserves the memory of the "nice parts" of Zenith as they appeared from 1860 to 1900. It is a red brick immensity with gray sandstone lintels and a roof of slate in courses of red, green, and dyspeptic yellow. There are two anemic towers, one roofed with copper, the other crowned with castiron ferns. The porch is like an open tomb; it is supported by squat granite pillars above which hang frozen cascades of brick. At one side of the house is a huge stained-glass window in the shape of a keyhole. But the house has an effect not at all humorous. It embodies the heavy dignity of those Victorian financiers who ruled the generation between the pioneers and the brisk "sales-engineers" and created a somber oligarchy by gaining control of banks, mills, land, railroads, mines. Out of the dozen contradictory Zeniths which together make up the true and complete Zenith, none is so powerful and enduring yet none so unfamiliar to the citizens as the small, still, dry, polite, cruel Zenith of the William Eathornes; and for that tiny hierarchy the other Zeniths unwittingly labor and insignificantly die. Most of the castles of the testy Victorian tetrarchs are gone now or decayed into boarding-houses, but the Eathorne Mansion remains virtuous and aloof, reminiscent of London, Back Bay, Rittenhouse Square. Its marble steps are scrubbed daily, the brass plate is reverently polished, and the lace curtains are as prim and superior as William Washington Eathorne himself. With a certain awe Babbitt and Chum Frink called on Eathorne for a meeting of the Sunday School Advisory Committee; with uneasy stillness they followed a uniformed maid through catacombs of reception-rooms to the library. It was as unmistakably the library of a solid old banker as Eathorne's side-whiskers were the side-whiskers of a solid old banker. The books were most of them Standard Sets, with the correct and traditional touch of dim blue, dim gold, and glossy calf-skin. The fire was exactly correct and traditional; a small, quiet, steady fire, reflected by polished fire-irons. The oak desk was dark and old and altogether perfect; the chairs were gently supercilious. Eathorne's inquiries as to the healths of Mrs. Babbitt, Miss Babbitt, and the Other Children were softly paternal, but Babbitt had nothing with which to answer him. It was indecent to think of using the "How's tricks, ole socks?" which gratified Vergil Gunch and Frink and Howard Littlefield--men who till now had seemed successful and urbane. Babbitt and Frink sat politely, and politely did Eathorne observe, opening his thin lips just wide enough to dismiss the words, "Gentlemen, before we begin our conference--you may have felt the cold in coming here--so good of you to save an old man the journey--shall we perhaps have a whisky toddy?" So well trained was Babbitt in all the conversation that befits a Good Fellow that he almost disgraced himself with "Rather than make trouble, and always providin' there ain't any enforcement officers hiding in the waste-basket--" The words died choking in his throat. He bowed in flustered obedience. So did Chum Frink. Eathorne rang for the maid. The modern and luxurious Babbitt had never seen any one ring for a servant in a private house, except during meals. Himself, in hotels, had rung for bell-boys, but in the house you didn't hurt Matilda's feelings; you went out in the hall and shouted for her. Nor had he, since prohibition, known any one to be casual about drinking. It was extraordinary merely to sip his toddy and not cry, "Oh, maaaaan, this hits me right where I live!" And always, with the ecstasy of youth meeting greatness, he marveled, "That little fuzzy-face there, why, he could make me or break me! If he told my banker to call my loans--! Gosh! That quarter-sized squirt! And looking like he hadn't got a single bit of hustle to him! I wonder--Do we Boosters throw too many fits about pep?" From this thought he shuddered away, and listened devoutly to Eathorne's ideas on the advancement of the Sunday School, which were very clear and very bad. Diffidently Babbitt outlined his own suggestions: "I think if you analyze the needs of the school, in fact, going right at it as if it was a merchandizing problem, of course the one basic and fundamental need is growth. I presume we're all agreed we won't be satisfied till we build up the biggest darn Sunday School in the whole state, so the Chatham Road Presbyterian won't have to take anything off anybody. Now about jazzing up the campaign for prospects: they've already used contesting teams, and given prizes to the kids that bring in the most members. And they made a mistake there: the prizes were a lot of folderols and doodads like poetry books and illustrated Testaments, instead of something a real live kid would want to work for, like real cash or a speedometer for his motor cycle. Course I suppose it's all fine and dandy to illustrate the lessons with these decorated book-marks and blackboard drawings and so on, but when it comes down to real he-hustling, getting out and drumming up customers--or members, I mean, why, you got to make it worth a fellow's while. "Now, I want to propose two stunts: First, divide the Sunday School into four armies, depending on age. Everybody gets a military rank in his own army according to how many members he brings in, and the duffers that lie down on us and don't bring in any, they remain privates. The pastor and superintendent rank as generals. And everybody has got to give salutes and all the rest of that junk, just like a regular army, to make 'em feel it's worth while to get rank. "Then, second: Course the school has its advertising committee, but, Lord, nobody ever really works good--nobody works well just for the love of it. The thing to do is to be practical and up-to-date, and hire a real paid press-agent for the Sunday School-some newspaper fellow who can give part of his time." "Sure, you bet!" said Chum Frink. "Think of the nice juicy bits he could get in!" Babbitt crowed. "Not only the big, salient, vital facts, about how fast the Sunday School--and the collection--is growing, but a lot of humorous gossip and kidding: about how some blowhard fell down on his pledge to get new members, or the good time the Sacred Trinity class of girls had at their wieniewurst party. And on the side, if he had time, the press-agent might even boost the lessons themselves--do a little advertising for all the Sunday Schools in town, in fact. No use being hoggish toward the rest of 'em, providing we can keep the bulge on 'em in membership. Frinstance, he might get the papers to--Course I haven't got a literary training like Frink here, and I'm just guessing how the pieces ought to be written, but take frinstance, suppose the week's lesson is about Jacob; well, the press-agent might get in something that would have a fine moral, and yet with a trick headline that'd get folks to read it--say like: 'Jake Fools the Old Man; Makes Getaway with Girl and Bankroll.' See how I mean? That'd get their interest! Now, course, Mr. Eathorne, you're conservative, and maybe you feel these stunts would be undignified, but honestly, I believe they'd bring home the bacon." Eathorne folded his hands on his comfortable little belly and purred like an aged pussy: "May I say, first, that I have been very much pleased by your analysis of the situation, Mr. Babbitt. As you surmise, it's necessary in My Position to be conservative, and perhaps endeavor to maintain a certain standard of dignity. Yet I think you'll find me somewhat progressive. In our bank, for example, I hope I may say that we have as modern a method of publicity and advertising as any in the city. Yes, I fancy you'll find us oldsters quite cognizant of the shifting spiritual values of the age. Yes, oh yes. And so, in fact, it pleases me to be able to say that though personally I might prefer the sterner Presbyterianism of an earlier era--" Babbitt finally gathered that Eathorne was willing. Chum Frink suggested as part-time press-agent one Kenneth Escott, reporter on the Advocate-Times. They parted on a high plane of amity and Christian helpfulness. Babbitt did not drive home, but toward the center of the city. He wished to be by himself and exult over the beauty of intimacy with William Washington Eathorne. II A snow-blanched evening of ringing pavements and eager lights. Great golden lights of trolley-cars sliding along the packed snow of the roadway. Demure lights of little houses. The belching glare of a distant foundry, wiping out the sharp-edged stars. Lights of neighborhood drug stores where friends gossiped, well pleased, after the day's work. The green light of a police-station, and greener radiance on the snow; the drama of a patrol-wagon--gong beating like a terrified heart, headlights scorching the crystal-sparkling street, driver not a chauffeur but a policeman proud in uniform, another policeman perilously dangling on the step at the back, and a glimpse of the prisoner. A murderer, a burglar, a coiner cleverly trapped? An enormous graystone church with a rigid spire; dim light in the Parlors, and cheerful droning of choir-practise. The quivering green mercury-vapor light of a photo-engraver's loft. Then the storming lights of down-town; parked cars with ruby tail-lights; white arched entrances to movie theaters, like frosty mouths of winter caves; electric signs--serpents and little dancing men of fire; pink-shaded globes and scarlet jazz music in a cheap up-stairs dance-hall; lights of Chinese restaurants, lanterns painted with cherry-blossoms and with pagodas, hung against lattices of lustrous gold and black. Small dirty lamps in small stinking lunchrooms. The smart shopping-district, with rich and quiet light on crystal pendants and furs and suave surfaces of polished wood in velvet-hung reticent windows. High above the street, an unexpected square hanging in the darkness, the window of an office where some one was working late, for a reason unknown and stimulating. A man meshed in bankruptcy, an ambitious boy, an oil-man suddenly become rich? The air was shrewd, the snow was deep in uncleared alleys, and beyond the city, Babbitt knew, were hillsides of snow-drift among wintry oaks, and the curving ice-enchanted river. He loved his city with passionate wonder. He lost the accumulated weariness of business--worry and expansive oratory; he felt young and potential. He was ambitious. It was not enough to be a Vergil Gunch, an Orville Jones. No. "They're bully fellows, simply lovely, but they haven't got any finesse." No. He was going to be an Eathorne; delicately rigorous, coldly powerful. "That's the stuff. The wallop in the velvet mitt. Not let anybody get fresh with you. Been getting careless about my diction. Slang. Colloquial. Cut it out. I was first-rate at rhetoric in college. Themes on--Anyway, not bad. Had too much of this hooptedoodle and good-fellow stuff. I--Why couldn't I organize a bank of my own some day? And Ted succeed me!" He drove happily home, and to Mrs. Babbitt he was a William Washington Eathorne, but she did not notice it. III Young Kenneth Escott, reporter on the Advocate-Times was appointed press-agent of the Chatham Road Presbyterian Sunday School. He gave six hours a week to it. At least he was paid for giving six hours a week. He had friends on the Press and the Gazette and he was not (officially) known as a press-agent. He procured a trickle of insinuating items about neighborliness and the Bible, about class-suppers, jolly but educational, and the value of the Prayer-life in attaining financial success. The Sunday School adopted Babbitt's system of military ranks. Quickened by this spiritual refreshment, it had a boom. It did not become the largest school in Zenith--the Central Methodist Church kept ahead of it by methods which Dr. Drew scored as "unfair, undignified, un-American, ungentlemanly, and unchristian"--but it climbed from fourth place to second, and there was rejoicing in heaven, or at least in that portion of heaven included in the parsonage of Dr. Drew, while Babbitt had much praise and good repute. He had received the rank of colonel on the general staff of the school. He was plumply pleased by salutes on the street from unknown small boys; his ears were tickled to ruddy ecstasy by hearing himself called "Colonel;" and if he did not attend Sunday School merely to be thus exalted, certainly he thought about it all the way there. He was particularly pleasant to the press-agent, Kenneth Escott; he took him to lunch at the Athletic Club and had him at the house for dinner. Like many of the cocksure young men who forage about cities in apparent contentment and who express their cynicism in supercilious slang, Escott was shy and lonely. His shrewd starveling face broadened with joy at dinner, and he blurted, "Gee whillikins, Mrs. Babbitt, if you knew how good it is to have home eats again!" Escott and Verona liked each other. All evening they "talked about ideas." They discovered that they were Radicals. True, they were sensible about it. They agreed that all communists were criminals; that this vers libre was tommy-rot; and that while there ought to be universal disarmament, of course Great Britain and the United States must, on behalf of oppressed small nations, keep a navy equal to the tonnage of all the rest of the world. But they were so revolutionary that they predicted (to Babbitt's irritation) that there would some day be a Third Party which would give trouble to the Republicans and Democrats. Escott shook hands with Babbitt three times, at parting. Babbitt mentioned his extreme fondness for Eathorne. Within a week three newspapers presented accounts of Babbitt's sterling labors for religion, and all of them tactfully mentioned William Washington Eathorne as his collaborator. Nothing had brought Babbitt quite so much credit at the Elks, the Athletic Club, and the Boosters'. His friends had always congratulated him on his oratory, but in their praise was doubt, for even in speeches advertising the city there was something highbrow and degenerate, like writing poetry. But now Orville Jones shouted across the Athletic dining-room, "Here's the new director of the First State Bank!" Grover Butterbaugh, the eminent wholesaler of plumbers' supplies, chuckled, "Wonder you mix with common folks, after holding Eathorne's hand!" And Emil Wengert, the jeweler, was at last willing to discuss buying a house in Dorchester. IV When the Sunday School campaign was finished, Babbitt suggested to Kenneth Escott, "Say, how about doing a little boosting for Doc Drew personally?" Escott grinned. "You trust the doc to do a little boosting for himself, Mr. Babbitt! There's hardly a week goes by without his ringing up the paper to say if we'll chase a reporter up to his Study, he'll let us in on the story about the swell sermon he's going to preach on the wickedness of short skirts, or the authorship of the Pentateuch. Don't you worry about him. There's just one better publicity-grabber in town, and that's this Dora Gibson Tucker that runs the Child Welfare and the Americanization League, and the only reason she's got Drew beaten is because she has got SOME brains!" "Well, now Kenneth, I don't think you ought to talk that way about the doctor. A preacher has to watch his interests, hasn't he? You remember that in the Bible about--about being diligent in the Lord's business, or something?" "All right, I'll get something in if you want me to, Mr. Babbitt, but I'll have to wait till the managing editor is out of town, and then blackjack the city editor." Thus it came to pass that in the Sunday Advocate-Times, under a picture of Dr. Drew at his earnestest, with eyes alert, jaw as granite, and rustic lock flamboyant, appeared an inscription--a wood-pulp tablet conferring twenty-four hours' immortality: The Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew, M.A., pastor of the beautiful Chatham Road Presbyterian Church in lovely Floral Heights, is a wizard soul-winner. He holds the local record for conversions. During his shepherdhood an average of almost a hundred sin-weary persons per year have declared their resolve to lead a new life and have found a harbor of refuge and peace. Everything zips at the Chatham Road Church. The subsidiary organizations are keyed to the top-notch of efficiency. Dr. Drew is especially keen on good congregational singing. Bright cheerful hymns are used at every meeting, and the special Sing Services attract lovers of music and professionals from all parts of the city. On the popular lecture platform as well as in the pulpit Dr. Drew is a renowned word-painter, and during the course of the year he receives literally scores of invitations to speak at varied functions both here and elsewhere. V Babbitt let Dr. Drew know that he was responsible for this tribute. Dr. Drew called him "brother," and shook his hand a great many times. During the meetings of the Advisory Committee, Babbitt had hinted that he would be charmed to invite Eathorne to dinner, but Eathorne had murmured, "So nice of you--old man, now--almost never go out." Surely Eathorne would not refuse his own pastor. Babbitt said boyishly to Drew: "Say, doctor, now we've put this thing over, strikes me it's up to the dominie to blow the three of us to a dinner!" "Bully! You bet! Delighted!" cried Dr. Drew, in his manliest way. (Some one had once told him that he talked like the late President Roosevelt.) "And, uh, say, doctor, be sure and get Mr. Eathorne to come. Insist on it. It's, uh--I think he sticks around home too much for his own health." Eathorne came. It was a friendly dinner. Babbitt spoke gracefully of the stabilizing and educational value of bankers to the community. They were, he said, the pastors of the fold of commerce. For the first time Eathorne departed from the topic of Sunday Schools, and asked Babbitt about the progress of his business. Babbitt answered modestly, almost filially. A few months later, when he had a chance to take part in the Street Traction Company's terminal deal, Babbitt did not care to go to his own bank for a loan. It was rather a quiet sort of deal and, if it had come out, the Public might not have understood. He went to his friend Mr. Eathorne; he was welcomed, and received the loan as a private venture; and they both profited in their pleasant new association. After that, Babbitt went to church regularly, except on spring Sunday mornings which were obviously meant for motoring. He announced to Ted, "I tell you, boy, there's no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who'll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!"

Chapter XVII

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xv-xviii

At the mansion of William Eathorne, where a Sunday School Advisory Committee meeting is being held, Babbitt is admiringly and reverently overwhelmed by the wealthy extravagance of Eathorne's lifestyle. As a money-making tactic, Babbitt proposes that the school be divided into four armies, with everyone being assigned a military rank, in order to motivate people to work harder. He also suggests that the school hire a "real paid press-agent" , and they eventually decide on Kenneth Scott, a reporter for the Advocate-Times. When Babbitt has Kenneth at his house for dinner, Kenneth and Verona discover that they share a passion for politics, and they spend the entire evening discussing their ideas. When Babbitt is unsuccessful at enticing Eathorne to have dinner at the Babbitts' home, he convinces Dr. Drew to host a dinner, knowing that Earthorne "would not refuse his own pastor". At the dinner, Babbitt and Eathorne become friends and join forces in unethical financial transactions

In Chapter XV, Lewis establishes a satiric parallel that is, in effect, so blatantly mocking that it almost overrides the novel's standard of realism. The fact that Babbitt now worships the McKelveys with their wealth and influence indicates that his morals and values have undergone a change. He sticks by Charles McKelvey at the reunion dinner, feeling "slight and adoring" at his side. After he tosses George a quick and empty compliment about his recent speeches, "Babbitt would have followed him through fire" . This attitude lies in sharp contrast with the one that Babbitt expressed to Myra at the beginning of the novel, when they discussed "Charley McKelvey and all that booze-hoising set of his." Babbitt once suggested that McKelvey cares so much about appearances that he buys nice dress suits--but "'hasn't got a decent set of underwear'' . The greatest irony centers around Babbitt's original assertion that he "wouldn't want to go there with dinner with that gang of, of highbinders'" , because he now spends the entire reunion heartily attempting to charm McKelvey into inviting him. This change indicates that, with his recent "fame," Babbitt has shed some of this resentful insecurity beside those who are more prosperous than he is and that he now sees himself as capable of entrance into their ivory towers. This change also indicates Lewis's skillful critique of people like Babbitt. The irony here is vast and nuanced in that it requires the conjunction of two very distant moments in the novel. Lewis's next satirical brushstroke, however, is an example of a two-part character condemnation that occurs in quick succession. Lewis draws the parallels between the dinner with the McKelveys and the dinner with the Overbrooks in a way that borders on heavy-handed and unartistic. He presents a scenario where one socially superior couple tolerates and then snubs a socially inferior couple , and then he creates a virtually identical situation between the Babbitts and the Overbrooks that occurs immediately afterwards. Lewis describes the pathetic hopefulness of both inferior couples as they await an invitation and their crestfallen resentment when this invitation never comes. In order to be sure that the reader has not possibly missed this parallel, both sections end with the sentence, "They did not speak of the again" . Of course, this is not only a merciless criticism of the boot-kissing, social-climbing Babbitts and Overbrooks, but also a negative portrayal of a society that creates such a hierarchy of social class. Lewis then turns his criticism to the entirely unreligious religion in Zenith society. The first sentence on this topic alerts the reader to the hypocrisy that will pervade not only Babbitt's personal experience of religion, but also the institution as it exists in Zenith: "Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School" . Here, Lewis ironically joins and almost equates the concepts of purification and publicity, which clearly are intended to contrast sharply--and which often obstruct each other. There is nothing pure or purifying about publicity as it occurs in this novel. In fact, publicity has emerged as a contaminating force that is closely related to a lack of moral and professional integrity. At the outset, we are informed that Babbitt's devotion is about to suffer a serious attack. Lewis describes Babbitt's rudimentary and ill-considered version of religion in the scene where he tries to convince himself that he will not go to Hell. In fact, his religion is "rarely pondered" . For Babbitt, religion becomes not directly about God or spirituality but about business and money making. Reverend Drew's two honorary degrees and editorials explaining "The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity" subject him to the same unfavorable scrutiny, yet Babbitt devises a plan to initiate "a real virile hustling religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated" . He cannot stay awake in Sunday School classes, and he is clueless about what happens between the Bible's covers, but he has a brilliant plan to completely and shamelessly commercialize an institution that ought to bear no resemblance to a real estate company and that should be free from Babbitt's scheming salesmanship. Religion in Zenith is no less polluted by social ills than by the broader social patterns of business and politics.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_4_part_4.txt

Babbitt.chapter xviii

chapter xviii

{"name": "Chapter XVIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xv-xviii", "summary": "Despite Verona's protests that she and Kenneth Escott are \"just good friends\" , Babbitt remains hopeful of their alliance and tries to unite them. He is worried about Ted, however, who lacks educational and professional direction and spends far too much time with Eunice Littlefield, whose sexiness and youthful liberation make Babbitt uneasy. Ted hosts a party for the senior class at the Babbitt household. When Howard Littlefield arrives to find Eunice dancing close with Ted, he tears Eunice from the party, resulting in months of \"coolness between the Babbitts and the Littlefields\". When Myra's parents move to a boarding house, Babbitt's mother comes for a three-week visit along with Babbitt's half-brother and the family, and Babbitt is suddenly \"sick of it\" again. While bedridden from a bout of food poisoning, he reflects on the mechanical nature of his business, his religion, and his life, and though he decides that he will not go to work anymore, he returns the very next day", "analysis": "In Chapter XV, Lewis establishes a satiric parallel that is, in effect, so blatantly mocking that it almost overrides the novel's standard of realism. The fact that Babbitt now worships the McKelveys with their wealth and influence indicates that his morals and values have undergone a change. He sticks by Charles McKelvey at the reunion dinner, feeling \"slight and adoring\" at his side. After he tosses George a quick and empty compliment about his recent speeches, \"Babbitt would have followed him through fire\" . This attitude lies in sharp contrast with the one that Babbitt expressed to Myra at the beginning of the novel, when they discussed \"Charley McKelvey and all that booze-hoising set of his.\" Babbitt once suggested that McKelvey cares so much about appearances that he buys nice dress suits--but \"'hasn't got a decent set of underwear'' . The greatest irony centers around Babbitt's original assertion that he \"wouldn't want to go there with dinner with that gang of, of highbinders'\" , because he now spends the entire reunion heartily attempting to charm McKelvey into inviting him. This change indicates that, with his recent \"fame,\" Babbitt has shed some of this resentful insecurity beside those who are more prosperous than he is and that he now sees himself as capable of entrance into their ivory towers. This change also indicates Lewis's skillful critique of people like Babbitt. The irony here is vast and nuanced in that it requires the conjunction of two very distant moments in the novel. Lewis's next satirical brushstroke, however, is an example of a two-part character condemnation that occurs in quick succession. Lewis draws the parallels between the dinner with the McKelveys and the dinner with the Overbrooks in a way that borders on heavy-handed and unartistic. He presents a scenario where one socially superior couple tolerates and then snubs a socially inferior couple , and then he creates a virtually identical situation between the Babbitts and the Overbrooks that occurs immediately afterwards. Lewis describes the pathetic hopefulness of both inferior couples as they await an invitation and their crestfallen resentment when this invitation never comes. In order to be sure that the reader has not possibly missed this parallel, both sections end with the sentence, \"They did not speak of the again\" . Of course, this is not only a merciless criticism of the boot-kissing, social-climbing Babbitts and Overbrooks, but also a negative portrayal of a society that creates such a hierarchy of social class. Lewis then turns his criticism to the entirely unreligious religion in Zenith society. The first sentence on this topic alerts the reader to the hypocrisy that will pervade not only Babbitt's personal experience of religion, but also the institution as it exists in Zenith: \"Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School\" . Here, Lewis ironically joins and almost equates the concepts of purification and publicity, which clearly are intended to contrast sharply--and which often obstruct each other. There is nothing pure or purifying about publicity as it occurs in this novel. In fact, publicity has emerged as a contaminating force that is closely related to a lack of moral and professional integrity. At the outset, we are informed that Babbitt's devotion is about to suffer a serious attack. Lewis describes Babbitt's rudimentary and ill-considered version of religion in the scene where he tries to convince himself that he will not go to Hell. In fact, his religion is \"rarely pondered\" . For Babbitt, religion becomes not directly about God or spirituality but about business and money making. Reverend Drew's two honorary degrees and editorials explaining \"The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity\" subject him to the same unfavorable scrutiny, yet Babbitt devises a plan to initiate \"a real virile hustling religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated\" . He cannot stay awake in Sunday School classes, and he is clueless about what happens between the Bible's covers, but he has a brilliant plan to completely and shamelessly commercialize an institution that ought to bear no resemblance to a real estate company and that should be free from Babbitt's scheming salesmanship. Religion in Zenith is no less polluted by social ills than by the broader social patterns of business and politics."}

I THOUGH he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed every detail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Babbitt was no more conscious of his children than of the buttons on his coat-sleeves. The admiration of Kenneth Escott made him aware of Verona. She had become secretary to Mr. Gruensberg of the Gruensberg Leather Company; she did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them; but she was one of the people who give an agitating impression of being on the point of doing something desperate--of leaving a job or a husband--without ever doing it. Babbitt was so hopeful about Escott's hesitant ardors that he became the playful parent. When he returned from the Elks he peered coyly into the living-room and gurgled, "Has our Kenny been here to-night?" He never credited Verona's protest, "Why, Ken and I are just good friends, and we only talk about Ideas. I won't have all this sentimental nonsense, that would spoil everything." It was Ted who most worried Babbitt. With conditions in Latin and English but with a triumphant record in manual training, basket-ball, and the organization of dances, Ted was struggling through his Senior year in the East Side High School. At home he was interested only when he was asked to trace some subtle ill in the ignition system of the car. He repeated to his tut-tutting father that he did not wish to go to college or law-school, and Babbitt was equally disturbed by this "shiftlessness" and by Ted's relations with Eunice Littlefield, next door. Though she was the daughter of Howard Littlefield, that wrought-iron fact-mill, that horse-faced priest of private ownership, Eunice was a midge in the sun. She danced into the house, she flung herself into Babbitt's lap when he was reading, she crumpled his paper, and laughed at him when he adequately explained that he hated a crumpled newspaper as he hated a broken sales-contract. She was seventeen now. Her ambition was to be a cinema actress. She did not merely attend the showing of every "feature film;" she also read the motion-picture magazines, those extraordinary symptoms of the Age of Pep--monthlies and weeklies gorgeously illustrated with portraits of young women who had recently been manicure girls, not very skilful manicure girls, and who, unless their every grimace had been arranged by a director, could not have acted in the Easter cantata of the Central Methodist Church; magazines reporting, quite seriously, in "interviews" plastered with pictures of riding-breeches and California bungalows, the views on sculpture and international politics of blankly beautiful, suspiciously beautiful young men; outlining the plots of films about pure prostitutes and kind-hearted train-robbers; and giving directions for making bootblacks into Celebrated Scenario Authors overnight. These authorities Eunice studied. She could, she frequently did, tell whether it was in November or December, 1905, that Mack Harker? the renowned screen cowpuncher and badman, began his public career as chorus man in "Oh, You Naughty Girlie." On the wall of her room, her father reported, she had pinned up twenty-one photographs of actors. But the signed portrait of the most graceful of the movie heroes she carried in her young bosom. Babbitt was bewildered by this worship of new gods, and he suspected that Eunice smoked cigarettes. He smelled the cloying reek from up-stairs, and heard her giggling with Ted. He never inquired. The agreeable child dismayed him. Her thin and charming face was sharpened by bobbed hair; her skirts were short, her stockings were rolled, and, as she flew after Ted, above the caressing silk were glimpses of soft knees which made Babbitt uneasy, and wretched that she should consider him old. Sometimes, in the veiled life of his dreams, when the fairy child came running to him she took on the semblance of Eunice Littlefield. Ted was motor-mad as Eunice was movie-mad. A thousand sarcastic refusals did not check his teasing for a car of his own. However lax he might be about early rising and the prosody of Vergil, he was tireless in tinkering. With three other boys he bought a rheumatic Ford chassis, built an amazing racer-body out of tin and pine, went skidding round corners in the perilous craft, and sold it at a profit. Babbitt gave him a motor-cycle, and every Saturday afternoon, with seven sandwiches and a bottle of Coca-Cola in his pockets, and Eunice perched eerily on the rumble seat, he went roaring off to distant towns. Usually Eunice and he were merely neighborhood chums, and quarreled with a wholesome and violent lack of delicacy; but now and then, after the color and scent of a dance, they were silent together and a little furtive, and Babbitt was worried. Babbitt was an average father. He was affectionate, bullying, opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like most parents, he enjoyed the game of waiting till the victim was clearly wrong, then virtuously pouncing. He justified himself by croaking, "Well, Ted's mother spoils him. Got to be somebody who tells him what's what, and me, I'm elected the goat. Because I try to bring him up to be a real, decent, human being and not one of these sapheads and lounge-lizards, of course they all call me a grouch!" Throughout, with the eternal human genius for arriving by the worst possible routes at surprisingly tolerable goals, Babbitt loved his son and warmed to his companionship and would have sacrificed everything for him--if he could have been sure of proper credit. II Ted was planning a party for his set in the Senior Class. Babbitt meant to be helpful and jolly about it. From his memory of high-school pleasures back in Catawba he suggested the nicest games: Going to Boston, and charades with stew-pans for helmets, and word-games in which you were an Adjective or a Quality. When he was most enthusiastic he discovered that they weren't paying attention; they were only tolerating him. As for the party, it was as fixed and standardized as a Union Club Hop. There was to be dancing in the living-room, a noble collation in the dining-room, and in the hall two tables of bridge for what Ted called "the poor old dumb-bells that you can't get to dance hardly more 'n half the time." Every breakfast was monopolized by conferences on the affair. No one listened to Babbitt's bulletins about the February weather or to his throat-clearing comments on the headlines. He said furiously, "If I may be PERMITTED to interrupt your engrossing private CONVERSATION--Juh hear what I SAID?" "Oh, don't be a spoiled baby! Ted and I have just as much right to talk as you have!" flared Mrs. Babbitt. On the night of the party he was permitted to look on, when he was not helping Matilda with the Vecchia ice cream and the petits fours. He was deeply disquieted. Eight years ago, when Verona had given a high-school party, the children had been featureless gabies. Now they were men and women of the world, very supercilious men and women; the boys condescended to Babbitt, they wore evening-clothes, and with hauteur they accepted cigarettes from silver cases. Babbitt had heard stories of what the Athletic Club called "goings on" at young parties; of girls "parking" their corsets in the dressing-room, of "cuddling" and "petting," and a presumable increase in what was known as Immorality. To-night he believed the stories. These children seemed bold to him, and cold. The girls wore misty chiffon, coral velvet, or cloth of gold, and around their dipping bobbed hair were shining wreaths. He had it, upon urgent and secret inquiry, that no corsets were known to be parked upstairs; but certainly these eager bodies were not stiff with steel. Their stockings were of lustrous silk, their slippers costly and unnatural, their lips carmined and their eyebrows penciled. They danced cheek to cheek with the boys, and Babbitt sickened with apprehension and unconscious envy. Worst of them all was Eunice Littlefield, and maddest of all the boys was Ted. Eunice was a flying demon. She slid the length of the room; her tender shoulders swayed; her feet were deft as a weaver's shuttle; she laughed, and enticed Babbitt to dance with her. Then he discovered the annex to the party. The boys and girls disappeared occasionally, and he remembered rumors of their drinking together from hip-pocket flasks. He tiptoed round the house, and in each of the dozen cars waiting in the street he saw the points of light from cigarettes, from each of them heard high giggles. He wanted to denounce them but (standing in the snow, peering round the dark corner) he did not dare. He tried to be tactful. When he had returned to the front hall he coaxed the boys, "Say, if any of you fellows are thirsty, there's some dandy ginger ale." "Oh! Thanks!" they condescended. He sought his wife, in the pantry, and exploded, "I'd like to go in there and throw some of those young pups out of the house! They talk down to me like I was the butler! I'd like to--" "I know," she sighed; "only everybody says, all the mothers tell me, unless you stand for them, if you get angry because they go out to their cars to have a drink, they won't come to your house any more, and we wouldn't want Ted left out of things, would we?" He announced that he would be enchanted to have Ted left out of things, and hurried in to be polite, lest Ted be left out of things. But, he resolved, if he found that the boys were drinking, he would--well, he'd "hand 'em something that would surprise 'em." While he was trying to be agreeable to large-shouldered young bullies he was earnestly sniffing at them. Twice he caught the reek of prohibition-time whisky, but then, it was only twice-- Dr. Howard Littlefield lumbered in. He had come, in a mood of solemn parental patronage, to look on. Ted and Eunice were dancing, moving together like one body. Littlefield gasped. He called Eunice. There was a whispered duologue, and Littlefield explained to Babbitt that Eunice's mother had a headache and needed her. She went off in tears. Babbitt looked after them furiously. "That little devil! Getting Ted into trouble! And Littlefield, the conceited old gas-bag, acting like it was Ted that was the bad influence!" Later he smelled whisky on Ted's breath. After the civil farewell to the guests, the row was terrific, a thorough Family Scene, like an avalanche, devastating and without reticences. Babbitt thundered, Mrs. Babbitt wept, Ted was unconvincingly defiant, and Verona in confusion as to whose side she was taking. For several months there was coolness between the Babbitts and the Littlefields, each family sheltering their lamb from the wolf-cub next door. Babbitt and Littlefield still spoke in pontifical periods about motors and the senate, but they kept bleakly away from mention of their families. Whenever Eunice came to the house she discussed with pleasant intimacy the fact that she had been forbidden to come to the house; and Babbitt tried, with no success whatever, to be fatherly and advisory with her. III "Gosh all fishhooks!" Ted wailed to Eunice, as they wolfed hot chocolate, lumps of nougat, and an assortment of glace nuts, in the mosaic splendor of the Royal Drug Store, "it gets me why Dad doesn't just pass out from being so poky. Every evening he sits there, about half-asleep, and if Rone or I say, 'Oh, come on, let's do something,' he doesn't even take the trouble to think about it. He just yawns and says, 'Naw, this suits me right here.' He doesn't know there's any fun going on anywhere. I suppose he must do some thinking, same as you and I do, but gosh, there's no way of telling it. I don't believe that outside of the office and playing a little bum golf on Saturday he knows there's anything in the world to do except just keep sitting there--sitting there every night--not wanting to go anywhere--not wanting to do anything--thinking us kids are crazy--sitting there--Lord!" IV If he was frightened by Ted's slackness, Babbitt was not sufficiently frightened by Verona. She was too safe. She lived too much in the neat little airless room of her mind. Kenneth Escott and she were always under foot. When they were not at home, conducting their cautiously radical courtship over sheets of statistics, they were trudging off to lectures by authors and Hindu philosophers and Swedish lieutenants. "Gosh," Babbitt wailed to his wife, as they walked home from the Fogartys' bridge-party, "it gets me how Rone and that fellow can be so poky. They sit there night after night, whenever he isn't working, and they don't know there's any fun in the world. All talk and discussion--Lord! Sitting there--sitting there--night after night--not wanting to do anything--thinking I'm crazy because I like to go out and play a fist of cards--sitting there--gosh!" Then round the swimmer, bored by struggling through the perpetual surf of family life, new combers swelled. V Babbitt's father- and mother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Henry T. Thompson, rented their old house in the Bellevue district and moved to the Hotel Hatton, that glorified boarding-house filled with widows, red-plush furniture, and the sound of ice-water pitchers. They were lonely there, and every other Sunday evening the Babbitts had to dine with them, on fricasseed chicken, discouraged celery, and cornstarch ice cream, and afterward sit, polite and restrained, in the hotel lounge, while a young woman violinist played songs from the German via Broadway. Then Babbitt's own mother came down from Catawba to spend three weeks. She was a kind woman and magnificently uncomprehending. She congratulated the convention-defying Verona on being a "nice, loyal home-body without all these Ideas that so many girls seem to have nowadays;" and when Ted filled the differential with grease, out of pure love of mechanics and filthiness, she rejoiced that he was "so handy around the house--and helping his father and all, and not going out with the girls all the time and trying to pretend he was a society fellow." Babbitt loved his mother, and sometimes he rather liked her, but he was annoyed by her Christian Patience, and he was reduced to pulpiness when she discoursed about a quite mythical hero called "Your Father": "You won't remember it, Georgie, you were such a little fellow at the time--my, I remember just how you looked that day, with your goldy brown curls and your lace collar, you always were such a dainty child, and kind of puny and sickly, and you loved pretty things so much and the red tassels on your little bootees and all--and Your Father was taking us to church and a man stopped us and said 'Major'--so many of the neighbors used to call Your Father 'Major;' of course he was only a private in The War but everybody knew that was because of the jealousy of his captain and he ought to have been a high-ranking officer, he had that natural ability to command that so very, very few men have--and this man came out into the road and held up his hand and stopped the buggy and said, 'Major,' he said, 'there's a lot of the folks around here that have decided to support Colonel Scanell for congress, and we want you to join us. Meeting people the way you do in the store, you could help us a lot.' "Well, Your Father just looked at him and said, 'I certainly shall do nothing of the sort. I don't like his politics,' he said. Well, the man--Captain Smith they used to call him, and heaven only knows why, because he hadn't the shadow or vestige of a right to be called 'Captain' or any other title--this Captain Smith said, 'We'll make it hot for you if you don't stick by your friends, Major.' Well, you know how Your Father was, and this Smith knew it too; he knew what a Real Man he was, and he knew Your Father knew the political situation from A to Z, and he ought to have seen that here was one man he couldn't impose on, but he went on trying to and hinting and trying till Your Father spoke up and said to him, 'Captain Smith,' he said, 'I have a reputation around these parts for being one who is amply qualified to mind his own business and let other folks mind theirs!' and with that he drove on and left the fellow standing there in the road like a bump on a log!" Babbitt was most exasperated when she revealed his boyhood to the children. He had, it seemed, been fond of barley-sugar; had worn the "loveliest little pink bow in his curls" and corrupted his own name to "Goo-goo." He heard (though he did not officially hear) Ted admonishing Tinka, "Come on now, kid; stick the lovely pink bow in your curls and beat it down to breakfast, or Goo-goo will jaw your head off." Babbitt's half-brother, Martin, with his wife and youngest baby, came down from Catawba for two days. Martin bred cattle and ran the dusty general-store. He was proud of being a freeborn independent American of the good old Yankee stock; he was proud of being honest, blunt, ugly, and disagreeable. His favorite remark was "How much did you pay for that?" He regarded Verona's books, Babbitt's silver pencil, and flowers on the table as citified extravagances, and said so. Babbitt would have quarreled with him but for his gawky wife and the baby, whom Babbitt teased and poked fingers at and addressed: "I think this baby's a bum, yes, sir, I think this little baby's a bum, he's a bum, yes, sir, he's a bum, that's what he is, he's a bum, this baby's a bum, he's nothing but an old bum, that's what he is--a bum!" All the while Verona and Kenneth Escott held long inquiries into epistemology; Ted was a disgraced rebel; and Tinka, aged eleven, was demanding that she be allowed to go to the movies thrice a week, "like all the girls." Babbitt raged, "I'm sick of it! Having to carry three generations. Whole damn bunch lean on me. Pay half of mother's income, listen to Henry T., listen to Myra's worrying, be polite to Mart, and get called an old grouch for trying to help the children. All of 'em depending on me and picking on me and not a damn one of 'em grateful! No relief, and no credit, and no help from anybody. And to keep it up for--good Lord, how long?" He enjoyed being sick in February; he was delighted by their consternation that he, the rock, should give way. He had eaten a questionable clam. For two days he was languorous and petted and esteemed. He was allowed to snarl "Oh, let me alone!" without reprisals. He lay on the sleeping-porch and watched the winter sun slide along the taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale blood red. The shadow of the draw-rope was dense black, in an enticing ripple on the canvas. He found pleasure in the curve of it, sighed as the fading light blurred it. He was conscious of life, and a little sad. With no Vergil Gunches before whom to set his face in resolute optimism, he beheld, and half admitted that he beheld, his way of life as incredibly mechanical. Mechanical business--a brisk selling of badly built houses. Mechanical religion--a dry, hard church, shut off from the real life of the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top-hat. Mechanical golf and dinner-parties and bridge and conversation. Save with Paul Riesling, mechanical friendships--back-slapping and jocular, never daring to essay the test of quietness. He turned uneasily in bed. He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long sweet afternoons which were meant for summery meadows, lost in such brittle pretentiousness. He thought of telephoning about leases, of cajoling men he hated, of making business calls and waiting in dirty anterooms--hat on knee, yawning at fly-specked calendars, being polite to office-boys. "I don't hardly want to go back to work," he prayed. "I'd like to--I don't know." But he was back next day, busy and of doubtful temper.

Chapter XVIII

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xv-xviii

Despite Verona's protests that she and Kenneth Escott are "just good friends" , Babbitt remains hopeful of their alliance and tries to unite them. He is worried about Ted, however, who lacks educational and professional direction and spends far too much time with Eunice Littlefield, whose sexiness and youthful liberation make Babbitt uneasy. Ted hosts a party for the senior class at the Babbitt household. When Howard Littlefield arrives to find Eunice dancing close with Ted, he tears Eunice from the party, resulting in months of "coolness between the Babbitts and the Littlefields". When Myra's parents move to a boarding house, Babbitt's mother comes for a three-week visit along with Babbitt's half-brother and the family, and Babbitt is suddenly "sick of it" again. While bedridden from a bout of food poisoning, he reflects on the mechanical nature of his business, his religion, and his life, and though he decides that he will not go to work anymore, he returns the very next day

In Chapter XV, Lewis establishes a satiric parallel that is, in effect, so blatantly mocking that it almost overrides the novel's standard of realism. The fact that Babbitt now worships the McKelveys with their wealth and influence indicates that his morals and values have undergone a change. He sticks by Charles McKelvey at the reunion dinner, feeling "slight and adoring" at his side. After he tosses George a quick and empty compliment about his recent speeches, "Babbitt would have followed him through fire" . This attitude lies in sharp contrast with the one that Babbitt expressed to Myra at the beginning of the novel, when they discussed "Charley McKelvey and all that booze-hoising set of his." Babbitt once suggested that McKelvey cares so much about appearances that he buys nice dress suits--but "'hasn't got a decent set of underwear'' . The greatest irony centers around Babbitt's original assertion that he "wouldn't want to go there with dinner with that gang of, of highbinders'" , because he now spends the entire reunion heartily attempting to charm McKelvey into inviting him. This change indicates that, with his recent "fame," Babbitt has shed some of this resentful insecurity beside those who are more prosperous than he is and that he now sees himself as capable of entrance into their ivory towers. This change also indicates Lewis's skillful critique of people like Babbitt. The irony here is vast and nuanced in that it requires the conjunction of two very distant moments in the novel. Lewis's next satirical brushstroke, however, is an example of a two-part character condemnation that occurs in quick succession. Lewis draws the parallels between the dinner with the McKelveys and the dinner with the Overbrooks in a way that borders on heavy-handed and unartistic. He presents a scenario where one socially superior couple tolerates and then snubs a socially inferior couple , and then he creates a virtually identical situation between the Babbitts and the Overbrooks that occurs immediately afterwards. Lewis describes the pathetic hopefulness of both inferior couples as they await an invitation and their crestfallen resentment when this invitation never comes. In order to be sure that the reader has not possibly missed this parallel, both sections end with the sentence, "They did not speak of the again" . Of course, this is not only a merciless criticism of the boot-kissing, social-climbing Babbitts and Overbrooks, but also a negative portrayal of a society that creates such a hierarchy of social class. Lewis then turns his criticism to the entirely unreligious religion in Zenith society. The first sentence on this topic alerts the reader to the hypocrisy that will pervade not only Babbitt's personal experience of religion, but also the institution as it exists in Zenith: "Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School" . Here, Lewis ironically joins and almost equates the concepts of purification and publicity, which clearly are intended to contrast sharply--and which often obstruct each other. There is nothing pure or purifying about publicity as it occurs in this novel. In fact, publicity has emerged as a contaminating force that is closely related to a lack of moral and professional integrity. At the outset, we are informed that Babbitt's devotion is about to suffer a serious attack. Lewis describes Babbitt's rudimentary and ill-considered version of religion in the scene where he tries to convince himself that he will not go to Hell. In fact, his religion is "rarely pondered" . For Babbitt, religion becomes not directly about God or spirituality but about business and money making. Reverend Drew's two honorary degrees and editorials explaining "The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity" subject him to the same unfavorable scrutiny, yet Babbitt devises a plan to initiate "a real virile hustling religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated" . He cannot stay awake in Sunday School classes, and he is clueless about what happens between the Bible's covers, but he has a brilliant plan to completely and shamelessly commercialize an institution that ought to bear no resemblance to a real estate company and that should be free from Babbitt's scheming salesmanship. Religion in Zenith is no less polluted by social ills than by the broader social patterns of business and politics.

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Babbitt.chapter xix

chapter xix

{"name": "Chapter XIX", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xix-xxii", "summary": "Using insider information, Babbitt extorts a high price from the Street Traction Company for land that it needs to rebuild some car-repair shops. Despite protests from the purchasing agent, the vice president, and the president of the company, a compromise is reached. Babbitt makes three thousand dollars from the deal. When a significant complaint is made against Stanley Graff for breaking a lease, Babbitt fires him. In the process, Graff accuses Babbitt of being \"crooked in the first place\" and of forcing Graff into being dishonest by not paying him enough. Feeling uneasy about these claims, Babbitt decides to take Ted with him on a trip to Chicago. The two men talk, laugh, and see a musical comedy together, and Babbitt is very lonely after Ted returns to Zenith. Dining by himself at the Regency Hotel, he runs into Sir Gerald Doak, and they go to see a movie and then have a drink back at Doak's hotel room. They had both previously been so lonely, discouraged, and bored that they are now extremely glad for each other's company, and Babbitt fantasizes about telling Mrs. McKelvey and others at the Athletic Club about how chummy he and \"Jerry\" are. But his spirits are dampened when he sees Paul Riesling with a woman back at the Regency Hotel. Paul coolly and begrudgingly introduces Babbitt to May Arnold, and Babbitt determines to meet Paul later at his hotel to discuss the situation", "analysis": "In a passing, casual way, Lewis's allusion to the unethical deal that Babbitt makes with the Zenith Street Traction Company emphasizes the moral depravity indicated by the previous chapters on inadequate religion. Eathorne makes an off-the-books loan to Babbitt to complete the \"triple-crossing\" deal. In the past, Babbitt has been professionally dishonest, but he has always been able to convince himself that his actions were just. In this case, Babbitt acts in a way that he knows to be dishonest. He has fallen so far from his image of the Solid Citizen that he no longer upholds his former values and standards. Lewis's explanation that \"In the midst of closing this splendid deal ... Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him\" drives the nail into the coffin of this moral condemnation in that it reveals Babbitt's shameless hypocrisy. The focus of this section now shifts back to the relationship between Babbitt and Paul, who has an affair and is convicted of killing his wife on the grounds of temporary insanity. When Babbitt sees Paul at the table with May Arnold, his reaction is strongly negative. He has \"so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he desperately that he must be diplomatic\" . He finds May Arnold \"doubtful\" and \" withered\" and a \"dried-up hag\" . These feelings betray his jealousy. George is so persistent that he waits in Paul's hotel room for three hours in the middle of the night, reminding himself that he must be careful not to say \"foolish dramatic things to Paul\" . After a brief argument about morality upon Paul's return, Babbitt stands beside Paul, \"patting his shoulder, making soft apologetic noises\" . Later, in the cab on the way home, \"Babbitt incredulously tears crowding into his eyes\" . Reviewed together, all of these reactions indicate a possessiveness, intimacy, and depth of emotion that exceed the boundaries of a typical male friendship. Babbitt is more shaken by Paul's affair with May than he has been about anything else thus far. He does not even understand his emotions, since he realizes that the situation does not call for such anxiety and distress. The suggestion of a homoerotic attraction seems stronger now. This suggestion is strengthened by Babbitt's reaction to the news that Paul has been thrown in jail. In an act of selflessness of which he seems almost incapable, he offers to commit perjury in order to save his friend. He will not tolerate it if his friends or family discuss the event. When Paul is finally thrown in prison, Babbitt must confront \"a world which, without Paul, meaningless\" . It becomes clear now how much of Babbitt's life has really centered around Paul in a way that seems to surpass Babbitt's relationship even with his wife. Although extremely close male friendships do not have to be homoerotic, this one, on Babbitt's part, might be."}

I THE Zenith Street Traction Company planned to build car-repair shops in the suburb of Dorchester, but when they came to buy the land they found it held, on options, by the Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company. The purchasing-agent, the first vice-president, and even the president of the Traction Company protested against the Babbitt price. They mentioned their duty toward stockholders, they threatened an appeal to the courts, though somehow the appeal to the courts was never carried out and the officials found it wiser to compromise with Babbitt. Carbon copies of the correspondence are in the company's files, where they may be viewed by any public commission. Just after this Babbitt deposited three thousand dollars in the bank, the purchasing-agent of the Street Traction Company bought a five thousand dollar car, the first vice-president built a home in Devon Woods, and the president was appointed minister to a foreign country. To obtain the options, to tie up one man's land without letting his neighbor know, had been an unusual strain on Babbitt. It was necessary to introduce rumors about planning garages and stores, to pretend that he wasn't taking any more options, to wait and look as bored as a poker-player at a time when the failure to secure a key-lot threatened his whole plan. To all this was added a nerve-jabbing quarrel with his secret associates in the deal. They did not wish Babbitt and Thompson to have any share in the deal except as brokers. Babbitt rather agreed. "Ethics of the business-broker ought to strictly represent his principles and not get in on the buying," he said to Thompson. "Ethics, rats! Think I'm going to see that bunch of holy grafters get away with the swag and us not climb in?" snorted old Henry. "Well, I don't like to do it. Kind of double-crossing." "It ain't. It's triple-crossing. It's the public that gets double-crossed. Well, now we've been ethical and got it out of our systems, the question is where we can raise a loan to handle some of the property for ourselves, on the Q. T. We can't go to our bank for it. Might come out." "I could see old Eathorne. He's close as the tomb." "That's the stuff." Eathorne was glad, he said, to "invest in character," to make Babbitt the loan and see to it that the loan did not appear on the books of the bank. Thus certain of the options which Babbitt and Thompson obtained were on parcels of real estate which they themselves owned, though the property did not appear in their names. In the midst of closing this splendid deal, which stimulated business and public confidence by giving an example of increased real-estate activity, Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him. The dishonest one was Stanley Graff, the outside salesman. For some time Babbitt had been worried about Graff. He did not keep his word to tenants. In order to rent a house he would promise repairs which the owner had not authorized. It was suspected that he juggled inventories of furnished houses so that when the tenant left he had to pay for articles which had never been in the house and the price of which Graff put into his pocket. Babbitt had not been able to prove these suspicions, and though he had rather planned to discharge Graff he had never quite found time for it. Now into Babbitt's private room charged a red-faced man, panting, "Look here! I've come to raise particular merry hell, and unless you have that fellow pinched, I will!" "What's--Calm down, o' man. What's trouble?" "Trouble! Huh! Here's the trouble--" "Sit down and take it easy! They can hear you all over the building!" "This fellow Graff you got working for you, he leases me a house. I was in yesterday and signs the lease, all O.K., and he was to get the owner's signature and mail me the lease last night. Well, and he did. This morning I comes down to breakfast and the girl says a fellow had come to the house right after the early delivery and told her he wanted an envelope that had been mailed by mistake, big long envelope with 'Babbitt-Thompson' in the corner of it. Sure enough, there it was, so she lets him have it. And she describes the fellow to me, and it was this Graff. So I 'phones to him and he, the poor fool, he admits it! He says after my lease was all signed he got a better offer from another fellow and he wanted my lease back. Now what you going to do about it?" "Your name is--?" "William Varney--W. K. Varney." "Oh, yes. That was the Garrison house." Babbitt sounded the buzzer. When Miss McGoun came in, he demanded, "Graff gone out?" "Yes, sir." "Will you look through his desk and see if there is a lease made out to Mr. Varney on the Garrison house?" To Varney: "Can't tell you how sorry I am this happened. Needless to say, I'll fire Graff the minute he comes in. And of course your lease stands. But there's one other thing I'd like to do. I'll tell the owner not to pay us the commission but apply it to your rent. No! Straight! I want to. To be frank, this thing shakes me up bad. I suppose I've always been a Practical Business Man. Probably I've told one or two fairy stories in my time, when the occasion called for it--you know: sometimes you have to lay things on thick, to impress boneheads. But this is the first time I've ever had to accuse one of my own employees of anything more dishonest than pinching a few stamps. Honest, it would hurt me if we profited by it. So you'll let me hand you the commission? Good!" II He walked through the February city, where trucks flung up a spattering of slush and the sky was dark above dark brick cornices. He came back miserable. He, who respected the law, had broken it by concealing the Federal crime of interception of the mails. But he could not see Graff go to jail and his wife suffer. Worse, he had to discharge Graff and this was a part of office routine which he feared. He liked people so much, he so much wanted them to like him that he could not bear insulting them. Miss McGoun dashed in to whisper, with the excitement of an approaching scene, "He's here!" "Mr. Graff? Ask him to come in." He tried to make himself heavy and calm in his chair, and to keep his eyes expressionless. Graff stalked in--a man of thirty-five, dapper, eye-glassed, with a foppish mustache. "Want me?" said Graff. "Yes. Sit down." Graff continued to stand, grunting, "I suppose that old nut Varney has been in to see you. Let me explain about him. He's a regular tightwad, and he sticks out for every cent, and he practically lied to me about his ability to pay the rent--I found that out just after we signed up. And then another fellow comes along with a better offer for the house, and I felt it was my duty to the firm to get rid of Varney, and I was so worried about it I skun up there and got back the lease. Honest, Mr. Babbitt, I didn't intend to pull anything crooked. I just wanted the firm to have all the commis--" "Wait now, Stan. This may all be true, but I've been having a lot of complaints about you. Now I don't s'pose you ever mean to do wrong, and I think if you just get a good lesson that'll jog you up a little, you'll turn out a first-class realtor yet. But I don't see how I can keep you on." Graff leaned against the filing-cabinet, his hands in his pockets, and laughed. "So I'm fired! Well, old Vision and Ethics, I'm tickled to death! But I don't want you to think you can get away with any holier-than-thou stuff. Sure I've pulled some raw stuff--a little of it--but how could I help it, in this office?" "Now, by God, young man--" "Tut, tut! Keep the naughty temper down, and don't holler, because everybody in the outside office will hear you. They're probably listening right now. Babbitt, old dear, you're crooked in the first place and a damn skinflint in the second. If you paid me a decent salary I wouldn't have to steal pennies off a blind man to keep my wife from starving. Us married just five months, and her the nicest girl living, and you keeping us flat broke all the time, you damned old thief, so you can put money away for your saphead of a son and your wishywashy fool of a daughter! Wait, now! You'll by God take it, or I'll bellow so the whole office will hear it! And crooked--Say, if I told the prosecuting attorney what I know about this last Street Traction option steal, both you and me would go to jail, along with some nice, clean, pious, high-up traction guns!" "Well, Stan, looks like we were coming down to cases. That deal--There was nothing crooked about it. The only way you can get progress is for the broad-gauged men to get things done; and they got to be rewarded--" "Oh, for Pete's sake, don't get virtuous on me! As I gather it, I'm fired. All right. It's a good thing for me. And if I catch you knocking me to any other firm, I'll squeal all I know about you and Henry T. and the dirty little lickspittle deals that you corporals of industry pull off for the bigger and brainier crooks, and you'll get chased out of town. And me--you're right, Babbitt, I've been going crooked, but now I'm going straight, and the first step will be to get a job in some office where the boss doesn't talk about Ideals. Bad luck, old dear, and you can stick your job up the sewer!" Babbitt sat for a long time, alternately raging, "I'll have him arrested," and yearning "I wonder--No, I've never done anything that wasn't necessary to keep the Wheels of Progress moving." Next day he hired in Graff's place Fritz Weilinger, the salesman of his most injurious rival, the East Side Homes and Development Company, and thus at once annoyed his competitor and acquired an excellent man. Young Fritz was a curly-headed, merry, tennis-playing youngster. He made customers welcome to the office. Babbitt thought of him as a son, and in him had much comfort. III An abandoned race-track on the outskirts of Chicago, a plot excellent for factory sites, was to be sold, and Jake Offut asked Babbitt to bid on it for him. The strain of the Street Traction deal and his disappointment in Stanley Graff had so shaken Babbitt that he found it hard to sit at his desk and concentrate. He proposed to his family, "Look here, folks! Do you know who's going to trot up to Chicago for a couple of days--just week-end; won't lose but one day of school--know who's going with that celebrated business-ambassador, George F. Babbitt? Why, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt!" "Hurray!" Ted shouted, and "Oh, maybe the Babbitt men won't paint that lil ole town red!" And, once away from the familiar implications of home, they were two men together. Ted was young only in his assumption of oldness, and the only realms, apparently, in which Babbitt had a larger and more grown-up knowledge than Ted's were the details of real estate and the phrases of politics. When the other sages of the Pullman smoking-compartment had left them to themselves, Babbitt's voice did not drop into the playful and otherwise offensive tone in which one addresses children but continued its overwhelming and monotonous rumble, and Ted tried to imitate it in his strident tenor: "Gee, dad, you certainly did show up that poor boot when he got flip about the League of Nations!" "Well, the trouble with a lot of these fellows is, they simply don't know what they're talking about. They don't get down to facts.... What do you think of Ken Escott?" "I'll tell you, dad: it strikes me Ken is a nice lad; no special faults except he smokes too much; but slow, Lord! Why, if we don't give him a shove the poor dumb-bell never will propose! And Rone just as bad. Slow." "Yes, I guess you're right. They're slow. They haven't either one of 'em got our pep." "That's right. They're slow. I swear, dad, I don't know how Rone got into our family! I'll bet, if the truth were known, you were a bad old egg when you were a kid!" "Well, I wasn't so slow!" "I'll bet you weren't! I'll bet you didn't miss many tricks!" "Well, when I was out with the girls I didn't spend all the time telling 'em about the strike in the knitting industry!" They roared together, and together lighted cigars. "What are we going to do with 'em?" Babbitt consulted. "Gosh, I don't know. I swear, sometimes I feel like taking Ken aside and putting him over the jumps and saying to him, 'Young fella me lad, are you going to marry young Rone, or are you going to talk her to death? Here you are getting on toward thirty, and you're only making twenty or twenty-five a week. When you going to develop a sense of responsibility and get a raise? If there's anything that George F. or I can do to help you, call on us, but show a little speed, anyway!'" "Well, at that, it might not be so bad if you or I talked to him, except he might not understand. He's one of these high brows. He can't come down to cases and lay his cards on the table and talk straight out from the shoulder, like you or I can." "That's right, he's like all these highbrows." "That's so, like all of 'em." "That's a fact." They sighed, and were silent and thoughtful and happy. The conductor came in. He had once called at Babbitt's office, to ask about houses. "H' are you, Mr. Babbitt! We going to have you with us to Chicago? This your boy?" "Yes, this is my son Ted." "Well now, what do you know about that! Here I been thinking you were a youngster yourself, not a day over forty, hardly, and you with this great big fellow!" "Forty? Why, brother, I'll never see forty-five again!" "Is that a fact! Wouldn't hardly 'a' thought it!" "Yes, sir, it's a bad give-away for the old man when he has to travel with a young whale like Ted here!" "You're right, it is." To Ted: "I suppose you're in college now?" Proudly, "No, not till next fall. I'm just kind of giving the diff'rent colleges the once-over now." As the conductor went on his affable way, huge watch-chain jingling against his blue chest, Babbitt and Ted gravely considered colleges. They arrived at Chicago late at night; they lay abed in the morning, rejoicing, "Pretty nice not to have to get up and get down to breakfast, heh?" They were staying at the modest Eden Hotel, because Zenith business men always stayed at the Eden, but they had dinner in the brocade and crystal Versailles Room of the Regency Hotel. Babbitt ordered Blue Point oysters with cocktail sauce, a tremendous steak with a tremendous platter of French fried potatoes, two pots of coffee, apple pie with ice cream for both of them and, for Ted, an extra piece of mince pie. "Hot stuff! Some feed, young fella!" Ted admired. "Huh! You stick around with me, old man, and I'll show you a good time!" They went to a musical comedy and nudged each other at the matrimonial jokes and the prohibition jokes; they paraded the lobby, arm in arm, between acts, and in the glee of his first release from the shame which dissevers fathers and sons Ted chuckled, "Dad, did you ever hear the one about the three milliners and the judge?" When Ted had returned to Zenith, Babbitt was lonely. As he was trying to make alliance between Offutt and certain Milwaukee interests which wanted the race-track plot, most of his time was taken up in waiting for telephone calls.... Sitting on the edge of his bed, holding the portable telephone, asking wearily, "Mr. Sagen not in yet? Didn' he leave any message for me? All right, I'll hold the wire." Staring at a stain on the wall, reflecting that it resembled a shoe, and being bored by this twentieth discovery that it resembled a shoe. Lighting a cigarette; then, bound to the telephone with no ashtray in reach, wondering what to do with this burning menace and anxiously trying to toss it into the tiled bathroom. At last, on the telephone, "No message, eh? All right, I'll call up again." One afternoon he wandered through snow-rutted streets of which he had never heard, streets of small tenements and two-family houses and marooned cottages. It came to him that he had nothing to do, that there was nothing he wanted to do. He was bleakly lonely in the evening, when he dined by himself at the Regency Hotel. He sat in the lobby afterward, in a plush chair bedecked with the Saxe-Coburg arms, lighting a cigar and looking for some one who would come and play with him and save him from thinking. In the chair next to him (showing the arms of Lithuania) was a half-familiar man, a large red-faced man with pop eyes and a deficient yellow mustache. He seemed kind and insignificant, and as lonely as Babbitt himself. He wore a tweed suit and a reluctant orange tie. It came to Babbitt with a pyrotechnic crash. The melancholy stranger was Sir Gerald Doak. Instinctively Babbitt rose, bumbling, "How 're you, Sir Gerald? 'Member we met in Zenith, at Charley McKelvey's? Babbitt's my name--real estate." "Oh! How d' you do." Sir Gerald shook hands flabbily. Embarrassed, standing, wondering how he could retreat, Babbitt maundered, "Well, I suppose you been having a great trip since we saw you in Zenith." "Quite. British Columbia and California and all over the place," he said doubtfully, looking at Babbitt lifelessly. "How did you find business conditions in British Columbia? Or I suppose maybe you didn't look into 'em. Scenery and sport and so on?" "Scenery? Oh, capital. But business conditions--You know, Mr. Babbitt, they're having almost as much unemployment as we are." Sir Gerald was speaking warmly now. "So? Business conditions not so doggone good, eh?" "No, business conditions weren't at all what I'd hoped to find them." "Not good, eh?" "No, not--not really good." "That's a darn shame. Well--I suppose you're waiting for somebody to take you out to some big shindig, Sir Gerald." "Shindig? Oh. Shindig. No, to tell you the truth, I was wondering what the deuce I could do this evening. Don't know a soul in Tchicahgo. I wonder if you happen to know whether there's a good theater in this city?" "Good? Why say, they're running grand opera right now! I guess maybe you'd like that." "Eh? Eh? Went to the opera once in London. Covent Garden sort of thing. Shocking! No, I was wondering if there was a good cinema-movie." Babbitt was sitting down, hitching his chair over, shouting, "Movie? Say, Sir Gerald, I supposed of course you had a raft of dames waiting to lead you out to some soiree--" "God forbid!" "--but if you haven't, what do you say you and me go to a movie? There's a peach of a film at the Grantham: Bill Hart in a bandit picture." "Right-o! Just a moment while I get my coat." Swollen with greatness, slightly afraid lest the noble blood of Nottingham change its mind and leave him at any street corner, Babbitt paraded with Sir Gerald Doak to the movie palace and in silent bliss sat beside him, trying not to be too enthusiastic, lest the knight despise his adoration of six-shooters and broncos. At the end Sir Gerald murmured, "Jolly good picture, this. So awfully decent of you to take me. Haven't enjoyed myself so much for weeks. All these Hostesses--they never let you go to the cinema!" "The devil you say!" Babbitt's speech had lost the delicate refinement and all the broad A's with which he had adorned it, and become hearty and natural. "Well, I'm tickled to death you liked it, Sir Gerald." They crawled past the knees of fat women into the aisle; they stood in the lobby waving their arms in the rite of putting on overcoats. Babbitt hinted, "Say, how about a little something to eat? I know a place where we could get a swell rarebit, and we might dig up a little drink--that is, if you ever touch the stuff." "Rather! But why don't you come to my room? I've some Scotch--not half bad." "Oh, I don't want to use up all your hootch. It's darn nice of you, but--You probably want to hit the hay." Sir Gerald was transformed. He was beefily yearning. "Oh really, now; I haven't had a decent evening for so long! Having to go to all these dances. No chance to discuss business and that sort of thing. Do be a good chap and come along. Won't you?" "Will I? You bet! I just thought maybe--Say, by golly, it does do a fellow good, don't it, to sit and visit about business conditions, after he's been to these balls and masquerades and banquets and all that society stuff. I often feel that way in Zenith. Sure, you bet I'll come." "That's awfully nice of you." They beamed along the street. "Look here, old chap, can you tell me, do American cities always keep up this dreadful social pace? All these magnificent parties?" "Go on now, quit your kidding! Gosh, you with court balls and functions and everything--" "No, really, old chap! Mother and I--Lady Doak, I should say, we usually play a hand of bezique and go to bed at ten. Bless my soul, I couldn't keep up your beastly pace! And talking! All your American women, they know so much--culture and that sort of thing. This Mrs. McKelvey--your friend--" "Yuh, old Lucile. Good kid." "--she asked me which of the galleries I liked best in Florence. Or was it in Firenze? Never been in Italy in my life! And primitives. Did I like primitives. Do you know what the deuce a primitive is?" "Me? I should say not! But I know what a discount for cash is." "Rather! So do I, by George! But primitives!" "Yuh! Primitives!" They laughed with the sound of a Boosters' luncheon. Sir Gerald's room was, except for his ponderous and durable English bags, very much like the room of George F. Babbitt; and quite in the manner of Babbitt he disclosed a huge whisky flask, looked proud and hospitable, and chuckled, "Say, when, old chap." It was after the third drink that Sir Gerald proclaimed, "How do you Yankees get the notion that writing chaps like Bertrand Shaw and this Wells represent us? The real business England, we think those chaps are traitors. Both our countries have their comic Old Aristocracy--you know, old county families, hunting people and all that sort of thing--and we both have our wretched labor leaders, but we both have a backbone of sound business men who run the whole show." "You bet. Here's to the real guys!" "I'm with you! Here's to ourselves!" It was after the fourth drink that Sir Gerald asked humbly, "What do you think of North Dakota mortgages?" but it was not till after the fifth that Babbitt began to call him "Jerry," and Sir Gerald confided, "I say, do you mind if I pull off my boots?" and ecstatically stretched his knightly feet, his poor, tired, hot, swollen feet out on the bed. After the sixth, Babbitt irregularly arose. "Well, I better be hiking along. Jerry, you're a regular human being! I wish to thunder we'd been better acquainted in Zenith. Lookit. Can't you come back and stay with me a while?" "So sorry--must go to New York to-morrow. Most awfully sorry, old boy. I haven't enjoyed an evening so much since I've been in the States. Real talk. Not all this social rot. I'd never have let them give me the beastly title--and I didn't get it for nothing, eh?--if I'd thought I'd have to talk to women about primitives and polo! Goodish thing to have in Nottingham, though; annoyed the mayor most frightfully when I got it; and of course the missus likes it. But nobody calls me 'Jerry' now--" He was almost weeping. "--and nobody in the States has treated me like a friend till to-night! Good-by, old chap, good-by! Thanks awfully!" "Don't mention it, Jerry. And remember whenever you get to Zenith, the latch-string is always out." "And don't forget, old boy, if you ever come to Nottingham, Mother and I will be frightfully glad to see you. I shall tell the fellows in Nottingham your ideas about Visions and Real Guys--at our next Rotary Club luncheon." IV Babbitt lay abed at his hotel, imagining the Zenith Athletic Club asking him, "What kind of a time d'you have in Chicago?" and his answering, "Oh, fair; ran around with Sir Gerald Doak a lot;" picturing himself meeting Lucile McKelvey and admonishing her, "You're all right, Mrs. Mac, when you aren't trying to pull this highbrow pose. It's just as Gerald Doak says to me in Chicago--oh, yes, Jerry's an old friend of mine--the wife and I are thinking of running over to England to stay with Jerry in his castle, next year--and he said to me, 'Georgie, old bean, I like Lucile first-rate, but you and me, George, we got to make her get over this highty-tighty hooptediddle way she's got." But that evening a thing happened which wrecked his pride. V At the Regency Hotel cigar-counter he fell to talking with a salesman of pianos, and they dined together. Babbitt was filled with friendliness and well-being. He enjoyed the gorgeousness of the dining-room: the chandeliers, the looped brocade curtains, the portraits of French kings against panels of gilded oak. He enjoyed the crowd: pretty women, good solid fellows who were "liberal spenders." He gasped. He stared, and turned away, and stared again. Three tables off, with a doubtful sort of woman, a woman at once coy and withered, was Paul Riesling, and Paul was supposed to be in Akron, selling tar-roofing. The woman was tapping his hand, mooning at him and giggling. Babbitt felt that he had encountered something involved and harmful. Paul was talking with the rapt eagerness of a man who is telling his troubles. He was concentrated on the woman's faded eyes. Once he held her hand and once, blind to the other guests, he puckered his lips as though he was pretending to kiss her. Babbitt had so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he could feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he felt, desperately, that he must be diplomatic, and not till he saw Paul paying the check did he bluster to the piano-salesman, "By golly--friend of mine over there--'scuse me second--just say hello to him." He touched Paul's shoulder, and cried, "Well, when did you hit town?" Paul glared up at him, face hardening. "Oh, hello, George. Thought you'd gone back to Zenith." He did not introduce his companion. Babbitt peeped at her. She was a flabbily pretty, weakly flirtatious woman of forty-two or three, in an atrocious flowery hat. Her rouging was thorough but unskilful. "Where you staying, Paulibus?" The woman turned, yawned, examined her nails. She seemed accustomed to not being introduced. Paul grumbled, "Campbell Inn, on the South Side." "Alone?" It sounded insinuating. "Yes! Unfortunately!" Furiously Paul turned toward the woman, smiling with a fondness sickening to Babbitt. "May! Want to introduce you. Mrs. Arnold, this is my old-acquaintance, George Babbitt." "Pleasmeech," growled Babbitt, while she gurgled, "Oh, I'm very pleased to meet any friend of Mr. Riesling's, I'm sure." Babbitt demanded, "Be back there later this evening, Paul? I'll drop down and see you." "No, better--We better lunch together to-morrow." "All right, but I'll see you to-night, too, Paul. I'll go down to your hotel, and I'll wait for you!"

Chapter XIX

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xix-xxii

Using insider information, Babbitt extorts a high price from the Street Traction Company for land that it needs to rebuild some car-repair shops. Despite protests from the purchasing agent, the vice president, and the president of the company, a compromise is reached. Babbitt makes three thousand dollars from the deal. When a significant complaint is made against Stanley Graff for breaking a lease, Babbitt fires him. In the process, Graff accuses Babbitt of being "crooked in the first place" and of forcing Graff into being dishonest by not paying him enough. Feeling uneasy about these claims, Babbitt decides to take Ted with him on a trip to Chicago. The two men talk, laugh, and see a musical comedy together, and Babbitt is very lonely after Ted returns to Zenith. Dining by himself at the Regency Hotel, he runs into Sir Gerald Doak, and they go to see a movie and then have a drink back at Doak's hotel room. They had both previously been so lonely, discouraged, and bored that they are now extremely glad for each other's company, and Babbitt fantasizes about telling Mrs. McKelvey and others at the Athletic Club about how chummy he and "Jerry" are. But his spirits are dampened when he sees Paul Riesling with a woman back at the Regency Hotel. Paul coolly and begrudgingly introduces Babbitt to May Arnold, and Babbitt determines to meet Paul later at his hotel to discuss the situation

In a passing, casual way, Lewis's allusion to the unethical deal that Babbitt makes with the Zenith Street Traction Company emphasizes the moral depravity indicated by the previous chapters on inadequate religion. Eathorne makes an off-the-books loan to Babbitt to complete the "triple-crossing" deal. In the past, Babbitt has been professionally dishonest, but he has always been able to convince himself that his actions were just. In this case, Babbitt acts in a way that he knows to be dishonest. He has fallen so far from his image of the Solid Citizen that he no longer upholds his former values and standards. Lewis's explanation that "In the midst of closing this splendid deal ... Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him" drives the nail into the coffin of this moral condemnation in that it reveals Babbitt's shameless hypocrisy. The focus of this section now shifts back to the relationship between Babbitt and Paul, who has an affair and is convicted of killing his wife on the grounds of temporary insanity. When Babbitt sees Paul at the table with May Arnold, his reaction is strongly negative. He has "so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he desperately that he must be diplomatic" . He finds May Arnold "doubtful" and " withered" and a "dried-up hag" . These feelings betray his jealousy. George is so persistent that he waits in Paul's hotel room for three hours in the middle of the night, reminding himself that he must be careful not to say "foolish dramatic things to Paul" . After a brief argument about morality upon Paul's return, Babbitt stands beside Paul, "patting his shoulder, making soft apologetic noises" . Later, in the cab on the way home, "Babbitt incredulously tears crowding into his eyes" . Reviewed together, all of these reactions indicate a possessiveness, intimacy, and depth of emotion that exceed the boundaries of a typical male friendship. Babbitt is more shaken by Paul's affair with May than he has been about anything else thus far. He does not even understand his emotions, since he realizes that the situation does not call for such anxiety and distress. The suggestion of a homoerotic attraction seems stronger now. This suggestion is strengthened by Babbitt's reaction to the news that Paul has been thrown in jail. In an act of selflessness of which he seems almost incapable, he offers to commit perjury in order to save his friend. He will not tolerate it if his friends or family discuss the event. When Paul is finally thrown in prison, Babbitt must confront "a world which, without Paul, meaningless" . It becomes clear now how much of Babbitt's life has really centered around Paul in a way that seems to surpass Babbitt's relationship even with his wife. Although extremely close male friendships do not have to be homoerotic, this one, on Babbitt's part, might be.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_5_part_2.txt

Babbitt.chapter xx

chapter xx

{"name": "Chapter XX", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xix-xxii", "summary": "At Paul's hotel, Babbitt tells the clerk that he is Paul's brother-in-law in order to be allowed to wait in Paul's room until his return. After three hours, Paul arrives, upset with Babbitt for \"butting into affairs\". When Babbitt chastises him for being an immoral husband, Paul breaks down and explains that he \"can't go Zilla's hammering any longer\" and that he is too tired of her torture to be moral. With May Arnold, things are pleasant and simple. Babbitt apologizes and agrees to help Paul by telling Zilla that they ran into each other in Akron, where Paul is supposed to be. After sending her a postcard from Akron on the way home, Babbitt drops in on Zilla back in Zenith to casually remark that he ran into Paul in Akron. Zilla confides that she is extremely worried that Paul is having an affair, and Babbitt denies it, convincing her that she should be nicer to Paul or she will eventually drive him into the arms of another woman after all. When Paul returns, Zilla is much kinder, but Paul tells Babbitt that \"it's too late now\"; he is determined to \"break away from her\" someday", "analysis": "In a passing, casual way, Lewis's allusion to the unethical deal that Babbitt makes with the Zenith Street Traction Company emphasizes the moral depravity indicated by the previous chapters on inadequate religion. Eathorne makes an off-the-books loan to Babbitt to complete the \"triple-crossing\" deal. In the past, Babbitt has been professionally dishonest, but he has always been able to convince himself that his actions were just. In this case, Babbitt acts in a way that he knows to be dishonest. He has fallen so far from his image of the Solid Citizen that he no longer upholds his former values and standards. Lewis's explanation that \"In the midst of closing this splendid deal ... Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him\" drives the nail into the coffin of this moral condemnation in that it reveals Babbitt's shameless hypocrisy. The focus of this section now shifts back to the relationship between Babbitt and Paul, who has an affair and is convicted of killing his wife on the grounds of temporary insanity. When Babbitt sees Paul at the table with May Arnold, his reaction is strongly negative. He has \"so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he desperately that he must be diplomatic\" . He finds May Arnold \"doubtful\" and \" withered\" and a \"dried-up hag\" . These feelings betray his jealousy. George is so persistent that he waits in Paul's hotel room for three hours in the middle of the night, reminding himself that he must be careful not to say \"foolish dramatic things to Paul\" . After a brief argument about morality upon Paul's return, Babbitt stands beside Paul, \"patting his shoulder, making soft apologetic noises\" . Later, in the cab on the way home, \"Babbitt incredulously tears crowding into his eyes\" . Reviewed together, all of these reactions indicate a possessiveness, intimacy, and depth of emotion that exceed the boundaries of a typical male friendship. Babbitt is more shaken by Paul's affair with May than he has been about anything else thus far. He does not even understand his emotions, since he realizes that the situation does not call for such anxiety and distress. The suggestion of a homoerotic attraction seems stronger now. This suggestion is strengthened by Babbitt's reaction to the news that Paul has been thrown in jail. In an act of selflessness of which he seems almost incapable, he offers to commit perjury in order to save his friend. He will not tolerate it if his friends or family discuss the event. When Paul is finally thrown in prison, Babbitt must confront \"a world which, without Paul, meaningless\" . It becomes clear now how much of Babbitt's life has really centered around Paul in a way that seems to surpass Babbitt's relationship even with his wife. Although extremely close male friendships do not have to be homoerotic, this one, on Babbitt's part, might be."}

I HE sat smoking with the piano-salesman, clinging to the warm refuge of gossip, afraid to venture into thoughts of Paul. He was the more affable on the surface as secretly he became more apprehensive, felt more hollow. He was certain that Paul was in Chicago without Zilla's knowledge, and that he was doing things not at all moral and secure. When the salesman yawned that he had to write up his orders, Babbitt left him, left the hotel, in leisurely calm. But savagely he said "Campbell Inn!" to the taxi-driver. He sat agitated on the slippery leather seat, in that chill dimness which smelled of dust and perfume and Turkish cigarettes. He did not heed the snowy lake-front, the dark spaces and sudden bright corners in the unknown land south of the Loop. The office of the Campbell Inn was hard, bright, new; the night clerk harder and brighter. "Yep?" he said to Babbitt. "Mr. Paul Riesling registered here?" "Yep." "Is he in now?" "Nope." "Then if you'll give me his key, I'll wait for him." "Can't do that, brother. Wait down here if you wanna." Babbitt had spoken with the deference which all the Clan of Good Fellows give to hotel clerks. Now he said with snarling abruptness: "I may have to wait some time. I'm Riesling's brother-in-law. I'll go up to his room. D' I look like a sneak-thief?" His voice was low and not pleasant. With considerable haste the clerk took down the key, protesting, "I never said you looked like a sneak-thief. Just rules of the hotel. But if you want to--" On his way up in the elevator Babbitt wondered why he was here. Why shouldn't Paul be dining with a respectable married woman? Why had he lied to the clerk about being Paul's brother-in-law? He had acted like a child. He must be careful not to say foolish dramatic things to Paul. As he settled down he tried to look pompous and placid. Then the thought--Suicide. He'd been dreading that, without knowing it. Paul would be just the person to do something like that. He must be out of his head or he wouldn't be confiding in that--that dried-up hag. Zilla (oh, damn Zilla! how gladly he'd throttle that nagging fiend of a woman!)--she'd probably succeeded at last, and driven Paul crazy. Suicide. Out there in the lake, way out, beyond the piled ice along the shore. It would be ghastly cold to drop into the water to-night. Or--throat cut--in the bathroom-- Babbitt flung into Paul's bathroom. It was empty. He smiled, feebly. He pulled at his choking collar, looked at his watch, opened the window to stare down at the street, looked at his watch, tried to read the evening paper lying on the glass-topped bureau, looked again at his watch. Three minutes had gone by since he had first looked at it. And he waited for three hours. He was sitting fixed, chilled, when the doorknob turned. Paul came in glowering. "Hello," Paul said. "Been waiting?" "Yuh, little while." "Well?" "Well what? Just thought I'd drop in to see how you made out in Akron." "I did all right. What difference does it make?" "Why, gosh, Paul, what are you sore about?" "What are you butting into my affairs for?" "Why, Paul, that's no way to talk! I'm not butting into nothing. I was so glad to see your ugly old phiz that I just dropped in to say howdy." "Well, I'm not going to have anybody following me around and trying to boss me. I've had all of that I'm going to stand!" "Well, gosh, I'm not--" "I didn't like the way you looked at May Arnold, or the snooty way you talked." "Well, all right then! If you think I'm a buttinsky, then I'll just butt in! I don't know who your May Arnold is, but I know doggone good and well that you and her weren't talking about tar-roofing, no, nor about playing the violin, neither! If you haven't got any moral consideration for yourself, you ought to have some for your position in the community. The idea of your going around places gawping into a female's eyes like a love-sick pup! I can understand a fellow slipping once, but I don't propose to see a fellow that's been as chummy with me as you have getting started on the downward path and sneaking off from his wife, even as cranky a one as Zilla, to go woman-chasing--" "Oh, you're a perfectly moral little husband!" "I am, by God! I've never looked at any woman except Myra since I've been married--practically--and I never will! I tell you there's nothing to immorality. It don't pay. Can't you see, old man, it just makes Zilla still crankier?" Slight of resolution as he was of body, Paul threw his snow-beaded overcoat on the floor and crouched on a flimsy cane chair. "Oh, you're an old blowhard, and you know less about morality than Tinka, but you're all right, Georgie. But you can't understand that--I'm through. I can't go Zilla's hammering any longer. She's made up her mind that I'm a devil, and--Reg'lar Inquisition. Torture. She enjoys it. It's a game to see how sore she can make me. And me, either it's find a little comfort, any comfort, anywhere, or else do something a lot worse. Now this Mrs. Arnold, she's not so young, but she's a fine woman and she understands a fellow, and she's had her own troubles." "Yea! I suppose she's one of these hens whose husband 'doesn't understand her'!" "I don't know. Maybe. He was killed in the war." Babbitt lumbered up, stood beside Paul patting his shoulder, making soft apologetic noises. "Honest, George, she's a fine woman, and she's had one hell of a time. We manage to jolly each other up a lot. We tell each other we're the dandiest pair on earth. Maybe we don't believe it, but it helps a lot to have somebody with whom you can be perfectly simple, and not all this discussing--explaining--" "And that's as far as you go?" "It is not! Go on! Say it!" "Well, I don't--I can't say I like it, but--" With a burst which left him feeling large and shining with generosity, "it's none of my darn business! I'll do anything I can for you, if there's anything I can do." "There might be. I judge from Zilla's letters that 've been forwarded from Akron that she's getting suspicious about my staying away so long. She'd be perfectly capable of having me shadowed, and of coming to Chicago and busting into a hotel dining-room and bawling me out before everybody." "I'll take care of Zilla. I'll hand her a good fairy-story when I get back to Zenith." "I don't know--I don't think you better try it. You're a good fellow, but I don't know that diplomacy is your strong point." Babbitt looked hurt, then irritated. "I mean with women! With women, I mean. Course they got to go some to beat you in business diplomacy, but I just mean with women. Zilla may do a lot of rough talking, but she's pretty shrewd. She'd have the story out of you in no time." "Well, all right, but--" Babbitt was still pathetic at not being allowed to play Secret Agent. Paul soothed: "Course maybe you might tell her you'd been in Akron and seen me there." "Why, sure, you bet! Don't I have to go look at that candy-store property in Akron? Don't I? Ain't it a shame I have to stop off there when I'm so anxious to get home? Ain't it a regular shame? I'll say it is! I'll say it's a doggone shame!" "Fine. But for glory hallelujah's sake don't go putting any fancy fixings on the story. When men lie they always try to make it too artistic, and that's why women get suspicious. And--Let's have a drink, Georgie. I've got some gin and a little vermouth." The Paul who normally refused a second cocktail took a second now, and a third. He became red-eyed and thick-tongued. He was embarrassingly jocular and salacious. In the taxicab Babbitt incredulously found tears crowding into his eyes. II He had not told Paul of his plan but he did stop at Akron, between trains, for the one purpose of sending to Zilla a postcard with "Had to come here for the day, ran into Paul." In Zenith he called on her. If for public appearances Zilla was over-coiffed, over-painted, and resolutely corseted, for private misery she wore a filthy blue dressing-gown and torn stockings thrust into streaky pink satin mules. Her face was sunken. She seemed to have but half as much hair as Babbitt remembered, and that half was stringy. She sat in a rocker amid a debris of candy-boxes and cheap magazines, and she sounded dolorous when she did not sound derisive. But Babbitt was exceedingly breezy: "Well, well, Zil, old dear, having a good loaf while hubby's away? That's the ideal I'll bet a hat Myra never got up till ten, while I was in Chicago. Say, could I borrow your thermos--just dropped in to see if I could borrow your thermos bottle. We're going to have a toboggan party--want to take some coffee mit. Oh, did you get my card from Akron, saying I'd run into Paul?" "Yes. What was he doing?" "How do you mean?" He unbuttoned his overcoat, sat tentatively on the arm of a chair. "You know how I mean!" She slapped the pages of a magazine with an irritable clatter. "I suppose he was trying to make love to some hotel waitress or manicure girl or somebody." "Hang it, you're always letting on that Paul goes round chasing skirts. He doesn't, in the first place, and if he did, it would prob'ly be because you keep hinting at him and dinging at him so much. I hadn't meant to, Zilla, but since Paul is away, in Akron--" "He really is in Akron? I know he has some horrible woman that he writes to in Chicago." "Didn't I tell you I saw him in Akron? What 're you trying to do? Make me out a liar?" "No, but I just--I get so worried." "Now, there you are! That's what gets me! Here you love Paul, and yet you plague him and cuss him out as if you hated him. I simply can't understand why it is that the more some folks love people, the harder they try to make 'em miserable." "You love Ted and Rone--I suppose--and yet you nag them." "Oh. Well. That. That's different. Besides, I don't nag 'em. Not what you'd call nagging. But zize saying: Now, here's Paul, the nicest, most sensitive critter on God's green earth. You ought to be ashamed of yourself the way you pan him. Why, you talk to him like a washerwoman. I'm surprised you can act so doggone common, Zilla!" She brooded over her linked fingers. "Oh, I know. I do go and get mean sometimes, and I'm sorry afterwards. But, oh, Georgie, Paul is so aggravating! Honestly, I've tried awfully hard, these last few years, to be nice to him, but just because I used to be spiteful--or I seemed so; I wasn't, really, but I used to speak up and say anything that came into my head--and so he made up his mind that everything was my fault. Everything can't always be my fault, can it? And now if I get to fussing, he just turns silent, oh, so dreadfully silent, and he won't look at me--he just ignores me. He simply isn't human! And he deliberately keeps it up till I bust out and say a lot of things I don't mean. So silent--Oh, you righteous men! How wicked you are! How rotten wicked!" They thrashed things over and over for half an hour. At the end, weeping drably, Zilla promised to restrain herself. Paul returned four days later, and the Babbitts and Rieslings went festively to the movies and had chop suey at a Chinese restaurant. As they walked to the restaurant through a street of tailor shops and barber shops, the two wives in front, chattering about cooks, Babbitt murmured to Paul, "Zil seems a lot nicer now." "Yes, she has been, except once or twice. But it's too late now. I just--I'm not going to discuss it, but I'm afraid of her. There's nothing left. I don't ever want to see her. Some day I'm going to break away from her. Somehow."

Chapter XX

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xix-xxii

At Paul's hotel, Babbitt tells the clerk that he is Paul's brother-in-law in order to be allowed to wait in Paul's room until his return. After three hours, Paul arrives, upset with Babbitt for "butting into affairs". When Babbitt chastises him for being an immoral husband, Paul breaks down and explains that he "can't go Zilla's hammering any longer" and that he is too tired of her torture to be moral. With May Arnold, things are pleasant and simple. Babbitt apologizes and agrees to help Paul by telling Zilla that they ran into each other in Akron, where Paul is supposed to be. After sending her a postcard from Akron on the way home, Babbitt drops in on Zilla back in Zenith to casually remark that he ran into Paul in Akron. Zilla confides that she is extremely worried that Paul is having an affair, and Babbitt denies it, convincing her that she should be nicer to Paul or she will eventually drive him into the arms of another woman after all. When Paul returns, Zilla is much kinder, but Paul tells Babbitt that "it's too late now"; he is determined to "break away from her" someday

In a passing, casual way, Lewis's allusion to the unethical deal that Babbitt makes with the Zenith Street Traction Company emphasizes the moral depravity indicated by the previous chapters on inadequate religion. Eathorne makes an off-the-books loan to Babbitt to complete the "triple-crossing" deal. In the past, Babbitt has been professionally dishonest, but he has always been able to convince himself that his actions were just. In this case, Babbitt acts in a way that he knows to be dishonest. He has fallen so far from his image of the Solid Citizen that he no longer upholds his former values and standards. Lewis's explanation that "In the midst of closing this splendid deal ... Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him" drives the nail into the coffin of this moral condemnation in that it reveals Babbitt's shameless hypocrisy. The focus of this section now shifts back to the relationship between Babbitt and Paul, who has an affair and is convicted of killing his wife on the grounds of temporary insanity. When Babbitt sees Paul at the table with May Arnold, his reaction is strongly negative. He has "so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he desperately that he must be diplomatic" . He finds May Arnold "doubtful" and " withered" and a "dried-up hag" . These feelings betray his jealousy. George is so persistent that he waits in Paul's hotel room for three hours in the middle of the night, reminding himself that he must be careful not to say "foolish dramatic things to Paul" . After a brief argument about morality upon Paul's return, Babbitt stands beside Paul, "patting his shoulder, making soft apologetic noises" . Later, in the cab on the way home, "Babbitt incredulously tears crowding into his eyes" . Reviewed together, all of these reactions indicate a possessiveness, intimacy, and depth of emotion that exceed the boundaries of a typical male friendship. Babbitt is more shaken by Paul's affair with May than he has been about anything else thus far. He does not even understand his emotions, since he realizes that the situation does not call for such anxiety and distress. The suggestion of a homoerotic attraction seems stronger now. This suggestion is strengthened by Babbitt's reaction to the news that Paul has been thrown in jail. In an act of selflessness of which he seems almost incapable, he offers to commit perjury in order to save his friend. He will not tolerate it if his friends or family discuss the event. When Paul is finally thrown in prison, Babbitt must confront "a world which, without Paul, meaningless" . It becomes clear now how much of Babbitt's life has really centered around Paul in a way that seems to surpass Babbitt's relationship even with his wife. Although extremely close male friendships do not have to be homoerotic, this one, on Babbitt's part, might be.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_5_part_3.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxi

chapter xxi

{"name": "Chapter XXI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xix-xxii", "summary": "At the second March lunch of the Zenith Boosters' Club, after much mingling and Chum Frink's address about why Zenith must have a Symphony Orchestra in order to compete with New York and Boston, Babbitt is elected Vice President in the presence of Mayor Lucas Prout. Having never known a \"higher moment\" , he returns to work where, over the phone, Myra informs him that Paul is in jail for shooting Zilla", "analysis": "In a passing, casual way, Lewis's allusion to the unethical deal that Babbitt makes with the Zenith Street Traction Company emphasizes the moral depravity indicated by the previous chapters on inadequate religion. Eathorne makes an off-the-books loan to Babbitt to complete the \"triple-crossing\" deal. In the past, Babbitt has been professionally dishonest, but he has always been able to convince himself that his actions were just. In this case, Babbitt acts in a way that he knows to be dishonest. He has fallen so far from his image of the Solid Citizen that he no longer upholds his former values and standards. Lewis's explanation that \"In the midst of closing this splendid deal ... Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him\" drives the nail into the coffin of this moral condemnation in that it reveals Babbitt's shameless hypocrisy. The focus of this section now shifts back to the relationship between Babbitt and Paul, who has an affair and is convicted of killing his wife on the grounds of temporary insanity. When Babbitt sees Paul at the table with May Arnold, his reaction is strongly negative. He has \"so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he desperately that he must be diplomatic\" . He finds May Arnold \"doubtful\" and \" withered\" and a \"dried-up hag\" . These feelings betray his jealousy. George is so persistent that he waits in Paul's hotel room for three hours in the middle of the night, reminding himself that he must be careful not to say \"foolish dramatic things to Paul\" . After a brief argument about morality upon Paul's return, Babbitt stands beside Paul, \"patting his shoulder, making soft apologetic noises\" . Later, in the cab on the way home, \"Babbitt incredulously tears crowding into his eyes\" . Reviewed together, all of these reactions indicate a possessiveness, intimacy, and depth of emotion that exceed the boundaries of a typical male friendship. Babbitt is more shaken by Paul's affair with May than he has been about anything else thus far. He does not even understand his emotions, since he realizes that the situation does not call for such anxiety and distress. The suggestion of a homoerotic attraction seems stronger now. This suggestion is strengthened by Babbitt's reaction to the news that Paul has been thrown in jail. In an act of selflessness of which he seems almost incapable, he offers to commit perjury in order to save his friend. He will not tolerate it if his friends or family discuss the event. When Paul is finally thrown in prison, Babbitt must confront \"a world which, without Paul, meaningless\" . It becomes clear now how much of Babbitt's life has really centered around Paul in a way that seems to surpass Babbitt's relationship even with his wife. Although extremely close male friendships do not have to be homoerotic, this one, on Babbitt's part, might be."}

THE International Organization of Boosters' Clubs has become a world-force for optimism, manly pleasantry, and good business. Chapters are to be found now in thirty countries. Nine hundred and twenty of the thousand chapters, however, are in the United States. None of these is more ardent than the Zenith Boosters' Club. The second March lunch of the Zenith Boosters was the most important of the year, as it was to be followed by the annual election of officers. There was agitation abroad. The lunch was held in the ballroom of the O'Hearn House. As each of the four hundred Boosters entered he took from a wall-board a huge celluloid button announcing his name, his nick name, and his business. There was a fine of ten cents for calling a Fellow Booster by anything but his nickname at a lunch, and as Babbitt jovially checked his hat the air was radiant with shouts of "Hello, Chet!" and "How're you, Shorty!" and "Top o' the mornin', Mac!" They sat at friendly tables for eight, choosing places by lot. Babbitt was with Albert Boos the merchant tailor, Hector Seybolt of the Little Sweetheart Condensed Milk Company, Emil Wengert the jeweler, Professor Pumphrey of the Riteway Business College, Dr. Walter Gorbutt, Roy Teegarten the photographer, and Ben Berkey the photo-engraver. One of the merits of the Boosters' Club was that only two persons from each department of business were permitted to join, so that you at once encountered the Ideals of other occupations, and realized the metaphysical oneness of all occupations--plumbing and portrait-painting, medicine and the manufacture of chewing-gum. Babbitt's table was particularly happy to-day, because Professor Pumphrey had just had a birthday, and was therefore open to teasing. "Let's pump Pump about how old he is!" said Emil Wengert. "No, let's paddle him with a dancing-pump!" said Ben Berkey. But it was Babbitt who had the applause, with "Don't talk about pumps to that guy! The only pump he knows is a bottle! Honest, they tell me he's starting a class in home-brewing at the ole college!" At each place was the Boosters' Club booklet, listing the members. Though the object of the club was good-fellowship, yet they never lost sight of the importance of doing a little more business. After each name was the member's occupation. There were scores of advertisements in the booklet, and on one page the admonition: "There's no rule that you have to trade with your Fellow Boosters, but get wise, boy--what's the use of letting all this good money get outside of our happy fambly?" And at each place, to-day, there was a present; a card printed in artistic red and black: SERVICE AND BOOSTERISM Service finds its finest opportunity and development only in its broadest and deepest application and the consideration of its perpetual action upon reaction. I believe the highest type of Service, like the most progressive tenets of ethics, senses unceasingly and is motived by active adherence and loyalty to that which is the essential principle of Boosterism--Good Citizenship in all its factors and aspects. DAD PETERSEN. Compliments of Dadbury Petersen Advertising Corp. "Ads, not Fads, at Dad's" The Boosters all read Mr. Peterson's aphorism and said they understood it perfectly. The meeting opened with the regular weekly "stunts." Retiring President Vergil Gunch was in the chair, his stiff hair like a hedge, his voice like a brazen gong of festival. Members who had brought guests introduced them publicly. "This tall red-headed piece of misinformation is the sporting editor of the Press," said Willis Ijams; and H. H. Hazen, the druggist, chanted, "Boys, when you're on a long motor tour and finally get to a romantic spot or scene and draw up and remark to the wife, 'This is certainly a romantic place,' it sends a glow right up and down your vertebrae. Well, my guest to-day is from such a place, Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in the beautiful Southland, with memories of good old General Robert E. Lee and of that brave soul, John Brown who, like every good Booster, goes marching on--" There were two especially distinguished guests: the leading man of the "Bird of Paradise" company, playing this week at the Dodsworth Theater, and the mayor of Zenith, the Hon. Lucas Prout. Vergil Gunch thundered, "When we manage to grab this celebrated Thespian off his lovely aggregation of beautiful actresses--and I got to admit I butted right into his dressing-room and told him how the Boosters appreciated the high-class artistic performance he's giving us--and don't forget that the treasurer of the Dodsworth is a Booster and will appreciate our patronage--and when on top of that we yank Hizzonor out of his multifarious duties at City Hall, then I feel we've done ourselves proud, and Mr. Prout will now say a few words about the problems and duties--" By rising vote the Boosters decided which was the handsomest and which the ugliest guest, and to each of them was given a bunch of carnations, donated, President Gunch noted, by Brother Booster H. G. Yeager, the Jennifer Avenue florist. Each week, in rotation, four Boosters were privileged to obtain the pleasures of generosity and of publicity by donating goods or services to four fellow-members, chosen by lot. There was laughter, this week, when it was announced that one of the contributors was Barnabas Joy, the undertaker. Everybody whispered, "I can think of a coupla good guys to be buried if his donation is a free funeral!" Through all these diversions the Boosters were lunching on chicken croquettes, peas, fried potatoes, coffee, apple pie, and American cheese. Gunch did not lump the speeches. Presently he called on the visiting secretary of the Zenith Rotary Club, a rival organization. The secretary had the distinction of possessing State Motor Car License Number 5. The Rotary secretary laughingly admitted that wherever he drove in the state so low a number created a sensation, and "though it was pretty nice to have the honor, yet traffic cops remembered it only too darn well, and sometimes he didn't know but what he'd almost as soon have just plain B56,876 or something like that. Only let any doggone Booster try to get Number 5 away from a live Rotarian next year, and watch the fur fly! And if they'd permit him, he'd wind up by calling for a cheer for the Boosters and Rotarians and the Kiwanis all together!" Babbitt sighed to Professor Pumphrey, "Be pretty nice to have as low a number as that! Everybody 'd say, 'He must be an important guy!' Wonder how he got it? I'll bet he wined and dined the superintendent of the Motor License Bureau to a fare-you-well!" Then Chum Frink addressed them: "Some of you may feel that it's out of place here to talk on a strictly highbrow and artistic subject, but I want to come out flatfooted and ask you boys to O.K. the proposition of a Symphony Orchestra for Zenith. Now, where a lot of you make your mistake is in assuming that if you don't like classical music and all that junk, you ought to oppose it. Now, I want to confess that, though I'm a literary guy by profession, I don't care a rap for all this long-haired music. I'd rather listen to a good jazz band any time than to some piece by Beethoven that hasn't any more tune to it than a bunch of fighting cats, and you couldn't whistle it to save your life! But that isn't the point. Culture has become as necessary an adornment and advertisement for a city to-day as pavements or bank-clearances. It's Culture, in theaters and art-galleries and so on, that brings thousands of visitors to New York every year and, to be frank, for all our splendid attainments we haven't yet got the Culture of a New York or Chicago or Boston--or at least we don't get the credit for it. The thing to do then, as a live bunch of go-getters, is to CAPITALIZE CULTURE; to go right out and grab it. "Pictures and books are fine for those that have the time to study 'em, but they don't shoot out on the road and holler 'This is what little old Zenith can put up in the way of Culture.' That's precisely what a Symphony Orchestra does do. Look at the credit Minneapolis and Cincinnati get. An orchestra with first-class musickers and a swell conductor--and I believe we ought to do the thing up brown and get one of the highest-paid conductors on the market, providing he ain't a Hun--it goes right into Beantown and New York and Washington; it plays at the best theaters to the most cultured and moneyed people; it gives such class-advertising as a town can get in no other way; and the guy who is so short-sighted as to crab this orchestra proposition is passing up the chance to impress the glorious name of Zenith on some big New York millionaire that might-that might establish a branch factory here! "I could also go into the fact that for our daughters who show an interest in highbrow music and may want to teach it, having an A1 local organization is of great benefit, but let's keep this on a practical basis, and I call on you good brothers to whoop it up for Culture and a World-beating Symphony Orchestra!" They applauded. To a rustle of excitement President Gunch proclaimed, "Gentlemen, we will now proceed to the annual election of officers." For each of the six offices, three candidates had been chosen by a committee. The second name among the candidates for vice-president was Babbitt's. He was surprised. He looked self-conscious. His heart pounded. He was still more agitated when the ballots were counted and Gunch said, "It's a pleasure to announce that Georgie Babbitt will be the next assistant gavel-wielder. I know of no man who stands more stanchly for common sense and enterprise than good old George. Come on, let's give him our best long yell!" As they adjourned, a hundred men crushed in to slap his back. He had never known a higher moment. He drove away in a blur of wonder. He lunged into his office, chuckling to Miss McGoun, "Well, I guess you better congratulate your boss! Been elected vice-president of the Boosters!" He was disappointed. She answered only, "Yes--Oh, Mrs. Babbitt's been trying to get you on the 'phone." But the new salesman, Fritz Weilinger, said, "By golly, chief, say, that's great, that's perfectly great! I'm tickled to death! Congratulations!" Babbitt called the house, and crowed to his wife, "Heard you were trying to get me, Myra. Say, you got to hand it to little Georgie, this time! Better talk careful! You are now addressing the vice-president of the Boosters' Club!" "Oh, Georgie--" "Pretty nice, huh? Willis Ijams is the new president, but when he's away, little ole Georgie takes the gavel and whoops 'em up and introduces the speakers--no matter if they're the governor himself--and--" "George! Listen!" "--It puts him in solid with big men like Doc Dilling and--" "George! Paul Riesling--" "Yes, sure, I'll 'phone Paul and let him know about it right away." "Georgie! LISTEN! Paul's in jail. He shot his wife, he shot Zilla, this noon. She may not live."

Chapter XXI

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xix-xxii

At the second March lunch of the Zenith Boosters' Club, after much mingling and Chum Frink's address about why Zenith must have a Symphony Orchestra in order to compete with New York and Boston, Babbitt is elected Vice President in the presence of Mayor Lucas Prout. Having never known a "higher moment" , he returns to work where, over the phone, Myra informs him that Paul is in jail for shooting Zilla

In a passing, casual way, Lewis's allusion to the unethical deal that Babbitt makes with the Zenith Street Traction Company emphasizes the moral depravity indicated by the previous chapters on inadequate religion. Eathorne makes an off-the-books loan to Babbitt to complete the "triple-crossing" deal. In the past, Babbitt has been professionally dishonest, but he has always been able to convince himself that his actions were just. In this case, Babbitt acts in a way that he knows to be dishonest. He has fallen so far from his image of the Solid Citizen that he no longer upholds his former values and standards. Lewis's explanation that "In the midst of closing this splendid deal ... Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him" drives the nail into the coffin of this moral condemnation in that it reveals Babbitt's shameless hypocrisy. The focus of this section now shifts back to the relationship between Babbitt and Paul, who has an affair and is convicted of killing his wife on the grounds of temporary insanity. When Babbitt sees Paul at the table with May Arnold, his reaction is strongly negative. He has "so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he desperately that he must be diplomatic" . He finds May Arnold "doubtful" and " withered" and a "dried-up hag" . These feelings betray his jealousy. George is so persistent that he waits in Paul's hotel room for three hours in the middle of the night, reminding himself that he must be careful not to say "foolish dramatic things to Paul" . After a brief argument about morality upon Paul's return, Babbitt stands beside Paul, "patting his shoulder, making soft apologetic noises" . Later, in the cab on the way home, "Babbitt incredulously tears crowding into his eyes" . Reviewed together, all of these reactions indicate a possessiveness, intimacy, and depth of emotion that exceed the boundaries of a typical male friendship. Babbitt is more shaken by Paul's affair with May than he has been about anything else thus far. He does not even understand his emotions, since he realizes that the situation does not call for such anxiety and distress. The suggestion of a homoerotic attraction seems stronger now. This suggestion is strengthened by Babbitt's reaction to the news that Paul has been thrown in jail. In an act of selflessness of which he seems almost incapable, he offers to commit perjury in order to save his friend. He will not tolerate it if his friends or family discuss the event. When Paul is finally thrown in prison, Babbitt must confront "a world which, without Paul, meaningless" . It becomes clear now how much of Babbitt's life has really centered around Paul in a way that seems to surpass Babbitt's relationship even with his wife. Although extremely close male friendships do not have to be homoerotic, this one, on Babbitt's part, might be.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_5_part_4.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxii

chapter xxii

{"name": "Chapter XXII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xix-xxii", "summary": "Shocked, George drives to see Paul at the City Prison. He waits half an hour until 3:30, which is the designated visiting time, only to learn that Paul refuses to see him. George convinces Mayor Prout to issue an order to the warden to permit George to see Paul. Paul shows pained remorse for what he has done, recognizing that Zilla \"hasn't had too easy a time\" either, and explaining that he pulled a revolver on her when she started to nag at him. He did not mean to do it, and he hopes that she will not die. When Paul's lawyer, P. J. Maxwell, arrives, George steps out of the cell and does not return, because Maxwell has ordered the doctor to give Paul morphine. George drives to the City Hospital and learns that Zilla will not likely die. At home, he forbids his family from discussing the matter. After dinner, he visits Maxwell and offers to commit perjury in the courtroom--lying to claim Paul's innocence. Maxwell assures George that the most helpful thing he can do is keep \"strictly out of it\". The trial lasts only fifteen minutes, during which Paul is partially pardoned on account of temporary insanity and is sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary. Back at the office, Babbitt does not want to face \"a world which, without Paul, meaningless\"", "analysis": "In a passing, casual way, Lewis's allusion to the unethical deal that Babbitt makes with the Zenith Street Traction Company emphasizes the moral depravity indicated by the previous chapters on inadequate religion. Eathorne makes an off-the-books loan to Babbitt to complete the \"triple-crossing\" deal. In the past, Babbitt has been professionally dishonest, but he has always been able to convince himself that his actions were just. In this case, Babbitt acts in a way that he knows to be dishonest. He has fallen so far from his image of the Solid Citizen that he no longer upholds his former values and standards. Lewis's explanation that \"In the midst of closing this splendid deal ... Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him\" drives the nail into the coffin of this moral condemnation in that it reveals Babbitt's shameless hypocrisy. The focus of this section now shifts back to the relationship between Babbitt and Paul, who has an affair and is convicted of killing his wife on the grounds of temporary insanity. When Babbitt sees Paul at the table with May Arnold, his reaction is strongly negative. He has \"so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he desperately that he must be diplomatic\" . He finds May Arnold \"doubtful\" and \" withered\" and a \"dried-up hag\" . These feelings betray his jealousy. George is so persistent that he waits in Paul's hotel room for three hours in the middle of the night, reminding himself that he must be careful not to say \"foolish dramatic things to Paul\" . After a brief argument about morality upon Paul's return, Babbitt stands beside Paul, \"patting his shoulder, making soft apologetic noises\" . Later, in the cab on the way home, \"Babbitt incredulously tears crowding into his eyes\" . Reviewed together, all of these reactions indicate a possessiveness, intimacy, and depth of emotion that exceed the boundaries of a typical male friendship. Babbitt is more shaken by Paul's affair with May than he has been about anything else thus far. He does not even understand his emotions, since he realizes that the situation does not call for such anxiety and distress. The suggestion of a homoerotic attraction seems stronger now. This suggestion is strengthened by Babbitt's reaction to the news that Paul has been thrown in jail. In an act of selflessness of which he seems almost incapable, he offers to commit perjury in order to save his friend. He will not tolerate it if his friends or family discuss the event. When Paul is finally thrown in prison, Babbitt must confront \"a world which, without Paul, meaningless\" . It becomes clear now how much of Babbitt's life has really centered around Paul in a way that seems to surpass Babbitt's relationship even with his wife. Although extremely close male friendships do not have to be homoerotic, this one, on Babbitt's part, might be."}

I HE drove to the City Prison, not blindly, but with unusual fussy care at corners, the fussiness of an old woman potting plants. It kept him from facing the obscenity of fate. The attendant said, "Naw, you can't see any of the prisoners till three-thirty--visiting-hour." It was three. For half an hour Babbitt sat looking at a calendar and a clock on a whitewashed wall. The chair was hard and mean and creaky. People went through the office and, he thought, stared at him. He felt a belligerent defiance which broke into a wincing fear of this machine which was grinding Paul--Paul---- Exactly at half-past three he sent in his name. The attendant returned with "Riesling says he don't want to see you." "You're crazy! You didn't give him my name! Tell him it's George wants to see him, George Babbitt." "Yuh, I told him, all right, all right! He said he didn't want to see you." "Then take me in anyway." "Nothing doing. If you ain't his lawyer, if he don't want to see you, that's all there is to it." "But, my GOD--Say, let me see the warden." "He's busy. Come on, now, you--" Babbitt reared over him. The attendant hastily changed to a coaxing "You can come back and try to-morrow. Probably the poor guy is off his nut." Babbitt drove, not at all carefully or fussily, sliding viciously past trucks, ignoring the truckmen's curses, to the City Hall; he stopped with a grind of wheels against the curb, and ran up the marble steps to the office of the Hon. Mr. Lucas Prout, the mayor. He bribed the mayor's doorman with a dollar; he was instantly inside, demanding, "You remember me, Mr. Prout? Babbitt--vice-president of the Boosters--campaigned for you? Say, have you heard about poor Riesling? Well, I want an order on the warden or whatever you call um of the City Prison to take me back and see him. Good. Thanks." In fifteen minutes he was pounding down the prison corridor to a cage where Paul Riesling sat on a cot, twisted like an old beggar, legs crossed, arms in a knot, biting at his clenched fist. Paul looked up blankly as the keeper unlocked the cell, admitted Babbitt, and left them together. He spoke slowly: "Go on! Be moral!" Babbitt plumped on the couch beside him. "I'm not going to be moral! I don't care what happened! I just want to do anything I can. I'm glad Zilla got what was coming to her." Paul said argumentatively, "Now, don't go jumping on Zilla. I've been thinking; maybe she hasn't had any too easy a time. Just after I shot her--I didn't hardly mean to, but she got to deviling me so I went crazy, just for a second, and pulled out that old revolver you and I used to shoot rabbits with, and took a crack at her. Didn't hardly mean to--After that, when I was trying to stop the blood--It was terrible what it did to her shoulder, and she had beautiful skin--Maybe she won't die. I hope it won't leave her skin all scarred. But just afterward, when I was hunting through the bathroom for some cotton to stop the blood, I ran onto a little fuzzy yellow duck we hung on the tree one Christmas, and I remembered she and I'd been awfully happy then--Hell. I can't hardly believe it's me here." As Babbitt's arm tightened about his shoulder, Paul sighed, "I'm glad you came. But I thought maybe you'd lecture me, and when you've committed a murder, and been brought here and everything--there was a big crowd outside the apartment house, all staring, and the cops took me through it--Oh, I'm not going to talk about it any more." But he went on, in a monotonous, terrified insane mumble. To divert him Babbitt said, "Why, you got a scar on your cheek." "Yes. That's where the cop hit me. I suppose cops get a lot of fun out of lecturing murderers, too. He was a big fellow. And they wouldn't let me help carry Zilla down to the ambulance." "Paul! Quit it! Listen: she won't die, and when it's all over you and I'll go off to Maine again. And maybe we can get that May Arnold to go along. I'll go up to Chicago and ask her. Good woman, by golly. And afterwards I'll see that you get started in business out West somewhere, maybe Seattle--they say that's a lovely city." Paul was half smiling. It was Babbitt who rambled now. He could not tell whether Paul was heeding, but he droned on till the coming of Paul's lawyer, P. J. Maxwell, a thin, busy, unfriendly man who nodded at Babbitt and hinted, "If Riesling and I could be alone for a moment--" Babbitt wrung Paul's hands, and waited in the office till Maxwell came pattering out. "Look, old man, what can I do?" he begged. "Nothing. Not a thing. Not just now," said Maxwell. "Sorry. Got to hurry. And don't try to see him. I've had the doctor give him a shot of morphine, so he'll sleep." It seemed somehow wicked to return to the office. Babbitt felt as though he had just come from a funeral. He drifted out to the City Hospital to inquire about Zilla. She was not likely to die, he learned. The bullet from Paul's huge old .44 army revolver had smashed her shoulder and torn upward and out. He wandered home and found his wife radiant with the horified interest we have in the tragedies of our friends. "Of course Paul isn't altogether to blame, but this is what comes of his chasing after other women instead of bearing his cross in a Christian way," she exulted. He was too languid to respond as he desired. He said what was to be said about the Christian bearing of crosses, and went out to clean the car. Dully, patiently, he scraped linty grease from the drip-pan, gouged at the mud caked on the wheels. He used up many minutes in washing his hands; scoured them with gritty kitchen soap; rejoiced in hurting his plump knuckles. "Damn soft hands--like a woman's. Aah!" At dinner, when his wife began the inevitable, he bellowed, "I forbid any of you to say a word about Paul! I'll 'tend to all the talking about this that's necessary, hear me? There's going to be one house in this scandal-mongering town to-night that isn't going to spring the holier-than-thou. And throw those filthy evening papers out of the house!" But he himself read the papers, after dinner. Before nine he set out for the house of Lawyer Maxwell. He was received without cordiality. "Well?" said Maxwell. "I want to offer my services in the trial. I've got an idea. Why couldn't I go on the stand and swear I was there, and she pulled the gun first and he wrestled with her and the gun went off accidentally?" "And perjure yourself?" "Huh? Yes, I suppose it would be perjury. Oh--Would it help?" "But, my dear fellow! Perjury!" "Oh, don't be a fool! Excuse me, Maxwell; I didn't mean to get your goat. I just mean: I've known and you've known many and many a case of perjury, just to annex some rotten little piece of real estate, and here where it's a case of saving Paul from going to prison, I'd perjure myself black in the face." "No. Aside from the ethics of the matter, I'm afraid it isn't practicable. The prosecutor would tear your testimony to pieces. It's known that only Riesling and his wife were there at the time." "Then, look here! Let me go on the stand and swear--and this would be the God's truth--that she pestered him till he kind of went crazy." "No. Sorry. Riesling absolutely refuses to have any testimony reflecting on his wife. He insists on pleading guilty." "Then let me get up and testify something--whatever you say. Let me do SOMETHING!" "I'm sorry, Babbitt, but the best thing you can do--I hate to say it, but you could help us most by keeping strictly out of it." Babbitt, revolving his hat like a defaulting poor tenant, winced so visibly that Maxwell condescended: "I don't like to hurt your feelings, but you see we both want to do our best for Riesling, and we mustn't consider any other factor. The trouble with you, Babbitt, is that you're one of these fellows who talk too readily. You like to hear your own voice. If there were anything for which I could put you in the witness-box, you'd get going and give the whole show away. Sorry. Now I must look over some papers--So sorry." II He spent most of the next morning nerving himself to face the garrulous world of the Athletic Club. They would talk about Paul; they would be lip-licking and rotten. But at the Roughnecks' Table they did not mention Paul. They spoke with zeal of the coming baseball season. He loved them as he never had before. III He had, doubtless from some story-book, pictured Paul's trial as a long struggle, with bitter arguments, a taut crowd, and sudden and overwhelming new testimony. Actually, the trial occupied less than fifteen minutes, largely filled with the evidence of doctors that Zilla would recover and that Paul must have been temporarily insane. Next day Paul was sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary and taken off--quite undramatically, not handcuffed, merely plodding in a tired way beside a cheerful deputy sheriff--and after saying good-by to him at the station Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless.

Chapter XXII

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xix-xxii

Shocked, George drives to see Paul at the City Prison. He waits half an hour until 3:30, which is the designated visiting time, only to learn that Paul refuses to see him. George convinces Mayor Prout to issue an order to the warden to permit George to see Paul. Paul shows pained remorse for what he has done, recognizing that Zilla "hasn't had too easy a time" either, and explaining that he pulled a revolver on her when she started to nag at him. He did not mean to do it, and he hopes that she will not die. When Paul's lawyer, P. J. Maxwell, arrives, George steps out of the cell and does not return, because Maxwell has ordered the doctor to give Paul morphine. George drives to the City Hospital and learns that Zilla will not likely die. At home, he forbids his family from discussing the matter. After dinner, he visits Maxwell and offers to commit perjury in the courtroom--lying to claim Paul's innocence. Maxwell assures George that the most helpful thing he can do is keep "strictly out of it". The trial lasts only fifteen minutes, during which Paul is partially pardoned on account of temporary insanity and is sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary. Back at the office, Babbitt does not want to face "a world which, without Paul, meaningless"

In a passing, casual way, Lewis's allusion to the unethical deal that Babbitt makes with the Zenith Street Traction Company emphasizes the moral depravity indicated by the previous chapters on inadequate religion. Eathorne makes an off-the-books loan to Babbitt to complete the "triple-crossing" deal. In the past, Babbitt has been professionally dishonest, but he has always been able to convince himself that his actions were just. In this case, Babbitt acts in a way that he knows to be dishonest. He has fallen so far from his image of the Solid Citizen that he no longer upholds his former values and standards. Lewis's explanation that "In the midst of closing this splendid deal ... Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him" drives the nail into the coffin of this moral condemnation in that it reveals Babbitt's shameless hypocrisy. The focus of this section now shifts back to the relationship between Babbitt and Paul, who has an affair and is convicted of killing his wife on the grounds of temporary insanity. When Babbitt sees Paul at the table with May Arnold, his reaction is strongly negative. He has "so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he desperately that he must be diplomatic" . He finds May Arnold "doubtful" and " withered" and a "dried-up hag" . These feelings betray his jealousy. George is so persistent that he waits in Paul's hotel room for three hours in the middle of the night, reminding himself that he must be careful not to say "foolish dramatic things to Paul" . After a brief argument about morality upon Paul's return, Babbitt stands beside Paul, "patting his shoulder, making soft apologetic noises" . Later, in the cab on the way home, "Babbitt incredulously tears crowding into his eyes" . Reviewed together, all of these reactions indicate a possessiveness, intimacy, and depth of emotion that exceed the boundaries of a typical male friendship. Babbitt is more shaken by Paul's affair with May than he has been about anything else thus far. He does not even understand his emotions, since he realizes that the situation does not call for such anxiety and distress. The suggestion of a homoerotic attraction seems stronger now. This suggestion is strengthened by Babbitt's reaction to the news that Paul has been thrown in jail. In an act of selflessness of which he seems almost incapable, he offers to commit perjury in order to save his friend. He will not tolerate it if his friends or family discuss the event. When Paul is finally thrown in prison, Babbitt must confront "a world which, without Paul, meaningless" . It becomes clear now how much of Babbitt's life has really centered around Paul in a way that seems to surpass Babbitt's relationship even with his wife. Although extremely close male friendships do not have to be homoerotic, this one, on Babbitt's part, might be.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/23.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_6_part_1.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxiii

chapter xxiii

{"name": "Chapter XXIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxiii-xxvi", "summary": "In June, Myra and Tinka Babbitt travel to visit relatives. On one night when Ted and Verona are both out, George has the house to himself. Unsure what to do with this unusual freedom, he again feels a \"discontent with the good common ways\". As he broods, Chum Frink walks by the house, drunk, calling George a fool and wallowing in self-pity for the writer that he could have been but will never be. Suddenly, George is struck with the sense that \"all life as he knew it and vigorously practiced it was futile\". He questions his desires for wealth and social position and falls asleep thinking of pretty young women, sensing that he is making a \"terrifying, thrilling break from everything that decent and moral\". The next day, he leaves the office to see a mid-day movie. Later that evening, Babbitt attends a Sunday dinner hosted by Eddie Swanson. There, he flirts with Louetta Swanson, who appreciates his compliments and dances with him--but she ultimately rejects him", "analysis": "Until this point in the novel, Babbitt has wavered between a sense of commitment to the value system to which he has subscribed throughout the entirety of his adult life and the growing sense of unrest and dissatisfaction that urges him to seek something new and more exciting. He has approached the edge of the board several times, but he has never made the jump. Now, two conversations have the cumulative effect of propelling him forth into the rebellion that briefly wreaks havoc in his life. The first of these conversations is the one that he has with an intoxicated Chum Frink. Late one night, Frink passes by the Babbitt house, calling George a fool and explaining that he is a \"traitor to poetry\" , bemoaning the loss of his potential and imagining what he could have been. With the words \"Could have written - Too late!\" he runs off, and Babbitt is left questioning the wealth and social position that he has been striving to attain. For the first time, he is able to identify his longings . He suddenly feels as though he has \"found something in life, and that he made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal\" . Thus, he follows through with the break the next day, when he not only notices but also obeys his desire to leave work and catch a midday movie. Then, at a dinner hosted by Eddie Swanson, he flirts with Louetta. He also flirts with Tanis Judique and kisses Ida Putiak after taking her on a date. In the span of a few days, he has pursued several women who appeal to him, which is a far more active approach to understanding and doing what he wants than he has ever taken. All of these thoughts, feelings, and actions testify to the complete change that Babbitt feels just on the verge of making. It is not until he speaks with Seneca Doane, however, that Babbitt is able to make this leap completely. Doane reminds Babbitt of his former potential as a liberal student at the State University, when Babbitt had intended to do work very similar to Doane's. In fact, Babbitt had actually been an inspiration to Doane. This confrontation with his own lost ideals and failed potential is what finally motivates Babbitt to adopt the new lifestyle that he has been seeking since the beginning of the book. Like a young, naive student back in college, he seems to think that nothing but complete rebellion can quench the thirst that he has for excitement and fulfillment. Not even his solitary trip to the woods could restore him. In fact, he is out of his element in the woods, unable to deactivate his restless mind and realizing he can \"never run away from himself.\" Nature is too natural and not wild enough. He returns home, vowing to \"'start something'\" . In an uncharacteristic moment, he follows through on his decision to act."}

I HE was busy, from March to June. He kept himself from the bewilderment of thinking. His wife and the neighbors were generous. Every evening he played bridge or attended the movies, and the days were blank of face and silent. In June, Mrs. Babbitt and Tinka went East, to stay with relatives, and Babbitt was free to do--he was not quite sure what. All day long after their departure he thought of the emancipated house in which he could, if he desired, go mad and curse the gods without having to keep up a husbandly front. He considered, "I could have a reg'lar party to-night; stay out till two and not do any explaining afterwards. Cheers!" He telephoned to Vergil Gunch, to Eddie Swanson. Both of them were engaged for the evening, and suddenly he was bored by having to take so much trouble to be riotous. He was silent at dinner, unusually kindly to Ted and Verona, hesitating but not disapproving when Verona stated her opinion of Kenneth Escott's opinion of Dr. John Jennison Drew's opinion of the opinions of the evolutionists. Ted was working in a garage through the summer vacation, and he related his daily triumphs: how he had found a cracked ball-race, what he had said to the Old Grouch, what he had said to the foreman about the future of wireless telephony. Ted and Verona went to a dance after dinner. Even the maid was out. Rarely had Babbitt been alone in the house for an entire evening. He was restless. He vaguely wanted something more diverting than the newspaper comic strips to read. He ambled up to Verona's room, sat on her maidenly blue and white bed, humming and grunting in a solid-citizen manner as he examined her books: Conrad's "Rescue," a volume strangely named "Figures of Earth," poetry (quite irregular poetry, Babbitt thought) by Vachel Lindsay, and essays by H. L. Mencken--highly improper essays, making fun of the church and all the decencies. He liked none of the books. In them he felt a spirit of rebellion against niceness and solid-citizenship. These authors--and he supposed they were famous ones, too--did not seem to care about telling a good story which would enable a fellow to forget his troubles. He sighed. He noted a book, "The Three Black Pennies," by Joseph Hergesheimer. Ah, that was something like it! It would be an adventure story, maybe about counterfeiting--detectives sneaking up on the old house at night. He tucked the book under his arm, he clumped down-stairs and solemnly began to read, under the piano-lamp: "A twilight like blue dust sifted into the shallow fold of the thickly wooded hills. It was early October, but a crisping frost had already stamped the maple trees with gold, the Spanish oaks were hung with patches of wine red, the sumach was brilliant in the darkening underbrush. A pattern of wild geese, flying low and unconcerned above the hills, wavered against the serene ashen evening. Howat Penny, standing in the comparative clearing of a road, decided that the shifting regular flight would not come close enough for a shot.... He had no intention of hunting the geese. With the drooping of day his keenness had evaporated; an habitual indifference strengthened, permeating him...." There it was again: discontent with the good common ways. Babbitt laid down the book and listened to the stillness. The inner doors of the house were open. He heard from the kitchen the steady drip of the refrigerator, a rhythm demanding and disquieting. He roamed to the window. The summer evening was foggy and, seen through the wire screen, the street lamps were crosses of pale fire. The whole world was abnormal. While he brooded, Verona and Ted came in and went up to bed. Silence thickened in the sleeping house. He put on his hat, his respectable derby, lighted a cigar, and walked up and down before the house, a portly, worthy, unimaginative figure, humming "Silver Threads among the Gold." He casually considered, "Might call up Paul." Then he remembered. He saw Paul in a jailbird's uniform, but while he agonized he didn't believe the tale. It was part of the unreality of this fog-enchanted evening. If she were here Myra would be hinting, "Isn't it late, Georgie?" He tramped in forlorn and unwanted freedom. Fog hid the house now. The world was uncreated, a chaos without turmoil or desire. Through the mist came a man at so feverish a pace that he seemed to dance with fury as he entered the orb of glow from a street-lamp. At each step he brandished his stick and brought it down with a crash. His glasses on their broad pretentious ribbon banged against his stomach. Babbitt incredulously saw that it was Chum Frink. Frink stopped, focused his vision, and spoke with gravity: "There's another fool. George Babbitt. Lives for renting howshes--houses. Know who I am? I'm traitor to poetry. I'm drunk. I'm talking too much. I don't care. Know what I could 've been? I could 've been a Gene Field or a James Whitcomb Riley. Maybe a Stevenson. I could 've. Whimsies. 'Magination. Lissen. Lissen to this. Just made it up: Glittering summery meadowy noise Of beetles and bums and respectable boys. Hear that? Whimzh--whimsy. I made that up. I don't know what it means! Beginning good verse. Chile's Garden Verses. And whadi write? Tripe! Cheer-up poems. All tripe! Could have written--Too late!" He darted on with an alarming plunge, seeming always to pitch forward yet never quite falling. Babbitt would have been no more astonished and no less had a ghost skipped out of the fog carrying his head. He accepted Frink with vast apathy; he grunted, "Poor boob!" and straightway forgot him. He plodded into the house, deliberately went to the refrigerator and rifled it. When Mrs. Babbitt was at home, this was one of the major household crimes. He stood before the covered laundry tubs, eating a chicken leg and half a saucer of raspberry jelly, and grumbling over a clammy cold boiled potato. He was thinking. It was coming to him that perhaps all life as he knew it and vigorously practised it was futile; that heaven as portrayed by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew was neither probable nor very interesting; that he hadn't much pleasure out of making money; that it was of doubtful worth to rear children merely that they might rear children who would rear children. What was it all about? What did he want? He blundered into the living-room, lay on the davenport, hands behind his head. What did he want? Wealth? Social position? Travel? Servants? Yes, but only incidentally. "I give it up," he sighed. But he did know that he wanted the presence of Paul Riesling; and from that he stumbled into the admission that he wanted the fairy girl--in the flesh. If there had been a woman whom he loved, he would have fled to her, humbled his forehead on her knees. He thought of his stenographer, Miss McGoun. He thought of the prettiest of the manicure girls at the Hotel Thornleigh barber shop. As he fell asleep on the davenport he felt that he had found something in life, and that he had made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal. II He had forgotten, next morning, that he was a conscious rebel, but he was irritable in the office and at the eleven o'clock drive of telephone calls and visitors he did something he had often desired and never dared: he left the office without excuses to those slave-drivers his employees, and went to the movies. He enjoyed the right to be alone. He came out with a vicious determination to do what he pleased. As he approached the Roughnecks' Table at the club, everybody laughed. "Well, here's the millionaire!" said Sidney Finkelstein. "Yes, I saw him in his Locomobile!" said Professor Pumphrey. "Gosh, it must be great to be a smart guy like Georgie!" moaned Vergil Gunch. "He's probably stolen all of Dorchester. I'd hate to leave a poor little defenseless piece of property lying around where he could get his hooks on it!" They had, Babbitt perceived, "something on him." Also, they "had their kidding clothes on." Ordinarily he would have been delighted at the honor implied in being chaffed, but he was suddenly touchy. He grunted, "Yuh, sure; maybe I'll take you guys on as office boys!" He was impatient as the jest elaborately rolled on to its denouement. "Of course he may have been meeting a girl," they said, and "No, I think he was waiting for his old roommate, Sir Jerusalem Doak." He exploded, "Oh, spring it, spring it, you boneheads! What's the great joke?" "Hurray! George is peeved!" snickered Sidney Finkelstein, while a grin went round the table. Gunch revealed the shocking truth: He had seen Babbitt coming out of a motion-picture theater--at noon! They kept it up. With a hundred variations, a hundred guffaws, they said that he had gone to the movies during business-hours. He didn't so much mind Gunch, but he was annoyed by Sidney Finkelstein, that brisk, lean, red-headed explainer of jokes. He was bothered, too, by the lump of ice in his glass of water. It was too large; it spun round and burned his nose when he tried to drink. He raged that Finkelstein was like that lump of ice. But he won through; he kept up his banter till they grew tired of the superlative jest and turned to the great problems of the day. He reflected, "What's the matter with me to-day? Seems like I've got an awful grouch. Only they talk so darn much. But I better steer careful and keep my mouth shut." As they lighted their cigars he mumbled, "Got to get back," and on a chorus of "If you WILL go spending your mornings with lady ushers at the movies!" he escaped. He heard them giggling. He was embarrassed. While he was most bombastically agreeing with the coat-man that the weather was warm, he was conscious that he was longing to run childishly with his troubles to the comfort of the fairy child. III He kept Miss McGoun after he had finished dictating. He searched for a topic which would warm her office impersonality into friendliness. "Where you going on your vacation?" he purred. "I think I'll go up-state to a farm do you want me to have the Siddons lease copied this afternoon?" "Oh, no hurry about it.... I suppose you have a great time when you get away from us cranks in the office." She rose and gathered her pencils. "Oh, nobody's cranky here I think I can get it copied after I do the letters." She was gone. Babbitt utterly repudiated the view that he had been trying to discover how approachable was Miss McGoun. "Course! knew there was nothing doing!" he said. IV Eddie Swanson, the motor-car agent who lived across the street from Babbitt, was giving a Sunday supper. His wife Louetta, young Louetta who loved jazz in music and in clothes and laughter, was at her wildest. She cried, "We'll have a real party!" as she received the guests. Babbitt had uneasily felt that to many men she might be alluring; now he admitted that to himself she was overwhelmingly alluring. Mrs. Babbitt had never quite approved of Louetta; Babbitt was glad that she was not here this evening. He insisted on helping Louetta in the kitchen: taking the chicken croquettes from the warming-oven, the lettuce sandwiches from the ice-box. He held her hand, once, and she depressingly didn't notice it. She caroled, "You're a good little mother's-helper, Georgie. Now trot in with the tray and leave it on the side-table." He wished that Eddie Swanson would give them cocktails; that Louetta would have one. He wanted--Oh, he wanted to be one of these Bohemians you read about. Studio parties. Wild lovely girls who were independent. Not necessarily bad. Certainly not! But not tame, like Floral Heights. How he'd ever stood it all these years-- Eddie did not give them cocktails. True, they supped with mirth, and with several repetitions by Orville Jones of "Any time Louetta wants to come sit on my lap I'll tell this sandwich to beat it!" but they were respectable, as befitted Sunday evening. Babbitt had discreetly preempted a place beside Louetta on the piano bench. While he talked about motors, while he listened with a fixed smile to her account of the film she had seen last Wednesday, while he hoped that she would hurry up and finish her description of the plot, the beauty of the leading man, and the luxury of the setting, he studied her. Slim waist girdled with raw silk, strong brows, ardent eyes, hair parted above a broad forehead--she meant youth to him and a charm which saddened. He thought of how valiant a companion she would be on a long motor tour, exploring mountains, picnicking in a pine grove high above a valley. Her frailness touched him; he was angry at Eddie Swanson for the incessant family bickering. All at once he identified Louetta with the fairy girl. He was startled by the conviction that they had always had a romantic attraction for each other. "I suppose you're leading a simply terrible life, now you're a widower," she said. "You bet! I'm a bad little fellow and proud of it. Some evening you slip Eddie some dope in his coffee and sneak across the road and I'll show you how to mix a cocktail," he roared. "Well, now, I might do it! You never can tell!" "Well, whenever you're ready, you just hang a towel out of the attic window and I'll jump for the gin!" Every one giggled at this naughtiness. In a pleased way Eddie Swanson stated that he would have a physician analyze his coffee daily. The others were diverted to a discussion of the more agreeable recent murders, but Babbitt drew Louetta back to personal things: "That's the prettiest dress I ever saw in my life." "Do you honestly like it?" "Like it? Why, say, I'm going to have Kenneth Escott put a piece in the paper saying that the swellest dressed woman in the U. S. is Mrs. E. Louetta Swanson." "Now, you stop teasing me!" But she beamed. "Let's dance a little. George, you've got to dance with me." Even as he protested, "Oh, you know what a rotten dancer I am!" he was lumbering to his feet. "I'll teach you. I can teach anybody." Her eyes were moist, her voice was jagged with excitement. He was convinced that he had won her. He clasped her, conscious of her smooth warmth, and solemnly he circled in a heavy version of the one-step. He bumped into only one or two people. "Gosh, I'm not doing so bad; hittin' 'em up like a regular stage dancer!" he gloated; and she answered busily, "Yes--yes--I told you I could teach anybody--DON'T TAKE SUCH LONG STEPS!" For a moment he was robbed of confidence; with fearful concentration he sought to keep time to the music. But he was enveloped again by her enchantment. "She's got to like me; I'll make her!" he vowed. He tried to kiss the lock beside her ear. She mechanically moved her head to avoid it, and mechanically she murmured, "Don't!" For a moment he hated her, but after the moment he was as urgent as ever. He danced with Mrs. Orville Jones, but he watched Louetta swooping down the length of the room with her husband. "Careful! You're getting foolish!" he cautioned himself, the while he hopped and bent his solid knees in dalliance with Mrs. Jones, and to that worthy lady rumbled, "Gee, it's hot!" Without reason, he thought of Paul in that shadowy place where men never dance. "I'm crazy to-night; better go home," he worried, but he left Mrs. Jones and dashed to Louetta's lovely side, demanding, "The next is mine." "Oh, I'm so hot; I'm not going to dance this one." "Then," boldly, "come out and sit on the porch and get all nice and cool." "Well--" In the tender darkness, with the clamor in the house behind them, he resolutely took her hand. She squeezed his once, then relaxed. "Louetta! I think you're the nicest thing I know!" "Well, I think you're very nice." "Do you? You got to like me! I'm so lonely!" "Oh, you'll be all right when your wife comes home." "No, I'm always lonely." She clasped her hands under her chin, so that he dared not touch her. He sighed: "When I feel punk and--" He was about to bring in the tragedy of Paul, but that was too sacred even for the diplomacy of love. "--when I get tired out at the office and everything, I like to look across the street and think of you. Do you know I dreamed of you, one time!" "Was it a nice dream?" "Lovely!" "Oh, well, they say dreams go by opposites! Now I must run in." She was on her feet. "Oh, don't go in yet! Please, Louetta!" "Yes, I must. Have to look out for my guests." "Let 'em look out for 'emselves!" "I couldn't do that." She carelessly tapped his shoulder and slipped away. But after two minutes of shamed and childish longing to sneak home he was snorting, "Certainly I wasn't trying to get chummy with her! Knew there was nothing doing, all the time!" and he ambled in to dance with Mrs. Orville Jones, and to avoid Louetta, virtuously and conspicuously.

Chapter XXIII

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxiii-xxvi

In June, Myra and Tinka Babbitt travel to visit relatives. On one night when Ted and Verona are both out, George has the house to himself. Unsure what to do with this unusual freedom, he again feels a "discontent with the good common ways". As he broods, Chum Frink walks by the house, drunk, calling George a fool and wallowing in self-pity for the writer that he could have been but will never be. Suddenly, George is struck with the sense that "all life as he knew it and vigorously practiced it was futile". He questions his desires for wealth and social position and falls asleep thinking of pretty young women, sensing that he is making a "terrifying, thrilling break from everything that decent and moral". The next day, he leaves the office to see a mid-day movie. Later that evening, Babbitt attends a Sunday dinner hosted by Eddie Swanson. There, he flirts with Louetta Swanson, who appreciates his compliments and dances with him--but she ultimately rejects him

Until this point in the novel, Babbitt has wavered between a sense of commitment to the value system to which he has subscribed throughout the entirety of his adult life and the growing sense of unrest and dissatisfaction that urges him to seek something new and more exciting. He has approached the edge of the board several times, but he has never made the jump. Now, two conversations have the cumulative effect of propelling him forth into the rebellion that briefly wreaks havoc in his life. The first of these conversations is the one that he has with an intoxicated Chum Frink. Late one night, Frink passes by the Babbitt house, calling George a fool and explaining that he is a "traitor to poetry" , bemoaning the loss of his potential and imagining what he could have been. With the words "Could have written - Too late!" he runs off, and Babbitt is left questioning the wealth and social position that he has been striving to attain. For the first time, he is able to identify his longings . He suddenly feels as though he has "found something in life, and that he made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal" . Thus, he follows through with the break the next day, when he not only notices but also obeys his desire to leave work and catch a midday movie. Then, at a dinner hosted by Eddie Swanson, he flirts with Louetta. He also flirts with Tanis Judique and kisses Ida Putiak after taking her on a date. In the span of a few days, he has pursued several women who appeal to him, which is a far more active approach to understanding and doing what he wants than he has ever taken. All of these thoughts, feelings, and actions testify to the complete change that Babbitt feels just on the verge of making. It is not until he speaks with Seneca Doane, however, that Babbitt is able to make this leap completely. Doane reminds Babbitt of his former potential as a liberal student at the State University, when Babbitt had intended to do work very similar to Doane's. In fact, Babbitt had actually been an inspiration to Doane. This confrontation with his own lost ideals and failed potential is what finally motivates Babbitt to adopt the new lifestyle that he has been seeking since the beginning of the book. Like a young, naive student back in college, he seems to think that nothing but complete rebellion can quench the thirst that he has for excitement and fulfillment. Not even his solitary trip to the woods could restore him. In fact, he is out of his element in the woods, unable to deactivate his restless mind and realizing he can "never run away from himself." Nature is too natural and not wild enough. He returns home, vowing to "'start something'" . In an uncharacteristic moment, he follows through on his decision to act.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_6_part_2.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxiv

chapter xxiv

{"name": "Chapter XXIV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxiii-xxvi", "summary": "Babbitt visits Paul in prison, understanding that he \" already dead\" emotionally. Back at the office, Mrs. Tanis Judique, a pretty middle-aged widow, seeks George's expertise in finding a flat. Nervously attracted by her smartness\" , Babbitt offers her a new apartment that he has been holding for Sidney Finkelstein. She decides to buy it. In the car, he flirts with her and pursues her casual offer to give him dancing lessons. Although he senses that he can put his arm around her, he rebukes himself and takes her home with \"excessive politeness\" , later regretting that he missed his chance with such an alluring woman. George finds himself increasingly attracted to young women, such as the manicurist at the Pompeian Barber Shop, Ida Putiak. He goes there and gets a manicure so that he can talk to her. He finds her enchanting and successfully invites her on a dinner date. That evening, his car breaks dow, so he picks Ida up in a taxi. After dinner, he is able to kiss her in the taxi on the way home, but she refuses to extend their date, so George is left feeling rejected and ashamed", "analysis": "Until this point in the novel, Babbitt has wavered between a sense of commitment to the value system to which he has subscribed throughout the entirety of his adult life and the growing sense of unrest and dissatisfaction that urges him to seek something new and more exciting. He has approached the edge of the board several times, but he has never made the jump. Now, two conversations have the cumulative effect of propelling him forth into the rebellion that briefly wreaks havoc in his life. The first of these conversations is the one that he has with an intoxicated Chum Frink. Late one night, Frink passes by the Babbitt house, calling George a fool and explaining that he is a \"traitor to poetry\" , bemoaning the loss of his potential and imagining what he could have been. With the words \"Could have written - Too late!\" he runs off, and Babbitt is left questioning the wealth and social position that he has been striving to attain. For the first time, he is able to identify his longings . He suddenly feels as though he has \"found something in life, and that he made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal\" . Thus, he follows through with the break the next day, when he not only notices but also obeys his desire to leave work and catch a midday movie. Then, at a dinner hosted by Eddie Swanson, he flirts with Louetta. He also flirts with Tanis Judique and kisses Ida Putiak after taking her on a date. In the span of a few days, he has pursued several women who appeal to him, which is a far more active approach to understanding and doing what he wants than he has ever taken. All of these thoughts, feelings, and actions testify to the complete change that Babbitt feels just on the verge of making. It is not until he speaks with Seneca Doane, however, that Babbitt is able to make this leap completely. Doane reminds Babbitt of his former potential as a liberal student at the State University, when Babbitt had intended to do work very similar to Doane's. In fact, Babbitt had actually been an inspiration to Doane. This confrontation with his own lost ideals and failed potential is what finally motivates Babbitt to adopt the new lifestyle that he has been seeking since the beginning of the book. Like a young, naive student back in college, he seems to think that nothing but complete rebellion can quench the thirst that he has for excitement and fulfillment. Not even his solitary trip to the woods could restore him. In fact, he is out of his element in the woods, unable to deactivate his restless mind and realizing he can \"never run away from himself.\" Nature is too natural and not wild enough. He returns home, vowing to \"'start something'\" . In an uncharacteristic moment, he follows through on his decision to act."}

I HIS visit to Paul was as unreal as his night of fog and questioning. Unseeing he went through prison corridors stinking of carbolic acid to a room lined with pale yellow settees pierced in rosettes, like the shoe-store benches he had known as a boy. The guard led in Paul. Above his uniform of linty gray, Paul's face was pale and without expression. He moved timorously in response to the guard's commands; he meekly pushed Babbitt's gifts of tobacco and magazines across the table to the guard for examination. He had nothing to say but "Oh, I'm getting used to it" and "I'm working in the tailor shop; the stuff hurts my fingers." Babbitt knew that in this place of death Paul was already dead. And as he pondered on the train home something in his own self seemed to have died: a loyal and vigorous faith in the goodness of the world, a fear of public disfavor, a pride in success. He was glad that his wife was away. He admitted it without justifying it. He did not care. II Her card read "Mrs. Daniel Judique." Babbitt knew of her as the widow of a wholesale paper-dealer. She must have been forty or forty-two but he thought her younger when he saw her in the office, that afternoon. She had come to inquire about renting an apartment, and he took her away from the unskilled girl accountant. He was nervously attracted by her smartness. She was a slender woman, in a black Swiss frock dotted with white, a cool-looking graceful frock. A broad black hat shaded her face. Her eyes were lustrous, her soft chin of an agreeable plumpness, and her cheeks an even rose. Babbitt wondered afterward if she was made up, but no man living knew less of such arts. She sat revolving her violet parasol. Her voice was appealing without being coy. "I wonder if you can help me?" "Be delighted." "I've looked everywhere and--I want a little flat, just a bedroom, or perhaps two, and sitting-room and kitchenette and bath, but I want one that really has some charm to it, not these dingy places or these new ones with terrible gaudy chandeliers. And I can't pay so dreadfully much. My name's Tanis Judique." "I think maybe I've got just the thing for you. Would you like to chase around and look at it now?" "Yes. I have a couple of hours." In the new Cavendish Apartments, Babbitt had a flat which he had been holding for Sidney Finkelstein, but at the thought of driving beside this agreeable woman he threw over his friend Finkelstein, and with a note of gallantry he proclaimed, "I'll let you see what I can do!" He dusted the seat of the car for her, and twice he risked death in showing off his driving. "You do know how to handle a car!" she said. He liked her voice. There was, he thought, music in it and a hint of culture, not a bouncing giggle like Louetta Swanson's. He boasted, "You know, there's a lot of these fellows that are so scared and drive so slow that they get in everybody's way. The safest driver is a fellow that knows how to handle his machine and yet isn't scared to speed up when it's necessary, don't you think so?" "Oh, yes!" "I bet you drive like a wiz." "Oh, no--I mean--not really. Of course, we had a car--I mean, before my husband passed on--and I used to make believe drive it, but I don't think any woman ever learns to drive like a man." "Well, now, there's some mighty good woman drivers." "Oh, of course, these women that try to imitate men, and play golf and everything, and ruin their complexions and spoil their hands!" "That's so. I never did like these mannish females." "I mean--of course, I admire them, dreadfully, and I feel so weak and useless beside them." "Oh, rats now! I bet you play the piano like a wiz." "Oh, no--I mean--not really." "Well, I'll bet you do!" He glanced at her smooth hands, her diamond and ruby rings. She caught the glance, snuggled her hands together with a kittenish curving of slim white fingers which delighted him, and yearned: "I do love to play--I mean--I like to drum on the piano, but I haven't had any real training. Mr. Judique used to say I would 've been a good pianist if I'd had any training, but then, I guess he was just flattering me." "I'll bet he wasn't! I'll bet you've got temperament." "Oh--Do you like music, Mr Babbitt?" "You bet I do! Only I don't know 's I care so much for all this classical stuff." "Oh, I do! I just love Chopin and all those." "Do you, honest? Well, of course, I go to lots of these highbrow concerts, but I do like a good jazz orchestra, right up on its toes, with the fellow that plays the bass fiddle spinning it around and beating it up with the bow." "Oh, I know. I do love good dance music. I love to dance, don't you, Mr. Babbitt?" "Sure, you bet. Not that I'm very darn good at it, though." "Oh, I'm sure you are. You ought to let me teach you. I can teach anybody to dance." "Would you give me a lesson some time?" "Indeed I would." "Better be careful, or I'll be taking you up on that proposition. I'll be coming up to your flat and making you give me that lesson." "Ye-es." She was not offended, but she was non-committal. He warned himself, "Have some sense now, you chump! Don't go making a fool of yourself again!" and with loftiness he discoursed: "I wish I could dance like some of these young fellows, but I'll tell you: I feel it's a man's place to take a full, you might say, a creative share in the world's work and mold conditions and have something to show for his life, don't you think so?" "Oh, I do!" "And so I have to sacrifice some of the things I might like to tackle, though I do, by golly, play about as good a game of golf as the next fellow!" "Oh, I'm sure you do.... Are you married?" "Uh--yes.... And, uh, of course official duties I'm the vice-president of the Boosters' Club, and I'm running one of the committees of the State Association of Real Estate Boards, and that means a lot of work and responsibility--and practically no gratitude for it." "Oh, I know! Public men never do get proper credit." They looked at each other with a high degree of mutual respect, and at the Cavendish Apartments he helped her out in a courtly manner, waved his hand at the house as though he were presenting it to her, and ponderously ordered the elevator boy to "hustle and get the keys." She stood close to him in the elevator, and he was stirred but cautious. It was a pretty flat, of white woodwork and soft blue walls. Mrs. Judique gushed with pleasure as she agreed to take it, and as they walked down the hall to the elevator she touched his sleeve, caroling, "Oh, I'm so glad I went to you! It's such a privilege to meet a man who really Understands. Oh! The flats SOME people have showed me!" He had a sharp instinctive belief that he could put his arm around her, but he rebuked himself and with excessive politeness he saw her to the car, drove her home. All the way back to his office he raged: "Glad I had some sense for once.... Curse it, I wish I'd tried. She's a darling! A corker! A reg'lar charmer! Lovely eyes and darling lips and that trim waist--never get sloppy, like some women.... No, no, no! She's a real cultured lady. One of the brightest little women I've met these many moons. Understands about Public Topics and--But, darn it, why didn't I try? . . . Tanis!" III He was harassed and puzzled by it, but he found that he was turning toward youth, as youth. The girl who especially disturbed him--though he had never spoken to her--was the last manicure girl on the right in the Pompeian Barber Shop. She was small, swift, black-haired, smiling. She was nineteen, perhaps, or twenty. She wore thin salmon-colored blouses which exhibited her shoulders and her black-ribboned camisoles. He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly hair-trim. As always, he felt disloyal at deserting his neighbor, the Reeves Building Barber Shop. Then, for the first time, he overthrew his sense of guilt. "Doggone it, I don't have to go here if I don't want to! I don't own the Reeves Building! These barbers got nothing on me! I'll doggone well get my hair cut where I doggone well want to! Don't want to hear anything more about it! I'm through standing by people--unless I want to. It doesn't get you anywhere. I'm through!" The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the Hotel Thornleigh, largest and most dynamically modern hotel in Zenith. Curving marble steps with a rail of polished brass led from the hotel-lobby down to the barber shop. The interior was of black and white and crimson tiles, with a sensational ceiling of burnished gold, and a fountain in which a massive nymph forever emptied a scarlet cornucopia. Forty barbers and nine manicure girls worked desperately, and at the door six colored porters lurked to greet the customers, to care reverently for their hats and collars, to lead them to a place of waiting where, on a carpet like a tropic isle in the stretch of white stone floor, were a dozen leather chairs and a table heaped with magazines. Babbitt's porter was an obsequious gray-haired negro who did him an honor highly esteemed in the land of Zenith--greeted him by name. Yet Babbitt was unhappy. His bright particular manicure girl was engaged. She was doing the nails of an overdressed man and giggling with him. Babbitt hated him. He thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful system of the Pompeian was inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted into a chair. About him was luxury, rich and delicate. One votary was having a violet-ray facial treatment, the next an oil shampoo. Boys wheeled about miraculous electrical massage-machines. The barbers snatched steaming towels from a machine like a howitzer of polished nickel and disdainfully flung them away after a second's use. On the vast marble shelf facing the chairs were hundreds of tonics, amber and ruby and emerald. It was flattering to Babbitt to have two personal slaves at once--the barber and the bootblack. He would have been completely happy if he could also have had the manicure girl. The barber snipped at his hair and asked his opinion of the Havre de Grace races, the baseball season, and Mayor Prout. The young negro bootblack hummed "The Camp Meeting Blues" and polished in rhythm to his tune, drawing the shiny shoe-rag so taut at each stroke that it snapped like a banjo string. The barber was an excellent salesman. He made Babbitt feel rich and important by his manner of inquiring, "What is your favorite tonic, sir? Have you time to-day, sir, for a facial massage? Your scalp is a little tight; shall I give you a scalp massage?" Babbitt's best thrill was in the shampoo. The barber made his hair creamy with thick soap, then (as Babbitt bent over the bowl, muffled in towels) drenched it with hot water which prickled along his scalp, and at last ran the water ice-cold. At the shock, the sudden burning cold on his skull, Babbitt's heart thumped, his chest heaved, and his spine was an electric wire. It was a sensation which broke the monotony of life. He looked grandly about the shop as he sat up. The barber obsequiously rubbed his wet hair and bound it in a towel as in a turban, so that Babbitt resembled a plump pink calif on an ingenious and adjustable throne. The barber begged (in the manner of one who was a good fellow yet was overwhelmed by the splendors of the calif), "How about a little Eldorado Oil Rub, sir? Very beneficial to the scalp, sir. Didn't I give you one the last time?" He hadn't, but Babbitt agreed, "Well, all right." With quaking eagerness he saw that his manicure girl was free. "I don't know, I guess I'll have a manicure after all," he droned, and excitedly watched her coming, dark-haired, smiling, tender, little. The manicuring would have to be finished at her table, and he would be able to talk to her without the barber listening. He waited contentedly, not trying to peep at her, while she filed his nails and the barber shaved him and smeared on his burning cheeks all the interesting mixtures which the pleasant minds of barbers have devised through the revolving ages. When the barber was done and he sat opposite the girl at her table, he admired the marble slab of it, admired the sunken set bowl with its tiny silver taps, and admired himself for being able to frequent so costly a place. When she withdrew his wet hand from the bowl, it was so sensitive from the warm soapy water that he was abnormally aware of the clasp of her firm little paw. He delighted in the pinkness and glossiness of her nails. Her hands seemed to him more adorable than Mrs. Judique's thin fingers, and more elegant. He had a certain ecstasy in the pain when she gnawed at the cuticle of his nails with a sharp knife. He struggled not to look at the outline of her young bosom and her shoulders, the more apparent under a film of pink chiffon. He was conscious of her as an exquisite thing, and when he tried to impress his personality on her he spoke as awkwardly as a country boy at his first party: "Well, kinda hot to be working to-day." "Oh, yes, it is hot. You cut your own nails, last time, didn't you!" "Ye-es, guess I must 've." "You always ought to go to a manicure." "Yes, maybe that's so. I--" "There's nothing looks so nice as nails that are looked after good. I always think that's the best way to spot a real gent. There was an auto salesman in here yesterday that claimed you could always tell a fellow's class by the car he drove, but I says to him, 'Don't be silly,' I says; 'the wisenheimers grab a look at a fellow's nails when they want to tell if he's a tin-horn or a real gent!"' "Yes, maybe there's something to that. Course, that is--with a pretty kiddy like you, a man can't help coming to get his mitts done." "Yeh, I may be a kid, but I'm a wise bird, and I know nice folks when I see um--I can read character at a glance--and I'd never talk so frank with a fellow if I couldn't see he was a nice fellow." She smiled. Her eyes seemed to him as gentle as April pools. With great seriousness he informed himself that "there were some roughnecks who would think that just because a girl was a manicure girl and maybe not awful well educated, she was no good, but as for him, he was a democrat, and understood people," and he stood by the assertion that this was a fine girl, a good girl--but not too uncomfortably good. He inquired in a voice quick with sympathy: "I suppose you have a lot of fellows who try to get fresh with you." "Say, gee, do I! Say, listen, there's some of these cigar-store sports that think because a girl's working in a barber shop, they can get away with anything. The things they saaaaaay! But, believe me, I know how to hop those birds! I just give um the north and south and ask um, 'Say, who do you think you're talking to?' and they fade away like love's young nightmare and oh, don't you want a box of nail-paste? It will keep the nails as shiny as when first manicured, harmless to apply and lasts for days." "Sure, I'll try some. Say--Say, it's funny; I've been coming here ever since the shop opened and--" With arch surprise. "--I don't believe I know your name!" "Don't you? My, that's funny! I don't know yours!" "Now you quit kidding me! What's the nice little name?" "Oh, it ain't so darn nice. I guess it's kind of kike. But my folks ain't kikes. My papa's papa was a nobleman in Poland, and there was a gentleman in here one day, he was kind of a count or something--" "Kind of a no-account, I guess you mean!" "Who's telling this, smarty? And he said he knew my papa's papa's folks in Poland and they had a dandy big house. Right on a lake!" Doubtfully, "Maybe you don't believe it?" "Sure. No. Really. Sure I do. Why not? Don't think I'm kidding you, honey, but every time I've noticed you I've said to myself, 'That kid has Blue Blood in her veins!'" "Did you, honest?" "Honest I did. Well, well, come on--now we're friends--what's the darling little name?" "Ida Putiak. It ain't so much-a-much of a name. I always say to Ma, I say, 'Ma, why didn't you name me Doloress or something with some class to it?'" "Well, now, I think it's a scrumptious name. Ida!" "I bet I know your name!" "Well, now, not necessarily. Of course--Oh, it isn't so specially well known." "Aren't you Mr. Sondheim that travels for the Krackajack Kitchen Kutlery Ko.?" "I am not! I'm Mr. Babbitt, the real-estate broker!" "Oh, excuse me! Oh, of course. You mean here in Zenith." "Yep." With the briskness of one whose feelings have been hurt. "Oh, sure. I've read your ads. They're swell." "Um, well--You might have read about my speeches." "Course I have! I don't get much time to read but--I guess you think I'm an awfully silly little nit!" "I think you're a little darling!" "Well--There's one nice thing about this job. It gives a girl a chance to meet some awfully nice gentlemen and improve her mind with conversation, and you get so you can read a guy's character at the first glance." "Look here, Ida; please don't think I'm getting fresh--" He was hotly reflecting that it would be humiliating to be rejected by this child, and dangerous to be accepted. If he took her to dinner, if he were seen by censorious friends--But he went on ardently: "Don't think I'm getting fresh if I suggest it would be nice for us to go out and have a little dinner together some evening." "I don't know as I ought to but--My gentleman-friend's always wanting to take me out. But maybe I could to-night." IV There was no reason, he assured himself, why he shouldn't have a quiet dinner with a poor girl who would benefit by association with an educated and mature person like himself. But, lest some one see them and not understand, he would take her to Biddlemeier's Inn, on the outskirts of the city. They would have a pleasant drive, this hot lonely evening, and he might hold her hand--no, he wouldn't even do that. Ida was complaisant; her bare shoulders showed it only too clearly; but he'd be hanged if he'd make love to her merely because she expected it. Then his car broke down; something had happened to the ignition. And he HAD to have the car this evening! Furiously he tested the spark-plugs, stared at the commutator. His angriest glower did not seem to stir the sulky car, and in disgrace it was hauled off to a garage. With a renewed thrill he thought of a taxicab. There was something at once wealthy and interestingly wicked about a taxicab. But when he met her, on a corner two blocks from the Hotel Thornleigh, she said, "A taxi? Why, I thought you owned a car!" "I do. Of course I do! But it's out of commission to-night." "Oh," she remarked, as one who had heard that tale before. All the way out to Biddlemeier's Inn he tried to talk as an old friend, but he could not pierce the wall of her words. With interminable indignation she narrated her retorts to "that fresh head-barber" and the drastic things she would do to him if he persisted in saying that she was "better at gassing than at hoof-paring." At Biddlemeier's Inn they were unable to get anything to drink. The head-waiter refused to understand who George F. Babbitt was. They sat steaming before a vast mixed grill, and made conversation about baseball. When he tried to hold Ida's hand she said with bright friendliness, "Careful! That fresh waiter is rubbering." But they came out into a treacherous summer night, the air lazy and a little moon above transfigured maples. "Let's drive some other place, where we can get a drink and dance!" he demanded. "Sure, some other night. But I promised Ma I'd be home early to-night." "Rats! It's too nice to go home." "I'd just love to, but Ma would give me fits." He was trembling. She was everything that was young and exquisite. He put his arm about her. She snuggled against his shoulder, unafraid, and he was triumphant. Then she ran down the steps of the Inn, singing, "Come on, Georgie, we'll have a nice drive and get cool." It was a night of lovers. All along the highway into Zenith, under the low and gentle moon, motors were parked and dim figures were clasped in revery. He held out hungry hands to Ida, and when she patted them he was grateful. There was no sense of struggle and transition; he kissed her and simply she responded to his kiss, they two behind the stolid back of the chauffeur. Her hat fell off, and she broke from his embrace to reach for it. "Oh, let it be!" he implored. "Huh? My hat? Not a chance!" He waited till she had pinned it on, then his arm sank about her. She drew away from it, and said with maternal soothing, "Now, don't be a silly boy! Mustn't make Ittle Mama scold! Just sit back, dearie, and see what a swell night it is. If you're a good boy, maybe I'll kiss you when we say nighty-night. Now give me a cigarette." He was solicitous about lighting her cigarette and inquiring as to her comfort. Then he sat as far from her as possible. He was cold with failure. No one could have told Babbitt that he was a fool with more vigor, precision, and intelligence than he himself displayed. He reflected that from the standpoint of the Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew he was a wicked man, and from the standpoint of Miss Ida Putiak, an old bore who had to be endured as the penalty attached to eating a large dinner. "Dearie, you aren't going to go and get peevish, are you?" She spoke pertly. He wanted to spank her. He brooded, "I don't have to take anything off this gutter-pup! Darn immigrant! Well, let's get it over as quick as we can, and sneak home and kick ourselves for the rest of the night." He snorted, "Huh? Me peevish? Why, you baby, why should I be peevish? Now, listen, Ida; listen to Uncle George. I want to put you wise about this scrapping with your head-barber all the time. I've had a lot of experience with employees, and let me tell you it doesn't pay to antagonize--" At the drab wooden house in which she lived he said good-night briefly and amiably, but as the taxicab drove off he was praying "Oh, my God!"

Chapter XXIV

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxiii-xxvi

Babbitt visits Paul in prison, understanding that he " already dead" emotionally. Back at the office, Mrs. Tanis Judique, a pretty middle-aged widow, seeks George's expertise in finding a flat. Nervously attracted by her smartness" , Babbitt offers her a new apartment that he has been holding for Sidney Finkelstein. She decides to buy it. In the car, he flirts with her and pursues her casual offer to give him dancing lessons. Although he senses that he can put his arm around her, he rebukes himself and takes her home with "excessive politeness" , later regretting that he missed his chance with such an alluring woman. George finds himself increasingly attracted to young women, such as the manicurist at the Pompeian Barber Shop, Ida Putiak. He goes there and gets a manicure so that he can talk to her. He finds her enchanting and successfully invites her on a dinner date. That evening, his car breaks dow, so he picks Ida up in a taxi. After dinner, he is able to kiss her in the taxi on the way home, but she refuses to extend their date, so George is left feeling rejected and ashamed

Until this point in the novel, Babbitt has wavered between a sense of commitment to the value system to which he has subscribed throughout the entirety of his adult life and the growing sense of unrest and dissatisfaction that urges him to seek something new and more exciting. He has approached the edge of the board several times, but he has never made the jump. Now, two conversations have the cumulative effect of propelling him forth into the rebellion that briefly wreaks havoc in his life. The first of these conversations is the one that he has with an intoxicated Chum Frink. Late one night, Frink passes by the Babbitt house, calling George a fool and explaining that he is a "traitor to poetry" , bemoaning the loss of his potential and imagining what he could have been. With the words "Could have written - Too late!" he runs off, and Babbitt is left questioning the wealth and social position that he has been striving to attain. For the first time, he is able to identify his longings . He suddenly feels as though he has "found something in life, and that he made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal" . Thus, he follows through with the break the next day, when he not only notices but also obeys his desire to leave work and catch a midday movie. Then, at a dinner hosted by Eddie Swanson, he flirts with Louetta. He also flirts with Tanis Judique and kisses Ida Putiak after taking her on a date. In the span of a few days, he has pursued several women who appeal to him, which is a far more active approach to understanding and doing what he wants than he has ever taken. All of these thoughts, feelings, and actions testify to the complete change that Babbitt feels just on the verge of making. It is not until he speaks with Seneca Doane, however, that Babbitt is able to make this leap completely. Doane reminds Babbitt of his former potential as a liberal student at the State University, when Babbitt had intended to do work very similar to Doane's. In fact, Babbitt had actually been an inspiration to Doane. This confrontation with his own lost ideals and failed potential is what finally motivates Babbitt to adopt the new lifestyle that he has been seeking since the beginning of the book. Like a young, naive student back in college, he seems to think that nothing but complete rebellion can quench the thirst that he has for excitement and fulfillment. Not even his solitary trip to the woods could restore him. In fact, he is out of his element in the woods, unable to deactivate his restless mind and realizing he can "never run away from himself." Nature is too natural and not wild enough. He returns home, vowing to "'start something'" . In an uncharacteristic moment, he follows through on his decision to act.

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all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_6_part_3.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxv

chapter xxv

{"name": "Chapter XXV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxiii-xxvi", "summary": "The next morning, though George sees no sense in his rebellion, he realizes that he cannot \"regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd\". He dreads Myra's return in August, and though he feels moments of reconnection with his former identity as husband and father, he still decides to take a solitary trip to Maine in order to \"seek Paul's spirit in the wilderness\". He takes out more money than he needs from the bank and bids Tinka farewell as though he will never return. When he arrives at the guide's shack in Maine, he is not received with the warmth and excitement that he expected. He joins in a game of stud poker and asks Joe Paradise to guide him for a few days. Joe arrives at George's cabin the next morning and, after much persuasion, agrees to guide George on a long hike to Box Car Pond. George enjoys the sense of being rugged and manly as they walk. But after supper and after Joe has gone to sleep, George feels extremely lonely and cannot stop thinking about his family, friends, and business back in Zenith. Thus, he realizes that he can \"never run away from himself. He returns home, vowing to \"start something\"", "analysis": "Until this point in the novel, Babbitt has wavered between a sense of commitment to the value system to which he has subscribed throughout the entirety of his adult life and the growing sense of unrest and dissatisfaction that urges him to seek something new and more exciting. He has approached the edge of the board several times, but he has never made the jump. Now, two conversations have the cumulative effect of propelling him forth into the rebellion that briefly wreaks havoc in his life. The first of these conversations is the one that he has with an intoxicated Chum Frink. Late one night, Frink passes by the Babbitt house, calling George a fool and explaining that he is a \"traitor to poetry\" , bemoaning the loss of his potential and imagining what he could have been. With the words \"Could have written - Too late!\" he runs off, and Babbitt is left questioning the wealth and social position that he has been striving to attain. For the first time, he is able to identify his longings . He suddenly feels as though he has \"found something in life, and that he made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal\" . Thus, he follows through with the break the next day, when he not only notices but also obeys his desire to leave work and catch a midday movie. Then, at a dinner hosted by Eddie Swanson, he flirts with Louetta. He also flirts with Tanis Judique and kisses Ida Putiak after taking her on a date. In the span of a few days, he has pursued several women who appeal to him, which is a far more active approach to understanding and doing what he wants than he has ever taken. All of these thoughts, feelings, and actions testify to the complete change that Babbitt feels just on the verge of making. It is not until he speaks with Seneca Doane, however, that Babbitt is able to make this leap completely. Doane reminds Babbitt of his former potential as a liberal student at the State University, when Babbitt had intended to do work very similar to Doane's. In fact, Babbitt had actually been an inspiration to Doane. This confrontation with his own lost ideals and failed potential is what finally motivates Babbitt to adopt the new lifestyle that he has been seeking since the beginning of the book. Like a young, naive student back in college, he seems to think that nothing but complete rebellion can quench the thirst that he has for excitement and fulfillment. Not even his solitary trip to the woods could restore him. In fact, he is out of his element in the woods, unable to deactivate his restless mind and realizing he can \"never run away from himself.\" Nature is too natural and not wild enough. He returns home, vowing to \"'start something'\" . In an uncharacteristic moment, he follows through on his decision to act."}

I HE awoke to stretch cheerfully as he listened to the sparrows, then to remember that everything was wrong; that he was determined to go astray, and not in the least enjoying the process. Why, he wondered, should he be in rebellion? What was it all about? "Why not be sensible; stop all this idiotic running around, and enjoy himself with his family, his business, the fellows at the club?" What was he getting out of rebellion? Misery and shame--the shame of being treated as an offensive small boy by a ragamuffin like Ida Putiak! And yet--Always he came back to "And yet." Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd. Only, he assured himself, he was "through with this chasing after girls." By noontime he was not so sure even of that. If in Miss McGoun, Louetta Swanson, and Ida he had failed to find the lady kind and lovely, it did not prove that she did not exist. He was hunted by the ancient thought that somewhere must exist the not impossible she who would understand him, value him, and make him happy. II Mrs. Babbitt returned in August. On her previous absences he had missed her reassuring buzz and of her arrival he had made a f�te. Now, though he dared not hurt her by letting a hint of it appear in his letters, he was sorry that she was coming before he had found himself, and he was embarrassed by the need of meeting her and looking joyful. He loitered down to the station; he studied the summer-resort posters, lest he have to speak to acquaintances and expose his uneasiness. But he was well trained. When the train clanked in he was out on the cement platform, peering into the chair-cars, and as he saw her in the line of passengers moving toward the vestibule he waved his hat. At the door he embraced her, and announced, "Well, well, well, well, by golly, you look fine, you look fine." Then he was aware of Tinka. Here was something, this child with her absurd little nose and lively eyes, that loved him, believed him great, and as he clasped her, lifted and held her till she squealed, he was for the moment come back to his old steady self. Tinka sat beside him in the car, with one hand on the steering-wheel, pretending to help him drive, and he shouted back to his wife, "I'll bet the kid will be the best chuffer in the family! She holds the wheel like an old professional!" All the while he was dreading the moment when he would be alone with his wife and she would patiently expect him to be ardent. III There was about the house an unofficial theory that he was to take his vacation alone, to spend a week or ten days in Catawba, but he was nagged by the memory that a year ago he had been with Paul in Maine. He saw himself returning; finding peace there, and the presence of Paul, in a life primitive and heroic. Like a shock came the thought that he actually could go. Only, he couldn't, really; he couldn't leave his business, and "Myra would think it sort of funny, his going way off there alone. Course he'd decided to do whatever he darned pleased, from now on, but still--to go way off to Maine!" He went, after lengthy meditations. With his wife, since it was inconceivable to explain that he was going to seek Paul's spirit in the wilderness, he frugally employed the lie prepared over a year ago and scarcely used at all. He said that he had to see a man in New York on business. He could not have explained even to himself why he drew from the bank several hundred dollars more than he needed, nor why he kissed Tinka so tenderly, and cried, "God bless you, baby!" From the train he waved to her till she was but a scarlet spot beside the brown bulkier presence of Mrs. Babbitt, at the end of a steel and cement aisle ending in vast barred gates. With melancholy he looked back at the last suburb of Zenith. All the way north he pictured the Maine guides: simple and strong and daring, jolly as they played stud-poker in their unceiled shack, wise in woodcraft as they tramped the forest and shot the rapids. He particularly remembered Joe Paradise, half Yankee, half Indian. If he could but take up a backwoods claim with a man like Joe, work hard with his hands, be free and noisy in a flannel shirt, and never come back to this dull decency! Or, like a trapper in a Northern Canada movie, plunge through the forest, make camp in the Rockies, a grim and wordless caveman! Why not? He COULD do it! There'd be enough money at home for the family to live on till Verona was married and Ted self-supporting. Old Henry T. would look out for them. Honestly! Why NOT? Really LIVE-- He longed for it, admitted that he longed for it, then almost believed that he was going to do it. Whenever common sense snorted, "Nonsense! Folks don't run away from decent families and partners; just simply don't do it, that's all!" then Babbitt answered pleadingly, "Well, it wouldn't take any more nerve than for Paul to go to jail and--Lord, how I'd' like to do it! Moccasins--six-gun--frontier town--gamblers--sleep under the stars--be a regular man, with he-men like Joe Paradise--gosh!" So he came to Maine, again stood on the wharf before the camp-hotel, again spat heroically into the delicate and shivering water, while the pines rustled, the mountains glowed, and a trout leaped and fell in a sliding circle. He hurried to the guides' shack as to his real home, his real friends, long missed. They would be glad to see him. They would stand up and shout? "Why, here's Mr. Babbitt! He ain't one of these ordinary sports! He's a real guy!" In their boarded and rather littered cabin the guides sat about the greasy table playing stud-poker with greasy cards: half a dozen wrinkled men in old trousers and easy old felt hats. They glanced up and nodded. Joe Paradise, the swart aging man with the big mustache, grunted, "How do. Back again?" Silence, except for the clatter of chips. Babbitt stood beside them, very lonely. He hinted, after a period of highly concentrated playing, "Guess I might take a hand, Joe." "Sure. Sit in. How many chips you want? Let's see; you were here with your wife, last year, wa'n't you?" said Joe Paradise. That was all of Babbitt's welcome to the old home. He played for half an hour before he spoke again. His head was reeking with the smoke of pipes and cheap cigars, and he was weary of pairs and four-flushes, resentful of the way in which they ignored him. He flung at Joe: "Working now?" "Nope." "Like to guide me for a few days?" "Well, jus' soon. I ain't engaged till next week." Only thus did Joe recognize the friendship Babbitt was offering him. Babbitt paid up his losses and left the shack rather childishly. Joe raised his head from the coils of smoke like a seal rising from surf, grunted, "I'll come 'round t'morrow," and dived down to his three aces. Neither in his voiceless cabin, fragrant with planks of new-cut pine, nor along the lake, nor in the sunset clouds which presently eddied behind the lavender-misted mountains, could Babbitt find the spirit of Paul as a reassuring presence. He was so lonely that after supper he stopped to talk with an ancient old lady, a gasping and steadily discoursing old lady, by the stove in the hotel-office. He told her of Ted's presumable future triumphs in the State University and of Tinka's remarkable vocabulary till he was homesick for the home he had left forever. Through the darkness, through that Northern pine-walled silence, he blundered down to the lake-front and found a canoe. There were no paddles in it but with a board, sitting awkwardly amidships and poking at the water rather than paddling, he made his way far out on the lake. The lights of the hotel and the cottages became yellow dots, a cluster of glow-worms at the base of Sachem Mountain. Larger and ever more imperturbable was the mountain in the star-filtered darkness, and the lake a limitless pavement of black marble. He was dwarfed and dumb and a little awed, but that insignificance freed him from the pomposities of being Mr. George F. Babbitt of Zenith; saddened and freed his heart. Now he was conscious of the presence of Paul, fancied him (rescued from prison, from Zilla and the brisk exactitudes of the tar-roofing business) playing his violin at the end of the canoe. He vowed, "I will go on! I'll never go back! Now that Paul's out of it, I don't want to see any of those damn people again! I was a fool to get sore because Joe Paradise didn't jump up and hug me. He's one of these woodsmen; too wise to go yelping and talking your arm off like a cityman. But get him back in the mountains, out on the trail--! That's real living!" IV Joe reported at Babbitt's cabin at nine the next morning. Babbitt greeted him as a fellow caveman: "Well, Joe, how d' you feel about hitting the trail, and getting away from these darn soft summerites and these women and all?" "All right, Mr. Babbitt." "What do you say we go over to Box Car Pond--they tell me the shack there isn't being used--and camp out?" "Well, all right, Mr. Babbitt, but it's nearer to Skowtuit Pond, and you can get just about as good fishing there." "No, I want to get into the real wilds." "Well, all right." "We'll put the old packs on our backs and get into the woods and really hike." "I think maybe it would be easier to go by water, through Lake Chogue. We can go all the way by motor boat--flat-bottom boat with an Evinrude." "No, sir! Bust up the quiet with a chugging motor? Not on your life! You just throw a pair of socks in the old pack, and tell 'em what you want for eats. I'll be ready soon 's you are." "Most of the sports go by boat, Mr. Babbitt. It's a long walk. "Look here, Joe: are you objecting to walking?" "Oh, no, I guess I can do it. But I haven't tramped that far for sixteen years. Most of the sports go by boat. But I can do it if you say so--I guess." Joe walked away in sadness. Babbitt had recovered from his touchy wrath before Joe returned. He pictured him as warming up and telling the most entertaining stories. But Joe had not yet warmed up when they took the trail. He persistently kept behind Babbitt, and however much his shoulders ached from the pack, however sorely he panted, Babbitt could hear his guide panting equally. But the trail was satisfying: a path brown with pine-needles and rough with roots, among the balsams, the ferns, the sudden groves of white birch. He became credulous again, and rejoiced in sweating. When he stopped to rest he chuckled, "Guess we're hitting it up pretty good for a couple o' old birds, eh?" "Uh-huh," admitted Joe. "This is a mighty pretty place. Look, you can see the lake down through the trees. I tell you, Joe, you don't appreciate how lucky you are to live in woods like this, instead of a city with trolleys grinding and typewriters clacking and people bothering the life out of you all the time! I wish I knew the woods like you do. Say, what's the name of that little red flower?" Rubbing his back, Joe regarded the flower resentfully "Well, some folks call it one thing and some calls it another I always just call it Pink Flower." Babbitt blessedly ceased thinking as tramping turned into blind plodding. He was submerged in weariness. His plump legs seemed to go on by themselves, without guidance, and he mechanically wiped away the sweat which stung his eyes. He was too tired to be consciously glad as, after a sun-scourged mile of corduroy tote-road through a swamp where flies hovered over a hot waste of brush, they reached the cool shore of Box Car Pond. When he lifted the pack from his back he staggered from the change in balance, and for a moment could not stand erect. He lay beneath an ample-bosomed maple tree near the guest-shack, and joyously felt sleep running through his veins. He awoke toward dusk, to find Joe efficiently cooking bacon and eggs and flapjacks for supper, and his admiration of the woodsman returned. He sat on a stump and felt virile. "Joe, what would you do if you had a lot of money? Would you stick to guiding, or would you take a claim 'way back in the woods and be independent of people?" For the first time Joe brightened. He chewed his cud a second, and bubbled, "I've often thought of that! If I had the money, I'd go down to Tinker's Falls and open a swell shoe store." After supper Joe proposed a game of stud-poker but Babbitt refused with brevity, and Joe contentedly went to bed at eight. Babbitt sat on the stump, facing the dark pond, slapping mosquitos. Save the snoring guide, there was no other human being within ten miles. He was lonelier than he had ever been in his life. Then he was in Zenith. He was worrying as to whether Miss McGoun wasn't paying too much for carbon paper. He was at once resenting and missing the persistent teasing at the Roughnecks' Table. He was wondering what Zilla Riesling was doing now. He was wondering whether, after the summer's maturity of being a garageman, Ted would "get busy" in the university. He was thinking of his wife. "If she would only--if she wouldn't be so darn satisfied with just settling down--No! I won't! I won't go back! I'll be fifty in three years. Sixty in thirteen years. I'm going to have some fun before it's too late. I don't care! I will!" He thought of Ida Putiak, of Louetta Swanson, of that nice widow--what was her name?--Tanis Judique?--the one for whom he'd found the flat. He was enmeshed in imaginary conversations. Then: "Gee, I can't seem to get away from thinking about folks!" Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself. That moment he started for Zenith. In his journey there was no appearance of flight, but he was fleeing, and four days afterward he was on the Zenith train. He knew that he was slinking back not because it was what he longed to do but because it was all he could do. He scanned again his discovery that he could never run away from Zenith and family and office, because in his own brain he bore the office and the family and every street and disquiet and illusion of Zenith. "But I'm going to--oh, I'm going to start something!" he vowed, and he tried to make it valiant.

Chapter XXV

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxiii-xxvi

The next morning, though George sees no sense in his rebellion, he realizes that he cannot "regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd". He dreads Myra's return in August, and though he feels moments of reconnection with his former identity as husband and father, he still decides to take a solitary trip to Maine in order to "seek Paul's spirit in the wilderness". He takes out more money than he needs from the bank and bids Tinka farewell as though he will never return. When he arrives at the guide's shack in Maine, he is not received with the warmth and excitement that he expected. He joins in a game of stud poker and asks Joe Paradise to guide him for a few days. Joe arrives at George's cabin the next morning and, after much persuasion, agrees to guide George on a long hike to Box Car Pond. George enjoys the sense of being rugged and manly as they walk. But after supper and after Joe has gone to sleep, George feels extremely lonely and cannot stop thinking about his family, friends, and business back in Zenith. Thus, he realizes that he can "never run away from himself. He returns home, vowing to "start something"

Until this point in the novel, Babbitt has wavered between a sense of commitment to the value system to which he has subscribed throughout the entirety of his adult life and the growing sense of unrest and dissatisfaction that urges him to seek something new and more exciting. He has approached the edge of the board several times, but he has never made the jump. Now, two conversations have the cumulative effect of propelling him forth into the rebellion that briefly wreaks havoc in his life. The first of these conversations is the one that he has with an intoxicated Chum Frink. Late one night, Frink passes by the Babbitt house, calling George a fool and explaining that he is a "traitor to poetry" , bemoaning the loss of his potential and imagining what he could have been. With the words "Could have written - Too late!" he runs off, and Babbitt is left questioning the wealth and social position that he has been striving to attain. For the first time, he is able to identify his longings . He suddenly feels as though he has "found something in life, and that he made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal" . Thus, he follows through with the break the next day, when he not only notices but also obeys his desire to leave work and catch a midday movie. Then, at a dinner hosted by Eddie Swanson, he flirts with Louetta. He also flirts with Tanis Judique and kisses Ida Putiak after taking her on a date. In the span of a few days, he has pursued several women who appeal to him, which is a far more active approach to understanding and doing what he wants than he has ever taken. All of these thoughts, feelings, and actions testify to the complete change that Babbitt feels just on the verge of making. It is not until he speaks with Seneca Doane, however, that Babbitt is able to make this leap completely. Doane reminds Babbitt of his former potential as a liberal student at the State University, when Babbitt had intended to do work very similar to Doane's. In fact, Babbitt had actually been an inspiration to Doane. This confrontation with his own lost ideals and failed potential is what finally motivates Babbitt to adopt the new lifestyle that he has been seeking since the beginning of the book. Like a young, naive student back in college, he seems to think that nothing but complete rebellion can quench the thirst that he has for excitement and fulfillment. Not even his solitary trip to the woods could restore him. In fact, he is out of his element in the woods, unable to deactivate his restless mind and realizing he can "never run away from himself." Nature is too natural and not wild enough. He returns home, vowing to "'start something'" . In an uncharacteristic moment, he follows through on his decision to act.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/26.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_6_part_4.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxvi

chapter xxvi

{"name": "Chapter XXVI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxiii-xxvi", "summary": "On the train returning to Zenith, George speaks with Seneca Doane, trying to explain why he campaigned for Proust for mayor, defining himself as an \"organization Republican\". Doane reminds George that, back in college, he used to be liberal, and they talk about being visionaries with ideals. Doane asks for George's help, requesting that he speak to businessmen about being \"more liberal in their attitude\" toward Beecher Ingram, a preacher banned from the Congregationalist Church. Babbitt agrees, feeling \"idealistic and cosmopolitan\" in Doane's presence. Shortly after his return to Zenith, George calls on Zilla, feeling very sorry for her. He is disturbed by her \"bloodless and aged\" appearance in the boarding house. He asks Zilla to be generous and have Paul pardoned, but Zilla explains that she has recently become very religious and it is God's blessing that Paul is in jail--for him to repent and save his soul. At home, Verona and Kenneth Escott are finally engaged. Ted enters the State University as a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, though he repeatedly proposes to George that he transfer to the School of Engineering to study mechanical engineering or mining engineering", "analysis": "Until this point in the novel, Babbitt has wavered between a sense of commitment to the value system to which he has subscribed throughout the entirety of his adult life and the growing sense of unrest and dissatisfaction that urges him to seek something new and more exciting. He has approached the edge of the board several times, but he has never made the jump. Now, two conversations have the cumulative effect of propelling him forth into the rebellion that briefly wreaks havoc in his life. The first of these conversations is the one that he has with an intoxicated Chum Frink. Late one night, Frink passes by the Babbitt house, calling George a fool and explaining that he is a \"traitor to poetry\" , bemoaning the loss of his potential and imagining what he could have been. With the words \"Could have written - Too late!\" he runs off, and Babbitt is left questioning the wealth and social position that he has been striving to attain. For the first time, he is able to identify his longings . He suddenly feels as though he has \"found something in life, and that he made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal\" . Thus, he follows through with the break the next day, when he not only notices but also obeys his desire to leave work and catch a midday movie. Then, at a dinner hosted by Eddie Swanson, he flirts with Louetta. He also flirts with Tanis Judique and kisses Ida Putiak after taking her on a date. In the span of a few days, he has pursued several women who appeal to him, which is a far more active approach to understanding and doing what he wants than he has ever taken. All of these thoughts, feelings, and actions testify to the complete change that Babbitt feels just on the verge of making. It is not until he speaks with Seneca Doane, however, that Babbitt is able to make this leap completely. Doane reminds Babbitt of his former potential as a liberal student at the State University, when Babbitt had intended to do work very similar to Doane's. In fact, Babbitt had actually been an inspiration to Doane. This confrontation with his own lost ideals and failed potential is what finally motivates Babbitt to adopt the new lifestyle that he has been seeking since the beginning of the book. Like a young, naive student back in college, he seems to think that nothing but complete rebellion can quench the thirst that he has for excitement and fulfillment. Not even his solitary trip to the woods could restore him. In fact, he is out of his element in the woods, unable to deactivate his restless mind and realizing he can \"never run away from himself.\" Nature is too natural and not wild enough. He returns home, vowing to \"'start something'\" . In an uncharacteristic moment, he follows through on his decision to act."}

I As he walked through the train, looking for familiar faces, he saw only one person whom he knew, and that was Seneca Doane, the lawyer who, after the blessings of being in Babbitt's own class at college and of becoming a corporation-counsel, had turned crank, had headed farmer-labor tickets and fraternized with admitted socialists. Though he was in rebellion, naturally Babbitt did not care to be seen talking with such a fanatic, but in all the Pullmans he could find no other acquaintance, and reluctantly he halted. Seneca Doane was a slight, thin-haired man, rather like Chum Frink except that he hadn't Frink's grin. He was reading a book called "The Way of All Flesh." It looked religious to Babbitt, and he wondered if Doane could possibly have been converted and turned decent and patriotic. "Why, hello, Doane," he said. Doane looked up. His voice was curiously kind. "Oh! How do, Babbitt." "Been away, eh?" "Yes, I've been in Washington." "Washington, eh? How's the old Government making out?" "It's--Won't you sit down?" "Thanks. Don't care if I do. Well, well! Been quite a while since I've had a good chance to talk to you, Doane. I was, uh--Sorry you didn't turn up at the last class-dinner." "Oh--thanks." "How's the unions coming? Going to run for mayor again?" Doane seemed restless. He was fingering the pages of his book. He said "I might" as though it didn't mean anything in particular, and he smiled. Babbitt liked that smile, and hunted for conversation: "Saw a bang-up cabaret in New York: the 'Good-Morning Cutie' bunch at the Hotel Minton." "Yes, they're pretty girls. I danced there one evening." "Oh. Like dancing?" "Naturally. I like dancing and pretty women and good food better than anything else in the world. Most men do." "But gosh, Doane, I thought you fellows wanted to take all the good eats and everything away from us." "No. Not at all. What I'd like to see is the meetings of the Garment Workers held at the Ritz, with a dance afterward. Isn't that reasonable?" "Yuh, might be good idea, all right. Well--Shame I haven't seen more of you, recent years. Oh, say, hope you haven't held it against me, my bucking you as mayor, going on the stump for Prout. You see, I'm an organization Republican, and I kind of felt--" "There's no reason why you shouldn't fight me. I have no doubt you're good for the Organization. I remember--in college you were an unusually liberal, sensitive chap. I can still recall your saying to me that you were going to be a lawyer, and take the cases of the poor for nothing, and fight the rich. And I remember I said I was going to be one of the rich myself, and buy paintings and live at Newport. I'm sure you inspired us all." "Well.... Well.... I've always aimed to be liberal." Babbitt was enormously shy and proud and self-conscious; he tried to look like the boy he had been a quarter-century ago, and he shone upon his old friend Seneca Doane as he rumbled, "Trouble with a lot of these fellows, even the live wires and some of 'em that think they're forward-looking, is they aren't broad-minded and liberal. Now, I always believe in giving the other fellow a chance, and listening to his ideas." "That's fine." "Tell you how I figure it: A little opposition is good for all of us, so a fellow, especially if he's a business man and engaged in doing the work of the world, ought to be liberal." "Yes--" "I always say a fellow ought to have Vision and Ideals. I guess some of the fellows in my business think I'm pretty visionary, but I just let 'em think what they want to and go right on--same as you do.... By golly, this is nice to have a chance to sit and visit and kind of, you might say, brush up on our ideals." "But of course we visionaries do rather get beaten. Doesn't it bother you?" "Not a bit! Nobody can dictate to me what I think!" "You're the man I want to help me. I want you to talk to some of the business men and try to make them a little more liberal in their attitude toward poor Beecher Ingram." "Ingram? But, why, he's this nut preacher that got kicked out of the Congregationalist Church, isn't he, and preaches free love and sedition?" This, Doane explained, was indeed the general conception of Beecher Ingram, but he himself saw Beecher Ingram as a priest of the brotherhood of man, of which Babbitt was notoriously an upholder. So would Babbitt keep his acquaintances from hounding Ingram and his forlorn little church? "You bet! I'll call down any of the boys I hear getting funny about Ingram," Babbitt said affectionately to his dear friend Doane. Doane warmed up and became reminiscent. He spoke of student days in Germany, of lobbying for single tax in Washington, of international labor conferences. He mentioned his friends, Lord Wycombe, Colonel Wedgwood, Professor Piccoli. Babbitt had always supposed that Doane associated only with the I. W. W., but now he nodded gravely, as one who knew Lord Wycombes by the score, and he got in two references to Sir Gerald Doak. He felt daring and idealistic and cosmopolitan. Suddenly, in his new spiritual grandeur, he was sorry for Zilla Riesling, and understood her as these ordinary fellows at the Boosters' Club never could. II Five hours after he had arrived in Zenith and told his wife how hot it was in New York, he went to call on Zilla. He was buzzing with ideas and forgiveness. He'd get Paul released; he'd do things, vague but highly benevolent things, for Zilla; he'd be as generous as his friend Seneca Doane. He had not seen Zilla since Paul had shot her, and he still pictured her as buxom, high-colored, lively, and a little blowsy. As he drove up to her boarding-house, in a depressing back street below the wholesale district, he stopped in discomfort. At an upper window, leaning on her elbow, was a woman with the features of Zilla, but she was bloodless and aged, like a yellowed wad of old paper crumpled into wrinkles. Where Zilla had bounced and jiggled, this woman was dreadfully still. He waited half an hour before she came into the boarding-house parlor. Fifty times he opened the book of photographs of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, fifty times he looked at the picture of the Court of Honor. He was startled to find Zilla in the room. She wore a black streaky gown which she had tried to brighten with a girdle of crimson ribbon. The ribbon had been torn and patiently mended. He noted this carefully, because he did not wish to look at her shoulders. One shoulder was lower than the other; one arm she carried in contorted fashion, as though it were paralyzed; and behind a high collar of cheap lace there was a gouge in the anemic neck which had once been shining and softly plump. "Yes?" she said. "Well, well, old Zilla! By golly, it's good to see you again!" "He can send his messages through a lawyer." "Why, rats, Zilla, I didn't come just because of him. Came as an old friend." "You waited long enough!" "Well, you know how it is. Figured you wouldn't want to see a friend of his for quite some time and--Sit down, honey! Let's be sensible. We've all of us done a bunch of things that we hadn't ought to, but maybe we can sort of start over again. Honest, Zilla, I'd like to do something to make you both happy. Know what I thought to-day? Mind you, Paul doesn't know a thing about this--doesn't know I was going to come see you. I got to thinking: Zilla's a fine? big-hearted woman, and she'll understand that, uh, Paul's had his lesson now. Why wouldn't it be a fine idea if you asked the governor to pardon him? Believe he would, if it came from you. No! Wait! Just think how good you'd feel if you were generous." "Yes, I wish to be generous." She was sitting primly, speaking icily. "For that reason I wish to keep him in prison, as an example to evil-doers. I've gotten religion, George, since the terrible thing that man did to me. Sometimes I used to be unkind, and I wished for worldly pleasures, for dancing and the theater. But when I was in the hospital the pastor of the Pentecostal Communion Faith used to come to see me, and he showed me, right from the prophecies written in the Word of God, that the Day of Judgment is coming and all the members of the older churches are going straight to eternal damnation, because they only do lip-service and swallow the world, the flesh, and the devil--" For fifteen wild minutes she talked, pouring out admonitions to flee the wrath to come, and her face flushed, her dead voice recaptured something of the shrill energy of the old Zilla. She wound up with a furious: "It's the blessing of God himself that Paul should be in prison now, and torn and humbled by punishment, so that he may yet save his soul, and so other wicked men, these horrible chasers after women and lust, may have an example." Babbitt had itched and twisted. As in church he dared not move during the sermon so now he felt that he must seem attentive, though her screeching denunciations flew past him like carrion birds. He sought to be calm and brotherly: "Yes, I know, Zilla. But gosh, it certainly is the essence of religion to be charitable, isn't it? Let me tell you how I figure it: What we need in the world is liberalism, liberality, if we're going to get anywhere. I've always believed in being broad-minded and liberal--" "You? Liberal?" It was very much the old Zilla. "Why, George Babbitt, you're about as broad-minded and liberal as a razor-blade!" "Oh, I am, am I! Well, just let me tell you, just--let me--tell--you, I'm as by golly liberal as you are religious, anyway! YOU RELIGIOUS!" "I am so! Our pastor says I sustain him in the faith!" "I'll bet you do! With Paul's money! But just to show you how liberal I am, I'm going to send a check for ten bucks to this Beecher Ingram, because a lot of fellows are saying the poor cuss preaches sedition and free love, and they're trying to run him out of town." "And they're right! They ought to run him out of town! Why, he preaches--if you can call it preaching--in a theater, in the House of Satan! You don't know what it is to find God, to find peace, to behold the snares that the devil spreads out for our feet. Oh, I'm so glad to see the mysterious purposes of God in having Paul harm me and stop my wickedness--and Paul's getting his, good and plenty, for the cruel things he did to me, and I hope he DIES in prison!" Babbitt was up, hat in hand, growling, "Well, if that's what you call being at peace, for heaven's sake just warn me before you go to war, will you?" III Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer. More than mountains or the shore-devouring sea, a city retains its character, imperturbable, cynical, holding behind apparent changes its essential purpose. Though Babbitt had deserted his family and dwelt with Joe Paradise in the wilderness, though he had become a liberal, though he had been quite sure, on the night before he reached Zenith, that neither he nor the city would be the same again, ten days after his return he could not believe that he had ever been away. Nor was it at all evident to his acquaintances that there was a new George F. Babbitt, save that he was more irritable under the incessant chaffing at the Athletic Club, and once, when Vergil Gunch observed that Seneca Doane ought to be hanged, Babbitt snorted, "Oh, rats, he's not so bad." At home he grunted "Eh?" across the newspaper to his commentatory wife, and was delighted by Tinka's new red tam o'shanter, and announced, "No class to that corrugated iron garage. Have to build me a nice frame one." Verona and Kenneth Escott appeared really to be engaged. In his newspaper Escott had conducted a pure-food crusade against commission-houses. As a result he had been given an excellent job in a commission-house, and he was making a salary on which he could marry, and denouncing irresponsible reporters who wrote stories criticizing commission-houses without knowing what they were talking about. This September Ted had entered the State University as a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. The university was at Mohalis only fifteen miles from Zenith, and Ted often came down for the week-end. Babbitt was worried. Ted was "going in for" everything but books. He had tried to "make" the football team as a light half-back, he was looking forward to the basket-ball season, he was on the committee for the Freshman Hop, and (as a Zenithite, an aristocrat among the yokels) he was being "rushed" by two fraternities. But of his studies Babbitt could learn nothing save a mumbled, "Oh, gosh, these old stiffs of teachers just give you a lot of junk about literature and economics." One week-end Ted proposed, "Say, Dad, why can't I transfer over from the College to the School of Engineering and take mechanical engineering? You always holler that I never study, but honest, I would study there." "No, the Engineering School hasn't got the standing the College has," fretted Babbitt. "I'd like to know how it hasn't! The Engineers can play on any of the teams!" There was much explanation of the "dollars-and-cents value of being known as a college man when you go into the law," and a truly oratorical account of the lawyer's life. Before he was through with it, Babbitt had Ted a United States Senator. Among the great lawyers whom he mentioned was Seneca Doane. "But, gee whiz," Ted marveled, "I thought you always said this Doane was a reg'lar nut!" "That's no way to speak of a great man! Doane's always been a good friend of mine--fact I helped him in college--I started him out and you might say inspired him. Just because he's sympathetic with the aims of Labor, a lot of chumps that lack liberality and broad-mindedness think he's a crank, but let me tell you there's mighty few of 'em that rake in the fees he does, and he's a friend of some of the strongest; most conservative men in the world--like Lord Wycombe, this, uh, this big English nobleman that's so well known. And you now, which would you rather do: be in with a lot of greasy mechanics and laboring-men, or chum up to a real fellow like Lord Wycombe, and get invited to his house for parties?" "Well--gosh," sighed Ted. The next week-end he came in joyously with, "Say, Dad, why couldn't I take mining engineering instead of the academic course? You talk about standing--maybe there isn't much in mechanical engineering, but the Miners, gee, they got seven out of eleven in the new elections to Nu Tau Tau!"

Chapter XXVI

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxiii-xxvi

On the train returning to Zenith, George speaks with Seneca Doane, trying to explain why he campaigned for Proust for mayor, defining himself as an "organization Republican". Doane reminds George that, back in college, he used to be liberal, and they talk about being visionaries with ideals. Doane asks for George's help, requesting that he speak to businessmen about being "more liberal in their attitude" toward Beecher Ingram, a preacher banned from the Congregationalist Church. Babbitt agrees, feeling "idealistic and cosmopolitan" in Doane's presence. Shortly after his return to Zenith, George calls on Zilla, feeling very sorry for her. He is disturbed by her "bloodless and aged" appearance in the boarding house. He asks Zilla to be generous and have Paul pardoned, but Zilla explains that she has recently become very religious and it is God's blessing that Paul is in jail--for him to repent and save his soul. At home, Verona and Kenneth Escott are finally engaged. Ted enters the State University as a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, though he repeatedly proposes to George that he transfer to the School of Engineering to study mechanical engineering or mining engineering

Until this point in the novel, Babbitt has wavered between a sense of commitment to the value system to which he has subscribed throughout the entirety of his adult life and the growing sense of unrest and dissatisfaction that urges him to seek something new and more exciting. He has approached the edge of the board several times, but he has never made the jump. Now, two conversations have the cumulative effect of propelling him forth into the rebellion that briefly wreaks havoc in his life. The first of these conversations is the one that he has with an intoxicated Chum Frink. Late one night, Frink passes by the Babbitt house, calling George a fool and explaining that he is a "traitor to poetry" , bemoaning the loss of his potential and imagining what he could have been. With the words "Could have written - Too late!" he runs off, and Babbitt is left questioning the wealth and social position that he has been striving to attain. For the first time, he is able to identify his longings . He suddenly feels as though he has "found something in life, and that he made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal" . Thus, he follows through with the break the next day, when he not only notices but also obeys his desire to leave work and catch a midday movie. Then, at a dinner hosted by Eddie Swanson, he flirts with Louetta. He also flirts with Tanis Judique and kisses Ida Putiak after taking her on a date. In the span of a few days, he has pursued several women who appeal to him, which is a far more active approach to understanding and doing what he wants than he has ever taken. All of these thoughts, feelings, and actions testify to the complete change that Babbitt feels just on the verge of making. It is not until he speaks with Seneca Doane, however, that Babbitt is able to make this leap completely. Doane reminds Babbitt of his former potential as a liberal student at the State University, when Babbitt had intended to do work very similar to Doane's. In fact, Babbitt had actually been an inspiration to Doane. This confrontation with his own lost ideals and failed potential is what finally motivates Babbitt to adopt the new lifestyle that he has been seeking since the beginning of the book. Like a young, naive student back in college, he seems to think that nothing but complete rebellion can quench the thirst that he has for excitement and fulfillment. Not even his solitary trip to the woods could restore him. In fact, he is out of his element in the woods, unable to deactivate his restless mind and realizing he can "never run away from himself." Nature is too natural and not wild enough. He returns home, vowing to "'start something'" . In an uncharacteristic moment, he follows through on his decision to act.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/27.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_7_part_1.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxvii

chapter xxvii

{"name": "Chapter XXVII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxvii-xxx", "summary": "In September, there are worker strikes and protests that turn Zenith \"into two belligerent camps\". All of the newspapers and the white-collar members of Zenith oppose the strike and try to reinstate order. Babbitt suddenly becomes publicly liberal, siding with the feared Seneca Doane and criticizing political services. In front of Chum Frink, he calls \"rot\" Dr. Drew's sermon about how love should prevent this chaos. At the strikers' parade, Babbitt becomes conflicted. Initially, he feels viscerally that the strikers are \"scoundrels who obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity\" , but when he sees Seneca Doane and a State University Professor among the marchers, he decides that the strikers have \"just as much right to march as anybody else\". At the Athletic Club, Babbitt opposes popular opinion about the strike, arousing the disdain and suspicion of Vergil Gunch. At home, George argues with Myra, who warns him that he will be misunderstood if he takes such a rebellious position. Babbitt is confused by this change as well, and he is frightened by the dismay of his friends", "analysis": "Even at his most rebellious, Babbitt is plagued by the indecisiveness that is inevitable for someone without any thoughts or beliefs that are entirely his own. Although it is not necessarily inconsistent, he still vacillates between an elitist disapproval of the protesting workers and a feeling that they have \"just as much right to march as anybody else\" . He requires the influence of Seneca Doane, once again, to temporarily subscribe to the liberal support of the strikers. Even still, he refers to them as \"a bad element\" and is confused by his own contradictions. This is, perhaps, the result of his living and having bought into a society so focused on conformity and so saturated by various forms of mass media. Finally, though, he is bold enough to support the socialist agenda in front of the men at the Athletic Club, and this results in the manipulative disdain that soon will contribute to Babbitt's renunciation of this rebellious phase. His rebellion is not strong enough to withstand such disdain among his colleagues. Although Babbitt believes that his relationship with Tanis Judique is based on a strong connection, mutual understanding, and respect, Lewis suggests that it is, like most things in Babbitt's life, a mere frivolity. During the long evening that they spend talking together, Babbitt feels as if they agree on everything. This, of course, might be an indication of their deep compatibility. Yet, Lewis informs us that \"They agreed that Prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was cultural,\" and they agreed that short skirts were short. The utter lack of substance in these impressions is made even more ridiculous by the fact that they interpret so much from this \"frank speaking\" . Lewis also emphasizes that Babbitt's attraction to Tanis results mainly from her willingness to offer him unlimited attention and sympathy. She feeds his ailing ego, but the moment she becomes burdensome, he no longer cares to exert the energy on their relationship. His eventual carelessness and lack of discretion in the affair may also indicate that his commitment to her is never as strong or complete as he believes it to be. Mrs. Mudge is one of several characters in the novel through whom Lewis critiques and satirizes the state of Jazz Age religion. She is a representative of the all-inclusive, nondescriptive religious category of New Thought, and her hour-long speech sounds like nothing more than verbal sludge. Although her sermon hypnotizes the audience, leaving them mesmerized, no one can extract any comprehensible message from her great ocean of words. The entire sermon contains no punctuation whatsoever; it is merely a blur of pseudo-spiritual phrases that the audience clearly does not understand, even though they seem to carry significance. The lack of grammatical meaning is reflective of the sermon's lack of meaningful content, revealing Mrs. Mudge as a religious quack and suggesting that real spiritual salvation is especially needed in a culture so concerned with material objects."}

I THE strike which turned Zenith into two belligerent camps; white and red, began late in September with a walk-out of telephone girls and linemen, in protest against a reduction of wages. The newly formed union of dairy-products workers went out, partly in sympathy and partly in demand for a forty-four hour week. They were followed by the truck-drivers' union. Industry was tied up, and the whole city was nervous with talk of a trolley strike, a printers' strike, a general strike. Furious citizens, trying to get telephone calls through strike-breaking girls, danced helplessly. Every truck that made its way from the factories to the freight-stations was guarded by a policeman, trying to look stoical beside the scab driver. A line of fifty trucks from the Zenith Steel and Machinery Company was attacked by strikers-rushing out from the sidewalk, pulling drivers from the seats, smashing carburetors and commutators, while telephone girls cheered from the walk, and small boys heaved bricks. The National Guard was ordered out. Colonel Nixon, who in private life was Mr. Caleb Nixon, secretary of the Pullmore Tractor Company, put on a long khaki coat and stalked through crowds, a .44 automatic in hand. Even Babbitt's friend, Clarence Drum the shoe merchant--a round and merry man who told stories at the Athletic Club, and who strangely resembled a Victorian pug-dog--was to be seen as a waddling but ferocious captain, with his belt tight about his comfortable little belly, and his round little mouth petulant as he piped to chattering groups on corners. "Move on there now! I can't have any of this loitering!" Every newspaper in the city, save one, was against the strikers. When mobs raided the news-stands, at each was stationed a militiaman, a young, embarrassed citizen-soldier with eye-glasses, bookkeeper or grocery-clerk in private life, trying to look dangerous while small boys yelped, "Get onto de tin soldier!" and striking truck-drivers inquired tenderly, "Say, Joe, when I was fighting in France, was you in camp in the States or was you doing Swede exercises in the Y. M. C. A.? Be careful of that bayonet, now, or you'll cut yourself!" There was no one in Zenith who talked of anything but the strike, and no one who did not take sides. You were either a courageous friend of Labor, or you were a fearless supporter of the Rights of Property; and in either case you were belligerent, and ready to disown any friend who did not hate the enemy. A condensed-milk plant was set afire--each side charged it to the other--and the city was hysterical. And Babbitt chose this time to be publicly liberal. He belonged to the sound, sane, right-thinking wing, and at first he agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot. He was sorry when his friend, Seneca Doane, defended arrested strikers, and he thought of going to Doane and explaining about these agitators, but when he read a broadside alleging that even on their former wages the telephone girls had been hungry, he was troubled. "All lies and fake figures," he said, but in a doubtful croak. For the Sunday after, the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church announced a sermon by Dr. John Jennison Drew on "How the Saviour Would End Strikes." Babbitt had been negligent about church-going lately, but he went to the service, hopeful that Dr. Drew really did have the information as to what the divine powers thought about strikes. Beside Babbitt in the large, curving, glossy, velvet-upholstered pew was Chum Frink. Frink whispered, "Hope the doc gives the strikers hell! Ordinarily, I don't believe in a preacher butting into political matters--let him stick to straight religion and save souls, and not stir up a lot of discussion--but at a time like this, I do think he ought to stand right up and bawl out those plug-uglies to a fare-you-well!" "Yes--well--" said Babbitt. The Rev. Dr. Drew, his rustic bang flopping with the intensity of his poetic and sociologic ardor, trumpeted: "During the untoward series of industrial dislocations which have--let us be courageous and admit it boldly--throttled the business life of our fair city these past days, there has been a great deal of loose talk about scientific prevention of scientific--SCIENTIFIC! Now, let me tell you that the most unscientific thing in the world is science! Take the attacks on the established fundamentals of the Christian creed which were so popular with the 'scientists' a generation ago. Oh, yes, they were mighty fellows, and great poo-bahs of criticism! They were going to destroy the church; they were going to prove the world was created and has been brought to its extraordinary level of morality and civilization by blind chance. Yet the church stands just as firmly to-day as ever, and the only answer a Christian pastor needs make to the long-haired opponents of his simple faith is just a pitying smile! "And now these same 'scientists' want to replace the natural condition of free competition by crazy systems which, no matter by what high-sounding names they are called, are nothing but a despotic paternalism. Naturally, I'm not criticizing labor courts, injunctions against men proven to be striking unjustly, or those excellent unions in which the men and the boss get together. But I certainly am criticizing the systems in which the free and fluid motivation of independent labor is to be replaced by cooked-up wage-scales and minimum salaries and government commissions and labor federations and all that poppycock. "What is not generally understood is that this whole industrial matter isn't a question of economics. It's essentially and only a matter of Love, and of the practical application of the Christian religion! Imagine a factory--instead of committees of workmen alienating the boss, the boss goes among them smiling, and they smile back, the elder brother and the younger. Brothers, that's what they must be, loving brothers, and then strikes would be as inconceivable as hatred in the home!" It was at this point that Babbitt muttered, "Oh, rot!" "Huh?" said Chum Frink. "He doesn't know what he's talking about. It's just as clear as mud. It doesn't mean a darn thing." "Maybe, but--" Frink looked at him doubtfully, through all the service kept glancing at him doubtfully, till Babbitt was nervous. II The strikers had announced a parade for Tuesday morning, but Colonel Nixon had forbidden it, the newspapers said. When Babbitt drove west from his office at ten that morning he saw a drove of shabby men heading toward the tangled, dirty district beyond Court House Square. He hated them, because they were poor, because they made him feel insecure. "Damn loafers! Wouldn't be common workmen if they had any pep," he complained. He wondered if there was going to be a riot. He drove toward the starting-point of the parade, a triangle of limp and faded grass known as Moore Street Park, and halted his car. The park and streets were buzzing with strikers, young men in blue denim shirts, old men with caps. Through them, keeping them stirred like a boiling pot, moved the militiamen. Babbitt could hear the soldiers' monotonous orders: "Keep moving--move on, 'bo--keep your feet warm!" Babbitt admired their stolid good temper. The crowd shouted, "Tin soldiers," and "Dirty dogs--servants of the capitalists!" but the militiamen grinned and answered only, "Sure, that's right. Keep moving, Billy!" Babbitt thrilled over the citizen-soldiers, hated the scoundrels who were obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity, admired Colonel Nixon's striding contempt for the crowd; and as Captain Clarence Drum, that rather puffing shoe-dealer, came raging by, Babbitt respectfully clamored, "Great work, Captain! Don't let 'em march!" He watched the strikers filing from the park. Many of them bore posters with "They can't stop our peacefully walking." The militiamen tore away the posters, but the strikers fell in behind their leaders and straggled off, a thin unimpressive trickle between steel-glinting lines of soldiers. Babbitt saw with disappointment that there wasn't going to be any violence, nothing interesting at all. Then he gasped. Among the marchers, beside a bulky young workman, was Seneca Doane, smiling, content. In front of him was Professor Brockbank, head of the history department in the State University, an old man and white-bearded, known to come from a distinguished Massachusetts family. "Why, gosh," Babbitt marveled, "a swell like him in with the strikers? And good ole Senny Doane! They're fools to get mixed up with this bunch. They're parlor socialists! But they have got nerve. And nothing in it for them, not a cent! And--I don't know 's ALL the strikers look like such tough nuts. Look just about like anybody else to me!" The militiamen were turning the parade down a side street. "They got just as much right to march as anybody else! They own the streets as much as Clarence Drum or the American Legion does!" Babbitt grumbled. "Of course, they're--they're a bad element, but--Oh, rats!" At the Athletic Club, Babbitt was silent during lunch, while the others fretted, "I don't know what the world's coming to," or solaced their spirits with "kidding." Captain Clarence Drum came swinging by, splendid in khaki. "How's it going, Captain?" inquired Vergil Gunch. "Oh, we got 'em stopped. We worked 'em off on side streets and separated 'em and they got discouraged and went home." "Fine work. No violence." "Fine work nothing!" groaned Mr. Drum. "If I had my way, there'd be a whole lot of violence, and I'd start it, and then the whole thing would be over. I don't believe in standing back and wet-nursing these fellows and letting the disturbances drag on. I tell you these strikers are nothing in God's world but a lot of bomb-throwing socialists and thugs, and the only way to handle 'em is with a club! That's what I'd do; beat up the whole lot of 'em!" Babbitt heard himself saying, "Oh, rats, Clarence, they look just about like you and me, and I certainly didn't notice any bombs." Drum complained, "Oh, you didn't, eh? Well, maybe you'd like to take charge of the strike! Just tell Colonel Nixon what innocents the strikers are! He'd be glad to hear about it!" Drum strode on, while all the table stared at Babbitt. "What's the idea? Do you want us to give those hell-hounds love and kisses, or what?" said Orville Jones. "Do you defend a lot of hoodlums that are trying to take the bread and butter away from our families?" raged Professor Pumphrey. Vergil Gunch intimidatingly said nothing. He put on sternness like a mask; his jaw was hard, his bristly short hair seemed cruel, his silence was a ferocious thunder. While the others assured Babbitt that they must have misunderstood him, Gunch looked as though he had understood only too well. Like a robed judge he listened to Babbitt's stammering: "No, sure; course they're a bunch of toughs. But I just mean--Strikes me it's bad policy to talk about clubbing 'em. Cabe Nixon doesn't. He's got the fine Italian hand. And that's why he's colonel. Clarence Drum is jealous of him." "Well," said Professor Pumphrey, "you hurt Clarence's feelings, George. He's been out there all morning getting hot and dusty, and no wonder he wants to beat the tar out of those sons of guns!" Gunch said nothing, and watched; and Babbitt knew that he was being watched. III As he was leaving the club Babbitt heard Chum Frink protesting to Gunch, "--don't know what's got into him. Last Sunday Doc Drew preached a corking sermon about decency in business and Babbitt kicked about that, too. Near 's I can figure out--" Babbitt was vaguely frightened. IV He saw a crowd listening to a man who was talking from the rostrum of a kitchen-chair. He stopped his car. From newspaper pictures he knew that the speaker must be the notorious freelance preacher, Beecher Ingram, of whom Seneca Doane had spoken. Ingram was a gaunt man with flamboyant hair, weather-beaten cheeks, and worried eyes. He was pleading: "--if those telephone girls can hold out, living on one meal a day, doing their own washing, starving and smiling, you big hulking men ought to be able--" Babbitt saw that from the sidewalk Vergil Gunch was watching him. In vague disquiet he started the car and mechanically drove on, while Gunch's hostile eyes seemed to follow him all the way. V "There's a lot of these fellows," Babbitt was complaining to his wife, "that think if workmen go on strike they're a regular bunch of fiends. Now, of course, it's a fight between sound business and the destructive element, and we got to lick the stuffin's out of 'em when they challenge us, but doggoned if I see why we can't fight like gentlemen and not go calling 'em dirty dogs and saying they ought to be shot down." "Why, George," she said placidly, "I thought you always insisted that all strikers ought to be put in jail." "I never did! Well, I mean--Some of 'em, of course. Irresponsible leaders. But I mean a fellow ought to be broad-minded and liberal about things like--" "But dearie, I thought you always said these so-called 'liberal' people were the worst of--" "Rats! Woman never can understand the different definitions of a word. Depends on how you mean it. And it don't pay to be too cocksure about anything. Now, these strikers: Honest, they're not such bad people. Just foolish. They don't understand the complications of merchandizing and profit, the way we business men do, but sometimes I think they're about like the rest of us, and no more hogs for wages than we are for profits." "George! If people were to hear you talk like that--of course I KNOW you; I remember what a wild crazy boy you were; I know you don't mean a word you say--but if people that didn't understand you were to hear you talking, they'd think you were a regular socialist!" "What do I care what anybody thinks? And let me tell you right now--I want you to distinctly understand I never was a wild crazy kid, and when I say a thing, I mean it, and I stand by it and--Honest, do you think people would think I was too liberal if I just said the strikers were decent?" "Of course they would. But don't worry, dear; I know you don't mean a word of it. Time to trot up to bed now. Have you enough covers for to-night?" On the sleeping-porch he puzzled, "She doesn't understand me. Hardly understand myself. Why can't I take things easy, way I used to? "Wish I could go out to Senny Doane's house and talk things over with him. No! Suppose Verg Gunch saw me going in there! "Wish I knew some really smart woman, and nice, that would see what I'm trying to get at, and let me talk to her and--I wonder if Myra's right? Could the fellows think I've gone nutty just because I'm broad-minded and liberal? Way Verg looked at me--"

Chapter XXVII

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxvii-xxx

In September, there are worker strikes and protests that turn Zenith "into two belligerent camps". All of the newspapers and the white-collar members of Zenith oppose the strike and try to reinstate order. Babbitt suddenly becomes publicly liberal, siding with the feared Seneca Doane and criticizing political services. In front of Chum Frink, he calls "rot" Dr. Drew's sermon about how love should prevent this chaos. At the strikers' parade, Babbitt becomes conflicted. Initially, he feels viscerally that the strikers are "scoundrels who obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity" , but when he sees Seneca Doane and a State University Professor among the marchers, he decides that the strikers have "just as much right to march as anybody else". At the Athletic Club, Babbitt opposes popular opinion about the strike, arousing the disdain and suspicion of Vergil Gunch. At home, George argues with Myra, who warns him that he will be misunderstood if he takes such a rebellious position. Babbitt is confused by this change as well, and he is frightened by the dismay of his friends

Even at his most rebellious, Babbitt is plagued by the indecisiveness that is inevitable for someone without any thoughts or beliefs that are entirely his own. Although it is not necessarily inconsistent, he still vacillates between an elitist disapproval of the protesting workers and a feeling that they have "just as much right to march as anybody else" . He requires the influence of Seneca Doane, once again, to temporarily subscribe to the liberal support of the strikers. Even still, he refers to them as "a bad element" and is confused by his own contradictions. This is, perhaps, the result of his living and having bought into a society so focused on conformity and so saturated by various forms of mass media. Finally, though, he is bold enough to support the socialist agenda in front of the men at the Athletic Club, and this results in the manipulative disdain that soon will contribute to Babbitt's renunciation of this rebellious phase. His rebellion is not strong enough to withstand such disdain among his colleagues. Although Babbitt believes that his relationship with Tanis Judique is based on a strong connection, mutual understanding, and respect, Lewis suggests that it is, like most things in Babbitt's life, a mere frivolity. During the long evening that they spend talking together, Babbitt feels as if they agree on everything. This, of course, might be an indication of their deep compatibility. Yet, Lewis informs us that "They agreed that Prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was cultural," and they agreed that short skirts were short. The utter lack of substance in these impressions is made even more ridiculous by the fact that they interpret so much from this "frank speaking" . Lewis also emphasizes that Babbitt's attraction to Tanis results mainly from her willingness to offer him unlimited attention and sympathy. She feeds his ailing ego, but the moment she becomes burdensome, he no longer cares to exert the energy on their relationship. His eventual carelessness and lack of discretion in the affair may also indicate that his commitment to her is never as strong or complete as he believes it to be. Mrs. Mudge is one of several characters in the novel through whom Lewis critiques and satirizes the state of Jazz Age religion. She is a representative of the all-inclusive, nondescriptive religious category of New Thought, and her hour-long speech sounds like nothing more than verbal sludge. Although her sermon hypnotizes the audience, leaving them mesmerized, no one can extract any comprehensible message from her great ocean of words. The entire sermon contains no punctuation whatsoever; it is merely a blur of pseudo-spiritual phrases that the audience clearly does not understand, even though they seem to carry significance. The lack of grammatical meaning is reflective of the sermon's lack of meaningful content, revealing Mrs. Mudge as a religious quack and suggesting that real spiritual salvation is especially needed in a culture so concerned with material objects.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/28.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_7_part_2.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxviii

chapter xxviii

{"name": "Chapter XXVIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxvii-xxx", "summary": "Tanis Judique calls George at the office about a leak in her apartment, and George goes to look things over. To him, Tanis represents the height of feminine class and grace, and he is enchanted by her. He stays for a cup of tea, and they talk for a great while, agreeing about most things as George basks in the \"glorious state of being appreciated\". He confides in her about his friendship with Seneca Doane and about the tension that developed with Vergil Gunch at the Athletic Club. They rejoice in mutual understanding and comfort, and Tanis reveals herself to be somewhat of a rebel as she smokes a cigarette. They decide to have dinner together, and George calls Myra from the deli with a lie about being out on business. They talk through the night, feeling utterly content in each other's company, and George returns home at dawn", "analysis": "Even at his most rebellious, Babbitt is plagued by the indecisiveness that is inevitable for someone without any thoughts or beliefs that are entirely his own. Although it is not necessarily inconsistent, he still vacillates between an elitist disapproval of the protesting workers and a feeling that they have \"just as much right to march as anybody else\" . He requires the influence of Seneca Doane, once again, to temporarily subscribe to the liberal support of the strikers. Even still, he refers to them as \"a bad element\" and is confused by his own contradictions. This is, perhaps, the result of his living and having bought into a society so focused on conformity and so saturated by various forms of mass media. Finally, though, he is bold enough to support the socialist agenda in front of the men at the Athletic Club, and this results in the manipulative disdain that soon will contribute to Babbitt's renunciation of this rebellious phase. His rebellion is not strong enough to withstand such disdain among his colleagues. Although Babbitt believes that his relationship with Tanis Judique is based on a strong connection, mutual understanding, and respect, Lewis suggests that it is, like most things in Babbitt's life, a mere frivolity. During the long evening that they spend talking together, Babbitt feels as if they agree on everything. This, of course, might be an indication of their deep compatibility. Yet, Lewis informs us that \"They agreed that Prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was cultural,\" and they agreed that short skirts were short. The utter lack of substance in these impressions is made even more ridiculous by the fact that they interpret so much from this \"frank speaking\" . Lewis also emphasizes that Babbitt's attraction to Tanis results mainly from her willingness to offer him unlimited attention and sympathy. She feeds his ailing ego, but the moment she becomes burdensome, he no longer cares to exert the energy on their relationship. His eventual carelessness and lack of discretion in the affair may also indicate that his commitment to her is never as strong or complete as he believes it to be. Mrs. Mudge is one of several characters in the novel through whom Lewis critiques and satirizes the state of Jazz Age religion. She is a representative of the all-inclusive, nondescriptive religious category of New Thought, and her hour-long speech sounds like nothing more than verbal sludge. Although her sermon hypnotizes the audience, leaving them mesmerized, no one can extract any comprehensible message from her great ocean of words. The entire sermon contains no punctuation whatsoever; it is merely a blur of pseudo-spiritual phrases that the audience clearly does not understand, even though they seem to carry significance. The lack of grammatical meaning is reflective of the sermon's lack of meaningful content, revealing Mrs. Mudge as a religious quack and suggesting that real spiritual salvation is especially needed in a culture so concerned with material objects."}

I MISS McGOUN came into his private office at three in the afternoon with "Lissen, Mr. Babbitt; there's a Mrs. Judique on the 'phone--wants to see about some repairs, and the salesmen are all out. Want to talk to her?" "All right." The voice of Tanis Judique was clear and pleasant. The black cylinder of the telephone-receiver seemed to hold a tiny animated image of her: lustrous eyes, delicate nose, gentle chin. "This is Mrs. Judique. Do you remember me? You drove me up here to the Cavendish Apartments and helped me find such a nice flat." "Sure! Bet I remember! What can I do for you?" "Why, it's just a little--I don't know that I ought to bother you, but the janitor doesn't seem to be able to fix it. You know my flat is on the top floor, and with these autumn rains the roof is beginning to leak, and I'd be awfully glad if--" "Sure! I'll come up and take a look at it." Nervously, "When do you expect to be in?" "Why, I'm in every morning." "Be in this afternoon, in an hour or so?" "Ye-es. Perhaps I could give you a cup of tea. I think I ought to, after all your trouble." "Fine! I'll run up there soon as I can get away." He meditated, "Now there's a woman that's got refinement, savvy, CLASS! 'After all your trouble--give you a cup of tea.' She'd appreciate a fellow. I'm a fool, but I'm not such a bad cuss, get to know me. And not so much a fool as they think!" The great strike was over, the strikers beaten. Except that Vergil Gunch seemed less cordial, there were no visible effects of Babbitt's treachery to the clan. The oppressive fear of criticism was gone, but a diffident loneliness remained. Now he was so exhilarated that, to prove he wasn't, he droned about the office for fifteen minutes, looking at blue-prints, explaining to Miss McGoun that this Mrs. Scott wanted more money for her house--had raised the asking-price--raised it from seven thousand to eighty-five hundred--would Miss McGoun be sure and put it down on the card--Mrs. Scott's house--raise. When he had thus established himself as a person unemotional and interested only in business, he sauntered out. He took a particularly long time to start his car; he kicked the tires, dusted the glass of the speedometer, and tightened the screws holding the wind-shield spot-light. He drove happily off toward the Bellevue district, conscious of the presence of Mrs. Judique as of a brilliant light on the horizon. The maple leaves had fallen and they lined the gutters of the asphalted streets. It was a day of pale gold and faded green, tranquil and lingering. Babbitt was aware of the meditative day, and of the barrenness of Bellevue--blocks of wooden houses, garages, little shops, weedy lots. "Needs pepping up; needs the touch that people like Mrs. Judique could give a place," he ruminated, as he rattled through the long, crude, airy streets. The wind rose, enlivening, keen, and in a blaze of well-being he came to the flat of Tanis Judique. She was wearing, when she flutteringly admitted him, a frock of black chiffon cut modestly round at the base of her pretty throat. She seemed to him immensely sophisticated. He glanced at the cretonnes and colored prints in her living-room, and gurgled, "Gosh, you've fixed the place nice! Takes a clever woman to know how to make a home, all right!" "You really like it? I'm so glad! But you've neglected me, scandalously. You promised to come some time and learn to dance." Rather unsteadily, "Oh, but you didn't mean it seriously!" "Perhaps not. But you might have tried!" "Well, here I've come for my lesson, and you might just as well prepare to have me stay for supper!" They both laughed in a manner which indicated that of course he didn't mean it. "But first I guess I better look at that leak." She climbed with him to the flat roof of the apartment-house a detached world of slatted wooden walks, clotheslines, water-tank in a penthouse. He poked at things with his toe, and sought to impress her by being learned about copper gutters, the desirability of passing plumbing pipes through a lead collar and sleeve and flashing them with copper, and the advantages of cedar over boiler-iron for roof-tanks. "You have to know so much, in real estate!" she admired. He promised that the roof should be repaired within two days. "Do you mind my 'phoning from your apartment?" he asked. "Heavens, no!" He stood a moment at the coping, looking over a land of hard little bungalows with abnormally large porches, and new apartment-houses, small, but brave with variegated brick walls and terra-cotta trimmings. Beyond them was a hill with a gouge of yellow clay like a vast wound. Behind every apartment-house, beside each dwelling, were small garages. It was a world of good little people, comfortable, industrious, credulous. In the autumnal light the flat newness was mellowed, and the air was a sun-tinted pool. "Golly, it's one fine afternoon. You get a great view here, right up Tanner's Hill," said Babbitt. "Yes, isn't it nice and open." "So darn few people appreciate a View." "Don't you go raising my rent on that account! Oh, that was naughty of me! I was just teasing. Seriously though, there are so few who respond--who react to Views. I mean--they haven't any feeling of poetry and beauty." "That's a fact, they haven't," he breathed, admiring her slenderness and the absorbed, airy way in which she looked toward the hill, chin lifted, lips smiling. "Well, guess I'd better telephone the plumbers, so they'll get on the job first thing in the morning." When he had telephoned, making it conspicuously authoritative and gruff and masculine, he looked doubtful, and sighed, "S'pose I'd better be--" "Oh, you must have that cup of tea first!" "Well, it would go pretty good, at that." It was luxurious to loll in a deep green rep chair, his legs thrust out before him, to glance at the black Chinese telephone stand and the colored photograph of Mount Vernon which he had always liked so much, while in the tiny kitchen--so near--Mrs. Judique sang "My Creole Queen." In an intolerable sweetness, a contentment so deep that he was wistfully discontented, he saw magnolias by moonlight and heard plantation darkies crooning to the banjo. He wanted to be near her, on pretense of helping her, yet he wanted to remain in this still ecstasy. Languidly he remained. When she bustled in with the tea he smiled up at her. "This is awfully nice!" For the first time, he was not fencing; he was quietly and securely friendly; and friendly and quiet was her answer: "It's nice to have you here. You were so kind, helping me to find this little home." They agreed that the weather would soon turn cold. They agreed that prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was cultural. They agreed about everything. They even became bold. They hinted that these modern young girls, well, honestly, their short skirts were short. They were proud to find that they were not shocked by such frank speaking. Tanis ventured, "I know you'll understand--I mean--I don't quite know how to say it, but I do think that girls who pretend they're bad by the way they dress really never go any farther. They give away the fact that they haven't the instincts of a womanly woman." Remembering Ida Putiak, the manicure girl, and how ill she had used him, Babbitt agreed with enthusiasm; remembering how ill all the world had used him, he told of Paul Riesling, of Zilla, of Seneca Doane, of the strike: "See how it was? Course I was as anxious to have those beggars licked to a standstill as anybody else, but gosh, no reason for not seeing their side. For a fellow's own sake, he's got to be broad-minded and liberal, don't you think so?" "Oh, I do!" Sitting on the hard little couch, she clasped her hands beside her, leaned toward him, absorbed him; and in a glorious state of being appreciated he proclaimed: "So I up and said to the fellows at the club, 'Look here,' I--" "Do you belong to the Union Club? I think it's--" "No; the Athletic. Tell you: Course they're always asking me to join the Union, but I always say, 'No, sir! Nothing doing!' I don't mind the expense but I can't stand all the old fogies." "Oh, yes, that's so. But tell me: what did you say to them?" "Oh, you don't want to hear it. I'm probably boring you to death with my troubles! You wouldn't hardly think I was an old duffer; I sound like a kid!" "Oh, you're a boy yet. I mean--you can't be a day over forty-five." "Well, I'm not--much. But by golly I begin to feel middle-aged sometimes; all these responsibilities and all." "Oh, I know!" Her voice caressed him; it cloaked him like warm silk. "And I feel lonely, so lonely, some days, Mr. Babbitt." "We're a sad pair of birds! But I think we're pretty darn nice!" "Yes, I think we're lots nicer than most people I know!" They smiled. "But please tell me what you said at the Club." "Well, it was like this: Course Seneca Doane is a friend of mine--they can say what they want to, they can call him anything they please, but what most folks here don't know is that Senny is the bosom pal of some of the biggest statesmen in the world--Lord Wycombe, frinstance--you know, this big British nobleman. My friend Sir Gerald Doak told me that Lord Wycombe is one of the biggest guns in England--well, Doak or somebody told me." "Oh! Do you know Sir Gerald? The one that was here, at the McKelveys'?" "Know him? Well, say, I know him just well enough so we call each other George and Jerry, and we got so pickled together in Chicago--" "That must have been fun. But--" She shook a finger at him. "--I can't have you getting pickled! I'll have to take you in hand!" "Wish you would! . . . Well, zize saying: You see I happen to know what a big noise Senny Doane is outside of Zenith, but of course a prophet hasn't got any honor in his own country, and Senny, darn his old hide, he's so blame modest that he never lets folks know the kind of an outfit he travels with when he goes abroad. Well, during the strike Clarence Drum comes pee-rading up to our table, all dolled up fit to kill in his nice lil cap'n's uniform, and somebody says to him, 'Busting the strike, Clarence?' "Well, he swells up like a pouter-pigeon and he hollers, so 's you could hear him way up in the reading-room, 'Yes, sure; I told the strike-leaders where they got off, and so they went home.' "'Well,' I says to him, 'glad there wasn't any violence.' "'Yes,' he says, 'but if I hadn't kept my eye skinned there would 've been. All those fellows had bombs in their pockets. They're reg'lar anarchists.' "'Oh, rats, Clarence,' I says, 'I looked 'em all over carefully, and they didn't have any more bombs 'n a rabbit,' I says. 'Course,' I says, 'they're foolish, but they're a good deal like you and me, after all.' "And then Vergil Gunch or somebody--no, it was Chum Frink--you know, this famous poet--great pal of mine--he says to me, 'Look here,' he says, 'do you mean to say you advocate these strikes?' Well, I was so disgusted with a fellow whose mind worked that way that I swear, I had a good mind to not explain at all--just ignore him--" "Oh, that's so wise!" said Mrs. Judique. "--but finally I explains to him: 'If you'd done as much as I have on Chamber of Commerce committees and all,' I says, 'then you'd have the right to talk! But same time,' I says, 'I believe in treating your opponent like a gentleman!' Well, sir, that held 'em! Frink--Chum I always call him--he didn't have another word to say. But at that, I guess some of 'em kind o' thought I was too liberal. What do you think?" "Oh, you were so wise. And courageous! I love a man to have the courage of his convictions!" "But do you think it was a good stunt? After all, some of these fellows are so darn cautious and narrow-minded that they're prejudiced against a fellow that talks right out in meeting." "What do you care? In the long run they're bound to respect a man who makes them think, and with your reputation for oratory you--" "What do you know about my reputation for oratory?" "Oh, I'm not going to tell you everything I know! But seriously, you don't realize what a famous man you are." "Well--Though I haven't done much orating this fall. Too kind of bothered by this Paul Riesling business, I guess. But--Do you know, you're the first person that's really understood what I was getting at, Tanis--Listen to me, will you! Fat nerve I've got, calling you Tanis!" "Oh, do! And shall I call you George? Don't you think it's awfully nice when two people have so much--what shall I call it?--so much analysis that they can discard all these stupid conventions and understand each other and become acquainted right away, like ships that pass in the night?" "I certainly do! I certainly do!" He was no longer quiescent in his chair; he wandered about the room, he dropped on the couch beside her. But as he awkwardly stretched his hand toward her fragile, immaculate fingers, she said brightly, "Do give me a cigarette. Would you think poor Tanis was dreadfully naughty if she smoked?" "Lord, no! I like it!" He had often and weightily pondered flappers smoking in Zenith restaurants, but he knew only one woman who smoked--Mrs. Sam Doppelbrau, his flighty neighbor. He ceremoniously lighted Tanis's cigarette, looked for a place to deposit the burnt match, and dropped it into his pocket. "I'm sure you want a cigar, you poor man!" she crooned. "Do you mind one?" "Oh, no! I love the smell of a good cigar; so nice and--so nice and like a man. You'll find an ash-tray in my bedroom, on the table beside the bed, if you don't mind getting it." He was embarrassed by her bedroom: the broad couch with a cover of violet silk, mauve curtains striped with gold. Chinese Chippendale bureau, and an amazing row of slippers, with ribbon-wound shoe-trees, and primrose stockings lying across them. His manner of bringing the ash-tray had just the right note of easy friendliness, he felt. "A boob like Verg Gunch would try to get funny about seeing her bedroom, but I take it casually." He was not casual afterward. The contentment of companionship was gone, and he was restless with desire to touch her hand. But whenever he turned toward her, the cigarette was in his way. It was a shield between them. He waited till she should have finished, but as he rejoiced at her quick crushing of its light on the ashtray she said, "Don't you want to give me another cigarette?" and hopelessly he saw the screen of pale smoke and her graceful tilted hand again between them. He was not merely curious now to find out whether she would let him hold her hand (all in the purest friendship, naturally), but agonized with need of it. On the surface appeared none of all this fretful drama. They were talking cheerfully of motors, of trips to California, of Chum Frink. Once he said delicately, "I do hate these guys--I hate these people that invite themselves to meals, but I seem to have a feeling I'm going to have supper with the lovely Mrs. Tanis Judique to-night. But I suppose you probably have seven dates already." "Well, I was thinking some of going to the movies. Yes, I really think I ought to get out and get some fresh air." She did not encourage him to stay, but never did she discourage him. He considered, "I better take a sneak! She WILL let me stay--there IS something doing--and I mustn't get mixed up with--I mustn't--I've got to beat it." Then, "No. it's too late now." Suddenly, at seven, brushing her cigarette away, brusquely taking her hand: "Tanis! Stop teasing me! You know we--Here we are, a couple of lonely birds, and we're awful happy together. Anyway I am! Never been so happy! Do let me stay! I'll gallop down to the delicatessen and buy some stuff--cold chicken maybe--or cold turkey--and we can have a nice little supper, and afterwards, if you want to chase me out, I'll be good and go like a lamb." "Well--yes--it would be nice," she said. Nor did she withdraw her hand. He squeezed it, trembling, and blundered toward his coat. At the delicatessen he bought preposterous stores of food, chosen on the principle of expensiveness. From the drug store across the street he telephoned to his wife, "Got to get a fellow to sign a lease before he leaves town on the midnight. Won't be home till late. Don't wait up for me. Kiss Tinka good-night." He expectantly lumbered back to the flat. "Oh, you bad thing, to buy so much food!" was her greeting, and her voice was gay, her smile acceptant. He helped her in the tiny white kitchen; he washed the lettuce, he opened the olive bottle. She ordered him to set the table, and as he trotted into the living-room, as he hunted through the buffet for knives and forks, he felt utterly at home. "Now the only other thing," he announced, "is what you're going to wear. I can't decide whether you're to put on your swellest evening gown, or let your hair down and put on short skirts and make-believe you're a little girl." "I'm going to dine just as I am, in this old chiffon rag, and if you can't stand poor Tanis that way, you can go to the club for dinner!" "Stand you!" He patted her shoulder. "Child, you're the brainiest and the loveliest and finest woman I've ever met! Come now, Lady Wycombe, if you'll take the Duke of Zenith's arm, we will proambulate in to the magnolious feed!" "Oh, you do say the funniest, nicest things!" When they had finished the picnic supper he thrust his head out of the window and reported, "It's turned awful chilly, and I think it's going to rain. You don't want to go to the movies." "Well--" "I wish we had a fireplace! I wish it was raining like all get-out to-night, and we were in a funny little old-fashioned cottage, and the trees thrashing like everything outside, and a great big log fire and--I'll tell you! Let's draw this couch up to the radiator, and stretch our feet out, and pretend it's a wood-fire." "Oh, I think that's pathetic! You big child!" But they did draw up to the radiator, and propped their feet against it--his clumsy black shoes, her patent-leather slippers. In the dimness they talked of themselves; of how lonely she was, how bewildered he, and how wonderful that they had found each other. As they fell silent the room was stiller than a country lane. There was no sound from the street save the whir of motor-tires, the rumble of a distant freight-train. Self-contained was the room, warm, secure, insulated from the harassing world. He was absorbed by a rapture in which all fear and doubting were smoothed away; and when he reached home, at dawn, the rapture had mellowed to contentment serene and full of memories.

Chapter XXVIII

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxvii-xxx

Tanis Judique calls George at the office about a leak in her apartment, and George goes to look things over. To him, Tanis represents the height of feminine class and grace, and he is enchanted by her. He stays for a cup of tea, and they talk for a great while, agreeing about most things as George basks in the "glorious state of being appreciated". He confides in her about his friendship with Seneca Doane and about the tension that developed with Vergil Gunch at the Athletic Club. They rejoice in mutual understanding and comfort, and Tanis reveals herself to be somewhat of a rebel as she smokes a cigarette. They decide to have dinner together, and George calls Myra from the deli with a lie about being out on business. They talk through the night, feeling utterly content in each other's company, and George returns home at dawn

Even at his most rebellious, Babbitt is plagued by the indecisiveness that is inevitable for someone without any thoughts or beliefs that are entirely his own. Although it is not necessarily inconsistent, he still vacillates between an elitist disapproval of the protesting workers and a feeling that they have "just as much right to march as anybody else" . He requires the influence of Seneca Doane, once again, to temporarily subscribe to the liberal support of the strikers. Even still, he refers to them as "a bad element" and is confused by his own contradictions. This is, perhaps, the result of his living and having bought into a society so focused on conformity and so saturated by various forms of mass media. Finally, though, he is bold enough to support the socialist agenda in front of the men at the Athletic Club, and this results in the manipulative disdain that soon will contribute to Babbitt's renunciation of this rebellious phase. His rebellion is not strong enough to withstand such disdain among his colleagues. Although Babbitt believes that his relationship with Tanis Judique is based on a strong connection, mutual understanding, and respect, Lewis suggests that it is, like most things in Babbitt's life, a mere frivolity. During the long evening that they spend talking together, Babbitt feels as if they agree on everything. This, of course, might be an indication of their deep compatibility. Yet, Lewis informs us that "They agreed that Prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was cultural," and they agreed that short skirts were short. The utter lack of substance in these impressions is made even more ridiculous by the fact that they interpret so much from this "frank speaking" . Lewis also emphasizes that Babbitt's attraction to Tanis results mainly from her willingness to offer him unlimited attention and sympathy. She feeds his ailing ego, but the moment she becomes burdensome, he no longer cares to exert the energy on their relationship. His eventual carelessness and lack of discretion in the affair may also indicate that his commitment to her is never as strong or complete as he believes it to be. Mrs. Mudge is one of several characters in the novel through whom Lewis critiques and satirizes the state of Jazz Age religion. She is a representative of the all-inclusive, nondescriptive religious category of New Thought, and her hour-long speech sounds like nothing more than verbal sludge. Although her sermon hypnotizes the audience, leaving them mesmerized, no one can extract any comprehensible message from her great ocean of words. The entire sermon contains no punctuation whatsoever; it is merely a blur of pseudo-spiritual phrases that the audience clearly does not understand, even though they seem to carry significance. The lack of grammatical meaning is reflective of the sermon's lack of meaningful content, revealing Mrs. Mudge as a religious quack and suggesting that real spiritual salvation is especially needed in a culture so concerned with material objects.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/30.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_7_part_4.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxx

chapter xxx

{"name": "Chapter XXX", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxvii-xxx", "summary": "Myra returns to Zenith, confessing her fears that George neither missed her nor needed her. As soon as George feels the pressure of obligation to satisfy Tanis while keeping the affair a secret, he is suddenly resentful of Tanis and of \"women and the way they get you all tied up in complications. Still, he continues the affair somewhat carelessly and unapologetically. During an argument about George's smoking and drinking, Myra reveals that she is resentful of the fact that George gets to \"run around with anybody\" he pleases while she stays home, still a slave to routine. When George blindly agrees to help her gain culture, she requests that he accompany her to Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge's New Thought meeting on Cultivating the Sun Spirit. Mrs. Mudge's speech is hypnotizing and incoherent, concluding with an announcement about the monthly magazine that costs a \"mere pittance\" per year. Though the audience listens with rapt adoration, Babbitt is unimpressed by this form of escapism, which upsets Myra. After another argument, George is unable to offer any assurance as Myra insinuates that their marriage is ending", "analysis": "Even at his most rebellious, Babbitt is plagued by the indecisiveness that is inevitable for someone without any thoughts or beliefs that are entirely his own. Although it is not necessarily inconsistent, he still vacillates between an elitist disapproval of the protesting workers and a feeling that they have \"just as much right to march as anybody else\" . He requires the influence of Seneca Doane, once again, to temporarily subscribe to the liberal support of the strikers. Even still, he refers to them as \"a bad element\" and is confused by his own contradictions. This is, perhaps, the result of his living and having bought into a society so focused on conformity and so saturated by various forms of mass media. Finally, though, he is bold enough to support the socialist agenda in front of the men at the Athletic Club, and this results in the manipulative disdain that soon will contribute to Babbitt's renunciation of this rebellious phase. His rebellion is not strong enough to withstand such disdain among his colleagues. Although Babbitt believes that his relationship with Tanis Judique is based on a strong connection, mutual understanding, and respect, Lewis suggests that it is, like most things in Babbitt's life, a mere frivolity. During the long evening that they spend talking together, Babbitt feels as if they agree on everything. This, of course, might be an indication of their deep compatibility. Yet, Lewis informs us that \"They agreed that Prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was cultural,\" and they agreed that short skirts were short. The utter lack of substance in these impressions is made even more ridiculous by the fact that they interpret so much from this \"frank speaking\" . Lewis also emphasizes that Babbitt's attraction to Tanis results mainly from her willingness to offer him unlimited attention and sympathy. She feeds his ailing ego, but the moment she becomes burdensome, he no longer cares to exert the energy on their relationship. His eventual carelessness and lack of discretion in the affair may also indicate that his commitment to her is never as strong or complete as he believes it to be. Mrs. Mudge is one of several characters in the novel through whom Lewis critiques and satirizes the state of Jazz Age religion. She is a representative of the all-inclusive, nondescriptive religious category of New Thought, and her hour-long speech sounds like nothing more than verbal sludge. Although her sermon hypnotizes the audience, leaving them mesmerized, no one can extract any comprehensible message from her great ocean of words. The entire sermon contains no punctuation whatsoever; it is merely a blur of pseudo-spiritual phrases that the audience clearly does not understand, even though they seem to carry significance. The lack of grammatical meaning is reflective of the sermon's lack of meaningful content, revealing Mrs. Mudge as a religious quack and suggesting that real spiritual salvation is especially needed in a culture so concerned with material objects."}

I THE summer before, Mrs. Babbitt's letters had crackled with desire to return to Zenith. Now they said nothing of returning, but a wistful "I suppose everything is going on all right without me" among her dry chronicles of weather and sicknesses hinted to Babbitt that he hadn't been very urgent about her coming. He worried it: "If she were here, and I went on raising cain like I been doing, she'd have a fit. I got to get hold of myself. I got to learn to play around and yet not make a fool of myself. I can do it, too, if folks like Verg Gunch 'll let me alone, and Myra 'll stay away. But--poor kid, she sounds lonely. Lord, I don't want to hurt her!" Impulsively he wrote that they missed her, and her next letter said happily that she was coming home. He persuaded himself that he was eager to see her. He bought roses for the house, he ordered squab for dinner, he had the car cleaned and polished. All the way home from the station with her he was adequate in his accounts of Ted's success in basket-ball at the university, but before they reached Floral Heights there was nothing more to say, and already he felt the force of her stolidity, wondered whether he could remain a good husband and still sneak out of the house this evening for half an hour with the Bunch. When he had housed the car he blundered upstairs, into the familiar talcum-scented warmth of her presence, blaring, "Help you unpack your bag?" "No, I can do it." Slowly she turned, holding up a small box, and slowly she said, "I brought you a present, just a new cigar-case. I don't know if you'd care to have it--" She was the lonely girl, the brown appealing Myra Thompson, whom he had married, and he almost wept for pity as he kissed her and besought, "Oh, honey, honey, CARE to have it? Of course I do! I'm awful proud you brought it to me. And I needed a new case badly." He wondered how he would get rid of the case he had bought the week before. "And you really are glad to see me back?" "Why, you poor kiddy, what you been worrying about?" "Well, you didn't seem to miss me very much." By the time he had finished his stint of lying they were firmly bound again. By ten that evening it seemed improbable that she had ever been away. There was but one difference: the problem of remaining a respectable husband, a Floral Heights husband, yet seeing Tanis and the Bunch with frequency. He had promised to telephone to Tanis that evening, and now it was melodramatically impossible. He prowled about the telephone, impulsively thrusting out a hand to lift the receiver, but never quite daring to risk it. Nor could he find a reason for slipping down to the drug store on Smith Street, with its telephone-booth. He was laden with responsibility till he threw it off with the speculation: "Why the deuce should I fret so about not being able to 'phone Tanis? She can get along without me. I don't owe her anything. She's a fine girl, but I've given her just as much as she has me. . . . Oh, damn these women and the way they get you all tied up in complications!" II For a week he was attentive to his wife, took her to the theater, to dinner at the Littlefields'; then the old weary dodging and shifting began and at least two evenings a week he spent with the Bunch. He still made pretense of going to the Elks and to committee-meetings but less and less did he trouble to have his excuses interesting, less and less did she affect to believe them. He was certain that she knew he was associating with what Floral Heights called "a sporty crowd," yet neither of them acknowledged it. In matrimonial geography the distance between the first mute recognition of a break and the admission thereof is as great as the distance between the first naive faith and the first doubting. As he began to drift away he also began to see her as a human being, to like and dislike her instead of accepting her as a comparatively movable part of the furniture, and he compassionated that husband-and-wife relation which, in twenty-five years of married life, had become a separate and real entity. He recalled their high lights: the summer vacation in Virginia meadows under the blue wall of the mountains; their motor tour through Ohio, and the exploration of Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus; the birth of Verona; their building of this new house, planned to comfort them through a happy old age--chokingly they had said that it might be the last home either of them would ever have. Yet his most softening remembrance of these dear moments did not keep him from barking at dinner, "Yep, going out f' few hours. Don't sit up for me." He did not dare now to come home drunk, and though he rejoiced in his return to high morality and spoke with gravity to Pete and Fulton Bemis about their drinking, he prickled at Myra's unexpressed criticisms and sulkily meditated that a "fellow couldn't ever learn to handle himself if he was always bossed by a lot of women." He no longer wondered if Tanis wasn't a bit worn and sentimental. In contrast to the complacent Myra he saw her as swift and air-borne and radiant, a fire-spirit tenderly stooping to the hearth, and however pitifully he brooded on his wife, he longed to be with Tanis. Then Mrs. Babbitt tore the decent cloak from her unhappiness and the astounded male discovered that she was having a small determined rebellion of her own. III They were beside the fireless fire-place, in the evening. "Georgie," she said, "you haven't given me the list of your household expenses while I was away." "No, I--Haven't made it out yet." Very affably: "Gosh, we must try to keep down expenses this year." "That's so. I don't know where all the money goes to. I try to economize, but it just seems to evaporate." "I suppose I oughtn't to spend so much on cigars. Don't know but what I'll cut down my smoking, maybe cut it out entirely. I was thinking of a good way to do it, the other day: start on these cubeb cigarettes, and they'd kind of disgust me with smoking." "Oh, I do wish you would! It isn't that I care, but honestly, George, it is so bad for you to smoke so much. Don't you think you could reduce the amount? And George--I notice now, when you come home from these lodges and all, that sometimes you smell of whisky. Dearie, you know I don't worry so much about the moral side of it, but you have a weak stomach and you can't stand all this drinking." "Weak stomach, hell! I guess I can carry my booze about as well as most folks!" "Well, I do think you ought to be careful. Don't you see, dear, I don't want you to get sick." "Sick, rats! I'm not a baby! I guess I ain't going to get sick just because maybe once a week I shoot a highball! That's the trouble with women. They always exaggerate so." "George, I don't think you ought to talk that way when I'm just speaking for your own good." "I know, but gosh all fishhooks, that's the trouble with women! They're always criticizing and commenting and bringing things up, and then they say it's 'for your own good'!" "Why, George, that's not a nice way to talk, to answer me so short." "Well, I didn't mean to answer short, but gosh, talking as if I was a kindergarten brat, not able to tote one highball without calling for the St. Mary's ambulance! A fine idea you must have of me!" "Oh, it isn't that; it's just--I don't want to see you get sick and--My, I didn't know it was so late! Don't forget to give me those household accounts for the time while I was away." "Oh, thunder, what's the use of taking the trouble to make 'em out now? Let's just skip 'em for that period." "Why, George Babbitt, in all the years we've been married we've never failed to keep a complete account of every penny we've spent!" "No. Maybe that's the trouble with us." "What in the world do you mean?" "Oh, I don't mean anything, only--Sometimes I get so darn sick and tired of all this routine and the accounting at the office and expenses at home and fussing and stewing and fretting and wearing myself out worrying over a lot of junk that doesn't really mean a doggone thing, and being so careful and--Good Lord, what do you think I'm made for? I could have been a darn good orator, and here I fuss and fret and worry--" "Don't you suppose I ever get tired of fussing? I get so bored with ordering three meals a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and ruining my eyes over that horrid sewing-machine, and looking after your clothes and Rone's and Ted's and Tinka's and everybody's, and the laundry, and darning socks, and going down to the Piggly Wiggly to market, and bringing my basket home to save money on the cash-and-carry and--EVERYTHING!" "Well, gosh," with a certain astonishment, "I suppose maybe you do! But talk about--Here I have to be in the office every single day, while you can go out all afternoon and see folks and visit with the neighbors and do any blinkin' thing you want to!" "Yes, and a fine lot of good that does me! Just talking over the same old things with the same old crowd, while you have all sorts of interesting people coming in to see you at the office." "Interesting! Cranky old dames that want to know why I haven't rented their dear precious homes for about seven times their value, and bunch of old crabs panning the everlasting daylights out of me because they don't receive every cent of their rentals by three G.M. on the second of the month! Sure! Interesting! Just as interesting as the small pox!" "Now, George, I will not have you shouting at me that way!" "Well, it gets my goat the way women figure out that a man doesn't do a darn thing but sit on his chair and have lovey-dovey conferences with a lot of classy dames and give 'em the glad eye!" "I guess you manage to give them a glad enough eye when they do come in." "What do you mean? Mean I'm chasing flappers?" "I should hope not--at your age!" "Now you look here! You may not believe it--Of course all you see is fat little Georgie Babbitt. Sure! Handy man around the house! Fixes the furnace when the furnace-man doesn't show up, and pays the bills, but dull, awful dull! Well, you may not believe it, but there's some women that think old George Babbitt isn't such a bad scout! They think he's not so bad-looking, not so bad that it hurts anyway, and he's got a pretty good line of guff, and some even think he shakes a darn wicked Walkover at dancing!" "Yes." She spoke slowly. "I haven't much doubt that when I'm away you manage to find people who properly appreciate you." "Well, I just mean--" he protested, with a sound of denial. Then he was angered into semi-honesty. "You bet I do! I find plenty of folks, and doggone nice ones, that don't think I'm a weak-stomached baby!" "That's exactly what I was saying! You can run around with anybody you please, but I'm supposed to sit here and wait for you. You have the chance to get all sorts of culture and everything, and I just stay home--" "Well, gosh almighty, there's nothing to prevent your reading books and going to lectures and all that junk, is there?" "George, I told you, I won't have you shouting at me like that! I don't know what's come over you. You never used to speak to me in this cranky way." "I didn't mean to sound cranky, but gosh, it certainly makes me sore to get the blame because you don't keep up with things." "I'm going to! Will you help me?" "Sure. Anything I can do to help you in the culture-grabbing line--yours to oblige, G. F. Babbitt." "Very well then, I want you to go to Mrs. Mudge's New Thought meeting with me, next Sunday afternoon." "Mrs. Who's which?" "Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge. The field-lecturer for the American New Thought League. She's going to speak on 'Cultivating the Sun Spirit' before the League of the Higher Illumination, at the Thornleigh." "Oh, punk! New Thought! Hashed thought with a poached egg! 'Cultivating the--' It sounds like 'Why is a mouse when it spins?' That's a fine spiel for a good Presbyterian to be going to, when you can hear Doc Drew!" "Reverend Drew is a scholar and a pulpit orator and all that, but he hasn't got the Inner Ferment, as Mrs. Mudge calls it; he hasn't any inspiration for the New Era. Women need inspiration now. So I want you to come, as you promised." IV The Zenith branch of the League of the Higher Illumination met in the smaller ballroom at the Hotel Thornleigh, a refined apartment with pale green walls and plaster wreaths of roses, refined parquet flooring, and ultra-refined frail gilt chairs. Here were gathered sixty-five women and ten men. Most of the men slouched in their chairs and wriggled, while their wives sat rigidly at attention, but two of them--red-necked, meaty men--were as respectably devout as their wives. They were newly rich contractors who, having bought houses, motors, hand-painted pictures, and gentlemanliness, were now buying a refined ready-made philosophy. It had been a toss-up with them whether to buy New Thought, Christian Science, or a good standard high-church model of Episcopalianism. In the flesh, Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge fell somewhat short of a prophetic aspect. She was pony-built and plump, with the face of a haughty Pekingese, a button of a nose, and arms so short that, despite her most indignant endeavors, she could not clasp her hands in front of her as she sat on the platform waiting. Her frock of taffeta and green velvet, with three strings of glass beads, and large folding eye-glasses dangling from a black ribbon, was a triumph of refinement. Mrs. Mudge was introduced by the president of the League of the Higher Illumination, an oldish young woman with a yearning voice, white spats, and a mustache. She said that Mrs. Mudge would now make it plain to the simplest intellect how the Sun Spirit could be cultivated, and they who had been thinking about cultivating one would do well to treasure Mrs. Mudge's words, because even Zenith (and everybody knew that Zenith stood in the van of spiritual and New Thought progress) didn't often have the opportunity to sit at the feet of such an inspiring Optimist and Metaphysical Seer as Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, who had lived the Life of Wider Usefulness through Concentration, and in the Silence found those Secrets of Mental Control and the Inner Key which were immediately going to transform and bring Peace, Power, and Prosperity to the unhappy nations; and so, friends, would they for this precious gem-studded hour forget the Illusions of the Seeming Real, and in the actualization of the deep-lying Veritas pass, along with Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, to the Realm Beautiful. If Mrs. Mudge was rather pudgier than one would like one's swamis, yogis, seers, and initiates, yet her voice had the real professional note. It was refined and optimistic; it was overpoweringly calm; it flowed on relentlessly, without one comma, till Babbitt was hypnotized. Her favorite word was "always," which she pronounced olllllle-ways. Her principal gesture was a pontifical but thoroughly ladylike blessing with two stubby fingers. She explained about this matter of Spiritual Saturation: "There are those--" Of "those" she made a linked sweetness long drawn out; a far-off delicate call in a twilight minor. It chastely rebuked the restless husbands, yet brought them a message of healing. "There are those who have seen the rim and outer seeming of the Logos there are those who have glimpsed and in enthusiasm possessed themselves of some segment and portion of the Logos there are those who thus flicked but not penetrated and radioactivated by the Dynamis go always to and fro assertative that they possess and are possessed of the Logos and the Metaphysikos but this word I bring you this concept I enlarge that those that are not utter are not even inceptive and that holiness is in its definitive essence always always always whole-iness and--" It proved that the Essence of the Sun Spirit was Truth, but its Aura and Effluxion were Cheerfulness: "Face always the day with the dawn-laugh with the enthusiasm of the initiate who perceives that all works together in the revolutions of the Wheel and who answers the strictures of the Soured Souls of the Destructionists with a Glad Affirmation--" It went on for about an hour and seven minutes. At the end Mrs. Mudge spoke with more vigor and punctuation: "Now let me suggest to all of you the advantages of the Theosophical and Pantheistic Oriental Reading Circle, which I represent. Our object is to unite all the manifestations of the New Era into one cohesive whole--New Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy, Vedanta, Bahaism, and the other sparks from the one New Light. The subscription is but ten dollars a year, and for this mere pittance the members receive not only the monthly magazine, Pearls of Healing, but the privilege of sending right to the president, our revered Mother Dobbs, any questions regarding spiritual progress, matrimonial problems, health and well-being questions, financial difficulties, and--" They listened to her with adoring attention. They looked genteel. They looked ironed-out. They coughed politely, and crossed their legs with quietness, and in expensive linen handkerchiefs they blew their noses with a delicacy altogether optimistic and refined. As for Babbitt, he sat and suffered. When they were blessedly out in the air again, when they drove home through a wind smelling of snow and honest sun, he dared not speak. They had been too near to quarreling, these days. Mrs. Babbitt forced it: "Did you enjoy Mrs. Mudge's talk?" "Well I--What did you get out of it?" "Oh, it starts a person thinking. It gets you out of a routine of ordinary thoughts." "Well, I'll hand it to Opal she isn't ordinary, but gosh--Honest, did that stuff mean anything to you?" "Of course I'm not trained in metaphysics, and there was lots I couldn't quite grasp, but I did feel it was inspiring. And she speaks so readily. I do think you ought to have got something out of it." "Well, I didn't! I swear, I was simply astonished, the way those women lapped it up! Why the dickens they want to put in their time listening to all that blaa when they--" "It's certainly better for them than going to roadhouses and smoking and drinking!" "I don't know whether it is or not! Personally I don't see a whole lot of difference. In both cases they're trying to get away from themselves--most everybody is, these days, I guess. And I'd certainly get a whole lot more out of hoofing it in a good lively dance, even in some dive, than sitting looking as if my collar was too tight, and feeling too scared to spit, and listening to Opal chewing her words." "I'm sure you do! You're very fond of dives. No doubt you saw a lot of them while I was away!" "Look here! You been doing a hell of a lot of insinuating and hinting around lately, as if I were leading a double life or something, and I'm damn sick of it, and I don't want to hear anything more about it!" "Why, George Babbitt! Do you realize what you're saying? Why, George, in all our years together you've never talked to me like that!" "It's about time then!" "Lately you've been getting worse and worse, and now, finally, you're cursing and swearing at me and shouting at me, and your voice so ugly and hateful--I just shudder!" "Oh, rats, quit exaggerating! I wasn't shouting, or swearing either." "I wish you could hear your own voice! Maybe you don't realize how it sounds. But even so--You never used to talk like that. You simply COULDN'T talk this way if something dreadful hadn't happened to you." His mind was hard. With amazement he found that he wasn't particularly sorry. It was only with an effort that he made himself more agreeable: "Well, gosh, I didn't mean to get sore." "George, do you realize that we can't go on like this, getting farther and farther apart, and you ruder and ruder to me? I just don't know what's going to happen." He had a moment's pity for her bewilderment; he thought of how many deep and tender things would be hurt if they really "couldn't go on like this." But his pity was impersonal, and he was wondering, "Wouldn't it maybe be a good thing if--Not a divorce and all that, o' course, but kind of a little more independence?" While she looked at him pleadingly he drove on in a dreadful silence.

Chapter XXX

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxvii-xxx

Myra returns to Zenith, confessing her fears that George neither missed her nor needed her. As soon as George feels the pressure of obligation to satisfy Tanis while keeping the affair a secret, he is suddenly resentful of Tanis and of "women and the way they get you all tied up in complications. Still, he continues the affair somewhat carelessly and unapologetically. During an argument about George's smoking and drinking, Myra reveals that she is resentful of the fact that George gets to "run around with anybody" he pleases while she stays home, still a slave to routine. When George blindly agrees to help her gain culture, she requests that he accompany her to Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge's New Thought meeting on Cultivating the Sun Spirit. Mrs. Mudge's speech is hypnotizing and incoherent, concluding with an announcement about the monthly magazine that costs a "mere pittance" per year. Though the audience listens with rapt adoration, Babbitt is unimpressed by this form of escapism, which upsets Myra. After another argument, George is unable to offer any assurance as Myra insinuates that their marriage is ending

Even at his most rebellious, Babbitt is plagued by the indecisiveness that is inevitable for someone without any thoughts or beliefs that are entirely his own. Although it is not necessarily inconsistent, he still vacillates between an elitist disapproval of the protesting workers and a feeling that they have "just as much right to march as anybody else" . He requires the influence of Seneca Doane, once again, to temporarily subscribe to the liberal support of the strikers. Even still, he refers to them as "a bad element" and is confused by his own contradictions. This is, perhaps, the result of his living and having bought into a society so focused on conformity and so saturated by various forms of mass media. Finally, though, he is bold enough to support the socialist agenda in front of the men at the Athletic Club, and this results in the manipulative disdain that soon will contribute to Babbitt's renunciation of this rebellious phase. His rebellion is not strong enough to withstand such disdain among his colleagues. Although Babbitt believes that his relationship with Tanis Judique is based on a strong connection, mutual understanding, and respect, Lewis suggests that it is, like most things in Babbitt's life, a mere frivolity. During the long evening that they spend talking together, Babbitt feels as if they agree on everything. This, of course, might be an indication of their deep compatibility. Yet, Lewis informs us that "They agreed that Prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was cultural," and they agreed that short skirts were short. The utter lack of substance in these impressions is made even more ridiculous by the fact that they interpret so much from this "frank speaking" . Lewis also emphasizes that Babbitt's attraction to Tanis results mainly from her willingness to offer him unlimited attention and sympathy. She feeds his ailing ego, but the moment she becomes burdensome, he no longer cares to exert the energy on their relationship. His eventual carelessness and lack of discretion in the affair may also indicate that his commitment to her is never as strong or complete as he believes it to be. Mrs. Mudge is one of several characters in the novel through whom Lewis critiques and satirizes the state of Jazz Age religion. She is a representative of the all-inclusive, nondescriptive religious category of New Thought, and her hour-long speech sounds like nothing more than verbal sludge. Although her sermon hypnotizes the audience, leaving them mesmerized, no one can extract any comprehensible message from her great ocean of words. The entire sermon contains no punctuation whatsoever; it is merely a blur of pseudo-spiritual phrases that the audience clearly does not understand, even though they seem to carry significance. The lack of grammatical meaning is reflective of the sermon's lack of meaningful content, revealing Mrs. Mudge as a religious quack and suggesting that real spiritual salvation is especially needed in a culture so concerned with material objects.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_8_part_1.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxxi

chapter xxxi

{"name": "Chapter XXXI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxxi-xxxiv", "summary": "Although George tries to avoid Tanis and to sever the affair, she reels him back in through phone calls and letters. Though he hates his sense of obligation, he goes to see her. He is immediately drawn to her sympathy and limitless interest in him, but he becomes discouraged when she begins to talk about her own troubles, which revolve around petty misunderstandings among her friends. The conversation wanes, and Tanis suddenly reveals her fear that Babbitt does not love her. She forces him to assure her of his love, and this pressure maims his attraction and makes him want to flee. He abruptly calls off the affair, feeling guilty about hurting Tanis but rejoicing again in his freedom", "analysis": "Babbitt's rebellion is shallow. His behavior during his rebellion often straddles the border between principle and childish stubbornness. His refusal to join the Good Citizens' League, when asked, is not so much a matter of wanting to remain faithful to his set of liberal beliefs, but rather of not wanting to be bullied into making a decision. In fact, he reflects several times on the fact that he would actually like to join, but he will not do so if it is not clear to everyone that the choice is wholly his. Although there is an element of maturity and self-respect in his defiance, it is adolescent, and he puts himself through the grief of fearing other prominent members of Zenith society. In this state of inner conflict, the reader is left to question Babbitt's final return to his old commitments as well. He returns like the prodigal son to his wife and his conformist republican life. But his return comes not from poverty or principle; he seems completely overcome with grief and worry when Myra falls ill with appendicitis. He feels and shows a love and tenderness for her that we have never seen, and he is driven to distraction by his concern for her life. One must wonder if Babbitt's sudden renunciation of his wicked ways and his enthusiastic return to the institutions that used to govern his life are sincerely driven by his deep love and broadened perspective, or if he is simply seeking a good excuse to do what he has been too stubborn to do. Perhaps Myra is a mere convenience, as she has been throughout the novel, and he uses her in a way that is almost as uncaring and inhuman as he typically does. But this is one section of the novel where satire, sarcasm, and irony seem to disappear entirely. The strength of Babbitt's emotions is expressed in prose that is simple and direct. Given its uniqueness, it seems as though this section is Lewis's declaration that Babbitt does care deeply for his wife despite his unreflective social choices; Babbitt does seem to care for the life he had and which he is no longer willing to give up. If before he jumped completely into rebellion, by the end he has jumped all the way back. Still, the process of acknowledging his dissatisfaction, trying to satisfy it, realizing that parties, liberalism, and affairs can still feel empty, and being frightened into remembering that he cares for Myra, has changed him. The process may have made Babbitt more human even if it has not made him fully reflective. This last section of the novel is not full of complaining or object worship, but it records his new acceptance and appreciation of the people and communities constituting his life. Nevertheless, Lewis explains that, as a result of the rebellion, he is not able to participate in the most extreme campaigns of the G.C.L., nor can he completely commit himself to the church. He is no longer morally vacuous, with the ability to promote or denounce any cause at the will of others. A more solid and consistent ethical code guides his decisions. Furthermore, his response to Ted's elopement and decision not to complete his college education reveals this change more clearly. In the face of doubt and anger expressed by the rest of the family, Babbitt is able to take his son aside and ask him what he plans to do, implying his assertion of Ted's right to make independent choices . Ted's response ) reveals Lewis's underlying conclusion: Babbitt has become more complete as a human who appreciates the complexities of life. Babbitt encourages his son to pursue his own path, acknowledging that he has \"never done a single thing wanted to in whole life\" . George Babbitt now has the perspective to realize that Ted can and should be happier. This ending provides a new hope for a deepening in the pursuit of the American Dream. Babbitt will pass this dream on to the next generation in the hope that Ted will have the insight and determination to engage more thoughtfully and deeply with the ideals, not just with the outward appearances of success. Lewis does not provide much of an opinion about this hope that Ted will really accomplish his goals , but the novel's introduction of this possibility is itself a moment of triumph. Babbitt may not have changed in very many tangible ways. He is still a conformist, he is still somewhat cowardly, and he is not entirely satisfied. But he has derived a greater understanding of himself and his world from his brief period of rebellion, and Lewis's straightforward depiction of this change is an undeniable testament to the possibility of a better, more satisfying, fulfillment."}

I WHEN he was away from her, while he kicked about the garage and swept the snow off the running-board and examined a cracked hose-connection, he repented, he was alarmed and astonished that he could have flared out at his wife, and thought fondly how much more lasting she was than the flighty Bunch. He went in to mumble that he was "sorry, didn't mean to be grouchy," and to inquire as to her interest in movies. But in the darkness of the movie theater he brooded that he'd "gone and tied himself up to Myra all over again." He had some satisfaction in taking it out on Tanis Judique. "Hang Tanis anyway! Why'd she gone and got him into these mix-ups and made him all jumpy and nervous and cranky? Too many complications! Cut 'em out!" He wanted peace. For ten days he did not see Tanis nor telephone to her, and instantly she put upon him the compulsion which he hated. When he had stayed away from her for five days, hourly taking pride in his resoluteness and hourly picturing how greatly Tanis must miss him, Miss McGoun reported, "Mrs. Judique on the 'phone. Like t' speak t' you 'bout some repairs." Tanis was quick and quiet: "Mr. Babbitt? Oh, George, this is Tanis. I haven't seen you for weeks--days, anyway. You aren't sick, are you?" "No, just been terribly rushed. I, uh, I think there'll be a big revival of building this year. Got to, uh, got to work hard." "Of course, my man! I want you to. You know I'm terribly ambitious for you; much more than I am for myself. I just don't want you to forget poor Tanis. Will you call me up soon?" "Sure! Sure! You bet!" "Please do. I sha'n't call you again." He meditated, "Poor kid! . . . But gosh, she oughtn't to 'phone me at the office.... She's a wonder--sympathy 'ambitious for me.' . . . But gosh, I won't be made and compelled to call her up till I get ready. Darn these women, the way they make demands! It'll be one long old time before I see her! . . . But gosh, I'd like to see her to-night--sweet little thing.... Oh, cut that, son! Now you've broken away, be wise!" She did not telephone again, nor he, but after five more days she wrote to him: Have I offended you? You must know, dear, I didn't mean to. I'm so lonely and I need somebody to cheer me up. Why didn't you come to the nice party we had at Carrie's last evening I remember she invited you. Can't you come around here to-morrow Thur evening? I shall be alone and hope to see you. His reflections were numerous: "Doggone it, why can't she let me alone? Why can't women ever learn a fellow hates to be bulldozed? And they always take advantage of you by yelling how lonely they are. "Now that isn't nice of you, young fella. She's a fine, square, straight girl, and she does get lonely. She writes a swell hand. Nice-looking stationery. Plain. Refined. I guess I'll have to go see her. Well, thank God, I got till to-morrow night free of her, anyway. "She's nice but--Hang it, I won't be MADE to do things! I'm not married to her. No, nor by golly going to be! "Oh, rats, I suppose I better go see her." II Thursday, the to-morrow of Tanis's note, was full of emotional crises. At the Roughnecks' Table at the club, Verg Gunch talked of the Good Citizens' League and (it seemed to Babbitt) deliberately left him out of the invitations to join. Old Mat Penniman, the general utility man at Babbitt's office, had Troubles, and came in to groan about them: his oldest boy was "no good," his wife was sick, and he had quarreled with his brother-in-law. Conrad Lyte also had Troubles, and since Lyte was one of his best clients, Babbitt had to listen to them. Mr. Lyte, it appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia, and the garage had overcharged him. When Babbitt came home, everybody had Troubles: his wife was simultaneously thinking about discharging the impudent new maid, and worried lest the maid leave; and Tinka desired to denounce her teacher. "Oh, quit fussing!" Babbitt fussed. "You never hear me whining about my Troubles, and yet if you had to run a real-estate office--Why, to-day I found Miss Bannigan was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched my finger in my desk, and Lyte was in and just as unreasonable as ever." He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape to Tanis, he merely grumped to his wife, "Got to go out. Be back by eleven, should think." "Oh! You're going out again?" "Again! What do you mean 'again'! Haven't hardly been out of the house for a week!" "Are you--are you going to the Elks?" "Nope. Got to see some people." Though this time he heard his own voice and knew that it was curt, though she was looking at him with wide-eyed reproach, he stumped into the hall, jerked on his ulster and furlined gloves, and went out to start the car. He was relieved to find Tanis cheerful, unreproachful, and brilliant in a frock of brown net over gold tissue. "You poor man, having to come out on a night like this! It's terribly cold. Don't you think a small highball would be nice?" "Now, by golly, there's a woman with savvy! I think we could more or less stand a highball if it wasn't too long a one--not over a foot tall!" He kissed her with careless heartiness, he forgot the compulsion of her demands, he stretched in a large chair and felt that he had beautifully come home. He was suddenly loquacious; he told her what a noble and misunderstood man he was, and how superior to Pete, Fulton Bemis, and the other men of their acquaintance; and she, bending forward, chin in charming hand, brightly agreed. But when he forced himself to ask, "Well, honey, how's things with YOU," she took his duty-question seriously, and he discovered that she too had Troubles: "Oh, all right but--I did get so angry with Carrie. She told Minnie that I told her that Minnie was an awful tightwad, and Minnie told me Carrie had told her, and of course I told her I hadn't said anything of the kind, and then Carrie found Minnie had told me, and she was simply furious because Minnie had told me, and of course I was just boiling because Carrie had told her I'd told her, and then we all met up at Fulton's--his wife is away--thank heavens!--oh, there's the dandiest floor in his house to dance on--and we were all of us simply furious at each other and--Oh, I do hate that kind of a mix-up, don't you? I mean--it's so lacking in refinement, but--And Mother wants to come and stay with me for a whole month, and of course I do love her, I suppose I do, but honestly, she'll cramp my style something dreadful--she never can learn not to comment, and she always wants to know where I'm going when I go out evenings, and if I lie to her she always spies around and ferrets around and finds out where I've been, and then she looks like Patience on a Monument till I could just scream. And oh, I MUST tell you--You know I never talk about myself; I just hate people who do, don't you? But--I feel so stupid to-night, and I know I must be boring you with all this but--What would you do about Mother?" He gave her facile masculine advice. She was to put off her mother's stay. She was to tell Carrie to go to the deuce. For these valuable revelations she thanked him, and they ambled into the familiar gossip of the Bunch. Of what a sentimental fool was Carrie. Of what a lazy brat was Pete. Of how nice Fulton Bemis could be--"course lots of people think he's a regular old grouch when they meet him because he doesn't give 'em the glad hand the first crack out of the box, but when they get to know him, he's a corker." But as they had gone conscientiously through each of these analyses before, the conversation staggered. Babbitt tried to be intellectual and deal with General Topics. He said some thoroughly sound things about Disarmament, and broad-mindedness and liberalism; but it seemed to him that General Topics interested Tanis only when she could apply them to Pete, Carrie, or themselves. He was distressingly conscious of their silence. He tried to stir her into chattering again, but silence rose like a gray presence and hovered between them. "I, uh--" he labored. "It strikes me--it strikes me that unemployment is lessening." "Maybe Pete will get a decent job, then." Silence. Desperately he essayed, "What's the trouble, old honey? You seem kind of quiet to-night." "Am I? Oh, I'm not. But--do you really care whether I am or not?" "Care? Sure! Course I do!" "Do you really?" She swooped on him, sat on the arm of his chair. He hated the emotional drain of having to appear fond of her. He stroked her hand, smiled up at her dutifully, and sank back. "George, I wonder if you really like me at all?" "Course I do, silly." "Do you really, precious? Do you care a bit?" "Why certainly! You don't suppose I'd be here if I didn't!" "Now see here, young man, I won't have you speaking to me in that huffy way!" "I didn't mean to sound huffy. I just--" In injured and rather childish tones: "Gosh almighty, it makes me tired the way everybody says I sound huffy when I just talk natural! Do they expect me to sing it or something?" "Who do you mean by 'everybody'? How many other ladies have you been consoling?" "Look here now, I won't have this hinting!" Humbly: "I know, dear. I was only teasing. I know it didn't mean to talk huffy--it was just tired. Forgive bad Tanis. But say you love me, say it!" "I love you.... Course I do." "Yes, you do!" cynically. "Oh, darling, I don't mean to be rude but--I get so lonely. I feel so useless. Nobody needs me, nothing I can do for anybody. And you know, dear, I'm so active--I could be if there was something to do. And I am young, aren't I! I'm not an old thing! I'm not old and stupid, am I?" He had to assure her. She stroked his hair, and he had to look pleased under that touch, the more demanding in its beguiling softness. He was impatient. He wanted to flee out to a hard, sure, unemotional man-world. Through her delicate and caressing fingers she may have caught something of his shrugging distaste. She left him--he was for the moment buoyantly relieved--she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking beseechingly up at him. But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now as middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own thoughts, they rode him. She was old, he winced. Old! He noted how the soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin, below her eyes, at the base of her wrists. A patch of her throat had a minute roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser. Old! She was younger in years than himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up at him with rolling great eyes--as if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making love to him. He fretted inwardly, "I'm through with this asinine fooling around. I'm going to cut her out. She's a darn decent nice woman, and I don't want to hurt her, but it'll hurt a lot less to cut her right out, like a good clean surgical operation." He was on his feet. He was speaking urgently. By every rule of self-esteem, he had to prove to her, and to himself, that it was her fault. "I suppose maybe I'm kind of out of sorts to-night, but honest, honey, when I stayed away for a while to catch up on work and everything and figure out where I was at, you ought to have been cannier and waited till I came back. Can't you see, dear, when you MADE me come, I--being about an average bull-headed chump--my tendency was to resist? Listen, dear, I'm going now--" "Not for a while, precious! No!" "Yep. Right now. And then sometime we'll see about the future." "What do you mean, dear, 'about the future'? Have I done something I oughtn't to? Oh, I'm so dreadfully sorry!" He resolutely put his hands behind him. "Not a thing, God bless you, not a thing. You're as good as they make 'em. But it's just--Good Lord, do you realize I've got things to do in the world? I've got a business to attend to and, you might not believe it, but I've got a wife and kids that I'm awful fond of!" Then only during the murder he was committing was he able to feel nobly virtuous. "I want us to be friends but, gosh, I can't go on this way feeling I got to come up here every so often--" "Oh, darling, darling, and I've always told you, so carefully, that you were absolutely free. I just wanted you to come around when you were tired and wanted to talk to me, or when you could enjoy our parties--" She was so reasonable, she was so gently right! It took him an hour to make his escape, with nothing settled and everything horribly settled. In a barren freedom of icy Northern wind he sighed, "Thank God that's over! Poor Tanis, poor darling decent Tanis! But it is over. Absolute! I'm free!"

Chapter XXXI

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxxi-xxxiv

Although George tries to avoid Tanis and to sever the affair, she reels him back in through phone calls and letters. Though he hates his sense of obligation, he goes to see her. He is immediately drawn to her sympathy and limitless interest in him, but he becomes discouraged when she begins to talk about her own troubles, which revolve around petty misunderstandings among her friends. The conversation wanes, and Tanis suddenly reveals her fear that Babbitt does not love her. She forces him to assure her of his love, and this pressure maims his attraction and makes him want to flee. He abruptly calls off the affair, feeling guilty about hurting Tanis but rejoicing again in his freedom

Babbitt's rebellion is shallow. His behavior during his rebellion often straddles the border between principle and childish stubbornness. His refusal to join the Good Citizens' League, when asked, is not so much a matter of wanting to remain faithful to his set of liberal beliefs, but rather of not wanting to be bullied into making a decision. In fact, he reflects several times on the fact that he would actually like to join, but he will not do so if it is not clear to everyone that the choice is wholly his. Although there is an element of maturity and self-respect in his defiance, it is adolescent, and he puts himself through the grief of fearing other prominent members of Zenith society. In this state of inner conflict, the reader is left to question Babbitt's final return to his old commitments as well. He returns like the prodigal son to his wife and his conformist republican life. But his return comes not from poverty or principle; he seems completely overcome with grief and worry when Myra falls ill with appendicitis. He feels and shows a love and tenderness for her that we have never seen, and he is driven to distraction by his concern for her life. One must wonder if Babbitt's sudden renunciation of his wicked ways and his enthusiastic return to the institutions that used to govern his life are sincerely driven by his deep love and broadened perspective, or if he is simply seeking a good excuse to do what he has been too stubborn to do. Perhaps Myra is a mere convenience, as she has been throughout the novel, and he uses her in a way that is almost as uncaring and inhuman as he typically does. But this is one section of the novel where satire, sarcasm, and irony seem to disappear entirely. The strength of Babbitt's emotions is expressed in prose that is simple and direct. Given its uniqueness, it seems as though this section is Lewis's declaration that Babbitt does care deeply for his wife despite his unreflective social choices; Babbitt does seem to care for the life he had and which he is no longer willing to give up. If before he jumped completely into rebellion, by the end he has jumped all the way back. Still, the process of acknowledging his dissatisfaction, trying to satisfy it, realizing that parties, liberalism, and affairs can still feel empty, and being frightened into remembering that he cares for Myra, has changed him. The process may have made Babbitt more human even if it has not made him fully reflective. This last section of the novel is not full of complaining or object worship, but it records his new acceptance and appreciation of the people and communities constituting his life. Nevertheless, Lewis explains that, as a result of the rebellion, he is not able to participate in the most extreme campaigns of the G.C.L., nor can he completely commit himself to the church. He is no longer morally vacuous, with the ability to promote or denounce any cause at the will of others. A more solid and consistent ethical code guides his decisions. Furthermore, his response to Ted's elopement and decision not to complete his college education reveals this change more clearly. In the face of doubt and anger expressed by the rest of the family, Babbitt is able to take his son aside and ask him what he plans to do, implying his assertion of Ted's right to make independent choices . Ted's response ) reveals Lewis's underlying conclusion: Babbitt has become more complete as a human who appreciates the complexities of life. Babbitt encourages his son to pursue his own path, acknowledging that he has "never done a single thing wanted to in whole life" . George Babbitt now has the perspective to realize that Ted can and should be happier. This ending provides a new hope for a deepening in the pursuit of the American Dream. Babbitt will pass this dream on to the next generation in the hope that Ted will have the insight and determination to engage more thoughtfully and deeply with the ideals, not just with the outward appearances of success. Lewis does not provide much of an opinion about this hope that Ted will really accomplish his goals , but the novel's introduction of this possibility is itself a moment of triumph. Babbitt may not have changed in very many tangible ways. He is still a conformist, he is still somewhat cowardly, and he is not entirely satisfied. But he has derived a greater understanding of himself and his world from his brief period of rebellion, and Lewis's straightforward depiction of this change is an undeniable testament to the possibility of a better, more satisfying, fulfillment.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/32.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_8_part_2.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxxii

chapter xxxii

{"name": "Chapter XXXII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxxi-xxxiv", "summary": "Back at home, when Myra confronts him about his whereabouts, George admits that he has been with a woman. But he accuses Myra of being responsible for his infidelity. He manipulates her into sharing that view. At the Boosters' Club the next day, George criticizes a conservative congressman in the presence of Dr. Dilling, a surgeon who is considered one of the most important men in the club. This results in an office visit later that afternoon by Dr. Dilling, Charles McKelvey, and Colonel Rutherford, three extremely powerful men in Zenith. They invite George to join the Good Citizens' League and, when George responds that he has to \"think it over a little\" , they become threatening. They blackmail him, using his recent impropriety as leverage and warning him that his business will no longer prosper if he does not join, but George refuses to be bullied. At home, Myra complains that he should have joined. George becomes lonely for Tanis. Suddenly, as expected, George is being ignored by his former associates. He starts losing business. Miss McGoun leaves Babbitt-Thompson Realty for their rival company. George is filled with fear, paranoia, and stubborn defiance. Though \"he would like to flee back to the security of conformity. he would not be forced back\". Wanting Tanis's sympathy, he appears at her door late one night, but she responds coldly and he retreats, defeated", "analysis": "Babbitt's rebellion is shallow. His behavior during his rebellion often straddles the border between principle and childish stubbornness. His refusal to join the Good Citizens' League, when asked, is not so much a matter of wanting to remain faithful to his set of liberal beliefs, but rather of not wanting to be bullied into making a decision. In fact, he reflects several times on the fact that he would actually like to join, but he will not do so if it is not clear to everyone that the choice is wholly his. Although there is an element of maturity and self-respect in his defiance, it is adolescent, and he puts himself through the grief of fearing other prominent members of Zenith society. In this state of inner conflict, the reader is left to question Babbitt's final return to his old commitments as well. He returns like the prodigal son to his wife and his conformist republican life. But his return comes not from poverty or principle; he seems completely overcome with grief and worry when Myra falls ill with appendicitis. He feels and shows a love and tenderness for her that we have never seen, and he is driven to distraction by his concern for her life. One must wonder if Babbitt's sudden renunciation of his wicked ways and his enthusiastic return to the institutions that used to govern his life are sincerely driven by his deep love and broadened perspective, or if he is simply seeking a good excuse to do what he has been too stubborn to do. Perhaps Myra is a mere convenience, as she has been throughout the novel, and he uses her in a way that is almost as uncaring and inhuman as he typically does. But this is one section of the novel where satire, sarcasm, and irony seem to disappear entirely. The strength of Babbitt's emotions is expressed in prose that is simple and direct. Given its uniqueness, it seems as though this section is Lewis's declaration that Babbitt does care deeply for his wife despite his unreflective social choices; Babbitt does seem to care for the life he had and which he is no longer willing to give up. If before he jumped completely into rebellion, by the end he has jumped all the way back. Still, the process of acknowledging his dissatisfaction, trying to satisfy it, realizing that parties, liberalism, and affairs can still feel empty, and being frightened into remembering that he cares for Myra, has changed him. The process may have made Babbitt more human even if it has not made him fully reflective. This last section of the novel is not full of complaining or object worship, but it records his new acceptance and appreciation of the people and communities constituting his life. Nevertheless, Lewis explains that, as a result of the rebellion, he is not able to participate in the most extreme campaigns of the G.C.L., nor can he completely commit himself to the church. He is no longer morally vacuous, with the ability to promote or denounce any cause at the will of others. A more solid and consistent ethical code guides his decisions. Furthermore, his response to Ted's elopement and decision not to complete his college education reveals this change more clearly. In the face of doubt and anger expressed by the rest of the family, Babbitt is able to take his son aside and ask him what he plans to do, implying his assertion of Ted's right to make independent choices . Ted's response ) reveals Lewis's underlying conclusion: Babbitt has become more complete as a human who appreciates the complexities of life. Babbitt encourages his son to pursue his own path, acknowledging that he has \"never done a single thing wanted to in whole life\" . George Babbitt now has the perspective to realize that Ted can and should be happier. This ending provides a new hope for a deepening in the pursuit of the American Dream. Babbitt will pass this dream on to the next generation in the hope that Ted will have the insight and determination to engage more thoughtfully and deeply with the ideals, not just with the outward appearances of success. Lewis does not provide much of an opinion about this hope that Ted will really accomplish his goals , but the novel's introduction of this possibility is itself a moment of triumph. Babbitt may not have changed in very many tangible ways. He is still a conformist, he is still somewhat cowardly, and he is not entirely satisfied. But he has derived a greater understanding of himself and his world from his brief period of rebellion, and Lewis's straightforward depiction of this change is an undeniable testament to the possibility of a better, more satisfying, fulfillment."}

I HIS wife was up when he came in. "Did you have a good time?" she sniffed. "I did not. I had a rotten time! Anything else I got to explain?" "George, how can you speak like--Oh, I don't know what's come over you!" "Good Lord, there's nothing come over me! Why do you look for trouble all the time?" He was warning himself, "Careful! Stop being so disagreeable. Course she feels it, being left alone here all evening." But he forgot his warning as she went on: "Why do you go out and see all sorts of strange people? I suppose you'll say you've been to another committee-meeting this evening!" "Nope. I've been calling on a woman. We sat by the fire and kidded each other and had a whale of a good time, if you want to know!" "Well--From the way you say it, I suppose it's my fault you went there! I probably sent you!" "You did!" "Well, upon my word--" "You hate 'strange people' as you call 'em. If you had your way, I'd be as much of an old stick-in-the-mud as Howard Littlefield. You never want to have anybody with any git to 'em at the house; you want a bunch of old stiffs that sit around and gas about the weather. You're doing your level best to make me old. Well, let me tell you, I'm not going to have--" Overwhelmed she bent to his unprecedented tirade, and in answer she mourned: "Oh, dearest, I don't think that's true. I don't mean to make you old, I know. Perhaps you're partly right. Perhaps I am slow about getting acquainted with new people. But when you think of all the dear good times we have, and the supper-parties and the movies and all--" With true masculine wiles he not only convinced himself that she had injured him but, by the loudness of his voice and the brutality of his attack, he convinced her also, and presently he had her apologizing for his having spent the evening with Tanis. He went up to bed well pleased, not only the master but the martyr of the household. For a distasteful moment after he had lain down he wondered if he had been altogether just. "Ought to be ashamed, bullying her. Maybe there is her side to things. Maybe she hasn't had such a bloomin' hectic time herself. But I don't care! Good for her to get waked up a little. And I'm going to keep free. Of her and Tanis and the fellows at the club and everybody. I'm going to run my own life!" II In this mood he was particularly objectionable at the Boosters' Club lunch next day. They were addressed by a congressman who had just returned from an exhaustive three-months study of the finances, ethnology, political systems, linguistic divisions, mineral resources, and agriculture of Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and Bulgaria. He told them all about those subjects, together with three funny stories about European misconceptions of America and some spirited words on the necessity of keeping ignorant foreigners out of America. "Say, that was a mighty informative talk. Real he-stuff," said Sidney Finkelstein. But the disaffected Babbitt grumbled, "Four-flusher! Bunch of hot air! And what's the matter with the immigrants? Gosh, they aren't all ignorant, and I got a hunch we're all descended from immigrants ourselves." "Oh, you make me tired!" said Mr. Finkelstein. Babbitt was aware that Dr. A. I. Dilling was sternly listening from across the table. Dr. Dilling was one of the most important men in the Boosters'. He was not a physician but a surgeon, a more romantic and sounding occupation. He was an intense large man with a boiling of black hair and a thick black mustache. The newspapers often chronicled his operations; he was professor of surgery in the State University; he went to dinner at the very best houses on Royal Ridge; and he was said to be worth several hundred thousand dollars. It was dismaying to Babbitt to have such a person glower at him. He hastily praised the congressman's wit, to Sidney Finkelstein, but for Dr. Dilling's benefit. III That afternoon three men shouldered into Babbitt's office with the air of a Vigilante committee in frontier days. They were large, resolute, big-jawed men, and they were all high lords in the land of Zenith--Dr. Dilling the surgeon, Charles McKelvey the contractor, and, most dismaying of all, the white-bearded Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the Advocate-Times. In their whelming presence Babbitt felt small and insignificant. "Well, well, great pleasure, have chairs, what c'n I do for you?" he babbled. They neither sat nor offered observations on the weather. "Babbitt," said Colonel Snow, "we've come from the Good Citizens' League. We've decided we want you to join. Vergil Gunch says you don't care to, but I think we can show you a new light. The League is going to combine with the Chamber of Commerce in a campaign for the Open Shop, so it's time for you to put your name down." In his embarrassment Babbitt could not recall his reasons for not wishing to join the League, if indeed he had ever definitely known them, but he was passionately certain that he did not wish to join, and at the thought of their forcing him he felt a stirring of anger against even these princes of commerce. "Sorry, Colonel, have to think it over a little," he mumbled. McKelvey snarled, "That means you're not going to join, George?" Something black and unfamiliar and ferocious spoke from Babbitt: "Now, you look here, Charley! I'm damned if I'm going to be bullied into joining anything, not even by you plutes!" "We're not bullying anybody," Dr. Dilling began, but Colonel Snow thrust him aside with, "Certainly we are! We don't mind a little bullying, if it's necessary. Babbitt, the G.C.L. has been talking about you a good deal. You're supposed to be a sensible, clean, responsible man; you always have been; but here lately, for God knows what reason, I hear from all sorts of sources that you're running around with a loose crowd, and what's a whole lot worse, you've actually been advocating and supporting some of the most dangerous elements in town, like this fellow Doane." "Colonel, that strikes me as my private business." "Possibly, but we want to have an understanding. You've stood in, you and your father-in-law, with some of the most substantial and forward-looking interests in town, like my friends of the Street Traction Company, and my papers have given you a lot of boosts. Well, you can't expect the decent citizens to go on aiding you if you intend to side with precisely the people who are trying to undermine us." Babbitt was frightened, but he had an agonized instinct that if he yielded in this he would yield in everything. He protested: "You're exaggerating, Colonel. I believe in being broad-minded and liberal, but, of course, I'm just as much agin the cranks and blatherskites and labor unions and so on as you are. But fact is, I belong to so many organizations now that I can't do 'em justice, and I want to think it over before I decide about coming into the G.C.L." Colonel Snow condescended, "Oh, no, I'm not exaggerating! Why the doctor here heard you cussing out and defaming one of the finest types of Republican congressmen, just this noon! And you have entirely the wrong idea about 'thinking over joining.' We're not begging you to join the G.C.L.--we're permitting you to join. I'm not sure, my boy, but what if you put it off it'll be too late. I'm not sure we'll want you then. Better think quick--better think quick!" The three Vigilantes, formidable in their righteousness, stared at him in a taut silence. Babbitt waited through. He thought nothing at all, he merely waited, while in his echoing head buzzed, "I don't want to join--I don't want to join--I don't want to." "All right. Sorry for you!" said Colonel Snow, and the three men abruptly turned their beefy backs. IV As Babbitt went out to his car that evening he saw Vergil Gunch coming down the block. He raised his hand in salutation, but Gunch ignored it and crossed the street. He was certain that Gunch had seen him. He drove home in sharp discomfort. His wife attacked at once: "Georgie dear, Muriel Frink was in this afternoon, and she says that Chum says the committee of this Good Citizens' League especially asked you to join and you wouldn't. Don't you think it would be better? You know all the nicest people belong, and the League stands for--" "I know what the League stands for! It stands for the suppression of free speech and free thought and everything else! I don't propose to be bullied and rushed into joining anything, and it isn't a question of whether it's a good league or a bad league or what the hell kind of a league it is; it's just a question of my refusing to be told I got to--" "But dear, if you don't join, people might criticize you." "Let 'em criticize!" "But I mean NICE people!" "Rats, I--Matter of fact, this whole League is just a fad. It's like all these other organizations that start off with such a rush and let on they're going to change the whole works, and pretty soon they peter out and everybody forgets all about 'em!" "But if it's THE fad now, don't you think you--" "No, I don't! Oh, Myra, please quit nagging me about it. I'm sick of hearing about the confounded G.C.L. I almost wish I'd joined it when Verg first came around, and got it over. And maybe I'd 've come in to-day if the committee hadn't tried to bullyrag me, but, by God, as long as I'm a free-born independent American cit--" "Now, George, you're talking exactly like the German furnace-man." "Oh, I am, am I! Then, I won't talk at all!" He longed, that evening, to see Tanis Judique, to be strengthened by her sympathy. When all the family were up-stairs he got as far as telephoning to her apartment-house, but he was agitated about it and when the janitor answered he blurted, "Nev' mind--I'll call later," and hung up the receiver. V If Babbitt had not been certain about Vergil Gunch's avoiding him, there could be little doubt about William Washington Eathorne, next morning. When Babbitt was driving down to the office he overtook Eathorne's car, with the great banker sitting in anemic solemnity behind his chauffeur. Babbitt waved and cried, "Mornin'!" Eathorne looked at him deliberately, hesitated, and gave him a nod more contemptuous than a direct cut. Babbitt's partner and father-in-law came in at ten: "George, what's this I hear about some song and dance you gave Colonel Snow about not wanting to join the G.C.L.? What the dickens you trying to do? Wreck the firm? You don't suppose these Big Guns will stand your bucking them and springing all this 'liberal' poppycock you been getting off lately, do you?" "Oh, rats, Henry T., you been reading bum fiction. There ain't any such a thing as these plots to keep folks from being liberal. This is a free country. A man can do anything he wants to." "Course th' ain't any plots. Who said they was? Only if folks get an idea you're scatter-brained and unstable, you don't suppose they'll want to do business with you, do you? One little rumor about your being a crank would do more to ruin this business than all the plots and stuff that these fool story-writers could think up in a month of Sundays." That afternoon, when the old reliable Conrad Lyte, the merry miser, Conrad Lyte, appeared, and Babbitt suggested his buying a parcel of land in the new residential section of Dorchester, Lyte said hastily, too hastily, "No, no, don't want to go into anything new just now." A week later Babbitt learned, through Henry Thompson, that the officials of the Street Traction Company were planning another real-estate coup, and that Sanders, Torrey and Wing, not the Babbitt-Thompson Company, were to handle it for them. "I figure that Jake Offutt is kind of leery about the way folks are talking about you. Of course Jake is a rock-ribbed old die-hard, and he probably advised the Traction fellows to get some other broker. George, you got to do something!" trembled Thompson. And, in a rush, Babbitt agreed. All nonsense the way people misjudged him, but still--He determined to join the Good Citizens' League the next time he was asked, and in furious resignation he waited. He wasn't asked. They ignored him. He did not have the courage to go to the League and beg in, and he took refuge in a shaky boast that he had "gotten away with bucking the whole city. Nobody could dictate to him how he was going to think and act!" He was jarred as by nothing else when the paragon of stenographers, Miss McGoun, suddenly left him, though her reasons were excellent--she needed a rest, her sister was sick, she might not do any more work for six months. He was uncomfortable with her successor, Miss Havstad. What Miss Havstad's given name was, no one in the office ever knew. It seemed improbable that she had a given name, a lover, a powder-puff, or a digestion. She was so impersonal, this slight, pale, industrious Swede, that it was vulgar to think of her as going to an ordinary home to eat hash. She was a perfectly oiled and enameled machine, and she ought, each evening, to have been dusted off and shut in her desk beside her too-slim, too-frail pencil points. She took dictation swiftly, her typing was perfect, but Babbitt became jumpy when he tried to work with her. She made him feel puffy, and at his best-beloved daily jokes she looked gently inquiring. He longed for Miss McGoun's return, and thought of writing to her. Then he heard that Miss McGoun had, a week after leaving him, gone over to his dangerous competitors, Sanders, Torrey and Wing. He was not merely annoyed; he was frightened. "Why did she quit, then?" he worried. "Did she have a hunch my business is going on the rocks? And it was Sanders got the Street Traction deal. Rats--sinking ship!" Gray fear loomed always by him now. He watched Fritz Weilinger, the young salesman, and wondered if he too would leave. Daily he fancied slights. He noted that he was not asked to speak at the annual Chamber of Commerce dinner. When Orville Jones gave a large poker party and he was not invited, he was certain that he had been snubbed. He was afraid to go to lunch at the Athletic Club, and afraid not to go. He believed that he was spied on; that when he left the table they whispered about him. Everywhere he heard the rustling whispers: in the offices of clients, in the bank when he made a deposit, in his own office, in his own home. Interminably he wondered what They were saying of him. All day long in imaginary conversations he caught them marveling, "Babbitt? Why, say, he's a regular anarchist! You got to admire the fellow for his nerve, the way he turned liberal and, by golly, just absolutely runs his life to suit himself, but say, he's dangerous, that's what he is, and he's got to be shown up." He was so twitchy that when he rounded a corner and chanced on two acquaintances talking--whispering--his heart leaped, and he stalked by like an embarrassed schoolboy. When he saw his neighbors Howard Littlefield and Orville Jones together, he peered at them, went indoors to escape their spying, and was miserably certain that they had been whispering--plotting--whispering. Through all his fear ran defiance. He felt stubborn. Sometimes he decided that he had been a very devil of a fellow, as bold as Seneca Doane; sometimes he planned to call on Doane and tell him what a revolutionist he was, and never got beyond the planning. But just as often, when he heard the soft whispers enveloping him he wailed, "Good Lord, what have I done? Just played with the Bunch, and called down Clarence Drum about being such a high-and-mighty sodger. Never catch ME criticizing people and trying to make them accept MY ideas!" He could not stand the strain. Before long he admitted that he would like to flee back to the security of conformity, provided there was a decent and creditable way to return. But, stubbornly, he would not be forced back; he would not, he swore, "eat dirt." Only in spirited engagements with his wife did these turbulent fears rise to the surface. She complained that he seemed nervous, that she couldn't understand why he did not want to "drop in at the Littlefields'" for the evening. He tried, but he could not express to her the nebulous facts of his rebellion and punishment. And, with Paul and Tanis lost, he had no one to whom he could talk. "Good Lord, Tinka is the only real friend I have, these days," he sighed, and he clung to the child, played floor-games with her all evening. He considered going to see Paul in prison, but, though he had a pale curt note from him every week, he thought of Paul as dead. It was Tanis for whom he was longing. "I thought I was so smart and independent, cutting Tanis out, and I need her, Lord how I need her!" he raged. "Myra simply can't understand. All she sees in life is getting along by being just like other folks. But Tanis, she'd tell me I was all right." Then he broke, and one evening, late, he did run to Tanis. He had not dared to hope for it, but she was in, and alone. Only she wasn't Tanis. She was a courteous, brow-lifting, ice-armored woman who looked like Tanis. She said, "Yes, George, what is it?" in even and uninterested tones, and he crept away, whipped. His first comfort was from Ted and Eunice Littlefield. They danced in one evening when Ted was home from the university, and Ted chuckled, "What's this I hear from Euny, dad? She says her dad says you raised Cain by boosting old Seneca Doane. Hot dog! Give 'em fits! Stir 'em up! This old burg is asleep!" Eunice plumped down on Babbitt's lap, kissed him, nestled her bobbed hair against his chin, and crowed; "I think you're lots nicer than Howard. Why is it," confidentially, "that Howard is such an old grouch? The man has a good heart, and honestly, he's awfully bright, but he never will learn to step on the gas, after all the training I've given him. Don't you think we could do something with him, dearest?" "Why, Eunice, that isn't a nice way to speak of your papa," Babbitt observed, in the best Floral Heights manner, but he was happy for the first time in weeks. He pictured himself as the veteran liberal strengthened by the loyalty of the young generation. They went out to rifle the ice-box. Babbitt gloated, "If your mother caught us at this, we'd certainly get our come-uppance!" and Eunice became maternal, scrambled a terrifying number of eggs for them, kissed Babbitt on the ear, and in the voice of a brooding abbess marveled, "It beats the devil why feminists like me still go on nursing these men!" Thus stimulated, Babbitt was reckless when he encountered Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A. and choir-leader of the Chatham Road Church. With one of his damp hands Smeeth imprisoned Babbitt's thick paw while he chanted, "Brother Babbitt, we haven't seen you at church very often lately. I know you're busy with a multitude of details, but you mustn't forget your dear friends at the old church home." Babbitt shook off the affectionate clasp--Sheldy liked to hold hands for a long time--and snarled, "Well, I guess you fellows can run the show without me. Sorry, Smeeth; got to beat it. G'day." But afterward he winced, "If that white worm had the nerve to try to drag me back to the Old Church Home, then the holy outfit must have been doing a lot of talking about me, too." He heard them whispering--whispering--Dr. John Jennison Drew, Cholmondeley Frink, even William Washington Eathorne. The independence seeped out of him and he walked the streets alone, afraid of men's cynical eyes and the incessant hiss of whispering.

Chapter XXXII

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxxi-xxxiv

Back at home, when Myra confronts him about his whereabouts, George admits that he has been with a woman. But he accuses Myra of being responsible for his infidelity. He manipulates her into sharing that view. At the Boosters' Club the next day, George criticizes a conservative congressman in the presence of Dr. Dilling, a surgeon who is considered one of the most important men in the club. This results in an office visit later that afternoon by Dr. Dilling, Charles McKelvey, and Colonel Rutherford, three extremely powerful men in Zenith. They invite George to join the Good Citizens' League and, when George responds that he has to "think it over a little" , they become threatening. They blackmail him, using his recent impropriety as leverage and warning him that his business will no longer prosper if he does not join, but George refuses to be bullied. At home, Myra complains that he should have joined. George becomes lonely for Tanis. Suddenly, as expected, George is being ignored by his former associates. He starts losing business. Miss McGoun leaves Babbitt-Thompson Realty for their rival company. George is filled with fear, paranoia, and stubborn defiance. Though "he would like to flee back to the security of conformity. he would not be forced back". Wanting Tanis's sympathy, he appears at her door late one night, but she responds coldly and he retreats, defeated

Babbitt's rebellion is shallow. His behavior during his rebellion often straddles the border between principle and childish stubbornness. His refusal to join the Good Citizens' League, when asked, is not so much a matter of wanting to remain faithful to his set of liberal beliefs, but rather of not wanting to be bullied into making a decision. In fact, he reflects several times on the fact that he would actually like to join, but he will not do so if it is not clear to everyone that the choice is wholly his. Although there is an element of maturity and self-respect in his defiance, it is adolescent, and he puts himself through the grief of fearing other prominent members of Zenith society. In this state of inner conflict, the reader is left to question Babbitt's final return to his old commitments as well. He returns like the prodigal son to his wife and his conformist republican life. But his return comes not from poverty or principle; he seems completely overcome with grief and worry when Myra falls ill with appendicitis. He feels and shows a love and tenderness for her that we have never seen, and he is driven to distraction by his concern for her life. One must wonder if Babbitt's sudden renunciation of his wicked ways and his enthusiastic return to the institutions that used to govern his life are sincerely driven by his deep love and broadened perspective, or if he is simply seeking a good excuse to do what he has been too stubborn to do. Perhaps Myra is a mere convenience, as she has been throughout the novel, and he uses her in a way that is almost as uncaring and inhuman as he typically does. But this is one section of the novel where satire, sarcasm, and irony seem to disappear entirely. The strength of Babbitt's emotions is expressed in prose that is simple and direct. Given its uniqueness, it seems as though this section is Lewis's declaration that Babbitt does care deeply for his wife despite his unreflective social choices; Babbitt does seem to care for the life he had and which he is no longer willing to give up. If before he jumped completely into rebellion, by the end he has jumped all the way back. Still, the process of acknowledging his dissatisfaction, trying to satisfy it, realizing that parties, liberalism, and affairs can still feel empty, and being frightened into remembering that he cares for Myra, has changed him. The process may have made Babbitt more human even if it has not made him fully reflective. This last section of the novel is not full of complaining or object worship, but it records his new acceptance and appreciation of the people and communities constituting his life. Nevertheless, Lewis explains that, as a result of the rebellion, he is not able to participate in the most extreme campaigns of the G.C.L., nor can he completely commit himself to the church. He is no longer morally vacuous, with the ability to promote or denounce any cause at the will of others. A more solid and consistent ethical code guides his decisions. Furthermore, his response to Ted's elopement and decision not to complete his college education reveals this change more clearly. In the face of doubt and anger expressed by the rest of the family, Babbitt is able to take his son aside and ask him what he plans to do, implying his assertion of Ted's right to make independent choices . Ted's response ) reveals Lewis's underlying conclusion: Babbitt has become more complete as a human who appreciates the complexities of life. Babbitt encourages his son to pursue his own path, acknowledging that he has "never done a single thing wanted to in whole life" . George Babbitt now has the perspective to realize that Ted can and should be happier. This ending provides a new hope for a deepening in the pursuit of the American Dream. Babbitt will pass this dream on to the next generation in the hope that Ted will have the insight and determination to engage more thoughtfully and deeply with the ideals, not just with the outward appearances of success. Lewis does not provide much of an opinion about this hope that Ted will really accomplish his goals , but the novel's introduction of this possibility is itself a moment of triumph. Babbitt may not have changed in very many tangible ways. He is still a conformist, he is still somewhat cowardly, and he is not entirely satisfied. But he has derived a greater understanding of himself and his world from his brief period of rebellion, and Lewis's straightforward depiction of this change is an undeniable testament to the possibility of a better, more satisfying, fulfillment.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/33.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_8_part_3.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxxiii

chapter xxxiii

{"name": "Chapter XXXIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxxi-xxxiv", "summary": "Babbitt awakes in the middle of the night and hears Myra groaning from a pain in her side. Forgetting his resentment, he brings her ice and calls Dr. Earl Patten to come examine her immediately. When the doctor says that her appendix is inflamed and that he will return in the morning, George is \"caught up in a black tempest\" of alarm. The full vigor of his faithfulness and commitment revive in the face his wife's possible death. He stays by her side throughout the night. Dr. Patten returns with Dr. Dilling, the surgeon from the Boosters' Club, who explains that Myra has acute appendicitis and that he must operate immediately. Babbitt is overcome by a renewed love for her, and she is overcome with relief at this change. Thus, \"in muttered incoherencies they each other\". George vows to himself that his rebellion is over. They ride in the ambulance to St. Mary's Hospital. In the waiting room, Babbitt accidentally opens the door to the operating room. He is utterly shaken by the sight, and subsequently he swears undying faith to every icon of middle-class conformity. Myra returns home after seventeen days. In this time, Babbitt's former friends regain their faith in him and he joins the Good Citizens' League, \"tearful with joy\" at being invited by Vergil Gunch. Within two weeks, he denounces Seneca Doane, labor unions, and immigrants as wicked", "analysis": "Babbitt's rebellion is shallow. His behavior during his rebellion often straddles the border between principle and childish stubbornness. His refusal to join the Good Citizens' League, when asked, is not so much a matter of wanting to remain faithful to his set of liberal beliefs, but rather of not wanting to be bullied into making a decision. In fact, he reflects several times on the fact that he would actually like to join, but he will not do so if it is not clear to everyone that the choice is wholly his. Although there is an element of maturity and self-respect in his defiance, it is adolescent, and he puts himself through the grief of fearing other prominent members of Zenith society. In this state of inner conflict, the reader is left to question Babbitt's final return to his old commitments as well. He returns like the prodigal son to his wife and his conformist republican life. But his return comes not from poverty or principle; he seems completely overcome with grief and worry when Myra falls ill with appendicitis. He feels and shows a love and tenderness for her that we have never seen, and he is driven to distraction by his concern for her life. One must wonder if Babbitt's sudden renunciation of his wicked ways and his enthusiastic return to the institutions that used to govern his life are sincerely driven by his deep love and broadened perspective, or if he is simply seeking a good excuse to do what he has been too stubborn to do. Perhaps Myra is a mere convenience, as she has been throughout the novel, and he uses her in a way that is almost as uncaring and inhuman as he typically does. But this is one section of the novel where satire, sarcasm, and irony seem to disappear entirely. The strength of Babbitt's emotions is expressed in prose that is simple and direct. Given its uniqueness, it seems as though this section is Lewis's declaration that Babbitt does care deeply for his wife despite his unreflective social choices; Babbitt does seem to care for the life he had and which he is no longer willing to give up. If before he jumped completely into rebellion, by the end he has jumped all the way back. Still, the process of acknowledging his dissatisfaction, trying to satisfy it, realizing that parties, liberalism, and affairs can still feel empty, and being frightened into remembering that he cares for Myra, has changed him. The process may have made Babbitt more human even if it has not made him fully reflective. This last section of the novel is not full of complaining or object worship, but it records his new acceptance and appreciation of the people and communities constituting his life. Nevertheless, Lewis explains that, as a result of the rebellion, he is not able to participate in the most extreme campaigns of the G.C.L., nor can he completely commit himself to the church. He is no longer morally vacuous, with the ability to promote or denounce any cause at the will of others. A more solid and consistent ethical code guides his decisions. Furthermore, his response to Ted's elopement and decision not to complete his college education reveals this change more clearly. In the face of doubt and anger expressed by the rest of the family, Babbitt is able to take his son aside and ask him what he plans to do, implying his assertion of Ted's right to make independent choices . Ted's response ) reveals Lewis's underlying conclusion: Babbitt has become more complete as a human who appreciates the complexities of life. Babbitt encourages his son to pursue his own path, acknowledging that he has \"never done a single thing wanted to in whole life\" . George Babbitt now has the perspective to realize that Ted can and should be happier. This ending provides a new hope for a deepening in the pursuit of the American Dream. Babbitt will pass this dream on to the next generation in the hope that Ted will have the insight and determination to engage more thoughtfully and deeply with the ideals, not just with the outward appearances of success. Lewis does not provide much of an opinion about this hope that Ted will really accomplish his goals , but the novel's introduction of this possibility is itself a moment of triumph. Babbitt may not have changed in very many tangible ways. He is still a conformist, he is still somewhat cowardly, and he is not entirely satisfied. But he has derived a greater understanding of himself and his world from his brief period of rebellion, and Lewis's straightforward depiction of this change is an undeniable testament to the possibility of a better, more satisfying, fulfillment."}

I HE tried to explain to his wife, as they prepared for bed, how objectionable was Sheldon Smeeth, but all her answer was, "He has such a beautiful voice--so spiritual. I don't think you ought to speak of him like that just because you can't appreciate music!" He saw her then as a stranger; he stared bleakly at this plump and fussy woman with the broad bare arms, and wondered how she had ever come here. In his chilly cot, turning from aching side to side, he pondered of Tanis. "He'd been a fool to lose her. He had to have somebody he could really talk to. He'd--oh, he'd BUST if he went on stewing about things by himself. And Myra, useless to expect her to understand. Well, rats, no use dodging the issue. Darn shame for two married people to drift apart after all these years; darn rotten shame; but nothing could bring them together now, as long as he refused to let Zenith bully him into taking orders--and he was by golly not going to let anybody bully him into anything, or wheedle him or coax him either!" He woke at three, roused by a passing motor, and struggled out of bed for a drink of water. As he passed through the bedroom he heard his wife groan. His resentment was night-blurred; he was solicitous in inquiring, "What's the trouble, hon?" "I've got--such a pain down here in my side--oh, it's just--it tears at me." "Bad indigestion? Shall I get you some bicarb?" "Don't think--that would help. I felt funny last evening and yesterday, and then--oh!--it passed away and I got to sleep and--That auto woke me up." Her voice was laboring like a ship in a storm. He was alarmed. "I better call the doctor." "No, no! It'll go away. But maybe you might get me an ice-bag." He stalked to the bathroom for the ice-bag, down to the kitchen for ice. He felt dramatic in this late-night expedition, but as he gouged the chunk of ice with the dagger-like pick he was cool, steady, mature; and the old friendliness was in his voice as he patted the ice-bag into place on her groin, rumbling, "There, there, that'll be better now." He retired to bed, but he did not sleep. He heard her groan again. Instantly he was up, soothing her, "Still pretty bad, honey?" "Yes, it just gripes me, and I can't get to sleep." Her voice was faint. He knew her dread of doctors' verdicts and he did not inform her, but he creaked down-stairs, telephoned to Dr. Earl Patten, and waited, shivering, trying with fuzzy eyes to read a magazine, till he heard the doctor's car. The doctor was youngish and professionally breezy. He came in as though it were sunny noontime. "Well, George, little trouble, eh? How is she now?" he said busily as, with tremendous and rather irritating cheerfulness, he tossed his coat on a chair and warmed his hands at a radiator. He took charge of the house. Babbitt felt ousted and unimportant as he followed the doctor up to the bedroom, and it was the doctor who chuckled, "Oh, just little stomach-ache" when Verona peeped through her door, begging, "What is it, Dad, what is it?" To Mrs. Babbitt the doctor said with amiable belligerence, after his examination, "Kind of a bad old pain, eh? I'll give you something to make you sleep, and I think you'll feel better in the morning. I'll come in right after breakfast." But to Babbitt, lying in wait in the lower hall, the doctor sighed, "I don't like the feeling there in her belly. There's some rigidity and some inflammation. She's never had her appendix out has she? Um. Well, no use worrying. I'll be here first thing in the morning, and meantime she'll get some rest. I've given her a hypo. Good night." Then was Babbitt caught up in the black tempest. Instantly all the indignations which had been dominating him and the spiritual dramas through which he had struggled became pallid and absurd before the ancient and overwhelming realities, the standard and traditional realities, of sickness and menacing death, the long night, and the thousand steadfast implications of married life. He crept back to her. As she drowsed away in the tropic languor of morphia, he sat on the edge of her bed, holding her hand, and for the first time in many weeks her hand abode trustfully in his. He draped himself grotesquely in his toweling bathrobe and a pink and white couch-cover, and sat lumpishly in a wing-chair. The bedroom was uncanny in its half-light, which turned the curtains to lurking robbers, the dressing-table to a turreted castle. It smelled of cosmetics, of linen, of sleep. He napped and woke, napped and woke, a hundred times. He heard her move and sigh in slumber; he wondered if there wasn't some officious brisk thing he could do for her, and before he could quite form the thought he was asleep, racked and aching. The night was infinite. When dawn came and the waiting seemed at an end, he fell asleep, and was vexed to have been caught off his guard, to have been aroused by Verona's entrance and her agitated "Oh, what is it, Dad?" His wife was awake, her face sallow and lifeless in the morning light, but now he did not compare her with Tanis; she was not merely A Woman, to be contrasted with other women, but his own self, and though he might criticize her and nag her, it was only as he might criticize and nag himself, interestedly, unpatronizingly, without the expectation of changing--or any real desire to change--the eternal essence. With Verona he sounded fatherly again, and firm. He consoled Tinka, who satisfactorily pointed the excitement of the hour by wailing. He ordered early breakfast, and wanted to look at the newspaper, and felt somehow heroic and useful in not looking at it. But there were still crawling and totally unheroic hours of waiting before Dr. Patten returned. "Don't see much change," said Patten. "I'll be back about eleven, and if you don't mind, I think I'll bring in some other world-famous pill-pedler for consultation, just to be on the safe side. Now George, there's nothing you can do. I'll have Verona keep the ice-bag filled--might as well leave that on, I guess--and you, you better beat it to the office instead of standing around her looking as if you were the patient. The nerve of husbands! Lot more neurotic than the women! They always have to horn in and get all the credit for feeling bad when their wives are ailing. Now have another nice cup of coffee and git!" Under this derision Babbitt became more matter-of-fact. He drove to the office, tried to dictate letters, tried to telephone and, before the call was answered, forgot to whom he was telephoning. At a quarter after ten he returned home. As he left the down-town traffic and sped up the car, his face was as grimly creased as the mask of tragedy. His wife greeted him with surprise. "Why did you come back, dear? I think I feel a little better. I told Verona to skip off to her office. Was it wicked of me to go and get sick?" He knew that she wanted petting, and she got it, joyously. They were curiously happy when he heard Dr. Patten's car in front. He looked out of the window. He was frightened. With Patten was an impatient man with turbulent black hair and a hussar mustache--Dr. A. I. Dilling, the surgeon. Babbitt sputtered with anxiety, tried to conceal it, and hurried down to the door. Dr. Patten was profusely casual: "Don't want to worry you, old man, but I thought it might be a good stunt to have Dr. Dilling examine her." He gestured toward Dilling as toward a master. Dilling nodded in his curtest manner and strode up-stairs Babbitt tramped the living-room in agony. Except for his wife's confinements there had never been a major operation in the family, and to him surgery was at once a miracle and an abomination of fear. But when Dilling and Patten came down again he knew that everything was all right, and he wanted to laugh, for the two doctors were exactly like the bearded physicians in a musical comedy, both of them rubbing their hands and looking foolishly sagacious. Dr. Dilling spoke: "I'm sorry, old man, but it's acute appendicitis. We ought to operate. Of course you must decide, but there's no question as to what has to be done." Babbitt did not get all the force of it. He mumbled, "Well I suppose we could get her ready in a couple o' days. Probably Ted ought to come down from the university, just in case anything happened." Dr. Dilling growled, "Nope. If you don't want peritonitis to set in, we'll have to operate right away. I must advise it strongly. If you say go ahead, I'll 'phone for the St. Mary's ambulance at once, and we'll have her on the table in three-quarters of an hour." "I--I Of course, I suppose you know what--But great God, man, I can't get her clothes ready and everything in two seconds, you know! And in her state, so wrought-up and weak--" "Just throw her hair-brush and comb and tooth-brush in a bag; that's all she'll need for a day or two," said Dr. Dilling, and went to the telephone. Babbitt galloped desperately up-stairs. He sent the frightened Tinka out of the room. He said gaily to his wife, "Well, old thing, the doc thinks maybe we better have a little operation and get it over. Just take a few minutes--not half as serious as a confinement--and you'll be all right in a jiffy." She gripped his hand till the fingers ached. She said patiently, like a cowed child, "I'm afraid--to go into the dark, all alone!" Maturity was wiped from her eyes; they were pleading and terrified. "Will you stay with me? Darling, you don't have to go to the office now, do you? Could you just go down to the hospital with me? Could you come see me this evening--if everything's all right? You won't have to go out this evening, will you?" He was on his knees by the bed. While she feebly ruffled his hair, he sobbed, he kissed the lawn of her sleeve, and swore, "Old honey, I love you more than anything in the world! I've kind of been worried by business and everything, but that's all over now, and I'm back again." "Are you really? George, I was thinking, lying here, maybe it would be a good thing if I just WENT. I was wondering if anybody really needed me. Or wanted me. I was wondering what was the use of my living. I've been getting so stupid and ugly--" "Why, you old humbug! Fishing for compliments when I ought to be packing your bag! Me, sure, I'm young and handsome and a regular village cut-up and--" He could not go on. He sobbed again; and in muttered incoherencies they found each other. As he packed, his brain was curiously clear and swift. He'd have no more wild evenings, he realized. He admitted that he would regret them. A little grimly he perceived that this had been his last despairing fling before the paralyzed contentment of middle-age. Well, and he grinned impishly, "it was one doggone good party while it lasted!" And--how much was the operation going to cost? "I ought to have fought that out with Dilling. But no, damn it, I don't care how much it costs!" The motor ambulance was at the door. Even in his grief the Babbitt who admired all technical excellences was interested in the kindly skill with which the attendants slid Mrs. Babbitt upon a stretcher and carried her down-stairs. The ambulance was a huge, suave, varnished, white thing. Mrs. Babbitt moaned, "It frightens me. It's just like a hearse, just like being put in a hearse. I want you to stay with me." "I'll be right up front with the driver," Babbitt promised. "No, I want you to stay inside with me." To the attendants: "Can't he be inside?" "Sure, ma'am, you bet. There's a fine little camp-stool in there," the older attendant said, with professional pride. He sat beside her in that traveling cabin with its cot, its stool, its active little electric radiator, and its quite unexplained calendar, displaying a girl eating cherries, and the name of an enterprising grocer. But as he flung out his hand in hopeless cheerfulness it touched the radiator, and he squealed: "Ouch! Jesus!" "Why, George Babbitt, I won't have you cursing and swearing and blaspheming!" "I know, awful sorry but--Gosh all fish-hooks, look how I burned my hand! Gee whiz, it hurts! It hurts like the mischief! Why, that damn radiator is hot as--it's hot as--it's hotter 'n the hinges of Hades! Look! You can see the mark!" So, as they drove up to St. Mary's Hospital, with the nurses already laying out the instruments for an operation to save her life, it was she who consoled him and kissed the place to make it well, and though he tried to be gruff and mature, he yielded to her and was glad to be babied. The ambulance whirled under the hooded carriage-entrance of the hospital, and instantly he was reduced to a zero in the nightmare succession of cork-floored halls, endless doors open on old women sitting up in bed, an elevator, the anesthetizing room, a young interne contemptuous of husbands. He was permitted to kiss his wife; he saw a thin dark nurse fit the cone over her mouth and nose; he stiffened at a sweet and treacherous odor; then he was driven out, and on a high stool in a laboratory he sat dazed, longing to see her once again, to insist that he had always loved her, had never for a second loved anybody else or looked at anybody else. In the laboratory he was conscious only of a decayed object preserved in a bottle of yellowing alcohol. It made him very sick, but he could not take his eyes from it. He was more aware of it than of waiting. His mind floated in abeyance, coming back always to that horrible bottle. To escape it he opened the door to the right, hoping to find a sane and business-like office. He realized that he was looking into the operating-room; in one glance he took in Dr. Dilling, strange in white gown and bandaged head, bending over the steel table with its screws and wheels, then nurses holding basins and cotton sponges, and a swathed thing, just a lifeless chin and a mound of white in the midst of which was a square of sallow flesh with a gash a little bloody at the edges, protruding from the gash a cluster of forceps like clinging parasites. He shut the door with haste. It may be that his frightened repentance of the night and morning had not eaten in, but this dehumanizing interment of her who had been so pathetically human shook him utterly, and as he crouched again on the high stool in the laboratory he swore faith to his wife . . . to Zenith . . . to business efficiency . . . to the Boosters' Club . . . to every faith of the Clan of Good Fellows. Then a nurse was soothing, "All over! Perfect success! She'll come out fine! She'll be out from under the anesthetic soon, and you can see her." He found her on a curious tilted bed, her face an unwholesome yellow but her purple lips moving slightly. Then only did he really believe that she was alive. She was muttering. He bent, and heard her sighing, "Hard get real maple syrup for pancakes." He laughed inexhaustibly; he beamed on the nurse and proudly confided, "Think of her talking about maple syrup! By golly, I'm going to go and order a hundred gallons of it, right from Vermont!" II She was out of the hospital in seventeen days. He went to see her each afternoon, and in their long talks they drifted back to intimacy. Once he hinted something of his relations to Tanis and the Bunch, and she was inflated by the view that a Wicked Woman had captivated her poor George. If once he had doubted his neighbors and the supreme charm of the Good Fellows, he was convinced now. You didn't, he noted, "see Seneca Doane coming around with any flowers or dropping in to chat with the Missus," but Mrs. Howard Littlefield brought to the hospital her priceless wine jelly (flavored with real wine); Orville Jones spent hours in picking out the kind of novels Mrs. Babbitt liked--nice love stories about New York millionaries and Wyoming cowpunchers; Louetta Swanson knitted a pink bed-jacket; Sidney Finkelstein and his merry brown-eyed flapper of a wife selected the prettiest nightgown in all the stock of Parcher and Stein. All his friends ceased whispering about him, suspecting him. At the Athletic Club they asked after her daily. Club members whose names he did not know stopped him to inquire, "How's your good lady getting on?" Babbitt felt that he was swinging from bleak uplands down into the rich warm air of a valley pleasant with cottages. One noon Vergil Gunch suggested, "You planning to be at the hospital about six? The wife and I thought we'd drop in." They did drop in. Gunch was so humorous that Mrs. Babbitt said he must "stop making her laugh because honestly it was hurting her incision." As they passed down the hall Gunch demanded amiably, "George, old scout, you were soreheaded about something, here a while back. I don't know why, and it's none of my business. But you seem to be feeling all hunky-dory again, and why don't you come join us in the Good Citizens' League, old man? We have some corking times together, and we need your advice." Then did Babbitt, almost tearful with joy at being coaxed instead of bullied, at being permitted to stop fighting, at being able to desert without injuring his opinion of himself, cease utterly to be a domestic revolutionist. He patted Gunch's shoulder, and next day he became a member of the Good Citizens' League. Within two weeks no one in the League was more violent regarding the wickedness of Seneca Doane, the crimes of labor unions, the perils of immigration, and the delights of golf, morality, and bank-accounts than was George F. Babbitt.

Chapter XXXIII

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxxi-xxxiv

Babbitt awakes in the middle of the night and hears Myra groaning from a pain in her side. Forgetting his resentment, he brings her ice and calls Dr. Earl Patten to come examine her immediately. When the doctor says that her appendix is inflamed and that he will return in the morning, George is "caught up in a black tempest" of alarm. The full vigor of his faithfulness and commitment revive in the face his wife's possible death. He stays by her side throughout the night. Dr. Patten returns with Dr. Dilling, the surgeon from the Boosters' Club, who explains that Myra has acute appendicitis and that he must operate immediately. Babbitt is overcome by a renewed love for her, and she is overcome with relief at this change. Thus, "in muttered incoherencies they each other". George vows to himself that his rebellion is over. They ride in the ambulance to St. Mary's Hospital. In the waiting room, Babbitt accidentally opens the door to the operating room. He is utterly shaken by the sight, and subsequently he swears undying faith to every icon of middle-class conformity. Myra returns home after seventeen days. In this time, Babbitt's former friends regain their faith in him and he joins the Good Citizens' League, "tearful with joy" at being invited by Vergil Gunch. Within two weeks, he denounces Seneca Doane, labor unions, and immigrants as wicked

Babbitt's rebellion is shallow. His behavior during his rebellion often straddles the border between principle and childish stubbornness. His refusal to join the Good Citizens' League, when asked, is not so much a matter of wanting to remain faithful to his set of liberal beliefs, but rather of not wanting to be bullied into making a decision. In fact, he reflects several times on the fact that he would actually like to join, but he will not do so if it is not clear to everyone that the choice is wholly his. Although there is an element of maturity and self-respect in his defiance, it is adolescent, and he puts himself through the grief of fearing other prominent members of Zenith society. In this state of inner conflict, the reader is left to question Babbitt's final return to his old commitments as well. He returns like the prodigal son to his wife and his conformist republican life. But his return comes not from poverty or principle; he seems completely overcome with grief and worry when Myra falls ill with appendicitis. He feels and shows a love and tenderness for her that we have never seen, and he is driven to distraction by his concern for her life. One must wonder if Babbitt's sudden renunciation of his wicked ways and his enthusiastic return to the institutions that used to govern his life are sincerely driven by his deep love and broadened perspective, or if he is simply seeking a good excuse to do what he has been too stubborn to do. Perhaps Myra is a mere convenience, as she has been throughout the novel, and he uses her in a way that is almost as uncaring and inhuman as he typically does. But this is one section of the novel where satire, sarcasm, and irony seem to disappear entirely. The strength of Babbitt's emotions is expressed in prose that is simple and direct. Given its uniqueness, it seems as though this section is Lewis's declaration that Babbitt does care deeply for his wife despite his unreflective social choices; Babbitt does seem to care for the life he had and which he is no longer willing to give up. If before he jumped completely into rebellion, by the end he has jumped all the way back. Still, the process of acknowledging his dissatisfaction, trying to satisfy it, realizing that parties, liberalism, and affairs can still feel empty, and being frightened into remembering that he cares for Myra, has changed him. The process may have made Babbitt more human even if it has not made him fully reflective. This last section of the novel is not full of complaining or object worship, but it records his new acceptance and appreciation of the people and communities constituting his life. Nevertheless, Lewis explains that, as a result of the rebellion, he is not able to participate in the most extreme campaigns of the G.C.L., nor can he completely commit himself to the church. He is no longer morally vacuous, with the ability to promote or denounce any cause at the will of others. A more solid and consistent ethical code guides his decisions. Furthermore, his response to Ted's elopement and decision not to complete his college education reveals this change more clearly. In the face of doubt and anger expressed by the rest of the family, Babbitt is able to take his son aside and ask him what he plans to do, implying his assertion of Ted's right to make independent choices . Ted's response ) reveals Lewis's underlying conclusion: Babbitt has become more complete as a human who appreciates the complexities of life. Babbitt encourages his son to pursue his own path, acknowledging that he has "never done a single thing wanted to in whole life" . George Babbitt now has the perspective to realize that Ted can and should be happier. This ending provides a new hope for a deepening in the pursuit of the American Dream. Babbitt will pass this dream on to the next generation in the hope that Ted will have the insight and determination to engage more thoughtfully and deeply with the ideals, not just with the outward appearances of success. Lewis does not provide much of an opinion about this hope that Ted will really accomplish his goals , but the novel's introduction of this possibility is itself a moment of triumph. Babbitt may not have changed in very many tangible ways. He is still a conformist, he is still somewhat cowardly, and he is not entirely satisfied. But he has derived a greater understanding of himself and his world from his brief period of rebellion, and Lewis's straightforward depiction of this change is an undeniable testament to the possibility of a better, more satisfying, fulfillment.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/34.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Babbitt/section_8_part_4.txt

Babbitt.chapter xxxiv

chapter xxxiv

{"name": "Chapter XXXIV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxxi-xxxiv", "summary": "Babbitt wins back Zenith's respect and approval through his work with the G. C. L. as well as through his return to the Boosters' Club and to church. Despite the resumed social order and peace at home , Babbitt's greatest joy is his \"return to being one of the best-loved men in the Boosters' Club. When they tease him about his middle name , he knows that all is well. The very last \"scar of his rebellion\" is healed when he regains his most important business client. He now rejoices in all of the conformity and restraints that he had so desperately sought to escape. But when Ted suddenly elopes with Eunice and tells George that he would rather become a mechanic than complete his college education, George displays the insight and perspective he has gained through his rebellion. He expresses approval of Eunice and tells Ted to do exactly as he wants with his life without being afraid of his family, his society, or himself", "analysis": "Babbitt's rebellion is shallow. His behavior during his rebellion often straddles the border between principle and childish stubbornness. His refusal to join the Good Citizens' League, when asked, is not so much a matter of wanting to remain faithful to his set of liberal beliefs, but rather of not wanting to be bullied into making a decision. In fact, he reflects several times on the fact that he would actually like to join, but he will not do so if it is not clear to everyone that the choice is wholly his. Although there is an element of maturity and self-respect in his defiance, it is adolescent, and he puts himself through the grief of fearing other prominent members of Zenith society. In this state of inner conflict, the reader is left to question Babbitt's final return to his old commitments as well. He returns like the prodigal son to his wife and his conformist republican life. But his return comes not from poverty or principle; he seems completely overcome with grief and worry when Myra falls ill with appendicitis. He feels and shows a love and tenderness for her that we have never seen, and he is driven to distraction by his concern for her life. One must wonder if Babbitt's sudden renunciation of his wicked ways and his enthusiastic return to the institutions that used to govern his life are sincerely driven by his deep love and broadened perspective, or if he is simply seeking a good excuse to do what he has been too stubborn to do. Perhaps Myra is a mere convenience, as she has been throughout the novel, and he uses her in a way that is almost as uncaring and inhuman as he typically does. But this is one section of the novel where satire, sarcasm, and irony seem to disappear entirely. The strength of Babbitt's emotions is expressed in prose that is simple and direct. Given its uniqueness, it seems as though this section is Lewis's declaration that Babbitt does care deeply for his wife despite his unreflective social choices; Babbitt does seem to care for the life he had and which he is no longer willing to give up. If before he jumped completely into rebellion, by the end he has jumped all the way back. Still, the process of acknowledging his dissatisfaction, trying to satisfy it, realizing that parties, liberalism, and affairs can still feel empty, and being frightened into remembering that he cares for Myra, has changed him. The process may have made Babbitt more human even if it has not made him fully reflective. This last section of the novel is not full of complaining or object worship, but it records his new acceptance and appreciation of the people and communities constituting his life. Nevertheless, Lewis explains that, as a result of the rebellion, he is not able to participate in the most extreme campaigns of the G.C.L., nor can he completely commit himself to the church. He is no longer morally vacuous, with the ability to promote or denounce any cause at the will of others. A more solid and consistent ethical code guides his decisions. Furthermore, his response to Ted's elopement and decision not to complete his college education reveals this change more clearly. In the face of doubt and anger expressed by the rest of the family, Babbitt is able to take his son aside and ask him what he plans to do, implying his assertion of Ted's right to make independent choices . Ted's response ) reveals Lewis's underlying conclusion: Babbitt has become more complete as a human who appreciates the complexities of life. Babbitt encourages his son to pursue his own path, acknowledging that he has \"never done a single thing wanted to in whole life\" . George Babbitt now has the perspective to realize that Ted can and should be happier. This ending provides a new hope for a deepening in the pursuit of the American Dream. Babbitt will pass this dream on to the next generation in the hope that Ted will have the insight and determination to engage more thoughtfully and deeply with the ideals, not just with the outward appearances of success. Lewis does not provide much of an opinion about this hope that Ted will really accomplish his goals , but the novel's introduction of this possibility is itself a moment of triumph. Babbitt may not have changed in very many tangible ways. He is still a conformist, he is still somewhat cowardly, and he is not entirely satisfied. But he has derived a greater understanding of himself and his world from his brief period of rebellion, and Lewis's straightforward depiction of this change is an undeniable testament to the possibility of a better, more satisfying, fulfillment."}

I THE Good Citizens' League had spread through the country, but nowhere was it so effective and well esteemed as in cities of the type of Zenith, commercial cities of a few hundred thousand inhabitants, most of which--though not all--lay inland, against a background of cornfields and mines and of small towns which depended upon them for mortgage-loans, table-manners, art, social philosophy and millinery. To the League belonged most of the prosperous citizens of Zenith. They were not all of the kind who called themselves "Regular Guys." Besides these hearty fellows, these salesmen of prosperity, there were the aristocrats, that is, the men who were richer or had been rich for more generations: the presidents of banks and of factories, the land-owners, the corporation lawyers, the fashionable doctors, and the few young-old men who worked not at all but, reluctantly remaining in Zenith, collected luster-ware and first editions as though they were back in Paris. All of them agreed that the working-classes must be kept in their place; and all of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary. In this they were like the ruling-class of any other country, particularly of Great Britain, but they differed in being more vigorous and in actually trying to produce the accepted standards which all classes, everywhere, desire, but usually despair of realizing. The longest struggle of the Good Citizens' League was against the Open Shop--which was secretly a struggle against all union labor. Accompanying it was an Americanization Movement, with evening classes in English and history and economics, and daily articles in the newspapers, so that newly arrived foreigners might learn that the true-blue and one hundred per cent. American way of settling labor-troubles was for workmen to trust and love their employers. The League was more than generous in approving other organizations which agreed with its aims. It helped the Y.M. C.A. to raise a two-hundred-thousand-dollar fund for a new building. Babbitt, Vergil Gunch, Sidney Finkelstein, and even Charles McKelvey told the spectators at movie theaters how great an influence for manly Christianity the "good old Y." had been in their own lives; and the hoar and mighty Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the Advocate-Times, was photographed clasping the hand of Sheldon Smeeth of the Y.M.C.A. It is true that afterward, when Smeeth lisped, "You must come to one of our prayer-meetings," the ferocious Colonel bellowed, "What the hell would I do that for? I've got a bar of my own," but this did not appear in the public prints. The League was of value to the American Legion at a time when certain of the lesser and looser newspapers were criticizing that organization of veterans of the Great War. One evening a number of young men raided the Zenith Socialist Headquarters, burned its records, beat the office staff, and agreeably dumped desks out of the window. All of the newspapers save the Advocate-Times and the Evening Advocate attributed this valuable but perhaps hasty direct-action to the American Legion. Then a flying squadron from the Good Citizens' League called on the unfair papers and explained that no ex-soldier could possibly do such a thing, and the editors saw the light, and retained their advertising. When Zenith's lone Conscientious Objector came home from prison and was righteously run out of town, the newspapers referred to the perpetrators as an "unidentified mob." II In all the activities and triumphs of the Good Citizens' League Babbitt took part, and completely won back to self-respect, placidity, and the affection of his friends. But he began to protest, "Gosh, I've done my share in cleaning up the city. I want to tend to business. Think I'll just kind of slacken up on this G.C.L. stuff now." He had returned to the church as he had returned to the Boosters' Club. He had even endured the lavish greeting which Sheldon Smeeth gave him. He was worried lest during his late discontent he had imperiled his salvation. He was not quite sure there was a Heaven to be attained, but Dr. John Jennison Drew said there was, and Babbitt was not going to take a chance. One evening when he was walking past Dr. Drew's parsonage he impulsively went in and found the pastor in his study. "Jus' minute--getting 'phone call," said Dr. Drew in businesslike tones, then, aggressively, to the telephone: "'Lo--'lo! This Berkey and Hannis? Reverend Drew speaking. Where the dickens is the proof for next Sunday's calendar? Huh? Y' ought to have it here. Well, I can't help it if they're ALL sick! I got to have it to-night. Get an A.D.T. boy and shoot it up here quick." He turned, without slackening his briskness. "Well, Brother Babbitt, what c'n I do for you?" "I just wanted to ask--Tell you how it is, dominie: Here a while ago I guess I got kind of slack. Took a few drinks and so on. What I wanted to ask is: How is it if a fellow cuts that all out and comes back to his senses? Does it sort of, well, you might say, does it score against him in the long run?" The Reverend Dr. Drew was suddenly interested. "And, uh, brother--the other things, too? Women?" "No, practically, you might say, practically not at all." "Don't hesitate to tell me, brother! That's what I'm here for. Been going on joy-rides? Squeezing girls in cars?" The reverend eyes glistened. "No--no--" "Well, I'll tell you. I've got a deputation from the Don't Make Prohibition a Joke Association coming to see me in a quarter of an hour, and one from the Anti-Birth-Control Union at a quarter of ten." He busily glanced at his watch. "But I can take five minutes off and pray with you. Kneel right down by your chair, brother. Don't be ashamed to seek the guidance of God." Babbitt's scalp itched and he longed to flee, but Dr. Drew had already flopped down beside his desk-chair and his voice had changed from rasping efficiency to an unctuous familiarity with sin and with the Almighty. Babbitt also knelt, while Drew gloated: "O Lord, thou seest our brother here, who has been led astray by manifold temptations. O Heavenly Father, make his heart to be pure, as pure as a little child's. Oh, let him know again the joy of a manly courage to abstain from evil--" Sheldon Smeeth came frolicking into the study. At the sight of the two men he smirked, forgivingly patted Babbitt on the shoulder, and knelt beside him, his arm about him, while he authorized Dr. Drew's imprecations with moans of "Yes, Lord! Help our brother, Lord!" Though he was trying to keep his eyes closed, Babbitt squinted between his fingers and saw the pastor glance at his watch as he concluded with a triumphant, "And let him never be afraid to come to Us for counsel and tender care, and let him know that the church can lead him as a little lamb." Dr. Drew sprang up, rolled his eyes in the general direction of Heaven, chucked his watch into his pocket, and demanded, "Has the deputation come yet, Sheldy?" "Yep, right outside," Sheldy answered, with equal liveliness; then, caressingly, to Babbitt, "Brother, if it would help, I'd love to go into the next room and pray with you while Dr. Drew is receiving the brothers from the Don't Make Prohibition a Joke Association." "No--no thanks--can't take the time!" yelped Babbitt, rushing toward the door. Thereafter he was often seen at the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church, but it is recorded that he avoided shaking hands with the pastor at the door. III If his moral fiber had been so weakened by rebellion that he was not quite dependable in the more rigorous campaigns of the Good Citizens' League nor quite appreciative of the church, yet there was no doubt of the joy with which Babbitt returned to the pleasures of his home and of the Athletic Club, the Boosters, the Elks. Verona and Kenneth Escott were eventually and hesitatingly married. For the wedding Babbitt was dressed as carefully as was Verona; he was crammed into the morning-coat he wore to teas thrice a year; and with a certain relief, after Verona and Kenneth had driven away in a limousine, he returned to the house, removed the morning coat, sat with his aching feet up on the davenport, and reflected that his wife and he could have the living-room to themselves now, and not have to listen to Verona and Kenneth worrying, in a cultured collegiate manner, about minimum wages and the Drama League. But even this sinking into peace was less consoling than his return to being one of the best-loved men in the Boosters' Club. IV President Willis Ijams began that Boosters' Club luncheon by standing quiet and staring at them so unhappily that they feared he was about to announce the death of a Brother Booster. He spoke slowly then, and gravely: "Boys, I have something shocking to reveal to you; something terrible about one of our own members." Several Boosters, including Babbitt, looked disconcerted. "A knight of the grip, a trusted friend of mine, recently made a trip up-state, and in a certain town, where a certain Booster spent his boyhood, he found out something which can no longer be concealed. In fact, he discovered the inward nature of a man whom we have accepted as a Real Guy and as one of us. Gentlemen, I cannot trust my voice to say it, so I have written it down." He uncovered a large blackboard and on it, in huge capitals, was the legend: George Follansbee Babbitt--oh you Folly! The Boosters cheered, they laughed, they wept, they threw rolls at Babbitt, they cried, "Speech, speech! Oh you Folly!" President Ijams continued: "That, gentlemen, is the awful thing Georgie Babbitt has been concealing all these years, when we thought he was just plain George F. Now I want you to tell us, taking it in turn, what you've always supposed the F. stood for." Flivver, they suggested, and Frog-face and Flathead and Farinaceous and Freezone and Flapdoodle and Foghorn. By the joviality of their insults Babbitt knew that he had been taken back to their hearts, and happily he rose. "Boys, I've got to admit it. I've never worn a wrist-watch, or parted my name in the middle, but I will confess to 'Follansbee.' My only justification is that my old dad--though otherwise he was perfectly sane, and packed an awful wallop when it came to trimming the City Fellers at checkers--named me after the family doc, old Dr. Ambrose Follansbee. I apologize, boys. In my next what-d'you-call-it I'll see to it that I get named something really practical--something that sounds swell and yet is good and virile--something, in fact, like that grand old name so familiar to every household--that bold and almost overpowering name, Willis Jimjams Ijams!" He knew by the cheer that he was secure again and popular; he knew that he would no more endanger his security and popularity by straying from the Clan of Good Fellows. V Henry Thompson dashed into the office, clamoring, "George! Big news! Jake Offutt says the Traction Bunch are dissatisfied with the way Sanders, Torrey and Wing handled their last deal, and they're willing to dicker with us!" Babbitt was pleased in the realization that the last scar of his rebellion was healed, yet as he drove home he was annoyed by such background thoughts as had never weakened him in his days of belligerent conformity. He discovered that he actually did not consider the Traction group quite honest. "Well, he'd carry out one more deal for them, but as soon as it was practicable, maybe as soon as old Henry Thompson died, he'd break away from all association from them. He was forty-eight; in twelve years he'd be sixty; he wanted to leave a clean business to his grandchildren. Course there was a lot of money in negotiating for the Traction people, and a fellow had to look at things in a practical way, only--" He wriggled uncomfortably. He wanted to tell the Traction group what he thought of them. "Oh, he couldn't do it, not now. If he offended them this second time, they would crush him. But--" He was conscious that his line of progress seemed confused. He wondered what he would do with his future. He was still young; was he through with all adventuring? He felt that he had been trapped into the very net from which he had with such fury escaped and, supremest jest of all, been made to rejoice in the trapping. "They've licked me; licked me to a finish!" he whimpered. The house was peaceful, that evening, and he enjoyed a game of pinochle with his wife. He indignantly told the Tempter that he was content to do things in the good old fashioned way. The day after, he went to see the purchasing-agent of the Street Traction Company and they made plans for the secret purchase of lots along the Evanston Road. But as he drove to his office he struggled, "I'm going to run things and figure out things to suit myself--when I retire." VI Ted had come down from the University for the week-end. Though he no longer spoke of mechanical engineering and though he was reticent about his opinion of his instructors, he seemed no more reconciled to college, and his chief interest was his wireless telephone set. On Saturday evening he took Eunice Littlefield to a dance at Devon Woods. Babbitt had a glimpse of her, bouncing in the seat of the car, brilliant in a scarlet cloak over a frock of thinnest creamy silk. They two had not returned when the Babbitts went to bed, at half-past eleven. At a blurred indefinite time of late night Babbitt was awakened by the ring of the telephone and gloomily crawled down-stairs. Howard Littlefield was speaking: "George, Euny isn't back yet. Is Ted?" "No--at least his door is open--" "They ought to be home. Eunice said the dance would be over at midnight. What's the name of those people where they're going?" "Why, gosh, tell the truth, I don't know, Howard. It's some classmate of Ted's, out in Devon Woods. Don't see what we can do. Wait, I'll skip up and ask Myra if she knows their name." Babbitt turned on the light in Ted's room. It was a brown boyish room; disordered dresser, worn books, a high-school pennant, photographs of basket-ball teams and baseball teams. Ted was decidedly not there. Mrs. Babbitt, awakened, irritably observed that she certainly did not know the name of Ted's host, that it was late, that Howard Littlefield was but little better than a born fool, and that she was sleepy. But she remained awake and worrying while Babbitt, on the sleeping-porch, struggled back into sleep through the incessant soft rain of her remarks. It was after dawn when he was aroused by her shaking him and calling "George! George!" in something like horror. "Wha--wha--what is it?" "Come here quick and see. Be quiet!" She led him down the hall to the door of Ted's room and pushed it gently open. On the worn brown rug he saw a froth of rose-colored chiffon lingerie; on the sedate Morris chair a girl's silver slipper. And on the pillows were two sleepy heads--Ted's and Eunice's. Ted woke to grin, and to mutter with unconvincing defiance, "Good morning! Let me introduce my wife--Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Eunice Littlefield Babbitt, Esquiress." "Good God!" from Babbitt, and from his wife a long wailing, "You've gone and--" "We got married last evening. Wife! Sit up and say a pretty good morning to mother-in-law." But Eunice hid her shoulders and her charming wild hair under the pillow. By nine o'clock the assembly which was gathered about Ted and Eunice in the living-room included Mr. and Mrs. George Babbitt, Dr. and Mrs. Howard Littlefield, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Escott, Mr. and Mrs. Henry T. Thompson, and Tinka Babbitt, who was the only pleased member of the inquisition. A crackling shower of phrases filled the room: "At their age--" "Ought to be annulled--" "Never heard of such a thing in--" "Fault of both of them and--" "Keep it out of the papers--" "Ought to be packed off to school--" "Do something about it at once, and what I say is--" "Damn good old-fashioned spanking--" Worst of them all was Verona. "TED! Some way MUST be found to make you understand how dreadfully SERIOUS this is, instead of standing AROUND with that silly foolish SMILE on your face!" He began to revolt. "Gee whittakers, Rone, you got married yourself, didn't you?" "That's entirely different." "You bet it is! They didn't have to work on Eu and me with a chain and tackle to get us to hold hands!" "Now, young man, we'll have no more flippancy," old Henry Thompson ordered. "You listen to me." "You listen to Grandfather!" said Verona. "Yes, listen to your Grandfather!" said Mrs. Babbitt. "Ted, you listen to Mr. Thompson!" said Howard Littlefield. "Oh, for the love o' Mike, I am listening!" Ted shouted. "But you look here, all of you! I'm getting sick and tired of being the corpse in this post mortem! If you want to kill somebody, go kill the preacher that married us! Why, he stung me five dollars, and all the money I had in the world was six dollars and two bits. I'm getting just about enough of being hollered at!" A new voice, booming, authoritative, dominated the room. It was Babbitt. "Yuh, there's too darn many putting in their oar! Rone, you dry up. Howard and I are still pretty strong, and able to do our own cussing. Ted, come into the dining-room and we'll talk this over." In the dining-room, the door firmly closed, Babbitt walked to his son, put both hands on his shoulders. "You're more or less right. They all talk too much. Now what do you plan to do, old man?" "Gosh, dad, are you really going to be human?" "Well, I--Remember one time you called us 'the Babbitt men' and said we ought to stick together? I want to. I don't pretend to think this isn't serious. The way the cards are stacked against a young fellow to-day, I can't say I approve of early marriages. But you couldn't have married a better girl than Eunice; and way I figure it, Littlefield is darn lucky to get a Babbitt for a son-in-law! But what do you plan to do? Course you could go right ahead with the U., and when you'd finished--" "Dad, I can't stand it any more. Maybe it's all right for some fellows. Maybe I'll want to go back some day. But me, I want to get into mechanics. I think I'd get to be a good inventor. There's a fellow that would give me twenty dollars a week in a factory right now." "Well--" Babbitt crossed the floor, slowly, ponderously, seeming a little old. "I've always wanted you to have a college degree." He meditatively stamped across the floor again. "But I've never--Now, for heaven's sake, don't repeat this to your mother, or she'd remove what little hair I've got left, but practically, I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life! I don't know 's I've accomplished anything except just get along. I figure out I've made about a quarter of an inch out of a possible hundred rods. Well, maybe you'll carry things on further. I don't know. But I do get a kind of sneaking pleasure out of the fact that you knew what you wanted to do and did it. Well, those folks in there will try to bully you, and tame you down. Tell 'em to go to the devil! I'll back you. Take your factory job, if you want to. Don't be scared of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I've been. Go ahead, old man! The world is yours!" Arms about each other's shoulders, the Babbitt men marched into the living-room and faced the swooping family.

Chapter XXXIV

https://web.archive.org/web/20180423144610/http://www.gradesaver.com/babbitt/study-guide/summary-chapters-xxxi-xxxiv

Babbitt wins back Zenith's respect and approval through his work with the G. C. L. as well as through his return to the Boosters' Club and to church. Despite the resumed social order and peace at home , Babbitt's greatest joy is his "return to being one of the best-loved men in the Boosters' Club. When they tease him about his middle name , he knows that all is well. The very last "scar of his rebellion" is healed when he regains his most important business client. He now rejoices in all of the conformity and restraints that he had so desperately sought to escape. But when Ted suddenly elopes with Eunice and tells George that he would rather become a mechanic than complete his college education, George displays the insight and perspective he has gained through his rebellion. He expresses approval of Eunice and tells Ted to do exactly as he wants with his life without being afraid of his family, his society, or himself

Babbitt's rebellion is shallow. His behavior during his rebellion often straddles the border between principle and childish stubbornness. His refusal to join the Good Citizens' League, when asked, is not so much a matter of wanting to remain faithful to his set of liberal beliefs, but rather of not wanting to be bullied into making a decision. In fact, he reflects several times on the fact that he would actually like to join, but he will not do so if it is not clear to everyone that the choice is wholly his. Although there is an element of maturity and self-respect in his defiance, it is adolescent, and he puts himself through the grief of fearing other prominent members of Zenith society. In this state of inner conflict, the reader is left to question Babbitt's final return to his old commitments as well. He returns like the prodigal son to his wife and his conformist republican life. But his return comes not from poverty or principle; he seems completely overcome with grief and worry when Myra falls ill with appendicitis. He feels and shows a love and tenderness for her that we have never seen, and he is driven to distraction by his concern for her life. One must wonder if Babbitt's sudden renunciation of his wicked ways and his enthusiastic return to the institutions that used to govern his life are sincerely driven by his deep love and broadened perspective, or if he is simply seeking a good excuse to do what he has been too stubborn to do. Perhaps Myra is a mere convenience, as she has been throughout the novel, and he uses her in a way that is almost as uncaring and inhuman as he typically does. But this is one section of the novel where satire, sarcasm, and irony seem to disappear entirely. The strength of Babbitt's emotions is expressed in prose that is simple and direct. Given its uniqueness, it seems as though this section is Lewis's declaration that Babbitt does care deeply for his wife despite his unreflective social choices; Babbitt does seem to care for the life he had and which he is no longer willing to give up. If before he jumped completely into rebellion, by the end he has jumped all the way back. Still, the process of acknowledging his dissatisfaction, trying to satisfy it, realizing that parties, liberalism, and affairs can still feel empty, and being frightened into remembering that he cares for Myra, has changed him. The process may have made Babbitt more human even if it has not made him fully reflective. This last section of the novel is not full of complaining or object worship, but it records his new acceptance and appreciation of the people and communities constituting his life. Nevertheless, Lewis explains that, as a result of the rebellion, he is not able to participate in the most extreme campaigns of the G.C.L., nor can he completely commit himself to the church. He is no longer morally vacuous, with the ability to promote or denounce any cause at the will of others. A more solid and consistent ethical code guides his decisions. Furthermore, his response to Ted's elopement and decision not to complete his college education reveals this change more clearly. In the face of doubt and anger expressed by the rest of the family, Babbitt is able to take his son aside and ask him what he plans to do, implying his assertion of Ted's right to make independent choices . Ted's response ) reveals Lewis's underlying conclusion: Babbitt has become more complete as a human who appreciates the complexities of life. Babbitt encourages his son to pursue his own path, acknowledging that he has "never done a single thing wanted to in whole life" . George Babbitt now has the perspective to realize that Ted can and should be happier. This ending provides a new hope for a deepening in the pursuit of the American Dream. Babbitt will pass this dream on to the next generation in the hope that Ted will have the insight and determination to engage more thoughtfully and deeply with the ideals, not just with the outward appearances of success. Lewis does not provide much of an opinion about this hope that Ted will really accomplish his goals , but the novel's introduction of this possibility is itself a moment of triumph. Babbitt may not have changed in very many tangible ways. He is still a conformist, he is still somewhat cowardly, and he is not entirely satisfied. But he has derived a greater understanding of himself and his world from his brief period of rebellion, and Lewis's straightforward depiction of this change is an undeniable testament to the possibility of a better, more satisfying, fulfillment.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/2.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_1_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-2", "summary": "With Myra gone, Babbitt glances around his bedroom. After a long description, the narrator tells us that almost every home in Babbitt's neighborhood has a bedroom exactly like this one. All in all, the narrator tells us, the Babbitts' house might be a house, but it isn't a home. Or in other words, there's nothing personal about anything inside the house. It's just a bunch of furniture and products that society has told them to buy. Coming downstairs, Babbitt curses his ungrateful kids as he comes to the breakfast table. Babbitt argue with his daughter Verona, who wants to quit her promising job at a leather company to go work for much less money at a charity. The argument eventually breaks down into a fight about who is going to get the car for the night. When the kids are gone, Babbitt turns to the newspaper and is happy to find that a new set of laws has come in to outlaw socialists in New York. Better yet, a labor organizer in Alabama is going to be deported. He also reads up on a man he used to know in college named Charley McKelvey, who is apparently a big shot who has made millions in business since graduating.", "analysis": ""}

RELIEVED of Babbitt's bumbling and the soft grunts with which his wife expressed the sympathy she was too experienced to feel and much too experienced not to show, their bedroom settled instantly into impersonality. It gave on the sleeping-porch. It served both of them as dressing-room, and on the coldest nights Babbitt luxuriously gave up the duty of being manly and retreated to the bed inside, to curl his toes in the warmth and laugh at the January gale. The room displayed a modest and pleasant color-scheme, after one of the best standard designs of the decorator who "did the interiors" for most of the speculative-builders' houses in Zenith. The walls were gray, the woodwork white, the rug a serene blue; and very much like mahogany was the furniture--the bureau with its great clear mirror, Mrs. Babbitt's dressing-table with toilet-articles of almost solid silver, the plain twin beds, between them a small table holding a standard electric bedside lamp, a glass for water, and a standard bedside book with colored illustrations--what particular book it was cannot be ascertained, since no one had ever opened it. The mattresses were firm but not hard, triumphant modern mattresses which had cost a great deal of money; the hot-water radiator was of exactly the proper scientific surface for the cubic contents of the room. The windows were large and easily opened, with the best catches and cords, and Holland roller-shades guaranteed not to crack. It was a masterpiece among bedrooms, right out of Cheerful Modern Houses for Medium Incomes. Only it had nothing to do with the Babbitts, nor with any one else. If people had ever lived and loved here, read thrillers at midnight and lain in beautiful indolence on a Sunday morning, there were no signs of it. It had the air of being a very good room in a very good hotel. One expected the chambermaid to come in and make it ready for people who would stay but one night, go without looking back, and never think of it again. Every second house in Floral Heights had a bedroom precisely like this. The Babbitts' house was five years old. It was all as competent and glossy as this bedroom. It had the best of taste, the best of inexpensive rugs, a simple and laudable architecture, and the latest conveniences. Throughout, electricity took the place of candles and slatternly hearth-fires. Along the bedroom baseboard were three plugs for electric lamps, concealed by little brass doors. In the halls were plugs for the vacuum cleaner, and in the living-room plugs for the piano lamp, for the electric fan. The trim dining-room (with its admirable oak buffet, its leaded-glass cupboard, its creamy plaster walls, its modest scene of a salmon expiring upon a pile of oysters) had plugs which supplied the electric percolator and the electric toaster. In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt house: It was not a home. II Often of a morning Babbitt came bouncing and jesting in to breakfast. But things were mysteriously awry to-day. As he pontifically tread the upper hall he looked into Verona's bedroom and protested, "What's the use of giving the family a high-class house when they don't appreciate it and tend to business and get down to brass tacks?" He marched upon them: Verona, a dumpy brown-haired girl of twenty-two, just out of Bryn Mawr, given to solicitudes about duty and sex and God and the unconquerable bagginess of the gray sports-suit she was now wearing. Ted--Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt--a decorative boy of seventeen. Tinka--Katherine--still a baby at ten, with radiant red hair and a thin skin which hinted of too much candy and too many ice cream sodas. Babbitt did not show his vague irritation as he tramped in. He really disliked being a family tyrant, and his nagging was as meaningless as it was frequent. He shouted at Tinka, "Well, kittiedoolie!" It was the only pet name in his vocabulary, except the "dear" and "hon." with which he recognized his wife, and he flung it at Tinka every morning. He gulped a cup of coffee in the hope of pacifying his stomach and his soul. His stomach ceased to feel as though it did not belong to him, but Verona began to be conscientious and annoying, and abruptly there returned to Babbitt the doubts regarding life and families and business which had clawed at him when his dream-life and the slim fairy girl had fled. Verona had for six months been filing-clerk at the Gruensberg Leather Company offices, with a prospect of becoming secretary to Mr. Gruensberg and thus, as Babbitt defined it, "getting some good out of your expensive college education till you're ready to marry and settle down." But now said Verona: "Father! I was talking to a classmate of mine that's working for the Associated Charities--oh, Dad, there's the sweetest little babies that come to the milk-station there!--and I feel as though I ought to be doing something worth while like that." "What do you mean 'worth while'? If you get to be Gruensberg's secretary--and maybe you would, if you kept up your shorthand and didn't go sneaking off to concerts and talkfests every evening--I guess you'll find thirty-five or forty bones a week worth while!" "I know, but--oh, I want to--contribute--I wish I were working in a settlement-house. I wonder if I could get one of the department-stores to let me put in a welfare-department with a nice rest-room and chintzes and wicker chairs and so on and so forth. Or I could--" "Now you look here! The first thing you got to understand is that all this uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothing in God's world but the entering wedge for socialism. The sooner a man learns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn't expect a lot of free grub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his kids unless he earns 'em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job and produce--produce--produce! That's what the country needs, and not all this fancy stuff that just enfeebles the will-power of the working man and gives his kids a lot of notions above their class. And you--if you'd tend to business instead of fooling and fussing--All the time! When I was a young man I made up my mind what I wanted to do, and stuck to it through thick and thin, and that's why I'm where I am to-day, and--Myra! What do you let the girl chop the toast up into these dinky little chunks for? Can't get your fist onto 'em. Half cold, anyway!" Ted Babbitt, junior in the great East Side High School, had been making hiccup-like sounds of interruption. He blurted now, "Say, Rone, you going to--" Verona whirled. "Ted! Will you kindly not interrupt us when we're talking about serious matters!" "Aw punk," said Ted judicially. "Ever since somebody slipped up and let you out of college, Ammonia, you been pulling these nut conversations about what-nots and so-on-and-so-forths. Are you going to--I want to use the car tonight." Babbitt snorted, "Oh, you do! May want it myself!" Verona protested, "Oh, you do, Mr. Smarty! I'm going to take it myself!" Tinka wailed, "Oh, papa, you said maybe you'd drive us down to Rosedale!" and Mrs. Babbitt, "Careful, Tinka, your sleeve is in the butter." They glared, and Verona hurled, "Ted, you're a perfect pig about the car!" "Course you're not! Not a-tall!" Ted could be maddeningly bland. "You just want to grab it off, right after dinner, and leave it in front of some skirt's house all evening while you sit and gas about lite'ature and the highbrows you're going to marry--if they only propose!" "Well, Dad oughtn't to EVER let you have it! You and those beastly Jones boys drive like maniacs. The idea of your taking the turn on Chautauqua Place at forty miles an hour!" "Aw, where do you get that stuff! You're so darn scared of the car that you drive up-hill with the emergency brake on!" "I do not! And you--Always talking about how much you know about motors, and Eunice Littlefield told me you said the battery fed the generator!" "You--why, my good woman, you don't know a generator from a differential." Not unreasonably was Ted lofty with her. He was a natural mechanic, a maker and tinkerer of machines; he lisped in blueprints for the blueprints came. "That'll do now!" Babbitt flung in mechanically, as he lighted the gloriously satisfying first cigar of the day and tasted the exhilarating drug of the Advocate-Times headlines. Ted negotiated: "Gee, honest, Rone, I don't want to take the old boat, but I promised couple o' girls in my class I'd drive 'em down to the rehearsal of the school chorus, and, gee, I don't want to, but a gentleman's got to keep his social engagements." "Well, upon my word! You and your social engagements! In high school!" "Oh, ain't we select since we went to that hen college! Let me tell you there isn't a private school in the state that's got as swell a bunch as we got in Gamma Digamma this year. There's two fellows that their dads are millionaires. Say, gee, I ought to have a car of my own, like lots of the fellows." Babbitt almost rose. "A car of your own! Don't you want a yacht, and a house and lot? That pretty nearly takes the cake! A boy that can't pass his Latin examinations, like any other boy ought to, and he expects me to give him a motor-car, and I suppose a chauffeur, and an areoplane maybe, as a reward for the hard work he puts in going to the movies with Eunice Littlefield! Well, when you see me giving you--" Somewhat later, after diplomacies, Ted persuaded Verona to admit that she was merely going to the Armory, that evening, to see the dog and cat show. She was then, Ted planned, to park the car in front of the candy-store across from the Armory and he would pick it up. There were masterly arrangements regarding leaving the key, and having the gasoline tank filled; and passionately, devotees of the Great God Motor, they hymned the patch on the spare inner-tube, and the lost jack-handle. Their truce dissolving, Ted observed that her friends were "a scream of a bunch-stuck-up gabby four-flushers." His friends, she indicated, were "disgusting imitation sports, and horrid little shrieking ignorant girls." Further: "It's disgusting of you to smoke cigarettes, and so on and so forth, and those clothes you've got on this morning, they're too utterly ridiculous--honestly, simply disgusting." Ted balanced over to the low beveled mirror in the buffet, regarded his charms, and smirked. His suit, the latest thing in Old Eli Togs, was skin-tight, with skimpy trousers to the tops of his glaring tan boots, a chorus-man waistline, pattern of an agitated check, and across the back a belt which belted nothing. His scarf was an enormous black silk wad. His flaxen hair was ice-smooth, pasted back without parting. When he went to school he would add a cap with a long vizor like a shovel-blade. Proudest of all was his waistcoat, saved for, begged for, plotted for; a real Fancy Vest of fawn with polka dots of a decayed red, the points astoundingly long. On the lower edge of it he wore a high-school button, a class button, and a fraternity pin. And none of it mattered. He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes (which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was not over-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: "Yes, I guess we're pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess our new necktie is some smear!" Babbitt barked: "It is! And while you're admiring yourself, let me tell you it might add to your manly beauty if you wiped some of that egg off your mouth!" Verona giggled, momentary victor in the greatest of Great Wars, which is the family war. Ted looked at her hopelessly, then shrieked at Tinka: "For the love o' Pete, quit pouring the whole sugar bowl on your corn flakes!" When Verona and Ted were gone and Tinka upstairs, Babbitt groaned to his wife: "Nice family, I must say! I don't pretend to be any baa-lamb, and maybe I'm a little cross-grained at breakfast sometimes, but the way they go on jab-jab-jabbering, I simply can't stand it. I swear, I feel like going off some place where I can get a little peace. I do think after a man's spent his lifetime trying to give his kids a chance and a decent education, it's pretty discouraging to hear them all the time scrapping like a bunch of hyenas and never--and never--Curious; here in the paper it says--Never silent for one mom--Seen the morning paper yet?" "No, dear." In twenty-three years of married life, Mrs. Babbitt had seen the paper before her husband just sixty-seven times. "Lots of news. Terrible big tornado in the South. Hard luck, all right. But this, say, this is corking! Beginning of the end for those fellows! New York Assembly has passed some bills that ought to completely outlaw the socialists! And there's an elevator-runners' strike in New York and a lot of college boys are taking their places. That's the stuff! And a mass-meeting in Birmingham's demanded that this Mick agitator, this fellow De Valera, be deported. Dead right, by golly! All these agitators paid with German gold anyway. And we got no business interfering with the Irish or any other foreign government. Keep our hands strictly off. And there's another well-authenticated rumor from Russia that Lenin is dead. That's fine. It's beyond me why we don't just step in there and kick those Bolshevik cusses out." "That's so," said Mrs. Babbitt. "And it says here a fellow was inaugurated mayor in overalls--a preacher, too! What do you think of that!" "Humph! Well!" He searched for an attitude, but neither as a Republican, a Presbyterian, an Elk, nor a real-estate broker did he have any doctrine about preacher-mayors laid down for him, so he grunted and went on. She looked sympathetic and did not hear a word. Later she would read the headlines, the society columns, and the department-store advertisements. "What do you know about this! Charley McKelvey still doing the sassiety stunt as heavy as ever. Here's what that gushy woman reporter says about last night:" Never is Society with the big, big S more flattered than when they are bidden to partake of good cheer at the distinguished and hospitable residence of Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. McKelvey as they were last night. Set in its spacious lawns and landscaping, one of the notable sights crowning Royal Ridge, but merry and homelike despite its mighty stone walls and its vast rooms famed for their decoration, their home was thrown open last night for a dance in honor of Mrs. McKelvey's notable guest, Miss J. Sneeth of Washington. The wide hall is so generous in its proportions that it made a perfect ballroom, its hardwood floor reflecting the charming pageant above its polished surface. Even the delights of dancing paled before the alluring opportunities for tete-a-tetes that invited the soul to loaf in the long library before the baronial fireplace, or in the drawing-room with its deep comfy armchairs, its shaded lamps just made for a sly whisper of pretty nothings all a deux; or even in the billiard room where one could take a cue and show a prowess at still another game than that sponsored by Cupid and Terpsichore. There was more, a great deal more, in the best urban journalistic style of Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, the popular society editor of the Advocate-Times. But Babbitt could not abide it. He grunted. He wrinkled the newspaper. He protested: "Can you beat it! I'm willing to hand a lot of credit to Charley McKelvey. When we were in college together, he was just as hard up as any of us, and he's made a million good bucks out of contracting and hasn't been any dishonester or bought any more city councils than was necessary. And that's a good house of his--though it ain't any 'mighty stone walls' and it ain't worth the ninety thousand it cost him. But when it comes to talking as though Charley McKelvey and all that booze-hoisting set of his are any blooming bunch of of, of Vanderbilts, why, it makes me tired!" Timidly from Mrs. Babbitt: "I would like to see the inside of their house though. It must be lovely. I've never been inside." "Well, I have! Lots of--couple of times. To see Chaz about business deals, in the evening. It's not so much. I wouldn't WANT to go there to dinner with that gang of, of high-binders. And I'll bet I make a whole lot more money than some of those tin-horns that spend all they got on dress-suits and haven't got a decent suit of underwear to their name! Hey! What do you think of this!" Mrs. Babbitt was strangely unmoved by the tidings from the Real Estate and Building column of the Advocate-Times: Ashtabula Street, 496--J. K. Dawson to Thomas Mullally, April 17, 15.7 X 112.2, mtg. $4000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nom And this morning Babbitt was too disquieted to entertain her with items from Mechanics' Liens, Mortgages Recorded, and Contracts Awarded. He rose. As he looked at her his eyebrows seemed shaggier than usual. Suddenly: "Yes, maybe--Kind of shame to not keep in touch with folks like the McKelveys. We might try inviting them to dinner, some evening. Oh, thunder, let's not waste our good time thinking about 'em! Our little bunch has a lot liver times than all those plutes. Just compare a real human like you with these neurotic birds like Lucile McKelvey--all highbrow talk and dressed up like a plush horse! You're a great old girl, hon.!" He covered his betrayal of softness with a complaining: "Say, don't let Tinka go and eat any more of that poison nutfudge. For Heaven's sake, try to keep her from ruining her digestion. I tell you, most folks don't appreciate how important it is to have a good digestion and regular habits. Be back 'bout usual time, I guess." He kissed her--he didn't quite kiss her--he laid unmoving lips against her unflushing cheek. He hurried out to the garage, muttering: "Lord, what a family! And now Myra is going to get pathetic on me because we don't train with this millionaire outfit. Oh, Lord, sometimes I'd like to quit the whole game. And the office worry and detail just as bad. And I act cranky and--I don't mean to, but I get--So darn tired!"

Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-2

With Myra gone, Babbitt glances around his bedroom. After a long description, the narrator tells us that almost every home in Babbitt's neighborhood has a bedroom exactly like this one. All in all, the narrator tells us, the Babbitts' house might be a house, but it isn't a home. Or in other words, there's nothing personal about anything inside the house. It's just a bunch of furniture and products that society has told them to buy. Coming downstairs, Babbitt curses his ungrateful kids as he comes to the breakfast table. Babbitt argue with his daughter Verona, who wants to quit her promising job at a leather company to go work for much less money at a charity. The argument eventually breaks down into a fight about who is going to get the car for the night. When the kids are gone, Babbitt turns to the newspaper and is happy to find that a new set of laws has come in to outlaw socialists in New York. Better yet, a labor organizer in Alabama is going to be deported. He also reads up on a man he used to know in college named Charley McKelvey, who is apparently a big shot who has made millions in business since graduating.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/9.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_8_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 9

chapter 9

{"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-9", "summary": "Babbitt likes playing host to his friends. But with dinner finished, he feels like he ate too much food. To make things worse, he finds his guests getting more and more boring as the booze wears off. To deal with his boredom, Babbitt decides to sit next to one of his friends' wives on the couch and to flirt with her. To pass the time, the group gets together to have a mock seance, in which they pretend to talk to the ghost of the famous Italian poet, Dante Alighieri. The party eventually wraps up, and once everyone is gone, Mrs. Babbitt tells her husband that she thinks it went pretty well. While they're talking, Babbitt says he wants to go up to Maine on vacation by himself. He totally blows his cover about meeting someone in New York on business, and instead tells Myra that he'd just like to go up to Maine by himself. Of course, she suspects that there's something else going on, and she tries to guilt him into taking her. He holds firm, though, and just says he wants to be alone for a while. She wants to know, though, if he even wants her around on his vacations. He tries to reassure her while at the same time protecting his right to go off alone. Eventually, she gives in and tells him to have a good time. But now, Babbitt feels ashamed about his newfound freedom.", "analysis": ""}

I BABBITT was fond of his friends, he loved the importance of being host and shouting, "Certainly, you're going to have smore chicken--the idea!" and he appreciated the genius of T. Cholmondeley Frink, but the vigor of the cocktails was gone, and the more he ate the less joyful he felt. Then the amity of the dinner was destroyed by the nagging of the Swansons. In Floral Heights and the other prosperous sections of Zenith, especially in the "young married set," there were many women who had nothing to do. Though they had few servants, yet with gas stoves, electric ranges and dish-washers and vacuum cleaners, and tiled kitchen walls, their houses were so convenient that they had little housework, and much of their food came from bakeries and delicatessens. They had but two, one, or no children; and despite the myth that the Great War had made work respectable, their husbands objected to their "wasting time and getting a lot of crank ideas" in unpaid social work, and still more to their causing a rumor, by earning money, that they were not adequately supported. They worked perhaps two hours a day, and the rest of the time they ate chocolates, went to the motion-pictures, went window-shopping, went in gossiping twos and threes to card-parties, read magazines, thought timorously of the lovers who never appeared, and accumulated a splendid restlessness which they got rid of by nagging their husbands. The husbands nagged back. Of these naggers the Swansons were perfect specimens. Throughout the dinner Eddie Swanson had been complaining, publicly, about his wife's new frock. It was, he submitted, too short, too low, too immodestly thin, and much too expensive. He appealed to Babbitt: "Honest, George, what do you think of that rag Louetta went and bought? Don't you think it's the limit?" "What's eating you, Eddie? I call it a swell little dress." "Oh, it is, Mr. Swanson. It's a sweet frock," Mrs. Babbitt protested. "There now, do you see, smarty! You're such an authority on clothes!" Louetta raged, while the guests ruminated and peeped at her shoulders. "That's all right now," said Swanson. "I'm authority enough so I know it was a waste of money, and it makes me tired to see you not wearing out a whole closetful of clothes you got already. I've expressed my idea about this before, and you know good and well you didn't pay the least bit of attention. I have to camp on your trail to get you to do anything--" There was much more of it, and they all assisted, all but Babbitt. Everything about him was dim except his stomach, and that was a bright scarlet disturbance. "Had too much grub; oughtn't to eat this stuff," he groaned--while he went on eating, while he gulped down a chill and glutinous slice of the ice-cream brick, and cocoanut cake as oozy as shaving-cream. He felt as though he had been stuffed with clay; his body was bursting, his throat was bursting, his brain was hot mud; and only with agony did he continue to smile and shout as became a host on Floral Heights. He would, except for his guests, have fled outdoors and walked off the intoxication of food, but in the haze which filled the room they sat forever, talking, talking, while he agonized, "Darn fool to be eating all this--not 'nother mouthful," and discovered that he was again tasting the sickly welter of melted ice cream on his plate. There was no magic in his friends; he was not uplifted when Howard Littlefield produced from his treasure-house of scholarship the information that the chemical symbol for raw rubber is C10H16, which turns into isoprene, or 2C5H8. Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was not merely bored but admitting that he was bored. It was ecstasy to escape from the table, from the torture of a straight chair, and loll on the davenport in the living-room. The others, from their fitful unconvincing talk, their expressions of being slowly and painfully smothered, seemed to be suffering from the toil of social life and the horror of good food as much as himself. All of them accepted with relief the suggestion of bridge. Babbitt recovered from the feeling of being boiled. He won at bridge. He was again able to endure Vergil Gunch's inexorable heartiness. But he pictured loafing with Paul Riesling beside a lake in Maine. It was as overpowering and imaginative as homesickness. He had never seen Maine, yet he beheld the shrouded mountains, the tranquil lake of evening. "That boy Paul's worth all these ballyhooing highbrows put together," he muttered; and, "I'd like to get away from--everything." Even Louetta Swanson did not rouse him. Mrs. Swanson was pretty and pliant. Babbitt was not an analyst of women, except as to their tastes in Furnished Houses to Rent. He divided them into Real Ladies, Working Women, Old Cranks, and Fly Chickens. He mooned over their charms but he was of opinion that all of them (save the women of his own family) were "different" and "mysterious." Yet he had known by instinct that Louetta Swanson could be approached. Her eyes and lips were moist. Her face tapered from a broad forehead to a pointed chin, her mouth was thin but strong and avid, and between her brows were two outcurving and passionate wrinkles. She was thirty, perhaps, or younger. Gossip had never touched her, but every man naturally and instantly rose to flirtatiousness when he spoke to her, and every woman watched her with stilled blankness. Between games, sitting on the davenport, Babbitt spoke to her with the requisite gallantry, that sonorous Floral Heights gallantry which is not flirtation but a terrified flight from it: "You're looking like a new soda-fountain to night, Louetta." "Am I?" "Ole Eddie kind of on the rampage." "Yes. I get so sick of it." "Well, when you get tired of hubby, you can run off with Uncle George." "If I ran away--Oh, well--" "Anybody ever tell you your hands are awful pretty?" She looked down at them, she pulled the lace of her sleeves over them, but otherwise she did not heed him. She was lost in unexpressed imaginings. Babbitt was too languid this evening to pursue his duty of being a captivating (though strictly moral) male. He ambled back to the bridge-tables. He was not much thrilled when Mrs. Frink, a small twittering woman, proposed that they "try and do some spiritualism and table-tipping--you know Chum can make the spirits come--honest, he just scares me!" The ladies of the party had not emerged all evening, but now, as the sex given to things of the spirit while the men warred against base things material, they took command and cried, "Oh, let's!" In the dimness the men were rather solemn and foolish, but the goodwives quivered and adored as they sat about the table. They laughed, "Now, you be good or I'll tell!" when the men took their hands in the circle. Babbitt tingled with a slight return of interest in life as Louetta Swanson's hand closed on his with quiet firmness. All of them hunched over, intent. They startled as some one drew a strained breath. In the dusty light from the hall they looked unreal, they felt disembodied. Mrs. Gunch squeaked, and they jumped with unnatural jocularity, but at Frink's hiss they sank into subdued awe. Suddenly, incredibly, they heard a knocking. They stared at Frink's half-revealed hands and found them lying still. They wriggled, and pretended not to be impressed. Frink spoke with gravity: "Is some one there?" A thud. "Is one knock to be the sign for 'yes'?" A thud. "And two for 'no'?" A thud. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, shall we ask the guide to put us into communication with the spirit of some great one passed over?" Frink mumbled. Mrs Orville Jones begged, "Oh, let's talk to Dante! We studied him at the Reading Circle. You know who he was, Orvy." "Certainly I know who he was! The Wop poet. Where do you think I was raised?" from her insulted husband. "Sure--the fellow that took the Cook's Tour to Hell. I've never waded through his po'try, but we learned about him in the U.," said Babbitt. "Page Mr. Dannnnnty!" intoned Eddie Swanson. "You ought to get him easy, Mr. Frink, you and he being fellow-poets," said Louetta Swanson. "Fellow-poets, rats! Where d' you get that stuff?" protested Vergil Gunch. "I suppose Dante showed a lot of speed for an old-timer--not that I've actually read him, of course--but to come right down to hard facts, he wouldn't stand one-two-three if he had to buckle down to practical literature and turn out a poem for the newspaper-syndicate every day, like Chum does!" "That's so," from Eddie Swanson. "Those old birds could take their time. Judas Priest, I could write poetry myself if I had a whole year for it, and just wrote about that old-fashioned junk like Dante wrote about." Frink demanded, "Hush, now! I'll call him. . . O, Laughing Eyes, emerge forth into the, uh, the ultimates and bring hither the spirit of Dante, that we mortals may list to his words of wisdom." "You forgot to give um the address: 1658 Brimstone Avenue, Fiery Heights, Hell," Gunch chuckled, but the others felt that this was irreligious. And besides--"probably it was just Chum making the knocks, but still, if there did happen to be something to all this, be exciting to talk to an old fellow belonging to--way back in early times--" A thud. The spirit of Dante had come to the parlor of George F. Babbitt. He was, it seemed, quite ready to answer their questions. He was "glad to be with them, this evening." Frink spelled out the messages by running through the alphabet till the spirit interpreter knocked at the right letter. Littlefield asked, in a learned tone, "Do you like it in the Paradiso, Messire?" "We are very happy on the higher plane, Signor. We are glad that you are studying this great truth of spiritualism," Dante replied. The circle moved with an awed creaking of stays and shirt-fronts. "Suppose--suppose there were something to this?" Babbitt had a different worry. "Suppose Chum Frink was really one of these spiritualists! Chum had, for a literary fellow, always seemed to be a Regular Guy; he belonged to the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church and went to the Boosters' lunches and liked cigars and motors and racy stories. But suppose that secretly--After all, you never could tell about these darn highbrows; and to be an out-and-out spiritualist would be almost like being a socialist!" No one could long be serious in the presence of Vergil Gunch. "Ask Dant' how Jack Shakespeare and old Verg'--the guy they named after me--are gettin' along, and don't they wish they could get into the movie game!" he blared, and instantly all was mirth. Mrs. Jones shrieked, and Eddie Swanson desired to know whether Dante didn't catch cold with nothing on but his wreath. The pleased Dante made humble answer. But Babbitt--the curst discontent was torturing him again, and heavily, in the impersonal darkness, he pondered, "I don't--We're all so flip and think we're so smart. There'd be--A fellow like Dante--I wish I'd read some of his pieces. I don't suppose I ever will, now." He had, without explanation, the impression of a slaggy cliff and on it, in silhouette against menacing clouds, a lone and austere figure. He was dismayed by a sudden contempt for his surest friends. He grasped Louetta Swanson's hand, and found the comfort of human warmth. Habit came, a veteran warrior; and he shook himself. "What the deuce is the matter with me, this evening?" He patted Louetta's hand, to indicate that he hadn't meant anything improper by squeezing it, and demanded of Frink, "Say, see if you can get old Dant' to spiel us some of his poetry. Talk up to him. Tell him, 'Buena giorna, senor, com sa va, wie geht's? Keskersaykersa a little pome, senor?'" II The lights were switched on; the women sat on the fronts of their chairs in that determined suspense whereby a wife indicates that as soon as the present speaker has finished, she is going to remark brightly to her husband, "Well, dear, I think per-HAPS it's about time for us to be saying good-night." For once Babbitt did not break out in blustering efforts to keep the party going. He had--there was something he wished to think out--But the psychical research had started them off again. ("Why didn't they go home! Why didn't they go home!") Though he was impressed by the profundity of the statement, he was only half-enthusiastic when Howard Littlefield lectured, "The United States is the only nation in which the government is a Moral Ideal and not just a social arrangement." ("True--true--weren't they EVER going home?") He was usually delighted to have an "inside view" of the momentous world of motors but to-night he scarcely listened to Eddie Swanson's revelation: "If you want to go above the Javelin class, the Zeeco is a mighty good buy. Couple weeks ago, and mind you, this was a fair, square test, they took a Zeeco stock touring-car and they slid up the Tonawanda hill on high, and fellow told me--" ("Zeeco good boat but--Were they planning to stay all night?") They really were going, with a flutter of "We did have the best time!" Most aggressively friendly of all was Babbitt, yet as he burbled he was reflecting, "I got through it, but for a while there I didn't hardly think I'd last out." He prepared to taste that most delicate pleasure of the host: making fun of his guests in the relaxation of midnight. As the door closed he yawned voluptuously, chest out, shoulders wriggling, and turned cynically to his wife. She was beaming. "Oh, it was nice, wasn't it! I know they enjoyed every minute of it. Don't you think so?" He couldn't do it. He couldn't mock. It would have been like sneering at a happy child. He lied ponderously: "You bet! Best party this year, by a long shot." "Wasn't the dinner good! And honestly I thought the fried chicken was delicious!" "You bet! Fried to the Queen's taste. Best fried chicken I've tasted for a coon's age." "Didn't Matilda fry it beautifully! And don't you think the soup was simply delicious?" "It certainly was! It was corking! Best soup I've tasted since Heck was a pup!" But his voice was seeping away. They stood in the hall, under the electric light in its square box-like shade of red glass bound with nickel. She stared at him. "Why, George, you don't sound--you sound as if you hadn't really enjoyed it." "Sure I did! Course I did!" "George! What is it?" "Oh, I'm kind of tired, I guess. Been pounding pretty hard at the office. Need to get away and rest up a little." "Well, we're going to Maine in just a few weeks now, dear." "Yuh--" Then he was pouring it out nakedly, robbed of reticence. "Myra: I think it'd be a good thing for me to get up there early." "But you have this man you have to meet in New York about business." "What man? Oh, sure. Him. Oh, that's all off. But I want to hit Maine early--get in a little fishing, catch me a big trout, by golly!" A nervous, artificial laugh. "Well, why don't we do it? Verona and Matilda can run the house between them, and you and I can go any time, if you think we can afford it." "But that's--I've been feeling so jumpy lately, I thought maybe it might be a good thing if I kind of got off by myself and sweat it out of me." "George! Don't you WANT me to go along?" She was too wretchedly in earnest to be tragic, or gloriously insulted, or anything save dumpy and defenseless and flushed to the red steaminess of a boiled beet. "Of course I do! I just meant--" Remembering that Paul Riesling had predicted this, he was as desperate as she. "I mean, sometimes it's a good thing for an old grouch like me to go off and get it out of his system." He tried to sound paternal. "Then when you and the kids arrive--I figured maybe I might skip up to Maine just a few days ahead of you--I'd be ready for a real bat, see how I mean?" He coaxed her with large booming sounds, with affable smiles, like a popular preacher blessing an Easter congregation, like a humorous lecturer completing his stint of eloquence, like all perpetrators of masculine wiles. She stared at him, the joy of festival drained from her face. "Do I bother you when we go on vacations? Don't I add anything to your fun?" He broke. Suddenly, dreadfully, he was hysterical, he was a yelping baby. "Yes, yes, yes! Hell, yes! But can't you understand I'm shot to pieces? I'm all in! I got to take care of myself! I tell you, I got to--I'm sick of everything and everybody! I got to--" It was she who was mature and protective now. "Why, of course! You shall run off by yourself! Why don't you get Paul to go along, and you boys just fish and have a good time?" She patted his shoulder--reaching up to it--while he shook with palsied helplessness, and in that moment was not merely by habit fond of her but clung to her strength. She cried cheerily, "Now up-stairs you go, and pop into bed. We'll fix it all up. I'll see to the doors. Now skip!" For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom.

Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-9

Babbitt likes playing host to his friends. But with dinner finished, he feels like he ate too much food. To make things worse, he finds his guests getting more and more boring as the booze wears off. To deal with his boredom, Babbitt decides to sit next to one of his friends' wives on the couch and to flirt with her. To pass the time, the group gets together to have a mock seance, in which they pretend to talk to the ghost of the famous Italian poet, Dante Alighieri. The party eventually wraps up, and once everyone is gone, Mrs. Babbitt tells her husband that she thinks it went pretty well. While they're talking, Babbitt says he wants to go up to Maine on vacation by himself. He totally blows his cover about meeting someone in New York on business, and instead tells Myra that he'd just like to go up to Maine by himself. Of course, she suspects that there's something else going on, and she tries to guilt him into taking her. He holds firm, though, and just says he wants to be alone for a while. She wants to know, though, if he even wants her around on his vacations. He tries to reassure her while at the same time protecting his right to go off alone. Eventually, she gives in and tells him to have a good time. But now, Babbitt feels ashamed about his newfound freedom.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_9_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 10

chapter 10

{"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-10", "summary": "The Babbitts go to call on the Rieslings . When the talk comes around to the idea of Paul needing a vacation, though, Zilla goes off on a rant about how she's the one who needs a vacation from Paul. She can't stand how everyone always thinks of Paul as a calm, gentle man. At home, he's totally crazy . Eventually, Babbitt has enough of Zilla and he blows up on her, telling her that she's a total wet blanket of a wife and that she has no right accusing Paul of being the bad one in their relationship. Ouch. His insults eventually cause Zilla to break down and cry. He does, though, get her to agree to let Paul come on the Maine vacation with him. Next thing you know, Babbitt and Paul are buying their fishing gear as they get ready for their trip. After a short spending spree, they hop a train that'll take them north to Maine. In the train car, Babbitt strikes up a conversation with some other male passengers about hotels in various cities, and which ones are good. It's a long time before Paul joins the conversation. And when he does, he gets too highbrow for the businessmen, talking about a nearby factory as if it's beautiful. The rest of the men look at it and only see something that makes money. Next, the conversation turns to black people. All of the businessmen agree that in 1922, black servants are getting too uppity with their masters and not knowing their place well enough. Refresher: this book is taking place way before the Civil Rights Movement, so people can be pretty odious and racist.", "analysis": ""}

No apartment-house in Zenith had more resolutely experimented in condensation than the Revelstoke Arms, in which Paul and Zilla Riesling had a flat. By sliding the beds into low closets the bedrooms were converted into living-rooms. The kitchens were cupboards each containing an electric range, a copper sink, a glass refrigerator, and, very intermittently, a Balkan maid. Everything about the Arms was excessively modern, and everything was compressed--except the garages. The Babbitts were calling on the Rieslings at the Arms. It was a speculative venture to call on the Rieslings; interesting and sometimes disconcerting. Zilla was an active, strident, full-blown, high-bosomed blonde. When she condescended to be good-humored she was nervously amusing. Her comments on people were saltily satiric and penetrative of accepted hypocrisies. "That's so!" you said, and looked sheepish. She danced wildly, and called on the world to be merry, but in the midst of it she would turn indignant. She was always becoming indignant. Life was a plot against her and she exposed it furiously. She was affable to-night. She merely hinted that Orville Jones wore a toupe, that Mrs. T. Cholmondeley Frink's singing resembled a Ford going into high, and that the Hon. Otis Deeble, mayor of Zenith and candidate for Congress, was a flatulent fool (which was quite true). The Babbitts and Rieslings sat doubtfully on stone-hard brocade chairs in the small living-room of the flat, with its mantel unprovided with a fireplace, and its strip of heavy gilt fabric upon a glaring new player-piano, till Mrs. Riesling shrieked, "Come on! Let's put some pep in it! Get out your fiddle, Paul, and I'll try to make Georgie dance decently." The Babbitts were in earnest. They were plotting for the escape to Maine. But when Mrs. Babbitt hinted with plump smilingness, "Does Paul get as tired after the winter's work as Georgie does?" then Zilla remembered an injury; and when Zilla Riesling remembered an injury the world stopped till something had been done about it. "Does he get tired? No, he doesn't get tired, he just goes crazy, that's all! You think Paul is so reasonable, oh, yes, and he loves to make out he's a little lamb, but he's stubborn as a mule. Oh, if you had to live with him--! You'd find out how sweet he is! He just pretends to be meek so he can have his own way. And me, I get the credit for being a terrible old crank, but if I didn't blow up once in a while and get something started, we'd die of dry-rot. He never wants to go any place and--Why, last evening, just because the car was out of order--and that was his fault, too, because he ought to have taken it to the service-station and had the battery looked at--and he didn't want to go down to the movies on the trolley. But we went, and then there was one of those impudent conductors, and Paul wouldn't do a thing. "I was standing on the platform waiting for the people to let me into the car, and this beast, this conductor, hollered at me, 'Come on, you, move up!' Why, I've never had anybody speak to me that way in all my life! I was so astonished I just turned to him and said--I thought there must be some mistake, and so I said to him, perfectly pleasant, 'Were you speaking to me?' and he went on and bellowed at me, 'Yes, I was! You're keeping the whole car from starting!' he said, and then I saw he was one of these dirty ill-bred hogs that kindness is wasted on, and so I stopped and looked right at him, and I said, 'I--beg--your--pardon, I am not doing anything of the kind,' I said, 'it's the people ahead of me, who won't move up,' I said, 'and furthermore, let me tell you, young man, that you're a low-down, foul-mouthed, impertinent skunk,' I said, 'and you're no gentleman! I certainly intend to report you, and we'll see,' I said, 'whether a lady is to be insulted by any drunken bum that chooses to put on a ragged uniform, and I'd thank you,' I said, 'to keep your filthy abuse to yourself.' And then I waited for Paul to show he was half a man and come to my defense, and he just stood there and pretended he hadn't heard a word, and so I said to him, 'Well,' I said--" "Oh, cut it, cut it, Zill!" Paul groaned. "We all know I'm a mollycoddle, and you're a tender bud, and let's let it go at that." "Let it go?" Zilla's face was wrinkled like the Medusa, her voice was a dagger of corroded brass. She was full of the joy of righteousness and bad temper. She was a crusader and, like every crusader, she exulted in the opportunity to be vicious in the name of virtue. "Let it go? If people knew how many things I've let go--" "Oh, quit being such a bully." "Yes, a fine figure you'd cut if I didn't bully you! You'd lie abed till noon and play your idiotic fiddle till midnight! You're born lazy, and you're born shiftless, and you're born cowardly, Paul Riesling--" "Oh, now, don't say that, Zilla; you don't mean a word of it!" protested Mrs. Babbitt. "I will say that, and I mean every single last word of it!" "Oh, now, Zilla, the idea!" Mrs. Babbitt was maternal and fussy. She was no older than Zilla, but she seemed so--at first. She was placid and puffy and mature, where Zilla, at forty-five, was so bleached and tight-corseted that you knew only that she was older than she looked. "The idea of talking to poor Paul like that!" "Poor Paul is right! We'd both be poor, we'd be in the poorhouse, if I didn't jazz him up!" "Why, now, Zilla, Georgie and I were just saying how hard Paul's been working all year, and we were thinking it would be lovely if the Boys could run off by themselves. I've been coaxing George to go up to Maine ahead of the rest of us, and get the tired out of his system before we come, and I think it would be lovely if Paul could manage to get away and join him." At this exposure of his plot to escape, Paul was startled out of impassivity. He rubbed his fingers. His hands twitched. Zilla bayed, "Yes! You're lucky! You can let George go, and not have to watch him. Fat old Georgie! Never peeps at another woman! Hasn't got the spunk!" "The hell I haven't!" Babbitt was fervently defending his priceless immorality when Paul interrupted him--and Paul looked dangerous. He rose quickly; he said gently to Zilla: "I suppose you imply I have a lot of sweethearts." "Yes, I do!" "Well, then, my dear, since you ask for it--There hasn't been a time in the last ten years when I haven't found some nice little girl to comfort me, and as long as you continue your amiability I shall probably continue to deceive you. It isn't hard. You're so stupid." Zilla gibbered; she howled; words could not be distinguished in her slaver of abuse. Then the bland George F. Babbitt was transformed. If Paul was dangerous, if Zilla was a snake-locked fury, if the neat emotions suitable to the Revelstoke Arms had been slashed into raw hatreds, it was Babbitt who was the most formidable. He leaped up. He seemed very large. He seized Zilla's shoulder. The cautions of the broker were wiped from his face, and his voice was cruel: "I've had enough of all this damn nonsense! I've known you for twenty-five years, Zil, and I never knew you to miss a chance to take your disappointments out on Paul. You're not wicked. You're worse. You're a fool. And let me tell you that Paul is the finest boy God ever made. Every decent person is sick and tired of your taking advantage of being a woman and springing every mean innuendo you can think of. Who the hell are you that a person like Paul should have to ask your PERMISSION to go with me? You act like you were a combination of Queen Victoria and Cleopatra. You fool, can't you see how people snicker at you, and sneer at you?" Zilla was sobbing, "I've never--I've never--nobody ever talked to me like this in all my life!" "No, but that's the way they talk behind your back! Always! They say you're a scolding old woman. Old, by God!" That cowardly attack broke her. Her eyes were blank. She wept. But Babbitt glared stolidly. He felt that he was the all-powerful official in charge; that Paul and Mrs. Babbitt looked on him with awe; that he alone could handle this case. Zilla writhed. She begged, "Oh, they don't!" "They certainly do!" "I've been a bad woman! I'm terribly sorry! I'll kill myself! I'll do anything. Oh, I'll--What do you want?" She abased herself completely. Also, she enjoyed it. To the connoisseur of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough, melodramatic, egoistic humility. "I want you to let Paul beat it off to Maine with me," Babbitt demanded. "How can I help his going? You've just said I was an idiot and nobody paid any attention to me." "Oh, you can help it, all right, all right! What you got to do is to cut out hinting that the minute he gets out of your sight, he'll go chasing after some petticoat. Matter fact, that's the way you start the boy off wrong. You ought to have more sense--" "Oh, I will, honestly, I will, George. I know I was bad. Oh, forgive me, all of you, forgive me--" She enjoyed it. So did Babbitt. He condemned magnificently and forgave piously, and as he went parading out with his wife he was grandly explanatory to her: "Kind of a shame to bully Zilla, but course it was the only way to handle her. Gosh, I certainly did have her crawling!" She said calmly, "Yes. You were horrid. You were showing off. You were having a lovely time thinking what a great fine person you were!" "Well, by golly! Can you beat it! Of course I might of expected you to not stand by me! I might of expected you'd stick up for your own sex!" "Yes. Poor Zilla, she's so unhappy. She takes it out on Paul. She hasn't a single thing to do, in that little flat. And she broods too much. And she used to be so pretty and gay, and she resents losing it. And you were just as nasty and mean as you could be. I'm not a bit proud of you--or of Paul, boasting about his horrid love-affairs!" He was sulkily silent; he maintained his bad temper at a high level of outraged nobility all the four blocks home. At the door he left her, in self-approving haughtiness, and tramped the lawn. With a shock it was revealed to him: "Gosh, I wonder if she was right--if she was partly right?" Overwork must have flayed him to abnormal sensitiveness; it was one of the few times in his life when he had queried his eternal excellence; and he perceived the summer night, smelled the wet grass. Then: "I don't care! I've pulled it off. We're going to have our spree. And for Paul, I'd do anything." II They were buying their Maine tackle at Ijams Brothers', the Sporting Goods Mart, with the help of Willis Ijams, fellow member of the Boosters' Club. Babbitt was completely mad. He trumpeted and danced. He muttered to Paul, "Say, this is pretty good, eh? To be buying the stuff, eh? And good old Willis Ijams himself coming down on the floor to wait on us! Say, if those fellows that are getting their kit for the North Lakes knew we were going clear up to Maine, they'd have a fit, eh? . . . Well, come on, Brother Ijams--Willis, I mean. Here's your chance! We're a couple of easy marks! Whee! Let me at it! I'm going to buy out the store!" He gloated on fly-rods and gorgeous rubber hip-boots, on tents with celluloid windows and folding chairs and ice-boxes. He simple-heartedly wanted to buy all of them. It was the Paul whom he was always vaguely protecting who kept him from his drunken desires. But even Paul lightened when Willis Ijams, a salesman with poetry and diplomacy, discussed flies. "Now, of course, you boys know." he said, "the great scrap is between dry flies and wet flies. Personally, I'm for dry flies. More sporting." "That's so. Lots more sporting," fulminated Babbitt, who knew very little about flies either wet or dry. "Now if you'll take my advice, Georgie, you'll stock up well on these pale evening dims, and silver sedges, and red ants. Oh, boy, there's a fly, that red ant!" "You bet! That's what it is--a fly!" rejoiced Babbitt. "Yes, sir, that red ant," said Ijams, "is a real honest-to-God FLY!" "Oh, I guess ole Mr. Trout won't come a-hustling when I drop one of those red ants on the water!" asserted Babbitt, and his thick wrists made a rapturous motion of casting. "Yes, and the landlocked salmon will take it, too," said Ijams, who had never seen a landlocked salmon. "Salmon! Trout! Say, Paul, can you see Uncle George with his khaki pants on haulin' 'em in, some morning 'bout seven? Whee!" III They were on the New York express, incredibly bound for Maine, incredibly without their families. They were free, in a man's world, in the smoking-compartment of the Pullman. Outside the car window was a glaze of darkness stippled with the gold of infrequent mysterious lights. Babbitt was immensely conscious, in the sway and authoritative clatter of the train, of going, of going on. Leaning toward Paul he grunted, "Gosh, pretty nice to be hiking, eh?" The small room, with its walls of ocher-colored steel, was filled mostly with the sort of men he classified as the Best Fellows You'll Ever Meet--Real Good Mixers. There were four of them on the long seat; a fat man with a shrewd fat face, a knife-edged man in a green velour hat, a very young young man with an imitation amber cigarette-holder, and Babbitt. Facing them, on two movable leather chairs, were Paul and a lanky, old-fashioned man, very cunning, with wrinkles bracketing his mouth. They all read newspapers or trade journals, boot-and-shoe journals, crockery journals, and waited for the joys of conversation. It was the very young man, now making his first journey by Pullman, who began it. "Say, gee, I had a wild old time in Zenith!" he gloried. "Say, if a fellow knows the ropes there he can have as wild a time as he can in New York!" "Yuh, I bet you simply raised the old Ned. I figured you were a bad man when I saw you get on the train!" chuckled the fat one. The others delightedly laid down their papers. "Well, that's all right now! I guess I seen some things in the Arbor you never seen!" complained the boy. "Oh, I'll bet you did! I bet you lapped up the malted milk like a reg'lar little devil!" Then, the boy having served as introduction, they ignored him and charged into real talk. Only Paul, sitting by himself, reading at a serial story in a newspaper, failed to join them and all but Babbitt regarded him as a snob, an eccentric, a person of no spirit. Which of them said which has never been determined, and does not matter, since they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderous and brassy assurance. If it was not Babbitt who was delivering any given verdict, at least he was beaming on the chancellor who did deliver it. "At that, though," announced the first "they're selling quite some booze in Zenith. Guess they are everywhere. I don't know how you fellows feel about prohibition, but the way it strikes me is that it's a mighty beneficial thing for the poor zob that hasn't got any will-power but for fellows like us, it's an infringement of personal liberty." "That's a fact. Congress has got no right to interfere with a fellow's personal liberty," contended the second. A man came in from the car, but as all the seats were full he stood up while he smoked his cigarette. He was an Outsider; he was not one of the Old Families of the smoking-compartment. They looked upon him bleakly and, after trying to appear at ease by examining his chin in the mirror, he gave it up and went out in silence. "Just been making a trip through the South. Business conditions not very good down there," said one of the council. "Is that a fact! Not very good, eh?" "No, didn't strike me they were up to normal." "Not up to normal, eh?" "No, I wouldn't hardly say they were." The whole council nodded sagely and decided, "Yump, not hardly up to snuff." "Well, business conditions ain't what they ought to be out West, neither, not by a long shot." "That's a fact. And I guess the hotel business feels it. That's one good thing, though: these hotels that've been charging five bucks a day--yes, and maybe six--seven!--for a rotten room are going to be darn glad to get four, and maybe give you a little service." "That's a fact. Say, uh, speaknubout hotels, I hit the St. Francis at San Francisco for the first time, the other day, and, say, it certainly is a first-class place." "You're right, brother! The St. Francis is a swell place--absolutely A1." "That's a fact. I'm right with you. It's a first-class place." "Yuh, but say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Rippleton, in Chicago? I don't want to knock--I believe in boosting wherever you can--but say, of all the rotten dumps that pass 'emselves off as first-class hotels, that's the worst. I'm going to get those guys, one of these days, and I told 'em so. You know how I am--well, maybe you don't know, but I'm accustomed to first-class accommodations, and I'm perfectly willing to pay a reasonable price. I got into Chicago late the other night, and the Rippleton's near the station--I'd never been there before, but I says to the taxi-driver--I always believe in taking a taxi when you get in late; may cost a little more money, but, gosh, it's worth it when you got to be up early next morning and out selling a lot of crabs--and I said to him, 'Oh, just drive me over to the Rippleton.' "Well, we got there, and I breezed up to the desk and said to the clerk, 'Well, brother, got a nice room with bath for Cousin Bill?' Saaaay! You'd 'a' thought I'd sold him a second, or asked him to work on Yom Kippur! He hands me the cold-boiled stare and yaps, 'I dunno, friend, I'll see,' and he ducks behind the rigamajig they keep track of the rooms on. Well, I guess he called up the Credit Association and the American Security League to see if I was all right--he certainly took long enough--or maybe he just went to sleep; but finally he comes out and looks at me like it hurts him, and croaks, 'I think I can let you have a room with bath.' 'Well, that's awful nice of you--sorry to trouble you--how much 'll it set me back?' I says, real sweet. 'It'll cost you seven bucks a day, friend,' he says. "Well, it was late, and anyway, it went down on my expense-account--gosh, if I'd been paying it instead of the firm, I'd 'a' tramped the streets all night before I'd 'a' let any hick tavern stick me seven great big round dollars, believe me! So I lets it go at that. Well, the clerk wakes a nice young bell hop--fine lad--not a day over seventy-nine years old--fought at the Battle of Gettysburg and doesn't know it's over yet--thought I was one of the Confederates, I guess, from the way he looked at me--and Rip van Winkle took me up to something--I found out afterwards they called it a room, but first I thought there'd been some mistake--I thought they were putting me in the Salvation Army collection-box! At seven per each and every diem! Gosh!" "Yuh, I've heard the Rippleton was pretty cheesy. Now, when I go to Chicago I always stay at the Blackstone or the La Salle--first-class places." "Say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Birchdale at Terre Haute? How is it?" "Oh, the Birchdale is a first-class hotel." (Twelve minutes of conference on the state of hotels in South Bend, Flint, Dayton, Tulsa, Wichita, Fort Worth, Winona, Erie, Fargo, and Moose Jaw.) "Speaknubout prices," the man in the velour hat observed, fingering the elk-tooth on his heavy watch-chain, "I'd like to know where they get this stuff about clothes coming down. Now, you take this suit I got on." He pinched his trousers-leg. "Four years ago I paid forty-two fifty for it, and it was real sure-'nough value. Well, here the other day I went into a store back home and asked to see a suit, and the fellow yanks out some hand-me-downs that, honest, I wouldn't put on a hired man. Just out of curiosity I asks him, 'What you charging for that junk?' 'Junk,' he says, 'what d' you mean junk? That's a swell piece of goods, all wool--' Like hell! It was nice vegetable wool, right off the Ole Plantation! 'It's all wool,' he says, 'and we get sixty-seven ninety for it.' 'Oh, you do, do you!' I says. 'Not from me you don't,' I says, and I walks right out on him. You bet! I says to the wife, 'Well,' I said, 'as long as your strength holds out and you can go on putting a few more patches on papa's pants, we'll just pass up buying clothes."' "That's right, brother. And just look at collars, frinstance--" "Hey! Wait!" the fat man protested. "What's the matter with collars? I'm selling collars! D' you realize the cost of labor on collars is still two hundred and seven per cent. above--" They voted that if their old friend the fat man sold collars, then the price of collars was exactly what it should be; but all other clothing was tragically too expensive. They admired and loved one another now. They went profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that the purpose of manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be sold. To them, the Romantic Hero was no longer the knight, the wandering poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young district attorney, but the great sales-manager, who had an Analysis of Merchandizing Problems on his glass-topped desk, whose title of nobility was "Go-getter," and who devoted himself and all his young samurai to the cosmic purpose of Selling--not of selling anything in particular, for or to anybody in particular, but pure Selling. The shop-talk roused Paul Riesling. Though he was a player of violins and an interestingly unhappy husband, he was also a very able salesman of tar-roofing. He listened to the fat man's remarks on "the value of house-organs and bulletins as a method of jazzing-up the Boys out on the road;" and he himself offered one or two excellent thoughts on the use of two-cent stamps on circulars. Then he committed an offense against the holy law of the Clan of Good Fellows. He became highbrow. They were entering a city. On the outskirts they passed a steel-mill which flared in scarlet and orange flame that licked at the cadaverous stacks, at the iron-sheathed walls and sullen converters. "My Lord, look at that--beautiful!" said Paul. "You bet it's beautiful, friend. That's the Shelling-Horton Steel Plant, and they tell me old John Shelling made a good three million bones out of munitions during the war!" the man with the velour hat said reverently. "I didn't mean--I mean it's lovely the way the light pulls that picturesque yard, all littered with junk, right out of the darkness," said Paul. They stared at him, while Babbitt crowed, "Paul there has certainly got one great little eye for picturesque places and quaint sights and all that stuff. 'D of been an author or something if he hadn't gone into the roofing line." Paul looked annoyed. (Babbitt sometimes wondered if Paul appreciated his loyal boosting.) The man in the velour hat grunted, "Well, personally, I think Shelling-Horton keep their works awful dirty. Bum routing. But I don't suppose there's any law against calling 'em 'picturesque' if it gets you that way!" Paul sulkily returned to his newspaper and the conversation logically moved on to trains. "What time do we get into Pittsburg?" asked Babbitt. "Pittsburg? I think we get in at--no, that was last year's schedule--wait a minute--let's see--got a time-table right here." "I wonder if we're on time?" "Yuh, sure, we must be just about on time." "No, we aren't--we were seven minutes late, last station." "Were we? Straight? Why, gosh, I thought we were right on time." "No, we're about seven minutes late." "Yuh, that's right; seven minutes late." The porter entered--a negro in white jacket with brass buttons. "How late are we, George?" growled the fat man. "'Deed, I don't know, sir. I think we're about on time," said the porter, folding towels and deftly tossing them up on the rack above the washbowls. The council stared at him gloomily and when he was gone they wailed: "I don't know what's come over these niggers, nowadays. They never give you a civil answer." "That's a fact. They're getting so they don't have a single bit of respect for you. The old-fashioned coon was a fine old cuss--he knew his place--but these young dinges don't want to be porters or cotton-pickers. Oh, no! They got to be lawyers and professors and Lord knows what all! I tell you, it's becoming a pretty serious problem. We ought to get together and show the black man, yes, and the yellow man, his place. Now, I haven't got one particle of race-prejudice. I'm the first to be glad when a nigger succeeds--so long as he stays where he belongs and doesn't try to usurp the rightful authority and business ability of the white man." "That's the i.! And another thing we got to do," said the man with the velour hat (whose name was Koplinsky), "is to keep these damn foreigners out of the country. Thank the Lord, we're putting a limit on immigration. These Dagoes and Hunkies have got to learn that this is a white man's country, and they ain't wanted here. When we've assimilated the foreigners we got here now and learned 'em the principles of Americanism and turned 'em into regular folks, why then maybe we'll let in a few more." "You bet. That's a fact," they observed, and passed on to lighter topics. They rapidly reviewed motor-car prices, tire-mileage, oil-stocks, fishing, and the prospects for the wheat-crop in Dakota. But the fat man was impatient at this waste of time. He was a veteran traveler and free of illusions. Already he had asserted that he was "an old he-one." He leaned forward, gathered in their attention by his expression of sly humor, and grumbled, "Oh, hell, boys, let's cut out the formality and get down to the stories!" They became very lively and intimate. Paul and the boy vanished. The others slid forward on the long seat, unbuttoned their vests, thrust their feet up on the chairs, pulled the stately brass cuspidors nearer, and ran the green window-shade down on its little trolley, to shut them in from the uncomfortable strangeness of night. After each bark of laughter they cried, "Say, jever hear the one about--" Babbitt was expansive and virile. When the train stopped at an important station, the four men walked up and down the cement platform, under the vast smoky train-shed roof, like a stormy sky, under the elevated footways, beside crates of ducks and sides of beef, in the mystery of an unknown city. They strolled abreast, old friends and well content. At the long-drawn "Alllll aboarrrrrd"--like a mountain call at dusk--they hastened back into the smoking-compartment, and till two of the morning continued the droll tales, their eyes damp with cigar-smoke and laughter. When they parted they shook hands, and chuckled, "Well, sir, it's been a great session. Sorry to bust it up. Mighty glad to met you." Babbitt lay awake in the close hot tomb of his Pullman berth, shaking with remembrance of the fat man's limerick about the lady who wished to be wild. He raised the shade; he lay with a puffy arm tucked between his head and the skimpy pillow, looking out on the sliding silhouettes of trees, and village lamps like exclamation-points. He was very happy.

Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-10

The Babbitts go to call on the Rieslings . When the talk comes around to the idea of Paul needing a vacation, though, Zilla goes off on a rant about how she's the one who needs a vacation from Paul. She can't stand how everyone always thinks of Paul as a calm, gentle man. At home, he's totally crazy . Eventually, Babbitt has enough of Zilla and he blows up on her, telling her that she's a total wet blanket of a wife and that she has no right accusing Paul of being the bad one in their relationship. Ouch. His insults eventually cause Zilla to break down and cry. He does, though, get her to agree to let Paul come on the Maine vacation with him. Next thing you know, Babbitt and Paul are buying their fishing gear as they get ready for their trip. After a short spending spree, they hop a train that'll take them north to Maine. In the train car, Babbitt strikes up a conversation with some other male passengers about hotels in various cities, and which ones are good. It's a long time before Paul joins the conversation. And when he does, he gets too highbrow for the businessmen, talking about a nearby factory as if it's beautiful. The rest of the men look at it and only see something that makes money. Next, the conversation turns to black people. All of the businessmen agree that in 1922, black servants are getting too uppity with their masters and not knowing their place well enough. Refresher: this book is taking place way before the Civil Rights Movement, so people can be pretty odious and racist.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_10_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 11

chapter 11

{"name": "Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-11", "summary": "Babbitt and Paul's train stops in Pittsburgh for four hours. The two of them get out to check out the sights, and Paul spends some time staring at an ocean liner docked in the harbor. He wishes that he'd gone to see Europe as a young man instead of staying in crusty old America. The two of them sit on the edge of the dock and discuss how much they'd love to never go back to work. When they arrive in Maine, they find themselves a cabin to rent and spend most of their days fishing. They don't talk much, but they revel in the fact that they don't have any wives to answer to. But even though times are pretty pleasant, Babbitt becomes more and more irritable as the vacation drags on. Paul, on the other hand, starts to become cheerful. Both of them are grumpy, however, when their wives are due to arrive. By the end of the vacation, though, Babbitt seems to recover his optimism about the coming year.", "analysis": ""}

I THEY had four hours in New York between trains. The one thing Babbitt wished to see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built since his last visit. He stared up at it, muttering, "Twenty-two hundred rooms and twenty-two hundred baths! That's got everything in the world beat. Lord, their turnover must be--well, suppose price of rooms is four to eight dollars a day, and I suppose maybe some ten and--four times twenty-two hundred-say six times twenty-two hundred--well, anyway, with restaurants and everything, say summers between eight and fifteen thousand a day. Every day! I never thought I'd see a thing like that! Some town! Of course the average fellow in Zenith has got more Individual Initiative than the fourflushers here, but I got to hand it to New York. Yes, sir, town, you're all right--some ways. Well, old Paulski, I guess we've seen everything that's worth while. How'll we kill the rest of the time? Movie?" But Paul desired to see a liner. "Always wanted to go to Europe--and, by thunder, I will, too, some day before I past out," he sighed. From a rough wharf on the North River they stared at the stern of the Aquitania and her stacks and wireless antenna lifted above the dock-house which shut her in. "By golly," Babbitt droned, "wouldn't be so bad to go over to the Old Country and take a squint at all these ruins, and the place where Shakespeare was born. And think of being able to order a drink whenever you wanted one! Just range up to a bar and holler out loud, 'Gimme a cocktail, and darn the police!' Not bad at all. What juh like to see, over there, Paulibus?" Paul did not answer. Babbitt turned. Paul was standing with clenched fists, head drooping, staring at the liner as in terror. His thin body, seen against the summer-glaring planks of the wharf, was childishly meager. Again, "What would you hit for on the other side, Paul?" Scowling at the steamer, his breast heaving, Paul whispered, "Oh, my God!" While Babbitt watched him anxiously he snapped, "Come on, let's get out of this," and hastened down the wharf, not looking back. "That's funny," considered Babbitt. "The boy didn't care for seeing the ocean boats after all. I thought he'd be interested in 'em." II Though he exulted, and made sage speculations about locomotive horse-power, as their train climbed the Maine mountain-ridge and from the summit he looked down the shining way among the pines; though he remarked, "Well, by golly!" when he discovered that the station at Katadumcook, the end of the line, was an aged freight-car; Babbitt's moment of impassioned release came when they sat on a tiny wharf on Lake Sunasquam, awaiting the launch from the hotel. A raft had floated down the lake; between the logs and the shore, the water was transparent, thin-looking, flashing with minnows. A guide in black felt hat with trout-flies in the band, and flannel shirt of a peculiarly daring blue, sat on a log and whittled and was silent. A dog, a good country dog, black and woolly gray, a dog rich in leisure and in meditation, scratched and grunted and slept. The thick sunlight was lavish on the bright water, on the rim of gold-green balsam boughs, the silver birches and tropic ferns, and across the lake it burned on the sturdy shoulders of the mountains. Over everything was a holy peace. Silent, they loafed on the edge of the wharf, swinging their legs above the water. The immense tenderness of the place sank into Babbitt, and he murmured, "I'd just like to sit here--the rest of my life--and whittle--and sit. And never hear a typewriter. Or Stan Graff fussing in the 'phone. Or Rone and Ted scrapping. Just sit. Gosh!" He patted Paul's shoulder. "How does it strike you, old snoozer?" "Oh, it's darn good, Georgie. There's something sort of eternal about it." For once, Babbitt understood him. III Their launch rounded the bend; at the head of the lake, under a mountain slope, they saw the little central dining-shack of their hotel and the crescent of squat log cottages which served as bedrooms. They landed, and endured the critical examination of the habitues who had been at the hotel for a whole week. In their cottage, with its high stone fireplace, they hastened, as Babbitt expressed it, to "get into some regular he-togs." They came out; Paul in an old gray suit and soft white shirt; Babbitt in khaki shirt and vast and flapping khaki trousers. It was excessively new khaki; his rimless spectacles belonged to a city office; and his face was not tanned but a city pink. He made a discordant noise in the place. But with infinite satisfaction he slapped his legs and crowed, "Say, this is getting back home, eh?" They stood on the wharf before the hotel. He winked at Paul and drew from his back pocket a plug of chewing-tobacco, a vulgarism forbidden in the Babbitt home. He took a chew, beaming and wagging his head as he tugged at it. "Um! Um! Maybe I haven't been hungry for a wad of eating-tobacco! Have some?" They looked at each other in a grin of understanding. Paul took the plug, gnawed at it. They stood quiet, their jaws working. They solemnly spat, one after the other, into the placid water. They stretched voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs. From beyond the mountains came the shuffling sound of a far-off train. A trout leaped, and fell back in a silver circle. They sighed together. IV They had a week before their families came. Each evening they planned to get up early and fish before breakfast. Each morning they lay abed till the breakfast-bell, pleasantly conscious that there were no efficient wives to rouse them. The mornings were cold; the fire was kindly as they dressed. Paul was distressingly clean, but Babbitt reveled in a good sound dirtiness, in not having to shave till his spirit was moved to it. He treasured every grease spot and fish-scale on his new khaki trousers. All morning they fished unenergetically, or tramped the dim and aqueous-lighted trails among rank ferns and moss sprinkled with crimson bells. They slept all afternoon, and till midnight played stud-poker with the guides. Poker was a serious business to the guides. They did not gossip; they shuffled the thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity menacing to the "sports;" and Joe Paradise, king of guides, was sarcastic to loiterers who halted the game even to scratch. At midnight, as Paul and he blundered to their cottage over the pungent wet grass, and pine-roots confusing in the darkness, Babbitt rejoiced that he did not have to explain to his wife where he had been all evening. They did not talk much. The nervous loquacity and opinionation of the Zenith Athletic Club dropped from them. But when they did talk they slipped into the naive intimacy of college days. Once they drew their canoe up to the bank of Sunasquam Water, a stream walled in by the dense green of the hardhack. The sun roared on the green jungle but in the shade was sleepy peace, and the water was golden and rippling. Babbitt drew his hand through the cool flood, and mused: "We never thought we'd come to Maine together!" "No. We've never done anything the way we thought we would. I expected to live in Germany with my granddad's people, and study the fiddle." "That's so. And remember how I wanted to be a lawyer and go into politics? I still think I might have made a go of it. I've kind of got the gift of the gab--anyway, I can think on my feet, and make some kind of a spiel on most anything, and of course that's the thing you need in politics. By golly, Ted's going to law-school, even if I didn't! Well--I guess it's worked out all right. Myra's been a fine wife. And Zilla means well, Paulibus." "Yes. Up here, I figure out all sorts of plans to keep her amused. I kind of feel life is going to be different, now that we're getting a good rest and can go back and start over again." "I hope so, old boy." Shyly: "Say, gosh, it's been awful nice to sit around and loaf and gamble and act regular, with you along, you old horse-thief!" "Well, you know what it means to me, Georgie. Saved my life." The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed a little, to prove they were good rough fellows; and in a mellow silence, Babbitt whistling while Paul hummed, they paddled back to the hotel. V Though it was Paul who had seemed overwrought, Babbitt who had been the protecting big brother, Paul became clear-eyed and merry, while Babbitt sank into irritability. He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness. At first he had played nimble jester to Paul and for him sought amusements; by the end of the week Paul was nurse, and Babbitt accepted favors with the condescension one always shows a patient nurse. The day before their families arrived, the women guests at the hotel bubbled, "Oh, isn't it nice! You must be so excited;" and the proprieties compelled Babbitt and Paul to look excited. But they went to bed early and grumpy. When Myra appeared she said at once, "Now, we want you boys to go on playing around just as if we weren't here." The first evening, he stayed out for poker with the guides, and she said in placid merriment, "My! You're a regular bad one!" The second evening, she groaned sleepily, "Good heavens, are you going to be out every single night?" The third evening, he didn't play poker. He was tired now in every cell. "Funny! Vacation doesn't seem to have done me a bit of good," he lamented. "Paul's frisky as a colt, but I swear, I'm crankier and nervouser than when I came up here." He had three weeks of Maine. At the end of the second week he began to feel calm, and interested in life. He planned an expedition to climb Sachem Mountain, and wanted to camp overnight at Box Car Pond. He was curiously weak, yet cheerful, as though he had cleansed his veins of poisonous energy and was filling them with wholesome blood. He ceased to be irritated by Ted's infatuation with a waitress (his seventh tragic affair this year); he played catch with Ted, and with pride taught him to cast a fly in the pine-shadowed silence of Skowtuit Pond. At the end he sighed, "Hang it, I'm just beginning to enjoy my vacation. But, well, I feel a lot better. And it's going to be one great year! Maybe the Real Estate Board will elect me president, instead of some fuzzy old-fashioned faker like Chan Mott." On the way home, whenever he went into the smoking-compartment he felt guilty at deserting his wife and angry at being expected to feel guilty, but each time he triumphed, "Oh, this is going to be a great year, a great old year!"

Chapter 11

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-11

Babbitt and Paul's train stops in Pittsburgh for four hours. The two of them get out to check out the sights, and Paul spends some time staring at an ocean liner docked in the harbor. He wishes that he'd gone to see Europe as a young man instead of staying in crusty old America. The two of them sit on the edge of the dock and discuss how much they'd love to never go back to work. When they arrive in Maine, they find themselves a cabin to rent and spend most of their days fishing. They don't talk much, but they revel in the fact that they don't have any wives to answer to. But even though times are pretty pleasant, Babbitt becomes more and more irritable as the vacation drags on. Paul, on the other hand, starts to become cheerful. Both of them are grumpy, however, when their wives are due to arrive. By the end of the vacation, though, Babbitt seems to recover his optimism about the coming year.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_11_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 12

chapter 12

{"name": "Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-12", "summary": "Back from Maine, Babbitt once again resolves to quit smoking. Once again, though, he fails because he keeps making up excuses to have \"one last smoke.\" Next, he decides he's going to start taking more time away from work to go watch the local baseball team. Even this doesn't last long, though, because he becomes too nervous about being away from the office when something important happens. Like his attempt to cut back on smoking, his attempt to cut back on working also fails. He tries playing more golf than usual to help his fitness. But even this leaves him feeling unfulfilled. Finally, Babbitt spends more time taking Myra and his youngest daughter Tinka to the movies. They seem to cheer him up more than anything else. But as the narrator suggests, these are all just distractions from bigger problems in Babbitt's life.", "analysis": ""}

I ALL the way home from Maine, Babbitt was certain that he was a changed man. He was converted to serenity. He was going to cease worrying about business. He was going to have more "interests"--theaters, public affairs, reading. And suddenly, as he finished an especially heavy cigar, he was going to stop smoking. He invented a new and perfect method. He would buy no tobacco; he would depend on borrowing it; and, of course, he would be ashamed to borrow often. In a spasm of righteousness he flung his cigar-case out of the smoking-compartment window. He went back and was kind to his wife about nothing in particular; he admired his own purity, and decided, "Absolutely simple. Just a matter of will-power." He started a magazine serial about a scientific detective. Ten miles on, he was conscious that he desired to smoke. He ducked his head, like a turtle going into its shell; he appeared uneasy; he skipped two pages in his story and didn't know it. Five miles later, he leaped up and sought the porter. "Say, uh, George, have you got a--" The porter looked patient. "Have you got a time-table?" Babbitt finished. At the next stop he went out and bought a cigar. Since it was to be his last before he reached Zenith, he finished it down to an inch stub. Four days later he again remembered that he had stopped smoking, but he was too busy catching up with his office-work to keep it remembered. II Baseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby. "No sense a man's working his fool head off. I'm going out to the Game three times a week. Besides, fellow ought to support the home team." He did go and support the team, and enhance the glory of Zenith, by yelling "Attaboy!" and "Rotten!" He performed the rite scrupulously. He wore a cotton handkerchief about his collar; he became sweaty; he opened his mouth in a wide loose grin; and drank lemon soda out of a bottle. He went to the Game three times a week, for one week. Then he compromised on watching the Advocate-Times bulletin-board. He stood in the thickest and steamiest of the crowd, and as the boy up on the lofty platform recorded the achievements of Big Bill Bostwick, the pitcher, Babbitt remarked to complete strangers, "Pretty nice! Good work!" and hastened back to the office. He honestly believed that he loved baseball. It is true that he hadn't, in twenty-five years, himself played any baseball except back-lot catch with Ted--very gentle, and strictly limited to ten minutes. But the game was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called "patriotism" and "love of sport." As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering, "Guess better hustle." All about him the city was hustling, for hustling's sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another trolley a minute behind, and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop across the sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food which cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, "Jus' shave me once over. Gotta hustle." Men were feverishly getting rid of visitors in offices adorned with the signs, "This Is My Busy Day" and "The Lord Created the World in Six Days--You Can Spiel All You Got to Say in Six Minutes." Men who had made five thousand, year before last, and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year; and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered. Among them Babbitt hustled back to his office, to sit down with nothing much to do except see that the staff looked as though they were hustling. III Every Saturday afternoon he hustled out to his country club and hustled through nine holes of golf as a rest after the week's hustle. In Zenith it was as necessary for a Successful Man to belong to a country club as it was to wear a linen collar. Babbitt's was the Outing Golf and Country Club, a pleasant gray-shingled building with a broad porch, on a daisy-starred cliff above Lake Kennepoose. There was another, the Tonawanda Country Club, to which belonged Charles McKelvey, Horace Updike, and the other rich men who lunched not at the Athletic but at the Union Club. Babbitt explained with frequency, "You couldn't hire me to join the Tonawanda, even if I did have a hundred and eighty bucks to throw away on the initiation fee. At the Outing we've got a bunch of real human fellows, and the finest lot of little women in town--just as good at joshing as the men--but at the Tonawanda there's nothing but these would-be's in New York get-ups, drinking tea! Too much dog altogether. Why, I wouldn't join the Tonawanda even if they--I wouldn't join it on a bet!" When he had played four or five holes, he relaxed a bit, his tobacco-fluttering heart beat more normally, and his voice slowed to the drawling of his hundred generations of peasant ancestors. IV At least once a week Mr. and Mrs. Babbitt and Tinka went to the movies. Their favorite motion-picture theater was the Chateau, which held three thousand spectators and had an orchestra of fifty pieces which played Arrangements from the Operas and suites portraying a Day on the Farm, or a Four-alarm Fire. In the stone rotunda, decorated with crown-embroidered velvet chairs and almost medieval tapestries, parrakeets sat on gilded lotos columns. With exclamations of "Well, by golly!" and "You got to go some to beat this dump!" Babbitt admired the Chateau. As he stared across the thousands of heads, a gray plain in the dimness, as he smelled good clothes and mild perfume and chewing-gum, he felt as when he had first seen a mountain and realized how very, very much earth and rock there was in it. He liked three kinds of films: pretty bathing girls with bare legs; policemen or cowboys and an industrious shooting of revolvers; and funny fat men who ate spaghetti. He chuckled with immense, moist-eyed sentimentality at interludes portraying puppies, kittens, and chubby babies; and he wept at deathbeds and old mothers being patient in mortgaged cottages. Mrs. Babbitt preferred the pictures in which handsome young women in elaborate frocks moved through sets ticketed as the drawing-rooms of New York millionaires. As for Tinka, she preferred, or was believed to prefer, whatever her parents told her to. All his relaxations--baseball, golf, movies, bridge, motoring, long talks with Paul at the Athletic Club, or at the Good Red Beef and Old English Chop House--were necessary to Babbitt, for he was entering a year of such activity as he had never known.

Chapter 12

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-12

Back from Maine, Babbitt once again resolves to quit smoking. Once again, though, he fails because he keeps making up excuses to have "one last smoke." Next, he decides he's going to start taking more time away from work to go watch the local baseball team. Even this doesn't last long, though, because he becomes too nervous about being away from the office when something important happens. Like his attempt to cut back on smoking, his attempt to cut back on working also fails. He tries playing more golf than usual to help his fitness. But even this leaves him feeling unfulfilled. Finally, Babbitt spends more time taking Myra and his youngest daughter Tinka to the movies. They seem to cheer him up more than anything else. But as the narrator suggests, these are all just distractions from bigger problems in Babbitt's life.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_13_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 14

chapter 14

{"name": "Chapter 14", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-14", "summary": "The mayoral election comes up for Zenith, and the left-wing lawyer Seneca Doane is running. That means that Babbitt and his pro-business brotherhood need to fire up their election machine and get anyone other than Doane into office. They promote a candidate named Lucas Prout and Babbitt goes around giving speeches in support of Prout. Ultimately, Babbitt's efforts are able to get Lucas Prout elected mayor. The business community survives another big scare from organized labor. Now that he has an established reputation as a speechmaker, Babbitt is invited to all sorts of functions to give speeches about business and about the glory of Zenith. One of the main points in his speeches is that state universities should fire all professors who preach liberal or socialist views. As his star continues to rise in Zenith's social circles, Babbitt wonders how he ever could have doubted the joys of being a solid citizen.", "analysis": ""}

THIS autumn a Mr. W. G. Harding, of Marion, Ohio, was appointed President of the United States, but Zenith was less interested in the national campaign than in the local election. Seneca Doane, though he was a lawyer and a graduate of the State University, was candidate for mayor of Zenith on an alarming labor ticket. To oppose him the Democrats and Republicans united on Lucas Prout, a mattress-manufacturer with a perfect record for sanity. Mr. Prout was supported by the banks, the Chamber of Commerce, all the decent newspapers, and George F. Babbitt. Babbitt was precinct-leader on Floral Heights, but his district was safe and he longed for stouter battling. His convention paper had given him the beginning of a reputation for oratory, so the Republican-Democratic Central Committee sent him to the Seventh Ward and South Zenith, to address small audiences of workmen and clerks, and wives uneasy with their new votes. He acquired a fame enduring for weeks. Now and then a reporter was present at one of his meetings, and the headlines (though they were not very large) indicated that George F. Babbitt had addressed Cheering Throng, and Distinguished Man of Affairs had pointed out the Fallacies of Doane. Once, in the rotogravure section of the Sunday Advocate-Times, there was a photograph of Babbitt and a dozen other business men, with the caption "Leaders of Zenith Finance and Commerce Who Back Prout." He deserved his glory. He was an excellent campaigner. He had faith; he was certain that if Lincoln were alive, he would be electioneering for Mr. W. G. Harding--unless he came to Zenith and electioneered for Lucas Prout. He did not confuse audiences by silly subtleties; Prout represented honest industry, Seneca Doane represented whining laziness, and you could take your choice. With his broad shoulders and vigorous voice, he was obviously a Good Fellow; and, rarest of all, he really liked people. He almost liked common workmen. He wanted them to be well paid, and able to afford high rents--though, naturally, they must not interfere with the reasonable profits of stockholders. Thus nobly endowed, and keyed high by the discovery that he was a natural orator, he was popular with audiences, and he raged through the campaign, renowned not only in the Seventh and Eighth Wards but even in parts of the Sixteenth. II Crowded in his car, they came driving up to Turnverein Hall, South Zenith--Babbitt, his wife, Verona, Ted, and Paul and Zilla Riesling. The hall was over a delicatessen shop, in a street banging with trolleys and smelling of onions and gasoline and fried fish. A new appreciation of Babbitt filled all of them, including Babbitt. "Don't know how you keep it up, talking to three bunches in one evening. Wish I had your strength," said Paul; and Ted exclaimed to Verona, "The old man certainly does know how to kid these roughnecks along!" Men in black sateen shirts, their faces new-washed but with a hint of grime under their eyes, were loitering on the broad stairs up to the hall. Babbitt's party politely edged through them and into the whitewashed room, at the front of which was a dais with a red-plush throne and a pine altar painted watery blue, as used nightly by the Grand Masters and Supreme Potentates of innumerable lodges. The hall was full. As Babbitt pushed through the fringe standing at the back, he heard the precious tribute, "That's him!" The chairman bustled down the center aisle with an impressive, "The speaker? All ready, sir! Uh--let's see--what was the name, sir?" Then Babbitt slid into a sea of eloquence: "Ladies and gentlemen of the Sixteenth Ward, there is one who cannot be with us here to-night, a man than whom there is no more stalwart Trojan in all the political arena--I refer to our leader, the Honorable Lucas Prout, standard-bearer of the city and county of Zenith. Since he is not here, I trust that you will bear with me if, as a friend and neighbor, as one who is proud to share with you the common blessing of being a resident of the great city of Zenith, I tell you in all candor, honesty, and sincerity how the issues of this critical campaign appear to one plain man of business--to one who, brought up to the blessings of poverty and of manual labor, has, even when Fate condemned him to sit at a desk, yet never forgotten how it feels, by heck, to be up at five-thirty and at the factory with the ole dinner-pail in his hardened mitt when the whistle blew at seven, unless the owner sneaked in ten minutes on us and blew it early! (Laughter.) To come down to the basic and fundamental issues of this campaign, the great error, insincerely promulgated by Seneca Doane--" There were workmen who jeered--young cynical workmen, for the most part foreigners, Jews, Swedes, Irishmen, Italians--but the older men, the patient, bleached, stooped carpenters and mechanics, cheered him; and when he worked up to his anecdote of Lincoln their eyes were wet. Modestly, busily, he hurried out of the hall on delicious applause, and sped off to his third audience of the evening. "Ted, you better drive," he said. "Kind of all in after that spiel. Well, Paul, how'd it go? Did I get 'em?" "Bully! Corking! You had a lot of pep." Mrs. Babbitt worshiped, "Oh, it was fine! So clear and interesting, and such nice ideas. When I hear you orating I realize I don't appreciate how profoundly you think and what a splendid brain and vocabulary you have. Just--splendid." But Verona was irritating. "Dad," she worried, "how do you know that public ownership of utilities and so on and so forth will always be a failure?" Mrs. Babbitt reproved, "Rone, I should think you could see and realize that when your father's all worn out with orating, it's no time to expect him to explain these complicated subjects. I'm sure when he's rested he'll be glad to explain it to you. Now let's all be quiet and give Papa a chance to get ready for his next speech. Just think! Right now they're gathering in Maccabee Temple, and WAITING for us!" III Mr. Lucas Prout and Sound Business defeated Mr. Seneca Doane and Class Rule, and Zenith was again saved. Babbitt was offered several minor appointments to distribute among poor relations, but he preferred advance information about the extension of paved highways, and this a grateful administration gave to him. Also, he was one of only nineteen speakers at the dinner with which the Chamber of Commerce celebrated the victory of righteousness. His reputation for oratory established, at the dinner of the Zenith Real Estate Board he made the Annual Address. The Advocate-Times reported this speech with unusual fullness: "One of the livest banquets that has recently been pulled off occurred last night in the annual Get-Together Fest of the Zenith Real Estate Board, held in the Venetian Ball Room of the O'Hearn House. Mine host Gil O'Hearn had as usual done himself proud and those assembled feasted on such an assemblage of plates as could be rivaled nowhere west of New York, if there, and washed down the plenteous feed with the cup which inspired but did not inebriate in the shape of cider from the farm of Chandler Mott, president of the board and who acted as witty and efficient chairman. "As Mr. Mott was suffering from slight infection and sore throat, G. F. Babbitt made the principal talk. Besides outlining the progress of Torrensing real estate titles, Mr. Babbitt spoke in part as follows: "'In rising to address you, with my impromptu speech carefully tucked into my vest pocket, I am reminded of the story of the two Irishmen, Mike and Pat, who were riding on the Pullman. Both of them, I forgot to say, were sailors in the Navy. It seems Mike had the lower berth and by and by he heard a terrible racket from the upper, and when he yelled up to find out what the trouble was, Pat answered, "Shure an' bedad an' how can I ever get a night's sleep at all, at all? I been trying to get into this darned little hammock ever since eight bells!" "'Now, gentlemen, standing up here before you, I feel a good deal like Pat, and maybe after I've spieled along for a while, I may feel so darn small that I'll be able to crawl into a Pullman hammock with no trouble at all, at all! "'Gentlemen, it strikes me that each year at this annual occasion when friend and foe get together and lay down the battle-ax and let the waves of good-fellowship waft them up the flowery slopes of amity, it behooves us, standing together eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder as fellow-citizens of the best city in the world, to consider where we are both as regards ourselves and the common weal. "'It is true that even with our 361,000, or practically 362,000, population, there are, by the last census, almost a score of larger cities in the United States. But, gentlemen, if by the next census we do not stand at least tenth, then I'll be the first to request any knocker to remove my shirt and to eat the same, with the compliments of G. F. Babbitt, Esquire! It may be true that New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia will continue to keep ahead of us in size. But aside from these three cities, which are notoriously so overgrown that no decent white man, nobody who loves his wife and kiddies and God's good out-o'doors and likes to shake the hand of his neighbor in greeting, would want to live in them--and let me tell you right here and now, I wouldn't trade a high-class Zenith acreage development for the whole length and breadth of Broadway or State Street!--aside from these three, it's evident to any one with a head for facts that Zenith is the finest example of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere. "'I don't mean to say we're perfect. We've got a lot to do in the way of extending the paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it's the fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the wheels of progress go round! "'That's the type of fellow that's ruling America to-day; in fact, it's the ideal type to which the entire world must tend, if there's to be a decent, well-balanced, Christian, go-ahead future for this little old planet! Once in a while I just naturally sit back and size up this Solid American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction. "'Our Ideal Citizen--I picture him first and foremost as being busier than a bird-dog, not wasting a lot of good time in day-dreaming or going to sassiety teas or kicking about things that are none of his business, but putting the zip into some store or profession or art. At night he lights up a good cigar, and climbs into the little old 'bus, and maybe cusses the carburetor, and shoots out home. He mows the lawn, or sneaks in some practice putting, and then he's ready for dinner. After dinner he tells the kiddies a story, or takes the family to the movies, or plays a few fists of bridge, or reads the evening paper, and a chapter or two of some good lively Western novel if he has a taste for literature, and maybe the folks next-door drop in and they sit and visit about their friends and the topics of the day. Then he goes happily to bed, his conscience clear, having contributed his mite to the prosperity of the city and to his own bank-account. "'In politics and religion this Sane Citizen is the canniest man on earth; and in the arts he invariably has a natural taste which makes him pick out the best, every time. In no country in the world will you find so many reproductions of the Old Masters and of well-known paintings on parlor walls as in these United States. No country has anything like our number of phonographs, with not only dance records and comic but also the best operas, such as Verdi, rendered by the world's highest-paid singers. "'In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent business man; and I, for one, am only too glad that the man who has the rare skill to season his message with interesting reading matter and who shows both purpose and pep in handling his literary wares has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year, to mingle with the biggest executives on terms of perfect equality, and to show as big a house and as swell a car as any Captain of Industry! But, mind you, it's the appreciation of the Regular Guy who I have been depicting which has made this possible, and you got to hand as much credit to him as to the authors themselves. "'Finally, but most important, our Standardized Citizen, even if he is a bachelor, is a lover of the Little Ones, a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time, and the thing that most distinguishes us from the decayed nations of Europe. "'I have never yet toured Europe--and as a matter of fact, I don't know that I care to such an awful lot, as long as there's our own mighty cities and mountains to be seen--but, the way I figure it out, there must be a good many of our own sort of folks abroad. Indeed, one of the most enthusiastic Rotarians I ever met boosted the tenets of one-hundred-per-cent pep in a burr that smacked o' bonny Scutlond and all ye bonny braes o' Bobby Burns. But same time, one thing that distinguishes us from our good brothers, the hustlers over there, is that they're willing to take a lot off the snobs and journalists and politicians, while the modern American business man knows how to talk right up for himself, knows how to make it good and plenty clear that he intends to run the works. He doesn't have to call in some highbrow hired-man when it's necessary for him to answer the crooked critics of the sane and efficient life. He's not dumb, like the old-fashioned merchant. He's got a vocabulary and a punch. "'With all modesty, I want to stand up here as a representative business man and gently whisper, "Here's our kind of folks! Here's the specifications of the Standardized American Citizen! Here's the new generation of Americans: fellows with hair on their chests and smiles in their eyes and adding-machines in their offices. We're not doing any boasting, but we like ourselves first-rate, and if you don't like us, look out--better get under cover before the cyclone hits town!" "'So! In my clumsy way I have tried to sketch the Real He-man, the fellow with Zip and Bang. And it's because Zenith has so large a proportion of such men that it's the most stable, the greatest of our cities. New York also has its thousands of Real Folks, but New York is cursed with unnumbered foreigners. So are Chicago and San Francisco. Oh, we have a golden roster of cities--Detroit and Cleveland with their renowned factories, Cincinnati with its great machine-tool and soap products, Pittsburg and Birmingham with their steel, Kansas City and Minneapolis and Omaha that open their bountiful gates on the bosom of the ocean-like wheatlands, and countless other magnificent sister-cities, for, by the last census, there were no less than sixty-eight glorious American burgs with a population of over one hundred thousand! And all these cities stand together for power and purity, and against foreign ideas and communism--Atlanta with Hartford, Rochester with Denver, Milwaukee with Indianapolis, Los Angeles with Scranton, Portland, Maine, with Portland, Oregon. A good live wire from Baltimore or Seattle or Duluth is the twin-brother of every like fellow booster from Buffalo or Akron, Fort Worth or Oskaloosa! "'But it's here in Zenith, the home for manly men and womanly women and bright kids, that you find the largest proportion of these Regular Guys, and that's what sets it in a class by itself; that's why Zenith will be remembered in history as having set the pace for a civilization that shall endure when the old time-killing ways are gone forever and the day of earnest efficient endeavor shall have dawned all round the world! "'Some time I hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination to win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in every land and clime, wherever condensed milk and pasteboard cartons are known! Believe me, the world has fallen too long for these worn-out countries that aren't producing anything but bootblacks and scenery and booze, that haven't got one bathroom per hundred people, and that don't know a loose-leaf ledger from a slip-cover; and it's just about time for some Zenithite to get his back up and holler for a show-down! "'I tell you, Zenith and her sister-cities are producing a new type of civilization. There are many resemblances between Zenith and these other burgs, and I'm darn glad of it! The extraordinary, growing, and sane standardization of stores, offices, streets, hotels, clothes, and newspapers throughout the United States shows how strong and enduring a type is ours. "'I always like to remember a piece that Chum Frink wrote for the newspapers about his lecture-tours. It is doubtless familiar to many of you, but if you will permit me, I'll take a chance and read it. It's one of the classic poems, like "If" by Kipling, or Ella Wheeler Wilcox's "The Man Worth While"; and I always carry this clipping of it in my note-book: "When I am out upon the road, a poet with a pedler's load I mostly sing a hearty song, and take a chew and hike along, a-handing out my samples fine of Cheero Brand of sweet sunshine, and peddling optimistic pokes and stable lines of japes and jokes to Lyceums and other folks, to Rotarys, Kiwanis' Clubs, and feel I ain't like other dubs. And then old Major Silas Satan, a brainy cuss who's always waitin', he gives his tail a lively quirk, and gets in quick his dirty work. He fills me up with mullygrubs; my hair the backward way he rubs; he makes me lonelier than a hound, on Sunday when the folks ain't round. And then b' gosh, I would prefer to never be a lecturer, a-ridin' round in classy cars and smoking fifty-cent cigars, and never more I want to roam; I simply want to be back home, a-eatin' flap jacks, hash, and ham, with folks who savvy whom I am! "But when I get that lonely spell, I simply seek the best hotel, no matter in what town I be--St. Paul, Toledo, or K.C., in Washington, Schenectady, in Louisville or Albany. And at that inn it hits my dome that I again am right at home. If I should stand a lengthy spell in front of that first-class hotel, that to the drummers loves to cater, across from some big film theayter; if I should look around and buzz, and wonder in what town I was, I swear that I could never tell! For all the crowd would be so swell, in just the same fine sort of jeans they wear at home, and all the queens with spiffy bonnets on their beans, and all the fellows standing round a-talkin' always, I'll be bound, the same good jolly kind of guff, 'bout autos, politics and stuff and baseball players of renown that Nice Guys talk in my home town! "Then when I entered that hotel, I'd look around and say, "Well, well!" For there would be the same news-stand, same magazines and candies grand, same smokes of famous standard brand, I'd find at home, I'll tell! And when I saw the jolly bunch come waltzing in for eats at lunch, and squaring up in natty duds to platters large of French Fried spuds, why then I'd stand right up and bawl, "I've never left my home at all!" And all replete I'd sit me down beside some guy in derby brown upon a lobby chair of plush, and murmur to him in a rush, "Hello, Bill, tell me, good old scout, how is your stock a-holdin' out?" Then we'd be off, two solid pals, a-chatterin' like giddy gals of flivvers, weather, home, and wives, lodge-brothers then for all our lives! So when Sam Satan makes you blue, good friend, that's what I'd up and do, for in these States where'er you roam, you never leave your home sweet home." "'Yes, sir, these other burgs are our true partners in the great game of vital living. But let's not have any mistake about this. I claim that Zenith is the best partner and the fastest-growing partner of the whole caboodle. I trust I may be pardoned if I give a few statistics to back up my claims. If they are old stuff to any of you, yet the tidings of prosperity, like the good news of the Bible, never become tedious to the ears of a real hustler, no matter how oft the sweet story is told! Every intelligent person knows that Zenith manufactures more condensed milk and evaporated cream, more paper boxes, and more lighting-fixtures, than any other city in the United States, if not in the world. But it is not so universally known that we also stand second in the manufacture of package-butter, sixth in the giant realm of motors and automobiles, and somewhere about third in cheese, leather findings, tar roofing, breakfast food, and overalls! "'Our greatness, however, lies not alone in punchful prosperity but equally in that public spirit, that forward-looking idealism and brotherhood, which has marked Zenith ever since its foundation by the Fathers. We have a right, indeed we have a duty toward our fair city, to announce broadcast the facts about our high schools, characterized by their complete plants and the finest school-ventilating systems in the country, bar none; our magnificent new hotels and banks and the paintings and carved marble in their lobbies; and the Second National Tower, the second highest business building in any inland city in the entire country. When I add that we have an unparalleled number of miles of paved streets, bathrooms vacuum cleaners, and all the other signs of civilization; that our library and art museum are well supported and housed in convenient and roomy buildings; that our park-system is more than up to par, with its handsome driveways adorned with grass, shrubs, and statuary, then I give but a hint of the all round unlimited greatness of Zenith! "'I believe, however, in keeping the best to the last. When I remind you that we have one motor car for every five and seven-eighths persons in the city, then I give a rock-ribbed practical indication of the kind of progress and braininess which is synonymous with the name Zenith! "'But the way of the righteous is not all roses. Before I close I must call your attention to a problem we have to face, this coming year. The worst menace to sound government is not the avowed socialists but a lot of cowards who work under cover--the long-haired gentry who call themselves "liberals" and "radicals" and "non-partisan" and "intelligentsia" and God only knows how many other trick names! Irresponsible teachers and professors constitute the worst of this whole gang, and I am ashamed to say that several of them are on the faculty of our great State University! The U. is my own Alma Mater, and I am proud to be known as an alumni, but there are certain instructors there who seem to think we ought to turn the conduct of the nation over to hoboes and roustabouts. "'Those profs are the snakes to be scotched--they and all their milk-and-water ilk! The American business man is generous to a fault. But one thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers and journalists: if we're going to pay them our good money, they've got to help us by selling efficiency and whooping it up for rational prosperity! And when it comes to these blab-mouth, fault-finding, pessimistic, cynical University teachers, let me tell you that during this golden coming year it's just as much our duty to bring influence to have those cusses fired as it is to sell all the real estate and gather in all the good shekels we can. "'Not till that is done will our sons and daughters see that the ideal of American manhood and culture isn't a lot of cranks sitting around chewing the rag about their Rights and their Wrongs, but a God-fearing, hustling, successful, two-fisted Regular Guy, who belongs to some church with pep and piety to it, who belongs to the Boosters or the Rotarians or the Kiwanis, to the Elks or Moose or Red Men or Knights of Columbus or any one of a score of organizations of good, jolly, kidding, laughing, sweating, upstanding, lend-a-handing Royal Good Fellows, who plays hard and works hard, and whose answer to his critics is a square-toed boot that'll teach the grouches and smart alecks to respect the He-man and get out and root for Uncle Samuel, U.S.A.!'" IV Babbitt promised to become a recognized orator. He entertained a Smoker of the Men's Club of the Chatham Road presbyterian Church with Irish, Jewish, and Chinese dialect stories. But in nothing was he more clearly revealed as the Prominent Citizen than in his lecture on "Brass Tacks Facts on Real Estate," as delivered before the class in Sales Methods at the Zenith Y.M.C.A. The Advocate-Times reported the lecture so fully that Vergil Gunch said to Babbitt, "You're getting to be one of the classiest spellbinders in town. Seems 's if I couldn't pick up a paper without reading about your well-known eloquence. All this guff ought to bring a lot of business into your office. Good work! Keep it up!" "Go on, quit your kidding," said Babbitt feebly, but at this tribute from Gunch, himself a man of no mean oratorical fame, he expanded with delight and wondered how, before his vacation, he could have questioned the joys of being a solid citizen.

Chapter 14

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-14

The mayoral election comes up for Zenith, and the left-wing lawyer Seneca Doane is running. That means that Babbitt and his pro-business brotherhood need to fire up their election machine and get anyone other than Doane into office. They promote a candidate named Lucas Prout and Babbitt goes around giving speeches in support of Prout. Ultimately, Babbitt's efforts are able to get Lucas Prout elected mayor. The business community survives another big scare from organized labor. Now that he has an established reputation as a speechmaker, Babbitt is invited to all sorts of functions to give speeches about business and about the glory of Zenith. One of the main points in his speeches is that state universities should fire all professors who preach liberal or socialist views. As his star continues to rise in Zenith's social circles, Babbitt wonders how he ever could have doubted the joys of being a solid citizen.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/16.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_15_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 16

chapter 16

{"name": "Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-16", "summary": "As time passes, Babbitt finds more and more ways of keeping his mind off the question of what his life even means, man. He gets his biggest consolation from hanging with Paul Riesling. But eventually, the project that gives him most meaning is working to promote a local Sunday school. One day, after mass is over, he gets called into the office of Dr. John Jennison Drew, the pastor at Babbitt's church. When Babbitt gets to the office, he finds his pal Chum Frink sitting there next to an old man named William W. Earthorne, the president of the First State Bank of Zenith. Or in other words, a really big fish who's way out of Babbitt's social league. It turns out that Dr. John wants the men to think of new ways to promote the church's Sunday school, which currently sits as fourth largest in the city. Drew wants to change it into the biggest and the best. Babbitt is pumped to be working alongside the likes of William Earthorne.", "analysis": ""}

THE certainty that he was not going to be accepted by the McKelveys made Babbitt feel guilty and a little absurd. But he went more regularly to the Elks; at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon he was oratorical regarding the wickedness of strikes; and again he saw himself as a Prominent Citizen. His clubs and associations were food comfortable to his spirit. Of a decent man in Zenith it was required that he should belong to one, preferably two or three, of the innumerous "lodges" and prosperity-boosting lunch-clubs; to the Rotarians, the Kiwanis, or the Boosters; to the Oddfellows, Moose, Masons, Red Men, Woodmen, Owls, Eagles, Maccabees, Knights of Pythias, Knights of Columbus, and other secret orders characterized by a high degree of heartiness, sound morals, and reverence for the Constitution. There were four reasons for joining these orders: It was the thing to do. It was good for business, since lodge-brothers frequently became customers. It gave to Americans unable to become Geheimrate or Commendatori such unctuous honorifics as High Worthy Recording Scribe and Grand Hoogow to add to the commonplace distinctions of Colonel, Judge, and Professor. And it permitted the swaddled American husband to stay away from home for one evening a week. The lodge was his piazza, his pavement cafe. He could shoot pool and talk man-talk and be obscene and valiant. Babbitt was what he called a "joiner" for all these reasons. Behind the gold and scarlet banner of his public achievements was the dun background of office-routine: leases, sales-contracts, lists of properties to rent. The evenings of oratory and committees and lodges stimulated him like brandy, but every morning he was sandy-tongued. Week by week he accumulated nervousness. He was in open disagreement with his outside salesman, Stanley Graff; and once, though her charms had always kept him nickeringly polite to her, he snarled at Miss McGoun for changing his letters. But in the presence of Paul Riesling he relaxed. At least once a week they fled from maturity. On Saturday they played golf, jeering, "As a golfer, you're a fine tennis-player," or they motored all Sunday afternoon, stopping at village lunchrooms to sit on high stools at a counter and drink coffee from thick cups. Sometimes Paul came over in the evening with his violin, and even Zilla was silent as the lonely man who had lost his way and forever crept down unfamiliar roads spun out his dark soul in music. II Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School. His church, the Chatham Road Presbyterian, was one of the largest and richest, one of the most oaken and velvety, in Zenith. The pastor was the Reverend John Jennison Drew, M.A., D.D., LL.D. (The M.A. and the D.D. were from Elbert University, Nebraska, the LL.D. from Waterbury College, Oklahoma.) He was eloquent, efficient, and versatile. He presided at meetings for the denunciation of unions or the elevation of domestic service, and confided to the audiences that as a poor boy he had carried newspapers. For the Saturday edition of the Evening Advocate he wrote editorials on "The Manly Man's Religion" and "The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity," which were printed in bold type surrounded by a wiggly border. He often said that he was "proud to be known as primarily a business man" and that he certainly was not going to "permit the old Satan to monopolize all the pep and punch." He was a thin, rustic-faced young man with gold spectacles and a bang of dull brown hair, but when he hurled himself into oratory he glowed with power. He admitted that he was too much the scholar and poet to imitate the evangelist, Mike Monday, yet he had once awakened his fold to new life, and to larger collections, by the challenge, "My brethren, the real cheap skate is the man who won't lend to the Lord!" He had made his church a true community center. It contained everything but a bar. It had a nursery, a Thursday evening supper with a short bright missionary lecture afterward, a gymnasium, a fortnightly motion-picture show, a library of technical books for young workmen--though, unfortunately, no young workman ever entered the church except to wash the windows or repair the furnace--and a sewing-circle which made short little pants for the children of the poor while Mrs. Drew read aloud from earnest novels. Though Dr. Drew's theology was Presbyterian, his church-building was gracefully Episcopalian. As he said, it had the "most perdurable features of those noble ecclesiastical monuments of grand Old England which stand as symbols of the eternity of faith, religious and civil." It was built of cheery iron-spot brick in an improved Gothic style, and the main auditorium had indirect lighting from electric globes in lavish alabaster bowls. On a December morning when the Babbitts went to church, Dr. John Jennison Drew was unusually eloquent. The crowd was immense. Ten brisk young ushers, in morning coats with white roses, were bringing folding chairs up from the basement. There was an impressive musical program, conducted by Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A., who also sang the offertory. Babbitt cared less for this, because some misguided person had taught young Mr. Smeeth to smile, smile, smile while he was singing, but with all the appreciation of a fellow-orator he admired Dr. Drew's sermon. It had the intellectual quality which distinguished the Chatham Road congregation from the grubby chapels on Smith Street. "At this abundant harvest-time of all the year," Dr. Drew chanted, "when, though stormy the sky and laborious the path to the drudging wayfarer, yet the hovering and bodiless spirit swoops back o'er all the labors and desires of the past twelve months, oh, then it seems to me there sounds behind all our apparent failures the golden chorus of greeting from those passed happily on; and lo! on the dim horizon we see behind dolorous clouds the mighty mass of mountains--mountains of melody, mountains of mirth, mountains of might!" "I certainly do like a sermon with culture and thought in it," meditated Babbitt. At the end of the service he was delighted when the pastor, actively shaking hands at the door, twittered, "Oh, Brother Babbitt, can you wait a jiffy? Want your advice." "Sure, doctor! You bet!" "Drop into my office. I think you'll like the cigars there." Babbitt did like the cigars. He also liked the office, which was distinguished from other offices only by the spirited change of the familiar wall-placard to "This is the Lord's Busy Day." Chum Frink came in, then William W. Eathorne. Mr. Eathorne was the seventy-year-old president of the First State Bank of Zenith. He still wore the delicate patches of side-whiskers which had been the uniform of bankers in 1870. If Babbitt was envious of the Smart Set of the McKelveys, before William Washington Eathorne he was reverent. Mr. Eathorne had nothing to do with the Smart Set. He was above it. He was the great-grandson of one of the five men who founded Zenith, in 1792, and he was of the third generation of bankers. He could examine credits, make loans, promote or injure a man's business. In his presence Babbitt breathed quickly and felt young. The Reverend Dr. Drew bounced into the room and flowered into speech: "I've asked you gentlemen to stay so I can put a proposition before you. The Sunday School needs bucking up. It's the fourth largest in Zenith, but there's no reason why we should take anybody's dust. We ought to be first. I want to request you, if you will, to form a committee of advice and publicity for the Sunday School; look it over and make any suggestions for its betterment, and then, perhaps, see that the press gives us some attention--give the public some really helpful and constructive news instead of all these murders and divorces." "Excellent," said the banker. Babbitt and Frink were enchanted to join him. III If you had asked Babbitt what his religion was, he would have answered in sonorous Boosters'-Club rhetoric, "My religion is to serve my fellow men, to honor my brother as myself, and to do my bit to make life happier for one and all." If you had pressed him for more detail, he would have announced, "I'm a member of the Presbyterian Church, and naturally, I accept its doctrines." If you had been so brutal as to go on, he would have protested, "There's no use discussing and arguing about religion; it just stirs up bad feeling." Actually, the content of his theology was that there was a supreme being who had tried to make us perfect, but presumably had failed; that if one was a Good Man he would go to a place called Heaven (Babbitt unconsciously pictured it as rather like an excellent hotel with a private garden), but if one was a Bad Man, that is, if he murdered or committed burglary or used cocaine or had mistresses or sold non-existent real estate, he would be punished. Babbitt was uncertain, however, about what he called "this business of Hell." He explained to Ted, "Of course I'm pretty liberal; I don't exactly believe in a fire-and-brimstone Hell. Stands to reason, though, that a fellow can't get away with all sorts of Vice and not get nicked for it, see how I mean?" Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which "did a fellow good--kept him in touch with Higher Things." His first investigations for the Sunday School Advisory Committee did not inspire him. He liked the Busy Folks' Bible Class, composed of mature men and women and addressed by the old-school physician, Dr. T. Atkins Jordan, in a sparkling style comparable to that of the more refined humorous after-dinner speakers, but when he went down to the junior classes he was disconcerted. He heard Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A. and leader of the church-choir, a pale but strenuous young man with curly hair and a smile, teaching a class of sixteen-year-old boys. Smeeth lovingly admonished them, "Now, fellows, I'm going to have a Heart to Heart Talk Evening at my house next Thursday. We'll get off by ourselves and be frank about our Secret Worries. You can just tell old Sheldy anything, like all the fellows do at the Y. I'm going to explain frankly about the horrible practises a kiddy falls into unless he's guided by a Big Brother, and about the perils and glory of Sex." Old Sheldy beamed damply; the boys looked ashamed; and Babbitt didn't know which way to turn his embarrassed eyes. Less annoying but also much duller were the minor classes which were being instructed in philosophy and Oriental ethnology by earnest spinsters. Most of them met in the highly varnished Sunday School room, but there was an overflow to the basement, which was decorated with varicose water-pipes and lighted by small windows high up in the oozing wall. What Babbitt saw, however, was the First Congregational Church of Catawba. He was back in the Sunday School of his boyhood. He smelled again that polite stuffiness to be found only in church parlors; he recalled the case of drab Sunday School books: "Hetty, a Humble Heroine" and "Josephus, a Lad of Palestine;" he thumbed once more the high-colored text-cards which no boy wanted but no boy liked to throw away, because they were somehow sacred; he was tortured by the stumbling rote of thirty-five years ago, as in the vast Zenith church he listened to: "Now, Edgar, you read the next verse. What does it mean when it says it's easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye? What does this teach us? Clarence! Please don't wiggle so! If you had studied your lesson you wouldn't be so fidgety. Now, Earl, what is the lesson Jesus was trying to teach his disciples? The one thing I want you to especially remember, boys, is the words, 'With God all things are possible.' Just think of that always--Clarence, PLEASE pay attention--just say 'With God all things are possible' whenever you feel discouraged, and, Alec, will you read the next verse; if you'd pay attention you wouldn't lose your place!" Drone--drone--drone--gigantic bees that boomed in a cavern of drowsiness-- Babbitt started from his open-eyed nap, thanked the teacher for "the privilege of listening to her splendid teaching," and staggered on to the next circle. After two weeks of this he had no suggestions whatever for the Reverend Dr. Drew. Then he discovered a world of Sunday School journals, an enormous and busy domain of weeklies and monthlies which were as technical, as practical and forward-looking, as the real-estate columns or the shoe-trade magazines. He bought half a dozen of them at a religious book-shop and till after midnight he read them and admired. He found many lucrative tips on "Focusing Appeals," "Scouting for New Members," and "Getting Prospects to Sign up with the Sunday School." He particularly liked the word "prospects," and he was moved by the rubric: "The moral springs of the community's life lie deep in its Sunday Schools--its schools of religious instruction and inspiration. Neglect now means loss of spiritual vigor and moral power in years to come.... Facts like the above, followed by a straight-arm appeal, will reach folks who can never be laughed or jollied into doing their part." Babbitt admitted, "That's so. I used to skin out of the ole Sunday School at Catawba every chance I got, but same time, I wouldn't be where I am to-day, maybe, if it hadn't been for its training in--in moral power. And all about the Bible. (Great literature. Have to read some of it again, one of these days)." How scientifically the Sunday School could be organized he learned from an article in the Westminster Adult Bible Class: "The second vice-president looks after the fellowship of the class. She chooses a group to help her. These become ushers. Every one who comes gets a glad hand. No one goes away a stranger. One member of the group stands on the doorstep and invites passers-by to come in." Perhaps most of all Babbitt appreciated the remarks by William H. Ridgway in the Sunday School Times: "If you have a Sunday School class without any pep and get-up-and-go in it, that is, without interest, that is uncertain in attendance, that acts like a fellow with the spring fever, let old Dr. Ridgway write you a prescription. Rx. Invite the Bunch for Supper." The Sunday School journals were as well rounded as they were practical. They neglected none of the arts. As to music the Sunday School Times advertised that C. Harold Lowden, "known to thousands through his sacred compositions," had written a new masterpiece, "entitled 'Yearning for You.' The poem, by Harry D. Kerr, is one of the daintiest you could imagine and the music is indescribably beautiful. Critics are agreed that it will sweep the country. May be made into a charming sacred song by substituting the hymn words, 'I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.'" Even manual training was adequately considered. Babbitt noted an ingenious way of illustrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ: "Model for Pupils to Make. Tomb with Rolling Door.--Use a square covered box turned upside down. Pull the cover forward a little to form a groove at the bottom. Cut a square door, also cut a circle of cardboard to more than cover the door. Cover the circular door and the tomb thickly with stiff mixture of sand, flour and water and let it dry. It was the heavy circular stone over the door the women found 'rolled away' on Easter morning. This is the story we are to 'Go-tell.'" In their advertisements the Sunday School journals were thoroughly efficient. Babbitt was interested in a preparation which "takes the place of exercise for sedentary men by building up depleted nerve tissue, nourishing the brain and the digestive system." He was edified to learn that the selling of Bibles was a hustling and strictly competitive industry, and as an expert on hygiene he was pleased by the Sanitary Communion Outfit Company's announcement of "an improved and satisfactory outfit throughout, including highly polished beautiful mahogany tray. This tray eliminates all noise, is lighter and more easily handled than others and is more in keeping with the furniture of the church than a tray of any other material." IV He dropped the pile of Sunday School journals. He pondered, "Now, there's a real he-world. Corking! "Ashamed I haven't sat in more. Fellow that's an influence in the community--shame if he doesn't take part in a real virile hustling religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated, you might say. "But with all reverence. "Some folks might claim these Sunday School fans are undignified and unspiritual and so on. Sure! Always some skunk to spring things like that! Knocking and sneering and tearing-down--so much easier than building up. But me, I certainly hand it to these magazines. They've brought ole George F. Babbitt into camp, and that's the answer to the critics! "The more manly and practical a fellow is, the more he ought to lead the enterprising Christian life. Me for it! Cut out this carelessness and boozing and--Rone! Where the devil you been? This is a fine time o' night to be coming in!"

Chapter 16

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-16

As time passes, Babbitt finds more and more ways of keeping his mind off the question of what his life even means, man. He gets his biggest consolation from hanging with Paul Riesling. But eventually, the project that gives him most meaning is working to promote a local Sunday school. One day, after mass is over, he gets called into the office of Dr. John Jennison Drew, the pastor at Babbitt's church. When Babbitt gets to the office, he finds his pal Chum Frink sitting there next to an old man named William W. Earthorne, the president of the First State Bank of Zenith. Or in other words, a really big fish who's way out of Babbitt's social league. It turns out that Dr. John wants the men to think of new ways to promote the church's Sunday school, which currently sits as fourth largest in the city. Drew wants to change it into the biggest and the best. Babbitt is pumped to be working alongside the likes of William Earthorne.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_16_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 17

chapter 17

{"name": "Chapter 17", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-17", "summary": "The narrator gives us a long description of William Earthorne's house, which is one of the oldest houses in all of Zenith. Babbitt and his buddy Chum Frink show up to discuss some promotional strategies for the Sunday school with Earthorne. Babbitt introduces all sort of schemes and strategies for increasing interest in the school. First, he wants to divide the students into ranks like you do with an army, with all the best students having higher ranks than the worst one. That'll provide incentive for students to do better. Second, he wants to hire a bona fide press agent to make sure that the school is constantly getting mentioned in the newspapers. William Eathorne approves of all his ideas, and he drives home happy to think that he can hang with the likes of a bank president. The guy that Babbitt ends up hiring to promote the school is a young man named Ken Escott. It's not long after Ken's first visit to the Babbitt house that he and Babbitt's daughter Verona strike up a relationship. While this is all going on, Babbitt convinces Ken to put a special piece about Reverend Drew in the newspaper. Once this happens, Babbitt makes sure to tell the Reverend-Doctor that this was his doing. Drew is pleased, to say the least. Score one more point for good ol' Babbitt. Being chummy with William Eathorne also gives Babbitt another great advantage: he can get bank loans without having them officially recorded in the books. Or in other words, no one will know when he's about to make a big real estate purchase.", "analysis": ""}

I THERE are but three or four old houses in Floral Heights, and in Floral Heights an old house is one which was built before 1880. The largest of these is the residence of William Washington Eathorne, president of the First State Bank. The Eathorne Mansion preserves the memory of the "nice parts" of Zenith as they appeared from 1860 to 1900. It is a red brick immensity with gray sandstone lintels and a roof of slate in courses of red, green, and dyspeptic yellow. There are two anemic towers, one roofed with copper, the other crowned with castiron ferns. The porch is like an open tomb; it is supported by squat granite pillars above which hang frozen cascades of brick. At one side of the house is a huge stained-glass window in the shape of a keyhole. But the house has an effect not at all humorous. It embodies the heavy dignity of those Victorian financiers who ruled the generation between the pioneers and the brisk "sales-engineers" and created a somber oligarchy by gaining control of banks, mills, land, railroads, mines. Out of the dozen contradictory Zeniths which together make up the true and complete Zenith, none is so powerful and enduring yet none so unfamiliar to the citizens as the small, still, dry, polite, cruel Zenith of the William Eathornes; and for that tiny hierarchy the other Zeniths unwittingly labor and insignificantly die. Most of the castles of the testy Victorian tetrarchs are gone now or decayed into boarding-houses, but the Eathorne Mansion remains virtuous and aloof, reminiscent of London, Back Bay, Rittenhouse Square. Its marble steps are scrubbed daily, the brass plate is reverently polished, and the lace curtains are as prim and superior as William Washington Eathorne himself. With a certain awe Babbitt and Chum Frink called on Eathorne for a meeting of the Sunday School Advisory Committee; with uneasy stillness they followed a uniformed maid through catacombs of reception-rooms to the library. It was as unmistakably the library of a solid old banker as Eathorne's side-whiskers were the side-whiskers of a solid old banker. The books were most of them Standard Sets, with the correct and traditional touch of dim blue, dim gold, and glossy calf-skin. The fire was exactly correct and traditional; a small, quiet, steady fire, reflected by polished fire-irons. The oak desk was dark and old and altogether perfect; the chairs were gently supercilious. Eathorne's inquiries as to the healths of Mrs. Babbitt, Miss Babbitt, and the Other Children were softly paternal, but Babbitt had nothing with which to answer him. It was indecent to think of using the "How's tricks, ole socks?" which gratified Vergil Gunch and Frink and Howard Littlefield--men who till now had seemed successful and urbane. Babbitt and Frink sat politely, and politely did Eathorne observe, opening his thin lips just wide enough to dismiss the words, "Gentlemen, before we begin our conference--you may have felt the cold in coming here--so good of you to save an old man the journey--shall we perhaps have a whisky toddy?" So well trained was Babbitt in all the conversation that befits a Good Fellow that he almost disgraced himself with "Rather than make trouble, and always providin' there ain't any enforcement officers hiding in the waste-basket--" The words died choking in his throat. He bowed in flustered obedience. So did Chum Frink. Eathorne rang for the maid. The modern and luxurious Babbitt had never seen any one ring for a servant in a private house, except during meals. Himself, in hotels, had rung for bell-boys, but in the house you didn't hurt Matilda's feelings; you went out in the hall and shouted for her. Nor had he, since prohibition, known any one to be casual about drinking. It was extraordinary merely to sip his toddy and not cry, "Oh, maaaaan, this hits me right where I live!" And always, with the ecstasy of youth meeting greatness, he marveled, "That little fuzzy-face there, why, he could make me or break me! If he told my banker to call my loans--! Gosh! That quarter-sized squirt! And looking like he hadn't got a single bit of hustle to him! I wonder--Do we Boosters throw too many fits about pep?" From this thought he shuddered away, and listened devoutly to Eathorne's ideas on the advancement of the Sunday School, which were very clear and very bad. Diffidently Babbitt outlined his own suggestions: "I think if you analyze the needs of the school, in fact, going right at it as if it was a merchandizing problem, of course the one basic and fundamental need is growth. I presume we're all agreed we won't be satisfied till we build up the biggest darn Sunday School in the whole state, so the Chatham Road Presbyterian won't have to take anything off anybody. Now about jazzing up the campaign for prospects: they've already used contesting teams, and given prizes to the kids that bring in the most members. And they made a mistake there: the prizes were a lot of folderols and doodads like poetry books and illustrated Testaments, instead of something a real live kid would want to work for, like real cash or a speedometer for his motor cycle. Course I suppose it's all fine and dandy to illustrate the lessons with these decorated book-marks and blackboard drawings and so on, but when it comes down to real he-hustling, getting out and drumming up customers--or members, I mean, why, you got to make it worth a fellow's while. "Now, I want to propose two stunts: First, divide the Sunday School into four armies, depending on age. Everybody gets a military rank in his own army according to how many members he brings in, and the duffers that lie down on us and don't bring in any, they remain privates. The pastor and superintendent rank as generals. And everybody has got to give salutes and all the rest of that junk, just like a regular army, to make 'em feel it's worth while to get rank. "Then, second: Course the school has its advertising committee, but, Lord, nobody ever really works good--nobody works well just for the love of it. The thing to do is to be practical and up-to-date, and hire a real paid press-agent for the Sunday School-some newspaper fellow who can give part of his time." "Sure, you bet!" said Chum Frink. "Think of the nice juicy bits he could get in!" Babbitt crowed. "Not only the big, salient, vital facts, about how fast the Sunday School--and the collection--is growing, but a lot of humorous gossip and kidding: about how some blowhard fell down on his pledge to get new members, or the good time the Sacred Trinity class of girls had at their wieniewurst party. And on the side, if he had time, the press-agent might even boost the lessons themselves--do a little advertising for all the Sunday Schools in town, in fact. No use being hoggish toward the rest of 'em, providing we can keep the bulge on 'em in membership. Frinstance, he might get the papers to--Course I haven't got a literary training like Frink here, and I'm just guessing how the pieces ought to be written, but take frinstance, suppose the week's lesson is about Jacob; well, the press-agent might get in something that would have a fine moral, and yet with a trick headline that'd get folks to read it--say like: 'Jake Fools the Old Man; Makes Getaway with Girl and Bankroll.' See how I mean? That'd get their interest! Now, course, Mr. Eathorne, you're conservative, and maybe you feel these stunts would be undignified, but honestly, I believe they'd bring home the bacon." Eathorne folded his hands on his comfortable little belly and purred like an aged pussy: "May I say, first, that I have been very much pleased by your analysis of the situation, Mr. Babbitt. As you surmise, it's necessary in My Position to be conservative, and perhaps endeavor to maintain a certain standard of dignity. Yet I think you'll find me somewhat progressive. In our bank, for example, I hope I may say that we have as modern a method of publicity and advertising as any in the city. Yes, I fancy you'll find us oldsters quite cognizant of the shifting spiritual values of the age. Yes, oh yes. And so, in fact, it pleases me to be able to say that though personally I might prefer the sterner Presbyterianism of an earlier era--" Babbitt finally gathered that Eathorne was willing. Chum Frink suggested as part-time press-agent one Kenneth Escott, reporter on the Advocate-Times. They parted on a high plane of amity and Christian helpfulness. Babbitt did not drive home, but toward the center of the city. He wished to be by himself and exult over the beauty of intimacy with William Washington Eathorne. II A snow-blanched evening of ringing pavements and eager lights. Great golden lights of trolley-cars sliding along the packed snow of the roadway. Demure lights of little houses. The belching glare of a distant foundry, wiping out the sharp-edged stars. Lights of neighborhood drug stores where friends gossiped, well pleased, after the day's work. The green light of a police-station, and greener radiance on the snow; the drama of a patrol-wagon--gong beating like a terrified heart, headlights scorching the crystal-sparkling street, driver not a chauffeur but a policeman proud in uniform, another policeman perilously dangling on the step at the back, and a glimpse of the prisoner. A murderer, a burglar, a coiner cleverly trapped? An enormous graystone church with a rigid spire; dim light in the Parlors, and cheerful droning of choir-practise. The quivering green mercury-vapor light of a photo-engraver's loft. Then the storming lights of down-town; parked cars with ruby tail-lights; white arched entrances to movie theaters, like frosty mouths of winter caves; electric signs--serpents and little dancing men of fire; pink-shaded globes and scarlet jazz music in a cheap up-stairs dance-hall; lights of Chinese restaurants, lanterns painted with cherry-blossoms and with pagodas, hung against lattices of lustrous gold and black. Small dirty lamps in small stinking lunchrooms. The smart shopping-district, with rich and quiet light on crystal pendants and furs and suave surfaces of polished wood in velvet-hung reticent windows. High above the street, an unexpected square hanging in the darkness, the window of an office where some one was working late, for a reason unknown and stimulating. A man meshed in bankruptcy, an ambitious boy, an oil-man suddenly become rich? The air was shrewd, the snow was deep in uncleared alleys, and beyond the city, Babbitt knew, were hillsides of snow-drift among wintry oaks, and the curving ice-enchanted river. He loved his city with passionate wonder. He lost the accumulated weariness of business--worry and expansive oratory; he felt young and potential. He was ambitious. It was not enough to be a Vergil Gunch, an Orville Jones. No. "They're bully fellows, simply lovely, but they haven't got any finesse." No. He was going to be an Eathorne; delicately rigorous, coldly powerful. "That's the stuff. The wallop in the velvet mitt. Not let anybody get fresh with you. Been getting careless about my diction. Slang. Colloquial. Cut it out. I was first-rate at rhetoric in college. Themes on--Anyway, not bad. Had too much of this hooptedoodle and good-fellow stuff. I--Why couldn't I organize a bank of my own some day? And Ted succeed me!" He drove happily home, and to Mrs. Babbitt he was a William Washington Eathorne, but she did not notice it. III Young Kenneth Escott, reporter on the Advocate-Times was appointed press-agent of the Chatham Road Presbyterian Sunday School. He gave six hours a week to it. At least he was paid for giving six hours a week. He had friends on the Press and the Gazette and he was not (officially) known as a press-agent. He procured a trickle of insinuating items about neighborliness and the Bible, about class-suppers, jolly but educational, and the value of the Prayer-life in attaining financial success. The Sunday School adopted Babbitt's system of military ranks. Quickened by this spiritual refreshment, it had a boom. It did not become the largest school in Zenith--the Central Methodist Church kept ahead of it by methods which Dr. Drew scored as "unfair, undignified, un-American, ungentlemanly, and unchristian"--but it climbed from fourth place to second, and there was rejoicing in heaven, or at least in that portion of heaven included in the parsonage of Dr. Drew, while Babbitt had much praise and good repute. He had received the rank of colonel on the general staff of the school. He was plumply pleased by salutes on the street from unknown small boys; his ears were tickled to ruddy ecstasy by hearing himself called "Colonel;" and if he did not attend Sunday School merely to be thus exalted, certainly he thought about it all the way there. He was particularly pleasant to the press-agent, Kenneth Escott; he took him to lunch at the Athletic Club and had him at the house for dinner. Like many of the cocksure young men who forage about cities in apparent contentment and who express their cynicism in supercilious slang, Escott was shy and lonely. His shrewd starveling face broadened with joy at dinner, and he blurted, "Gee whillikins, Mrs. Babbitt, if you knew how good it is to have home eats again!" Escott and Verona liked each other. All evening they "talked about ideas." They discovered that they were Radicals. True, they were sensible about it. They agreed that all communists were criminals; that this vers libre was tommy-rot; and that while there ought to be universal disarmament, of course Great Britain and the United States must, on behalf of oppressed small nations, keep a navy equal to the tonnage of all the rest of the world. But they were so revolutionary that they predicted (to Babbitt's irritation) that there would some day be a Third Party which would give trouble to the Republicans and Democrats. Escott shook hands with Babbitt three times, at parting. Babbitt mentioned his extreme fondness for Eathorne. Within a week three newspapers presented accounts of Babbitt's sterling labors for religion, and all of them tactfully mentioned William Washington Eathorne as his collaborator. Nothing had brought Babbitt quite so much credit at the Elks, the Athletic Club, and the Boosters'. His friends had always congratulated him on his oratory, but in their praise was doubt, for even in speeches advertising the city there was something highbrow and degenerate, like writing poetry. But now Orville Jones shouted across the Athletic dining-room, "Here's the new director of the First State Bank!" Grover Butterbaugh, the eminent wholesaler of plumbers' supplies, chuckled, "Wonder you mix with common folks, after holding Eathorne's hand!" And Emil Wengert, the jeweler, was at last willing to discuss buying a house in Dorchester. IV When the Sunday School campaign was finished, Babbitt suggested to Kenneth Escott, "Say, how about doing a little boosting for Doc Drew personally?" Escott grinned. "You trust the doc to do a little boosting for himself, Mr. Babbitt! There's hardly a week goes by without his ringing up the paper to say if we'll chase a reporter up to his Study, he'll let us in on the story about the swell sermon he's going to preach on the wickedness of short skirts, or the authorship of the Pentateuch. Don't you worry about him. There's just one better publicity-grabber in town, and that's this Dora Gibson Tucker that runs the Child Welfare and the Americanization League, and the only reason she's got Drew beaten is because she has got SOME brains!" "Well, now Kenneth, I don't think you ought to talk that way about the doctor. A preacher has to watch his interests, hasn't he? You remember that in the Bible about--about being diligent in the Lord's business, or something?" "All right, I'll get something in if you want me to, Mr. Babbitt, but I'll have to wait till the managing editor is out of town, and then blackjack the city editor." Thus it came to pass that in the Sunday Advocate-Times, under a picture of Dr. Drew at his earnestest, with eyes alert, jaw as granite, and rustic lock flamboyant, appeared an inscription--a wood-pulp tablet conferring twenty-four hours' immortality: The Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew, M.A., pastor of the beautiful Chatham Road Presbyterian Church in lovely Floral Heights, is a wizard soul-winner. He holds the local record for conversions. During his shepherdhood an average of almost a hundred sin-weary persons per year have declared their resolve to lead a new life and have found a harbor of refuge and peace. Everything zips at the Chatham Road Church. The subsidiary organizations are keyed to the top-notch of efficiency. Dr. Drew is especially keen on good congregational singing. Bright cheerful hymns are used at every meeting, and the special Sing Services attract lovers of music and professionals from all parts of the city. On the popular lecture platform as well as in the pulpit Dr. Drew is a renowned word-painter, and during the course of the year he receives literally scores of invitations to speak at varied functions both here and elsewhere. V Babbitt let Dr. Drew know that he was responsible for this tribute. Dr. Drew called him "brother," and shook his hand a great many times. During the meetings of the Advisory Committee, Babbitt had hinted that he would be charmed to invite Eathorne to dinner, but Eathorne had murmured, "So nice of you--old man, now--almost never go out." Surely Eathorne would not refuse his own pastor. Babbitt said boyishly to Drew: "Say, doctor, now we've put this thing over, strikes me it's up to the dominie to blow the three of us to a dinner!" "Bully! You bet! Delighted!" cried Dr. Drew, in his manliest way. (Some one had once told him that he talked like the late President Roosevelt.) "And, uh, say, doctor, be sure and get Mr. Eathorne to come. Insist on it. It's, uh--I think he sticks around home too much for his own health." Eathorne came. It was a friendly dinner. Babbitt spoke gracefully of the stabilizing and educational value of bankers to the community. They were, he said, the pastors of the fold of commerce. For the first time Eathorne departed from the topic of Sunday Schools, and asked Babbitt about the progress of his business. Babbitt answered modestly, almost filially. A few months later, when he had a chance to take part in the Street Traction Company's terminal deal, Babbitt did not care to go to his own bank for a loan. It was rather a quiet sort of deal and, if it had come out, the Public might not have understood. He went to his friend Mr. Eathorne; he was welcomed, and received the loan as a private venture; and they both profited in their pleasant new association. After that, Babbitt went to church regularly, except on spring Sunday mornings which were obviously meant for motoring. He announced to Ted, "I tell you, boy, there's no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who'll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!"

Chapter 17

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-17

The narrator gives us a long description of William Earthorne's house, which is one of the oldest houses in all of Zenith. Babbitt and his buddy Chum Frink show up to discuss some promotional strategies for the Sunday school with Earthorne. Babbitt introduces all sort of schemes and strategies for increasing interest in the school. First, he wants to divide the students into ranks like you do with an army, with all the best students having higher ranks than the worst one. That'll provide incentive for students to do better. Second, he wants to hire a bona fide press agent to make sure that the school is constantly getting mentioned in the newspapers. William Eathorne approves of all his ideas, and he drives home happy to think that he can hang with the likes of a bank president. The guy that Babbitt ends up hiring to promote the school is a young man named Ken Escott. It's not long after Ken's first visit to the Babbitt house that he and Babbitt's daughter Verona strike up a relationship. While this is all going on, Babbitt convinces Ken to put a special piece about Reverend Drew in the newspaper. Once this happens, Babbitt makes sure to tell the Reverend-Doctor that this was his doing. Drew is pleased, to say the least. Score one more point for good ol' Babbitt. Being chummy with William Eathorne also gives Babbitt another great advantage: he can get bank loans without having them officially recorded in the books. Or in other words, no one will know when he's about to make a big real estate purchase.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_17_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 18

chapter 18

{"name": "Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-18", "summary": "As time passes, Babbitt becomes aware of his daughter's growing relationship with Ken Escott. He also becomes aware that his son Ted has been hanging around the girl next door, Eunice Littlefield. The most distressing thing for Babbitt, though, is the realization that he sometimes feels a sexual attraction to Eunice, who is only seventeen years old. The fairy child in his dreams even begins to take on the image of Eunice. One day, Ted decides to have a party for his graduating class in high school. When the party happens, it's fairly rowdy. Babbitt suspects that the guests are ducking outside to drink from flasks, but he doesn't call any of them out for fear of embarrassing Ted. Finally, Eunice Littlefield's dad shows up and takes her home, explaining that his wife has a headache and that she needs Eunice. Eunice, though, is crying. Babbitt fears that Littlefield now thinks that Ted is a bad influence on Eunice. Later in the evening, Babbitt smells whiskey on Ted's breath. And once the guests are gone, this leads to a huge fight. Ted rebels against how conservative and boring his parents are. The thing is, though, that as concerned as Babbitt is about Ted, he's equally concerned about Verona for being too safe, especially in her relationship with Ken. All the two of them ever do is talk about philosophy. Over the next little while, Babbitt's mother pays a visit, as does his half-brother Martin with his wife and baby. Babbitt listens to their boring conversation and listens to his children constantly nagging him for more stuff. It gets to the point that he feels like he's going to burst from frustration. He thinks again about how nice it would be to never go back to work.", "analysis": ""}

I THOUGH he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed every detail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Babbitt was no more conscious of his children than of the buttons on his coat-sleeves. The admiration of Kenneth Escott made him aware of Verona. She had become secretary to Mr. Gruensberg of the Gruensberg Leather Company; she did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them; but she was one of the people who give an agitating impression of being on the point of doing something desperate--of leaving a job or a husband--without ever doing it. Babbitt was so hopeful about Escott's hesitant ardors that he became the playful parent. When he returned from the Elks he peered coyly into the living-room and gurgled, "Has our Kenny been here to-night?" He never credited Verona's protest, "Why, Ken and I are just good friends, and we only talk about Ideas. I won't have all this sentimental nonsense, that would spoil everything." It was Ted who most worried Babbitt. With conditions in Latin and English but with a triumphant record in manual training, basket-ball, and the organization of dances, Ted was struggling through his Senior year in the East Side High School. At home he was interested only when he was asked to trace some subtle ill in the ignition system of the car. He repeated to his tut-tutting father that he did not wish to go to college or law-school, and Babbitt was equally disturbed by this "shiftlessness" and by Ted's relations with Eunice Littlefield, next door. Though she was the daughter of Howard Littlefield, that wrought-iron fact-mill, that horse-faced priest of private ownership, Eunice was a midge in the sun. She danced into the house, she flung herself into Babbitt's lap when he was reading, she crumpled his paper, and laughed at him when he adequately explained that he hated a crumpled newspaper as he hated a broken sales-contract. She was seventeen now. Her ambition was to be a cinema actress. She did not merely attend the showing of every "feature film;" she also read the motion-picture magazines, those extraordinary symptoms of the Age of Pep--monthlies and weeklies gorgeously illustrated with portraits of young women who had recently been manicure girls, not very skilful manicure girls, and who, unless their every grimace had been arranged by a director, could not have acted in the Easter cantata of the Central Methodist Church; magazines reporting, quite seriously, in "interviews" plastered with pictures of riding-breeches and California bungalows, the views on sculpture and international politics of blankly beautiful, suspiciously beautiful young men; outlining the plots of films about pure prostitutes and kind-hearted train-robbers; and giving directions for making bootblacks into Celebrated Scenario Authors overnight. These authorities Eunice studied. She could, she frequently did, tell whether it was in November or December, 1905, that Mack Harker? the renowned screen cowpuncher and badman, began his public career as chorus man in "Oh, You Naughty Girlie." On the wall of her room, her father reported, she had pinned up twenty-one photographs of actors. But the signed portrait of the most graceful of the movie heroes she carried in her young bosom. Babbitt was bewildered by this worship of new gods, and he suspected that Eunice smoked cigarettes. He smelled the cloying reek from up-stairs, and heard her giggling with Ted. He never inquired. The agreeable child dismayed him. Her thin and charming face was sharpened by bobbed hair; her skirts were short, her stockings were rolled, and, as she flew after Ted, above the caressing silk were glimpses of soft knees which made Babbitt uneasy, and wretched that she should consider him old. Sometimes, in the veiled life of his dreams, when the fairy child came running to him she took on the semblance of Eunice Littlefield. Ted was motor-mad as Eunice was movie-mad. A thousand sarcastic refusals did not check his teasing for a car of his own. However lax he might be about early rising and the prosody of Vergil, he was tireless in tinkering. With three other boys he bought a rheumatic Ford chassis, built an amazing racer-body out of tin and pine, went skidding round corners in the perilous craft, and sold it at a profit. Babbitt gave him a motor-cycle, and every Saturday afternoon, with seven sandwiches and a bottle of Coca-Cola in his pockets, and Eunice perched eerily on the rumble seat, he went roaring off to distant towns. Usually Eunice and he were merely neighborhood chums, and quarreled with a wholesome and violent lack of delicacy; but now and then, after the color and scent of a dance, they were silent together and a little furtive, and Babbitt was worried. Babbitt was an average father. He was affectionate, bullying, opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like most parents, he enjoyed the game of waiting till the victim was clearly wrong, then virtuously pouncing. He justified himself by croaking, "Well, Ted's mother spoils him. Got to be somebody who tells him what's what, and me, I'm elected the goat. Because I try to bring him up to be a real, decent, human being and not one of these sapheads and lounge-lizards, of course they all call me a grouch!" Throughout, with the eternal human genius for arriving by the worst possible routes at surprisingly tolerable goals, Babbitt loved his son and warmed to his companionship and would have sacrificed everything for him--if he could have been sure of proper credit. II Ted was planning a party for his set in the Senior Class. Babbitt meant to be helpful and jolly about it. From his memory of high-school pleasures back in Catawba he suggested the nicest games: Going to Boston, and charades with stew-pans for helmets, and word-games in which you were an Adjective or a Quality. When he was most enthusiastic he discovered that they weren't paying attention; they were only tolerating him. As for the party, it was as fixed and standardized as a Union Club Hop. There was to be dancing in the living-room, a noble collation in the dining-room, and in the hall two tables of bridge for what Ted called "the poor old dumb-bells that you can't get to dance hardly more 'n half the time." Every breakfast was monopolized by conferences on the affair. No one listened to Babbitt's bulletins about the February weather or to his throat-clearing comments on the headlines. He said furiously, "If I may be PERMITTED to interrupt your engrossing private CONVERSATION--Juh hear what I SAID?" "Oh, don't be a spoiled baby! Ted and I have just as much right to talk as you have!" flared Mrs. Babbitt. On the night of the party he was permitted to look on, when he was not helping Matilda with the Vecchia ice cream and the petits fours. He was deeply disquieted. Eight years ago, when Verona had given a high-school party, the children had been featureless gabies. Now they were men and women of the world, very supercilious men and women; the boys condescended to Babbitt, they wore evening-clothes, and with hauteur they accepted cigarettes from silver cases. Babbitt had heard stories of what the Athletic Club called "goings on" at young parties; of girls "parking" their corsets in the dressing-room, of "cuddling" and "petting," and a presumable increase in what was known as Immorality. To-night he believed the stories. These children seemed bold to him, and cold. The girls wore misty chiffon, coral velvet, or cloth of gold, and around their dipping bobbed hair were shining wreaths. He had it, upon urgent and secret inquiry, that no corsets were known to be parked upstairs; but certainly these eager bodies were not stiff with steel. Their stockings were of lustrous silk, their slippers costly and unnatural, their lips carmined and their eyebrows penciled. They danced cheek to cheek with the boys, and Babbitt sickened with apprehension and unconscious envy. Worst of them all was Eunice Littlefield, and maddest of all the boys was Ted. Eunice was a flying demon. She slid the length of the room; her tender shoulders swayed; her feet were deft as a weaver's shuttle; she laughed, and enticed Babbitt to dance with her. Then he discovered the annex to the party. The boys and girls disappeared occasionally, and he remembered rumors of their drinking together from hip-pocket flasks. He tiptoed round the house, and in each of the dozen cars waiting in the street he saw the points of light from cigarettes, from each of them heard high giggles. He wanted to denounce them but (standing in the snow, peering round the dark corner) he did not dare. He tried to be tactful. When he had returned to the front hall he coaxed the boys, "Say, if any of you fellows are thirsty, there's some dandy ginger ale." "Oh! Thanks!" they condescended. He sought his wife, in the pantry, and exploded, "I'd like to go in there and throw some of those young pups out of the house! They talk down to me like I was the butler! I'd like to--" "I know," she sighed; "only everybody says, all the mothers tell me, unless you stand for them, if you get angry because they go out to their cars to have a drink, they won't come to your house any more, and we wouldn't want Ted left out of things, would we?" He announced that he would be enchanted to have Ted left out of things, and hurried in to be polite, lest Ted be left out of things. But, he resolved, if he found that the boys were drinking, he would--well, he'd "hand 'em something that would surprise 'em." While he was trying to be agreeable to large-shouldered young bullies he was earnestly sniffing at them. Twice he caught the reek of prohibition-time whisky, but then, it was only twice-- Dr. Howard Littlefield lumbered in. He had come, in a mood of solemn parental patronage, to look on. Ted and Eunice were dancing, moving together like one body. Littlefield gasped. He called Eunice. There was a whispered duologue, and Littlefield explained to Babbitt that Eunice's mother had a headache and needed her. She went off in tears. Babbitt looked after them furiously. "That little devil! Getting Ted into trouble! And Littlefield, the conceited old gas-bag, acting like it was Ted that was the bad influence!" Later he smelled whisky on Ted's breath. After the civil farewell to the guests, the row was terrific, a thorough Family Scene, like an avalanche, devastating and without reticences. Babbitt thundered, Mrs. Babbitt wept, Ted was unconvincingly defiant, and Verona in confusion as to whose side she was taking. For several months there was coolness between the Babbitts and the Littlefields, each family sheltering their lamb from the wolf-cub next door. Babbitt and Littlefield still spoke in pontifical periods about motors and the senate, but they kept bleakly away from mention of their families. Whenever Eunice came to the house she discussed with pleasant intimacy the fact that she had been forbidden to come to the house; and Babbitt tried, with no success whatever, to be fatherly and advisory with her. III "Gosh all fishhooks!" Ted wailed to Eunice, as they wolfed hot chocolate, lumps of nougat, and an assortment of glace nuts, in the mosaic splendor of the Royal Drug Store, "it gets me why Dad doesn't just pass out from being so poky. Every evening he sits there, about half-asleep, and if Rone or I say, 'Oh, come on, let's do something,' he doesn't even take the trouble to think about it. He just yawns and says, 'Naw, this suits me right here.' He doesn't know there's any fun going on anywhere. I suppose he must do some thinking, same as you and I do, but gosh, there's no way of telling it. I don't believe that outside of the office and playing a little bum golf on Saturday he knows there's anything in the world to do except just keep sitting there--sitting there every night--not wanting to go anywhere--not wanting to do anything--thinking us kids are crazy--sitting there--Lord!" IV If he was frightened by Ted's slackness, Babbitt was not sufficiently frightened by Verona. She was too safe. She lived too much in the neat little airless room of her mind. Kenneth Escott and she were always under foot. When they were not at home, conducting their cautiously radical courtship over sheets of statistics, they were trudging off to lectures by authors and Hindu philosophers and Swedish lieutenants. "Gosh," Babbitt wailed to his wife, as they walked home from the Fogartys' bridge-party, "it gets me how Rone and that fellow can be so poky. They sit there night after night, whenever he isn't working, and they don't know there's any fun in the world. All talk and discussion--Lord! Sitting there--sitting there--night after night--not wanting to do anything--thinking I'm crazy because I like to go out and play a fist of cards--sitting there--gosh!" Then round the swimmer, bored by struggling through the perpetual surf of family life, new combers swelled. V Babbitt's father- and mother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Henry T. Thompson, rented their old house in the Bellevue district and moved to the Hotel Hatton, that glorified boarding-house filled with widows, red-plush furniture, and the sound of ice-water pitchers. They were lonely there, and every other Sunday evening the Babbitts had to dine with them, on fricasseed chicken, discouraged celery, and cornstarch ice cream, and afterward sit, polite and restrained, in the hotel lounge, while a young woman violinist played songs from the German via Broadway. Then Babbitt's own mother came down from Catawba to spend three weeks. She was a kind woman and magnificently uncomprehending. She congratulated the convention-defying Verona on being a "nice, loyal home-body without all these Ideas that so many girls seem to have nowadays;" and when Ted filled the differential with grease, out of pure love of mechanics and filthiness, she rejoiced that he was "so handy around the house--and helping his father and all, and not going out with the girls all the time and trying to pretend he was a society fellow." Babbitt loved his mother, and sometimes he rather liked her, but he was annoyed by her Christian Patience, and he was reduced to pulpiness when she discoursed about a quite mythical hero called "Your Father": "You won't remember it, Georgie, you were such a little fellow at the time--my, I remember just how you looked that day, with your goldy brown curls and your lace collar, you always were such a dainty child, and kind of puny and sickly, and you loved pretty things so much and the red tassels on your little bootees and all--and Your Father was taking us to church and a man stopped us and said 'Major'--so many of the neighbors used to call Your Father 'Major;' of course he was only a private in The War but everybody knew that was because of the jealousy of his captain and he ought to have been a high-ranking officer, he had that natural ability to command that so very, very few men have--and this man came out into the road and held up his hand and stopped the buggy and said, 'Major,' he said, 'there's a lot of the folks around here that have decided to support Colonel Scanell for congress, and we want you to join us. Meeting people the way you do in the store, you could help us a lot.' "Well, Your Father just looked at him and said, 'I certainly shall do nothing of the sort. I don't like his politics,' he said. Well, the man--Captain Smith they used to call him, and heaven only knows why, because he hadn't the shadow or vestige of a right to be called 'Captain' or any other title--this Captain Smith said, 'We'll make it hot for you if you don't stick by your friends, Major.' Well, you know how Your Father was, and this Smith knew it too; he knew what a Real Man he was, and he knew Your Father knew the political situation from A to Z, and he ought to have seen that here was one man he couldn't impose on, but he went on trying to and hinting and trying till Your Father spoke up and said to him, 'Captain Smith,' he said, 'I have a reputation around these parts for being one who is amply qualified to mind his own business and let other folks mind theirs!' and with that he drove on and left the fellow standing there in the road like a bump on a log!" Babbitt was most exasperated when she revealed his boyhood to the children. He had, it seemed, been fond of barley-sugar; had worn the "loveliest little pink bow in his curls" and corrupted his own name to "Goo-goo." He heard (though he did not officially hear) Ted admonishing Tinka, "Come on now, kid; stick the lovely pink bow in your curls and beat it down to breakfast, or Goo-goo will jaw your head off." Babbitt's half-brother, Martin, with his wife and youngest baby, came down from Catawba for two days. Martin bred cattle and ran the dusty general-store. He was proud of being a freeborn independent American of the good old Yankee stock; he was proud of being honest, blunt, ugly, and disagreeable. His favorite remark was "How much did you pay for that?" He regarded Verona's books, Babbitt's silver pencil, and flowers on the table as citified extravagances, and said so. Babbitt would have quarreled with him but for his gawky wife and the baby, whom Babbitt teased and poked fingers at and addressed: "I think this baby's a bum, yes, sir, I think this little baby's a bum, he's a bum, yes, sir, he's a bum, that's what he is, he's a bum, this baby's a bum, he's nothing but an old bum, that's what he is--a bum!" All the while Verona and Kenneth Escott held long inquiries into epistemology; Ted was a disgraced rebel; and Tinka, aged eleven, was demanding that she be allowed to go to the movies thrice a week, "like all the girls." Babbitt raged, "I'm sick of it! Having to carry three generations. Whole damn bunch lean on me. Pay half of mother's income, listen to Henry T., listen to Myra's worrying, be polite to Mart, and get called an old grouch for trying to help the children. All of 'em depending on me and picking on me and not a damn one of 'em grateful! No relief, and no credit, and no help from anybody. And to keep it up for--good Lord, how long?" He enjoyed being sick in February; he was delighted by their consternation that he, the rock, should give way. He had eaten a questionable clam. For two days he was languorous and petted and esteemed. He was allowed to snarl "Oh, let me alone!" without reprisals. He lay on the sleeping-porch and watched the winter sun slide along the taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale blood red. The shadow of the draw-rope was dense black, in an enticing ripple on the canvas. He found pleasure in the curve of it, sighed as the fading light blurred it. He was conscious of life, and a little sad. With no Vergil Gunches before whom to set his face in resolute optimism, he beheld, and half admitted that he beheld, his way of life as incredibly mechanical. Mechanical business--a brisk selling of badly built houses. Mechanical religion--a dry, hard church, shut off from the real life of the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top-hat. Mechanical golf and dinner-parties and bridge and conversation. Save with Paul Riesling, mechanical friendships--back-slapping and jocular, never daring to essay the test of quietness. He turned uneasily in bed. He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long sweet afternoons which were meant for summery meadows, lost in such brittle pretentiousness. He thought of telephoning about leases, of cajoling men he hated, of making business calls and waiting in dirty anterooms--hat on knee, yawning at fly-specked calendars, being polite to office-boys. "I don't hardly want to go back to work," he prayed. "I'd like to--I don't know." But he was back next day, busy and of doubtful temper.

Chapter 18

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-18

As time passes, Babbitt becomes aware of his daughter's growing relationship with Ken Escott. He also becomes aware that his son Ted has been hanging around the girl next door, Eunice Littlefield. The most distressing thing for Babbitt, though, is the realization that he sometimes feels a sexual attraction to Eunice, who is only seventeen years old. The fairy child in his dreams even begins to take on the image of Eunice. One day, Ted decides to have a party for his graduating class in high school. When the party happens, it's fairly rowdy. Babbitt suspects that the guests are ducking outside to drink from flasks, but he doesn't call any of them out for fear of embarrassing Ted. Finally, Eunice Littlefield's dad shows up and takes her home, explaining that his wife has a headache and that she needs Eunice. Eunice, though, is crying. Babbitt fears that Littlefield now thinks that Ted is a bad influence on Eunice. Later in the evening, Babbitt smells whiskey on Ted's breath. And once the guests are gone, this leads to a huge fight. Ted rebels against how conservative and boring his parents are. The thing is, though, that as concerned as Babbitt is about Ted, he's equally concerned about Verona for being too safe, especially in her relationship with Ken. All the two of them ever do is talk about philosophy. Over the next little while, Babbitt's mother pays a visit, as does his half-brother Martin with his wife and baby. Babbitt listens to their boring conversation and listens to his children constantly nagging him for more stuff. It gets to the point that he feels like he's going to burst from frustration. He thinks again about how nice it would be to never go back to work.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_19_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 20

chapter 20

{"name": "Chapter 20", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-20", "summary": "Babbitt travels to Paul Riesling's hotel room in Chicago. After a little scrap with the man at the front desk, Babbitt gets a key to Paul's room and goes in to wait for him. Hours later, Paul shows up. He and Babbitt get into a fight, with Babbitt chastising Paul for being an immoral man and cheating on his wife. After they calm down, Paul asks Babbitt to do him a favor by lying to Zilla and saying that he saw Paul in Akron, Ohio, which is where he's supposed to be. As he rides home in a cab that night, Babbitt finds tears coming to his eyes. When he gets back home, he calls personally on Zilla to tell him how nice it was to run into Paul in Akron. Zilla, though, doesn't fully believe him. She knows that Paul has something going on with a woman in Chicago. Babbitt scolds her, though, for always being so hard on Paul. When Paul gets back from Chicago, Zilla seems like a changed woman. She is a lot nicer to him on the whole. But Paul soon tells Babbitt that it's too late for Zilla to start being nice now. He is determined to get away from her. Somehow.", "analysis": ""}

I HE sat smoking with the piano-salesman, clinging to the warm refuge of gossip, afraid to venture into thoughts of Paul. He was the more affable on the surface as secretly he became more apprehensive, felt more hollow. He was certain that Paul was in Chicago without Zilla's knowledge, and that he was doing things not at all moral and secure. When the salesman yawned that he had to write up his orders, Babbitt left him, left the hotel, in leisurely calm. But savagely he said "Campbell Inn!" to the taxi-driver. He sat agitated on the slippery leather seat, in that chill dimness which smelled of dust and perfume and Turkish cigarettes. He did not heed the snowy lake-front, the dark spaces and sudden bright corners in the unknown land south of the Loop. The office of the Campbell Inn was hard, bright, new; the night clerk harder and brighter. "Yep?" he said to Babbitt. "Mr. Paul Riesling registered here?" "Yep." "Is he in now?" "Nope." "Then if you'll give me his key, I'll wait for him." "Can't do that, brother. Wait down here if you wanna." Babbitt had spoken with the deference which all the Clan of Good Fellows give to hotel clerks. Now he said with snarling abruptness: "I may have to wait some time. I'm Riesling's brother-in-law. I'll go up to his room. D' I look like a sneak-thief?" His voice was low and not pleasant. With considerable haste the clerk took down the key, protesting, "I never said you looked like a sneak-thief. Just rules of the hotel. But if you want to--" On his way up in the elevator Babbitt wondered why he was here. Why shouldn't Paul be dining with a respectable married woman? Why had he lied to the clerk about being Paul's brother-in-law? He had acted like a child. He must be careful not to say foolish dramatic things to Paul. As he settled down he tried to look pompous and placid. Then the thought--Suicide. He'd been dreading that, without knowing it. Paul would be just the person to do something like that. He must be out of his head or he wouldn't be confiding in that--that dried-up hag. Zilla (oh, damn Zilla! how gladly he'd throttle that nagging fiend of a woman!)--she'd probably succeeded at last, and driven Paul crazy. Suicide. Out there in the lake, way out, beyond the piled ice along the shore. It would be ghastly cold to drop into the water to-night. Or--throat cut--in the bathroom-- Babbitt flung into Paul's bathroom. It was empty. He smiled, feebly. He pulled at his choking collar, looked at his watch, opened the window to stare down at the street, looked at his watch, tried to read the evening paper lying on the glass-topped bureau, looked again at his watch. Three minutes had gone by since he had first looked at it. And he waited for three hours. He was sitting fixed, chilled, when the doorknob turned. Paul came in glowering. "Hello," Paul said. "Been waiting?" "Yuh, little while." "Well?" "Well what? Just thought I'd drop in to see how you made out in Akron." "I did all right. What difference does it make?" "Why, gosh, Paul, what are you sore about?" "What are you butting into my affairs for?" "Why, Paul, that's no way to talk! I'm not butting into nothing. I was so glad to see your ugly old phiz that I just dropped in to say howdy." "Well, I'm not going to have anybody following me around and trying to boss me. I've had all of that I'm going to stand!" "Well, gosh, I'm not--" "I didn't like the way you looked at May Arnold, or the snooty way you talked." "Well, all right then! If you think I'm a buttinsky, then I'll just butt in! I don't know who your May Arnold is, but I know doggone good and well that you and her weren't talking about tar-roofing, no, nor about playing the violin, neither! If you haven't got any moral consideration for yourself, you ought to have some for your position in the community. The idea of your going around places gawping into a female's eyes like a love-sick pup! I can understand a fellow slipping once, but I don't propose to see a fellow that's been as chummy with me as you have getting started on the downward path and sneaking off from his wife, even as cranky a one as Zilla, to go woman-chasing--" "Oh, you're a perfectly moral little husband!" "I am, by God! I've never looked at any woman except Myra since I've been married--practically--and I never will! I tell you there's nothing to immorality. It don't pay. Can't you see, old man, it just makes Zilla still crankier?" Slight of resolution as he was of body, Paul threw his snow-beaded overcoat on the floor and crouched on a flimsy cane chair. "Oh, you're an old blowhard, and you know less about morality than Tinka, but you're all right, Georgie. But you can't understand that--I'm through. I can't go Zilla's hammering any longer. She's made up her mind that I'm a devil, and--Reg'lar Inquisition. Torture. She enjoys it. It's a game to see how sore she can make me. And me, either it's find a little comfort, any comfort, anywhere, or else do something a lot worse. Now this Mrs. Arnold, she's not so young, but she's a fine woman and she understands a fellow, and she's had her own troubles." "Yea! I suppose she's one of these hens whose husband 'doesn't understand her'!" "I don't know. Maybe. He was killed in the war." Babbitt lumbered up, stood beside Paul patting his shoulder, making soft apologetic noises. "Honest, George, she's a fine woman, and she's had one hell of a time. We manage to jolly each other up a lot. We tell each other we're the dandiest pair on earth. Maybe we don't believe it, but it helps a lot to have somebody with whom you can be perfectly simple, and not all this discussing--explaining--" "And that's as far as you go?" "It is not! Go on! Say it!" "Well, I don't--I can't say I like it, but--" With a burst which left him feeling large and shining with generosity, "it's none of my darn business! I'll do anything I can for you, if there's anything I can do." "There might be. I judge from Zilla's letters that 've been forwarded from Akron that she's getting suspicious about my staying away so long. She'd be perfectly capable of having me shadowed, and of coming to Chicago and busting into a hotel dining-room and bawling me out before everybody." "I'll take care of Zilla. I'll hand her a good fairy-story when I get back to Zenith." "I don't know--I don't think you better try it. You're a good fellow, but I don't know that diplomacy is your strong point." Babbitt looked hurt, then irritated. "I mean with women! With women, I mean. Course they got to go some to beat you in business diplomacy, but I just mean with women. Zilla may do a lot of rough talking, but she's pretty shrewd. She'd have the story out of you in no time." "Well, all right, but--" Babbitt was still pathetic at not being allowed to play Secret Agent. Paul soothed: "Course maybe you might tell her you'd been in Akron and seen me there." "Why, sure, you bet! Don't I have to go look at that candy-store property in Akron? Don't I? Ain't it a shame I have to stop off there when I'm so anxious to get home? Ain't it a regular shame? I'll say it is! I'll say it's a doggone shame!" "Fine. But for glory hallelujah's sake don't go putting any fancy fixings on the story. When men lie they always try to make it too artistic, and that's why women get suspicious. And--Let's have a drink, Georgie. I've got some gin and a little vermouth." The Paul who normally refused a second cocktail took a second now, and a third. He became red-eyed and thick-tongued. He was embarrassingly jocular and salacious. In the taxicab Babbitt incredulously found tears crowding into his eyes. II He had not told Paul of his plan but he did stop at Akron, between trains, for the one purpose of sending to Zilla a postcard with "Had to come here for the day, ran into Paul." In Zenith he called on her. If for public appearances Zilla was over-coiffed, over-painted, and resolutely corseted, for private misery she wore a filthy blue dressing-gown and torn stockings thrust into streaky pink satin mules. Her face was sunken. She seemed to have but half as much hair as Babbitt remembered, and that half was stringy. She sat in a rocker amid a debris of candy-boxes and cheap magazines, and she sounded dolorous when she did not sound derisive. But Babbitt was exceedingly breezy: "Well, well, Zil, old dear, having a good loaf while hubby's away? That's the ideal I'll bet a hat Myra never got up till ten, while I was in Chicago. Say, could I borrow your thermos--just dropped in to see if I could borrow your thermos bottle. We're going to have a toboggan party--want to take some coffee mit. Oh, did you get my card from Akron, saying I'd run into Paul?" "Yes. What was he doing?" "How do you mean?" He unbuttoned his overcoat, sat tentatively on the arm of a chair. "You know how I mean!" She slapped the pages of a magazine with an irritable clatter. "I suppose he was trying to make love to some hotel waitress or manicure girl or somebody." "Hang it, you're always letting on that Paul goes round chasing skirts. He doesn't, in the first place, and if he did, it would prob'ly be because you keep hinting at him and dinging at him so much. I hadn't meant to, Zilla, but since Paul is away, in Akron--" "He really is in Akron? I know he has some horrible woman that he writes to in Chicago." "Didn't I tell you I saw him in Akron? What 're you trying to do? Make me out a liar?" "No, but I just--I get so worried." "Now, there you are! That's what gets me! Here you love Paul, and yet you plague him and cuss him out as if you hated him. I simply can't understand why it is that the more some folks love people, the harder they try to make 'em miserable." "You love Ted and Rone--I suppose--and yet you nag them." "Oh. Well. That. That's different. Besides, I don't nag 'em. Not what you'd call nagging. But zize saying: Now, here's Paul, the nicest, most sensitive critter on God's green earth. You ought to be ashamed of yourself the way you pan him. Why, you talk to him like a washerwoman. I'm surprised you can act so doggone common, Zilla!" She brooded over her linked fingers. "Oh, I know. I do go and get mean sometimes, and I'm sorry afterwards. But, oh, Georgie, Paul is so aggravating! Honestly, I've tried awfully hard, these last few years, to be nice to him, but just because I used to be spiteful--or I seemed so; I wasn't, really, but I used to speak up and say anything that came into my head--and so he made up his mind that everything was my fault. Everything can't always be my fault, can it? And now if I get to fussing, he just turns silent, oh, so dreadfully silent, and he won't look at me--he just ignores me. He simply isn't human! And he deliberately keeps it up till I bust out and say a lot of things I don't mean. So silent--Oh, you righteous men! How wicked you are! How rotten wicked!" They thrashed things over and over for half an hour. At the end, weeping drably, Zilla promised to restrain herself. Paul returned four days later, and the Babbitts and Rieslings went festively to the movies and had chop suey at a Chinese restaurant. As they walked to the restaurant through a street of tailor shops and barber shops, the two wives in front, chattering about cooks, Babbitt murmured to Paul, "Zil seems a lot nicer now." "Yes, she has been, except once or twice. But it's too late now. I just--I'm not going to discuss it, but I'm afraid of her. There's nothing left. I don't ever want to see her. Some day I'm going to break away from her. Somehow."

Chapter 20

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-20

Babbitt travels to Paul Riesling's hotel room in Chicago. After a little scrap with the man at the front desk, Babbitt gets a key to Paul's room and goes in to wait for him. Hours later, Paul shows up. He and Babbitt get into a fight, with Babbitt chastising Paul for being an immoral man and cheating on his wife. After they calm down, Paul asks Babbitt to do him a favor by lying to Zilla and saying that he saw Paul in Akron, Ohio, which is where he's supposed to be. As he rides home in a cab that night, Babbitt finds tears coming to his eyes. When he gets back home, he calls personally on Zilla to tell him how nice it was to run into Paul in Akron. Zilla, though, doesn't fully believe him. She knows that Paul has something going on with a woman in Chicago. Babbitt scolds her, though, for always being so hard on Paul. When Paul gets back from Chicago, Zilla seems like a changed woman. She is a lot nicer to him on the whole. But Paul soon tells Babbitt that it's too late for Zilla to start being nice now. He is determined to get away from her. Somehow.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_20_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 21

chapter 21

{"name": "Chapter 21", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-21", "summary": "We're back at the Zenith Boosters' Club, where Babbitt enjoys an afternoon palling around with his buddies. They tease a fellow Booster about getting older, since it's the man's birthday. They deal with some of the afternoon's business, such as voting which man is the room is the handsomest and which is the ugliest. Then Chum Frink gets up and talks about why they should support a local symphony orchestra, even though classical music is too high-brow for many of them. Before the lunch is over, Babbitt is surprised to find out that he's been elected the new Vice President of the Boosters' Club. Everyone pats him on the back and shakes his hand. And he's feeling as good as a pig in... let's say mud. Babbitt's happiness quickly disappears, though, when he calls home to tell Myra. Before he can explain his good fortune, she informs him that his friend Paul has shot his wife, Zilla.", "analysis": ""}

THE International Organization of Boosters' Clubs has become a world-force for optimism, manly pleasantry, and good business. Chapters are to be found now in thirty countries. Nine hundred and twenty of the thousand chapters, however, are in the United States. None of these is more ardent than the Zenith Boosters' Club. The second March lunch of the Zenith Boosters was the most important of the year, as it was to be followed by the annual election of officers. There was agitation abroad. The lunch was held in the ballroom of the O'Hearn House. As each of the four hundred Boosters entered he took from a wall-board a huge celluloid button announcing his name, his nick name, and his business. There was a fine of ten cents for calling a Fellow Booster by anything but his nickname at a lunch, and as Babbitt jovially checked his hat the air was radiant with shouts of "Hello, Chet!" and "How're you, Shorty!" and "Top o' the mornin', Mac!" They sat at friendly tables for eight, choosing places by lot. Babbitt was with Albert Boos the merchant tailor, Hector Seybolt of the Little Sweetheart Condensed Milk Company, Emil Wengert the jeweler, Professor Pumphrey of the Riteway Business College, Dr. Walter Gorbutt, Roy Teegarten the photographer, and Ben Berkey the photo-engraver. One of the merits of the Boosters' Club was that only two persons from each department of business were permitted to join, so that you at once encountered the Ideals of other occupations, and realized the metaphysical oneness of all occupations--plumbing and portrait-painting, medicine and the manufacture of chewing-gum. Babbitt's table was particularly happy to-day, because Professor Pumphrey had just had a birthday, and was therefore open to teasing. "Let's pump Pump about how old he is!" said Emil Wengert. "No, let's paddle him with a dancing-pump!" said Ben Berkey. But it was Babbitt who had the applause, with "Don't talk about pumps to that guy! The only pump he knows is a bottle! Honest, they tell me he's starting a class in home-brewing at the ole college!" At each place was the Boosters' Club booklet, listing the members. Though the object of the club was good-fellowship, yet they never lost sight of the importance of doing a little more business. After each name was the member's occupation. There were scores of advertisements in the booklet, and on one page the admonition: "There's no rule that you have to trade with your Fellow Boosters, but get wise, boy--what's the use of letting all this good money get outside of our happy fambly?" And at each place, to-day, there was a present; a card printed in artistic red and black: SERVICE AND BOOSTERISM Service finds its finest opportunity and development only in its broadest and deepest application and the consideration of its perpetual action upon reaction. I believe the highest type of Service, like the most progressive tenets of ethics, senses unceasingly and is motived by active adherence and loyalty to that which is the essential principle of Boosterism--Good Citizenship in all its factors and aspects. DAD PETERSEN. Compliments of Dadbury Petersen Advertising Corp. "Ads, not Fads, at Dad's" The Boosters all read Mr. Peterson's aphorism and said they understood it perfectly. The meeting opened with the regular weekly "stunts." Retiring President Vergil Gunch was in the chair, his stiff hair like a hedge, his voice like a brazen gong of festival. Members who had brought guests introduced them publicly. "This tall red-headed piece of misinformation is the sporting editor of the Press," said Willis Ijams; and H. H. Hazen, the druggist, chanted, "Boys, when you're on a long motor tour and finally get to a romantic spot or scene and draw up and remark to the wife, 'This is certainly a romantic place,' it sends a glow right up and down your vertebrae. Well, my guest to-day is from such a place, Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in the beautiful Southland, with memories of good old General Robert E. Lee and of that brave soul, John Brown who, like every good Booster, goes marching on--" There were two especially distinguished guests: the leading man of the "Bird of Paradise" company, playing this week at the Dodsworth Theater, and the mayor of Zenith, the Hon. Lucas Prout. Vergil Gunch thundered, "When we manage to grab this celebrated Thespian off his lovely aggregation of beautiful actresses--and I got to admit I butted right into his dressing-room and told him how the Boosters appreciated the high-class artistic performance he's giving us--and don't forget that the treasurer of the Dodsworth is a Booster and will appreciate our patronage--and when on top of that we yank Hizzonor out of his multifarious duties at City Hall, then I feel we've done ourselves proud, and Mr. Prout will now say a few words about the problems and duties--" By rising vote the Boosters decided which was the handsomest and which the ugliest guest, and to each of them was given a bunch of carnations, donated, President Gunch noted, by Brother Booster H. G. Yeager, the Jennifer Avenue florist. Each week, in rotation, four Boosters were privileged to obtain the pleasures of generosity and of publicity by donating goods or services to four fellow-members, chosen by lot. There was laughter, this week, when it was announced that one of the contributors was Barnabas Joy, the undertaker. Everybody whispered, "I can think of a coupla good guys to be buried if his donation is a free funeral!" Through all these diversions the Boosters were lunching on chicken croquettes, peas, fried potatoes, coffee, apple pie, and American cheese. Gunch did not lump the speeches. Presently he called on the visiting secretary of the Zenith Rotary Club, a rival organization. The secretary had the distinction of possessing State Motor Car License Number 5. The Rotary secretary laughingly admitted that wherever he drove in the state so low a number created a sensation, and "though it was pretty nice to have the honor, yet traffic cops remembered it only too darn well, and sometimes he didn't know but what he'd almost as soon have just plain B56,876 or something like that. Only let any doggone Booster try to get Number 5 away from a live Rotarian next year, and watch the fur fly! And if they'd permit him, he'd wind up by calling for a cheer for the Boosters and Rotarians and the Kiwanis all together!" Babbitt sighed to Professor Pumphrey, "Be pretty nice to have as low a number as that! Everybody 'd say, 'He must be an important guy!' Wonder how he got it? I'll bet he wined and dined the superintendent of the Motor License Bureau to a fare-you-well!" Then Chum Frink addressed them: "Some of you may feel that it's out of place here to talk on a strictly highbrow and artistic subject, but I want to come out flatfooted and ask you boys to O.K. the proposition of a Symphony Orchestra for Zenith. Now, where a lot of you make your mistake is in assuming that if you don't like classical music and all that junk, you ought to oppose it. Now, I want to confess that, though I'm a literary guy by profession, I don't care a rap for all this long-haired music. I'd rather listen to a good jazz band any time than to some piece by Beethoven that hasn't any more tune to it than a bunch of fighting cats, and you couldn't whistle it to save your life! But that isn't the point. Culture has become as necessary an adornment and advertisement for a city to-day as pavements or bank-clearances. It's Culture, in theaters and art-galleries and so on, that brings thousands of visitors to New York every year and, to be frank, for all our splendid attainments we haven't yet got the Culture of a New York or Chicago or Boston--or at least we don't get the credit for it. The thing to do then, as a live bunch of go-getters, is to CAPITALIZE CULTURE; to go right out and grab it. "Pictures and books are fine for those that have the time to study 'em, but they don't shoot out on the road and holler 'This is what little old Zenith can put up in the way of Culture.' That's precisely what a Symphony Orchestra does do. Look at the credit Minneapolis and Cincinnati get. An orchestra with first-class musickers and a swell conductor--and I believe we ought to do the thing up brown and get one of the highest-paid conductors on the market, providing he ain't a Hun--it goes right into Beantown and New York and Washington; it plays at the best theaters to the most cultured and moneyed people; it gives such class-advertising as a town can get in no other way; and the guy who is so short-sighted as to crab this orchestra proposition is passing up the chance to impress the glorious name of Zenith on some big New York millionaire that might-that might establish a branch factory here! "I could also go into the fact that for our daughters who show an interest in highbrow music and may want to teach it, having an A1 local organization is of great benefit, but let's keep this on a practical basis, and I call on you good brothers to whoop it up for Culture and a World-beating Symphony Orchestra!" They applauded. To a rustle of excitement President Gunch proclaimed, "Gentlemen, we will now proceed to the annual election of officers." For each of the six offices, three candidates had been chosen by a committee. The second name among the candidates for vice-president was Babbitt's. He was surprised. He looked self-conscious. His heart pounded. He was still more agitated when the ballots were counted and Gunch said, "It's a pleasure to announce that Georgie Babbitt will be the next assistant gavel-wielder. I know of no man who stands more stanchly for common sense and enterprise than good old George. Come on, let's give him our best long yell!" As they adjourned, a hundred men crushed in to slap his back. He had never known a higher moment. He drove away in a blur of wonder. He lunged into his office, chuckling to Miss McGoun, "Well, I guess you better congratulate your boss! Been elected vice-president of the Boosters!" He was disappointed. She answered only, "Yes--Oh, Mrs. Babbitt's been trying to get you on the 'phone." But the new salesman, Fritz Weilinger, said, "By golly, chief, say, that's great, that's perfectly great! I'm tickled to death! Congratulations!" Babbitt called the house, and crowed to his wife, "Heard you were trying to get me, Myra. Say, you got to hand it to little Georgie, this time! Better talk careful! You are now addressing the vice-president of the Boosters' Club!" "Oh, Georgie--" "Pretty nice, huh? Willis Ijams is the new president, but when he's away, little ole Georgie takes the gavel and whoops 'em up and introduces the speakers--no matter if they're the governor himself--and--" "George! Listen!" "--It puts him in solid with big men like Doc Dilling and--" "George! Paul Riesling--" "Yes, sure, I'll 'phone Paul and let him know about it right away." "Georgie! LISTEN! Paul's in jail. He shot his wife, he shot Zilla, this noon. She may not live."

Chapter 21

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-21

We're back at the Zenith Boosters' Club, where Babbitt enjoys an afternoon palling around with his buddies. They tease a fellow Booster about getting older, since it's the man's birthday. They deal with some of the afternoon's business, such as voting which man is the room is the handsomest and which is the ugliest. Then Chum Frink gets up and talks about why they should support a local symphony orchestra, even though classical music is too high-brow for many of them. Before the lunch is over, Babbitt is surprised to find out that he's been elected the new Vice President of the Boosters' Club. Everyone pats him on the back and shakes his hand. And he's feeling as good as a pig in... let's say mud. Babbitt's happiness quickly disappears, though, when he calls home to tell Myra. Before he can explain his good fortune, she informs him that his friend Paul has shot his wife, Zilla.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_21_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 22

chapter 22

{"name": "Chapter 22", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-22", "summary": "Babbitt drives to the city prison to see Paul. When he arrives, though, he finds that Paul isn't willing to see him. Not to be defeated, Babbitt drives down to city hall and gets the mayor's permission to go see Paul whether Paul wants him to or not. When he sees Paul, he asks Paul what happened. As you might imagine, Paul says that Zilla just nagged him one too many times. Paul cries, though, when he thinks of some of the good times he used to have with Zilla back in the early days of their marriage. Eventually, Paul collapses into a sobbing mess and his lawyer shows up. Babbitt wants to know what he can do to help, but the lawyer informs him that there's nothing for the moment that he can do. The next time he contacts Paul's lawyer, though, he offers to lie on the witness stand and to say that he was there when Paul's gun went off and that it was all an accident. After all the drama, Paul's trial lasts less than fifteen minutes. Paul is found temporarily insane and sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary and it turns out that Zilla will survive being shot. After Paul's sentencing, Babbitt realizes that for him, a world without Paul Riesling might be meaningless.", "analysis": ""}

I HE drove to the City Prison, not blindly, but with unusual fussy care at corners, the fussiness of an old woman potting plants. It kept him from facing the obscenity of fate. The attendant said, "Naw, you can't see any of the prisoners till three-thirty--visiting-hour." It was three. For half an hour Babbitt sat looking at a calendar and a clock on a whitewashed wall. The chair was hard and mean and creaky. People went through the office and, he thought, stared at him. He felt a belligerent defiance which broke into a wincing fear of this machine which was grinding Paul--Paul---- Exactly at half-past three he sent in his name. The attendant returned with "Riesling says he don't want to see you." "You're crazy! You didn't give him my name! Tell him it's George wants to see him, George Babbitt." "Yuh, I told him, all right, all right! He said he didn't want to see you." "Then take me in anyway." "Nothing doing. If you ain't his lawyer, if he don't want to see you, that's all there is to it." "But, my GOD--Say, let me see the warden." "He's busy. Come on, now, you--" Babbitt reared over him. The attendant hastily changed to a coaxing "You can come back and try to-morrow. Probably the poor guy is off his nut." Babbitt drove, not at all carefully or fussily, sliding viciously past trucks, ignoring the truckmen's curses, to the City Hall; he stopped with a grind of wheels against the curb, and ran up the marble steps to the office of the Hon. Mr. Lucas Prout, the mayor. He bribed the mayor's doorman with a dollar; he was instantly inside, demanding, "You remember me, Mr. Prout? Babbitt--vice-president of the Boosters--campaigned for you? Say, have you heard about poor Riesling? Well, I want an order on the warden or whatever you call um of the City Prison to take me back and see him. Good. Thanks." In fifteen minutes he was pounding down the prison corridor to a cage where Paul Riesling sat on a cot, twisted like an old beggar, legs crossed, arms in a knot, biting at his clenched fist. Paul looked up blankly as the keeper unlocked the cell, admitted Babbitt, and left them together. He spoke slowly: "Go on! Be moral!" Babbitt plumped on the couch beside him. "I'm not going to be moral! I don't care what happened! I just want to do anything I can. I'm glad Zilla got what was coming to her." Paul said argumentatively, "Now, don't go jumping on Zilla. I've been thinking; maybe she hasn't had any too easy a time. Just after I shot her--I didn't hardly mean to, but she got to deviling me so I went crazy, just for a second, and pulled out that old revolver you and I used to shoot rabbits with, and took a crack at her. Didn't hardly mean to--After that, when I was trying to stop the blood--It was terrible what it did to her shoulder, and she had beautiful skin--Maybe she won't die. I hope it won't leave her skin all scarred. But just afterward, when I was hunting through the bathroom for some cotton to stop the blood, I ran onto a little fuzzy yellow duck we hung on the tree one Christmas, and I remembered she and I'd been awfully happy then--Hell. I can't hardly believe it's me here." As Babbitt's arm tightened about his shoulder, Paul sighed, "I'm glad you came. But I thought maybe you'd lecture me, and when you've committed a murder, and been brought here and everything--there was a big crowd outside the apartment house, all staring, and the cops took me through it--Oh, I'm not going to talk about it any more." But he went on, in a monotonous, terrified insane mumble. To divert him Babbitt said, "Why, you got a scar on your cheek." "Yes. That's where the cop hit me. I suppose cops get a lot of fun out of lecturing murderers, too. He was a big fellow. And they wouldn't let me help carry Zilla down to the ambulance." "Paul! Quit it! Listen: she won't die, and when it's all over you and I'll go off to Maine again. And maybe we can get that May Arnold to go along. I'll go up to Chicago and ask her. Good woman, by golly. And afterwards I'll see that you get started in business out West somewhere, maybe Seattle--they say that's a lovely city." Paul was half smiling. It was Babbitt who rambled now. He could not tell whether Paul was heeding, but he droned on till the coming of Paul's lawyer, P. J. Maxwell, a thin, busy, unfriendly man who nodded at Babbitt and hinted, "If Riesling and I could be alone for a moment--" Babbitt wrung Paul's hands, and waited in the office till Maxwell came pattering out. "Look, old man, what can I do?" he begged. "Nothing. Not a thing. Not just now," said Maxwell. "Sorry. Got to hurry. And don't try to see him. I've had the doctor give him a shot of morphine, so he'll sleep." It seemed somehow wicked to return to the office. Babbitt felt as though he had just come from a funeral. He drifted out to the City Hospital to inquire about Zilla. She was not likely to die, he learned. The bullet from Paul's huge old .44 army revolver had smashed her shoulder and torn upward and out. He wandered home and found his wife radiant with the horified interest we have in the tragedies of our friends. "Of course Paul isn't altogether to blame, but this is what comes of his chasing after other women instead of bearing his cross in a Christian way," she exulted. He was too languid to respond as he desired. He said what was to be said about the Christian bearing of crosses, and went out to clean the car. Dully, patiently, he scraped linty grease from the drip-pan, gouged at the mud caked on the wheels. He used up many minutes in washing his hands; scoured them with gritty kitchen soap; rejoiced in hurting his plump knuckles. "Damn soft hands--like a woman's. Aah!" At dinner, when his wife began the inevitable, he bellowed, "I forbid any of you to say a word about Paul! I'll 'tend to all the talking about this that's necessary, hear me? There's going to be one house in this scandal-mongering town to-night that isn't going to spring the holier-than-thou. And throw those filthy evening papers out of the house!" But he himself read the papers, after dinner. Before nine he set out for the house of Lawyer Maxwell. He was received without cordiality. "Well?" said Maxwell. "I want to offer my services in the trial. I've got an idea. Why couldn't I go on the stand and swear I was there, and she pulled the gun first and he wrestled with her and the gun went off accidentally?" "And perjure yourself?" "Huh? Yes, I suppose it would be perjury. Oh--Would it help?" "But, my dear fellow! Perjury!" "Oh, don't be a fool! Excuse me, Maxwell; I didn't mean to get your goat. I just mean: I've known and you've known many and many a case of perjury, just to annex some rotten little piece of real estate, and here where it's a case of saving Paul from going to prison, I'd perjure myself black in the face." "No. Aside from the ethics of the matter, I'm afraid it isn't practicable. The prosecutor would tear your testimony to pieces. It's known that only Riesling and his wife were there at the time." "Then, look here! Let me go on the stand and swear--and this would be the God's truth--that she pestered him till he kind of went crazy." "No. Sorry. Riesling absolutely refuses to have any testimony reflecting on his wife. He insists on pleading guilty." "Then let me get up and testify something--whatever you say. Let me do SOMETHING!" "I'm sorry, Babbitt, but the best thing you can do--I hate to say it, but you could help us most by keeping strictly out of it." Babbitt, revolving his hat like a defaulting poor tenant, winced so visibly that Maxwell condescended: "I don't like to hurt your feelings, but you see we both want to do our best for Riesling, and we mustn't consider any other factor. The trouble with you, Babbitt, is that you're one of these fellows who talk too readily. You like to hear your own voice. If there were anything for which I could put you in the witness-box, you'd get going and give the whole show away. Sorry. Now I must look over some papers--So sorry." II He spent most of the next morning nerving himself to face the garrulous world of the Athletic Club. They would talk about Paul; they would be lip-licking and rotten. But at the Roughnecks' Table they did not mention Paul. They spoke with zeal of the coming baseball season. He loved them as he never had before. III He had, doubtless from some story-book, pictured Paul's trial as a long struggle, with bitter arguments, a taut crowd, and sudden and overwhelming new testimony. Actually, the trial occupied less than fifteen minutes, largely filled with the evidence of doctors that Zilla would recover and that Paul must have been temporarily insane. Next day Paul was sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary and taken off--quite undramatically, not handcuffed, merely plodding in a tired way beside a cheerful deputy sheriff--and after saying good-by to him at the station Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless.

Chapter 22

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-22

Babbitt drives to the city prison to see Paul. When he arrives, though, he finds that Paul isn't willing to see him. Not to be defeated, Babbitt drives down to city hall and gets the mayor's permission to go see Paul whether Paul wants him to or not. When he sees Paul, he asks Paul what happened. As you might imagine, Paul says that Zilla just nagged him one too many times. Paul cries, though, when he thinks of some of the good times he used to have with Zilla back in the early days of their marriage. Eventually, Paul collapses into a sobbing mess and his lawyer shows up. Babbitt wants to know what he can do to help, but the lawyer informs him that there's nothing for the moment that he can do. The next time he contacts Paul's lawyer, though, he offers to lie on the witness stand and to say that he was there when Paul's gun went off and that it was all an accident. After all the drama, Paul's trial lasts less than fifteen minutes. Paul is found temporarily insane and sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary and it turns out that Zilla will survive being shot. After Paul's sentencing, Babbitt realizes that for him, a world without Paul Riesling might be meaningless.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_24_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 25

chapter 25

{"name": "Chapter 25", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-25", "summary": "After his experience with Ida the manicure girl, Babbitt swears that he'll stop chasing after women. But then again, he figures, maybe he just hasn't found the right one to chase yet. Maybe there's still a woman out there who will value him and make him happy. Just as he starts thinking these things, his wife Myra returns from her time out east. For the first time, Babbitt is sorry that she's coming back, and he feels embarrassed by the need to fake his joy at her coming home. Shortly after this, Babbitt pulls out his old lie about meeting someone in New York and uses the opportunity to sneak off to Maine to be alone. In reality, he wants to find the sort of experience he used to have with Paul, but he knows he can't find it. He decides, though, that when he's in Maine, he's going to find an old guide and go out into the forest and be a manly man. He's going to get back his faith in himself. And yes, if it sounds like the guy is really having a mid-life crisis, that's because he is. Babbitt finds a guide named Joe in Maine and goes out into the forest with him. Joe wants to travel by motorboat, which surprises Babbitt, who wants to hike through the woods the way a man should. Once they get to where they're going, they hang for a bit. But Joe wants to fall asleep early, and Babbitt is left feeling unsatisfied and resentful about the whole thing. While he stays up alone, Babbitt realizes that what he wants out of life is to do some living before it's too late.", "analysis": ""}

I HE awoke to stretch cheerfully as he listened to the sparrows, then to remember that everything was wrong; that he was determined to go astray, and not in the least enjoying the process. Why, he wondered, should he be in rebellion? What was it all about? "Why not be sensible; stop all this idiotic running around, and enjoy himself with his family, his business, the fellows at the club?" What was he getting out of rebellion? Misery and shame--the shame of being treated as an offensive small boy by a ragamuffin like Ida Putiak! And yet--Always he came back to "And yet." Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd. Only, he assured himself, he was "through with this chasing after girls." By noontime he was not so sure even of that. If in Miss McGoun, Louetta Swanson, and Ida he had failed to find the lady kind and lovely, it did not prove that she did not exist. He was hunted by the ancient thought that somewhere must exist the not impossible she who would understand him, value him, and make him happy. II Mrs. Babbitt returned in August. On her previous absences he had missed her reassuring buzz and of her arrival he had made a f�te. Now, though he dared not hurt her by letting a hint of it appear in his letters, he was sorry that she was coming before he had found himself, and he was embarrassed by the need of meeting her and looking joyful. He loitered down to the station; he studied the summer-resort posters, lest he have to speak to acquaintances and expose his uneasiness. But he was well trained. When the train clanked in he was out on the cement platform, peering into the chair-cars, and as he saw her in the line of passengers moving toward the vestibule he waved his hat. At the door he embraced her, and announced, "Well, well, well, well, by golly, you look fine, you look fine." Then he was aware of Tinka. Here was something, this child with her absurd little nose and lively eyes, that loved him, believed him great, and as he clasped her, lifted and held her till she squealed, he was for the moment come back to his old steady self. Tinka sat beside him in the car, with one hand on the steering-wheel, pretending to help him drive, and he shouted back to his wife, "I'll bet the kid will be the best chuffer in the family! She holds the wheel like an old professional!" All the while he was dreading the moment when he would be alone with his wife and she would patiently expect him to be ardent. III There was about the house an unofficial theory that he was to take his vacation alone, to spend a week or ten days in Catawba, but he was nagged by the memory that a year ago he had been with Paul in Maine. He saw himself returning; finding peace there, and the presence of Paul, in a life primitive and heroic. Like a shock came the thought that he actually could go. Only, he couldn't, really; he couldn't leave his business, and "Myra would think it sort of funny, his going way off there alone. Course he'd decided to do whatever he darned pleased, from now on, but still--to go way off to Maine!" He went, after lengthy meditations. With his wife, since it was inconceivable to explain that he was going to seek Paul's spirit in the wilderness, he frugally employed the lie prepared over a year ago and scarcely used at all. He said that he had to see a man in New York on business. He could not have explained even to himself why he drew from the bank several hundred dollars more than he needed, nor why he kissed Tinka so tenderly, and cried, "God bless you, baby!" From the train he waved to her till she was but a scarlet spot beside the brown bulkier presence of Mrs. Babbitt, at the end of a steel and cement aisle ending in vast barred gates. With melancholy he looked back at the last suburb of Zenith. All the way north he pictured the Maine guides: simple and strong and daring, jolly as they played stud-poker in their unceiled shack, wise in woodcraft as they tramped the forest and shot the rapids. He particularly remembered Joe Paradise, half Yankee, half Indian. If he could but take up a backwoods claim with a man like Joe, work hard with his hands, be free and noisy in a flannel shirt, and never come back to this dull decency! Or, like a trapper in a Northern Canada movie, plunge through the forest, make camp in the Rockies, a grim and wordless caveman! Why not? He COULD do it! There'd be enough money at home for the family to live on till Verona was married and Ted self-supporting. Old Henry T. would look out for them. Honestly! Why NOT? Really LIVE-- He longed for it, admitted that he longed for it, then almost believed that he was going to do it. Whenever common sense snorted, "Nonsense! Folks don't run away from decent families and partners; just simply don't do it, that's all!" then Babbitt answered pleadingly, "Well, it wouldn't take any more nerve than for Paul to go to jail and--Lord, how I'd' like to do it! Moccasins--six-gun--frontier town--gamblers--sleep under the stars--be a regular man, with he-men like Joe Paradise--gosh!" So he came to Maine, again stood on the wharf before the camp-hotel, again spat heroically into the delicate and shivering water, while the pines rustled, the mountains glowed, and a trout leaped and fell in a sliding circle. He hurried to the guides' shack as to his real home, his real friends, long missed. They would be glad to see him. They would stand up and shout? "Why, here's Mr. Babbitt! He ain't one of these ordinary sports! He's a real guy!" In their boarded and rather littered cabin the guides sat about the greasy table playing stud-poker with greasy cards: half a dozen wrinkled men in old trousers and easy old felt hats. They glanced up and nodded. Joe Paradise, the swart aging man with the big mustache, grunted, "How do. Back again?" Silence, except for the clatter of chips. Babbitt stood beside them, very lonely. He hinted, after a period of highly concentrated playing, "Guess I might take a hand, Joe." "Sure. Sit in. How many chips you want? Let's see; you were here with your wife, last year, wa'n't you?" said Joe Paradise. That was all of Babbitt's welcome to the old home. He played for half an hour before he spoke again. His head was reeking with the smoke of pipes and cheap cigars, and he was weary of pairs and four-flushes, resentful of the way in which they ignored him. He flung at Joe: "Working now?" "Nope." "Like to guide me for a few days?" "Well, jus' soon. I ain't engaged till next week." Only thus did Joe recognize the friendship Babbitt was offering him. Babbitt paid up his losses and left the shack rather childishly. Joe raised his head from the coils of smoke like a seal rising from surf, grunted, "I'll come 'round t'morrow," and dived down to his three aces. Neither in his voiceless cabin, fragrant with planks of new-cut pine, nor along the lake, nor in the sunset clouds which presently eddied behind the lavender-misted mountains, could Babbitt find the spirit of Paul as a reassuring presence. He was so lonely that after supper he stopped to talk with an ancient old lady, a gasping and steadily discoursing old lady, by the stove in the hotel-office. He told her of Ted's presumable future triumphs in the State University and of Tinka's remarkable vocabulary till he was homesick for the home he had left forever. Through the darkness, through that Northern pine-walled silence, he blundered down to the lake-front and found a canoe. There were no paddles in it but with a board, sitting awkwardly amidships and poking at the water rather than paddling, he made his way far out on the lake. The lights of the hotel and the cottages became yellow dots, a cluster of glow-worms at the base of Sachem Mountain. Larger and ever more imperturbable was the mountain in the star-filtered darkness, and the lake a limitless pavement of black marble. He was dwarfed and dumb and a little awed, but that insignificance freed him from the pomposities of being Mr. George F. Babbitt of Zenith; saddened and freed his heart. Now he was conscious of the presence of Paul, fancied him (rescued from prison, from Zilla and the brisk exactitudes of the tar-roofing business) playing his violin at the end of the canoe. He vowed, "I will go on! I'll never go back! Now that Paul's out of it, I don't want to see any of those damn people again! I was a fool to get sore because Joe Paradise didn't jump up and hug me. He's one of these woodsmen; too wise to go yelping and talking your arm off like a cityman. But get him back in the mountains, out on the trail--! That's real living!" IV Joe reported at Babbitt's cabin at nine the next morning. Babbitt greeted him as a fellow caveman: "Well, Joe, how d' you feel about hitting the trail, and getting away from these darn soft summerites and these women and all?" "All right, Mr. Babbitt." "What do you say we go over to Box Car Pond--they tell me the shack there isn't being used--and camp out?" "Well, all right, Mr. Babbitt, but it's nearer to Skowtuit Pond, and you can get just about as good fishing there." "No, I want to get into the real wilds." "Well, all right." "We'll put the old packs on our backs and get into the woods and really hike." "I think maybe it would be easier to go by water, through Lake Chogue. We can go all the way by motor boat--flat-bottom boat with an Evinrude." "No, sir! Bust up the quiet with a chugging motor? Not on your life! You just throw a pair of socks in the old pack, and tell 'em what you want for eats. I'll be ready soon 's you are." "Most of the sports go by boat, Mr. Babbitt. It's a long walk. "Look here, Joe: are you objecting to walking?" "Oh, no, I guess I can do it. But I haven't tramped that far for sixteen years. Most of the sports go by boat. But I can do it if you say so--I guess." Joe walked away in sadness. Babbitt had recovered from his touchy wrath before Joe returned. He pictured him as warming up and telling the most entertaining stories. But Joe had not yet warmed up when they took the trail. He persistently kept behind Babbitt, and however much his shoulders ached from the pack, however sorely he panted, Babbitt could hear his guide panting equally. But the trail was satisfying: a path brown with pine-needles and rough with roots, among the balsams, the ferns, the sudden groves of white birch. He became credulous again, and rejoiced in sweating. When he stopped to rest he chuckled, "Guess we're hitting it up pretty good for a couple o' old birds, eh?" "Uh-huh," admitted Joe. "This is a mighty pretty place. Look, you can see the lake down through the trees. I tell you, Joe, you don't appreciate how lucky you are to live in woods like this, instead of a city with trolleys grinding and typewriters clacking and people bothering the life out of you all the time! I wish I knew the woods like you do. Say, what's the name of that little red flower?" Rubbing his back, Joe regarded the flower resentfully "Well, some folks call it one thing and some calls it another I always just call it Pink Flower." Babbitt blessedly ceased thinking as tramping turned into blind plodding. He was submerged in weariness. His plump legs seemed to go on by themselves, without guidance, and he mechanically wiped away the sweat which stung his eyes. He was too tired to be consciously glad as, after a sun-scourged mile of corduroy tote-road through a swamp where flies hovered over a hot waste of brush, they reached the cool shore of Box Car Pond. When he lifted the pack from his back he staggered from the change in balance, and for a moment could not stand erect. He lay beneath an ample-bosomed maple tree near the guest-shack, and joyously felt sleep running through his veins. He awoke toward dusk, to find Joe efficiently cooking bacon and eggs and flapjacks for supper, and his admiration of the woodsman returned. He sat on a stump and felt virile. "Joe, what would you do if you had a lot of money? Would you stick to guiding, or would you take a claim 'way back in the woods and be independent of people?" For the first time Joe brightened. He chewed his cud a second, and bubbled, "I've often thought of that! If I had the money, I'd go down to Tinker's Falls and open a swell shoe store." After supper Joe proposed a game of stud-poker but Babbitt refused with brevity, and Joe contentedly went to bed at eight. Babbitt sat on the stump, facing the dark pond, slapping mosquitos. Save the snoring guide, there was no other human being within ten miles. He was lonelier than he had ever been in his life. Then he was in Zenith. He was worrying as to whether Miss McGoun wasn't paying too much for carbon paper. He was at once resenting and missing the persistent teasing at the Roughnecks' Table. He was wondering what Zilla Riesling was doing now. He was wondering whether, after the summer's maturity of being a garageman, Ted would "get busy" in the university. He was thinking of his wife. "If she would only--if she wouldn't be so darn satisfied with just settling down--No! I won't! I won't go back! I'll be fifty in three years. Sixty in thirteen years. I'm going to have some fun before it's too late. I don't care! I will!" He thought of Ida Putiak, of Louetta Swanson, of that nice widow--what was her name?--Tanis Judique?--the one for whom he'd found the flat. He was enmeshed in imaginary conversations. Then: "Gee, I can't seem to get away from thinking about folks!" Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself. That moment he started for Zenith. In his journey there was no appearance of flight, but he was fleeing, and four days afterward he was on the Zenith train. He knew that he was slinking back not because it was what he longed to do but because it was all he could do. He scanned again his discovery that he could never run away from Zenith and family and office, because in his own brain he bore the office and the family and every street and disquiet and illusion of Zenith. "But I'm going to--oh, I'm going to start something!" he vowed, and he tried to make it valiant.

Chapter 25

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-25

After his experience with Ida the manicure girl, Babbitt swears that he'll stop chasing after women. But then again, he figures, maybe he just hasn't found the right one to chase yet. Maybe there's still a woman out there who will value him and make him happy. Just as he starts thinking these things, his wife Myra returns from her time out east. For the first time, Babbitt is sorry that she's coming back, and he feels embarrassed by the need to fake his joy at her coming home. Shortly after this, Babbitt pulls out his old lie about meeting someone in New York and uses the opportunity to sneak off to Maine to be alone. In reality, he wants to find the sort of experience he used to have with Paul, but he knows he can't find it. He decides, though, that when he's in Maine, he's going to find an old guide and go out into the forest and be a manly man. He's going to get back his faith in himself. And yes, if it sounds like the guy is really having a mid-life crisis, that's because he is. Babbitt finds a guide named Joe in Maine and goes out into the forest with him. Joe wants to travel by motorboat, which surprises Babbitt, who wants to hike through the woods the way a man should. Once they get to where they're going, they hang for a bit. But Joe wants to fall asleep early, and Babbitt is left feeling unsatisfied and resentful about the whole thing. While he stays up alone, Babbitt realizes that what he wants out of life is to do some living before it's too late.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/27.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_26_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 27

chapter 27

{"name": "Chapter 27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-27", "summary": "Just when everything seems to be going well for the city of Zenith, there's a general workers' strike. This divides the city into two camps: the pro-workers camp and the pro-business camp. When the striking workers start attacking some of the replacement workers, the government calls in the National Guard to get things under control. While everyone in the Zenith Athletic Club is criticizing the workers, though, Babbitt becomes the lone voice that sticks up for them. Of course, his friends tend to think he's joking, since he's spent most of his life supporting pro-business agendas all over the city. At church, even the Reverend Drew starts giving sermons about how God is opposed to the striking workers. Babbitt is so bold as to call the speech garbage, even though his business buddy Chum Frink can hear him. After watching a march by the strikers, Babbitt goes back to the Athletic Club one afternoon and again defends the strikers in front of everybody. People want to know what's wrong with him. Babbitt, though, says that he's just trying to look at things moderately, instead of calling for workers' blood every time they stand up for themselves. As he leaves the club, Babbitt can hear Chum Frink whisper to Vergil Gunch about how he doesn't know what has gotten into Babbitt. When he gets home, he tries to talk to his wife about workers' rights. But Myra insists that he has always said that strikers ought to be thrown in jail. On top of that, she's not willing to follow him in his newfound liberalism. This, of course, just leaves Babbitt feeling like no one understands him. As he rambles on, his wife warns him against saying stuff like this in public, or else people are going to think he's a socialist. Babbitt goes to sleep feeling very unsure of himself and what he believes.", "analysis": ""}

I THE strike which turned Zenith into two belligerent camps; white and red, began late in September with a walk-out of telephone girls and linemen, in protest against a reduction of wages. The newly formed union of dairy-products workers went out, partly in sympathy and partly in demand for a forty-four hour week. They were followed by the truck-drivers' union. Industry was tied up, and the whole city was nervous with talk of a trolley strike, a printers' strike, a general strike. Furious citizens, trying to get telephone calls through strike-breaking girls, danced helplessly. Every truck that made its way from the factories to the freight-stations was guarded by a policeman, trying to look stoical beside the scab driver. A line of fifty trucks from the Zenith Steel and Machinery Company was attacked by strikers-rushing out from the sidewalk, pulling drivers from the seats, smashing carburetors and commutators, while telephone girls cheered from the walk, and small boys heaved bricks. The National Guard was ordered out. Colonel Nixon, who in private life was Mr. Caleb Nixon, secretary of the Pullmore Tractor Company, put on a long khaki coat and stalked through crowds, a .44 automatic in hand. Even Babbitt's friend, Clarence Drum the shoe merchant--a round and merry man who told stories at the Athletic Club, and who strangely resembled a Victorian pug-dog--was to be seen as a waddling but ferocious captain, with his belt tight about his comfortable little belly, and his round little mouth petulant as he piped to chattering groups on corners. "Move on there now! I can't have any of this loitering!" Every newspaper in the city, save one, was against the strikers. When mobs raided the news-stands, at each was stationed a militiaman, a young, embarrassed citizen-soldier with eye-glasses, bookkeeper or grocery-clerk in private life, trying to look dangerous while small boys yelped, "Get onto de tin soldier!" and striking truck-drivers inquired tenderly, "Say, Joe, when I was fighting in France, was you in camp in the States or was you doing Swede exercises in the Y. M. C. A.? Be careful of that bayonet, now, or you'll cut yourself!" There was no one in Zenith who talked of anything but the strike, and no one who did not take sides. You were either a courageous friend of Labor, or you were a fearless supporter of the Rights of Property; and in either case you were belligerent, and ready to disown any friend who did not hate the enemy. A condensed-milk plant was set afire--each side charged it to the other--and the city was hysterical. And Babbitt chose this time to be publicly liberal. He belonged to the sound, sane, right-thinking wing, and at first he agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot. He was sorry when his friend, Seneca Doane, defended arrested strikers, and he thought of going to Doane and explaining about these agitators, but when he read a broadside alleging that even on their former wages the telephone girls had been hungry, he was troubled. "All lies and fake figures," he said, but in a doubtful croak. For the Sunday after, the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church announced a sermon by Dr. John Jennison Drew on "How the Saviour Would End Strikes." Babbitt had been negligent about church-going lately, but he went to the service, hopeful that Dr. Drew really did have the information as to what the divine powers thought about strikes. Beside Babbitt in the large, curving, glossy, velvet-upholstered pew was Chum Frink. Frink whispered, "Hope the doc gives the strikers hell! Ordinarily, I don't believe in a preacher butting into political matters--let him stick to straight religion and save souls, and not stir up a lot of discussion--but at a time like this, I do think he ought to stand right up and bawl out those plug-uglies to a fare-you-well!" "Yes--well--" said Babbitt. The Rev. Dr. Drew, his rustic bang flopping with the intensity of his poetic and sociologic ardor, trumpeted: "During the untoward series of industrial dislocations which have--let us be courageous and admit it boldly--throttled the business life of our fair city these past days, there has been a great deal of loose talk about scientific prevention of scientific--SCIENTIFIC! Now, let me tell you that the most unscientific thing in the world is science! Take the attacks on the established fundamentals of the Christian creed which were so popular with the 'scientists' a generation ago. Oh, yes, they were mighty fellows, and great poo-bahs of criticism! They were going to destroy the church; they were going to prove the world was created and has been brought to its extraordinary level of morality and civilization by blind chance. Yet the church stands just as firmly to-day as ever, and the only answer a Christian pastor needs make to the long-haired opponents of his simple faith is just a pitying smile! "And now these same 'scientists' want to replace the natural condition of free competition by crazy systems which, no matter by what high-sounding names they are called, are nothing but a despotic paternalism. Naturally, I'm not criticizing labor courts, injunctions against men proven to be striking unjustly, or those excellent unions in which the men and the boss get together. But I certainly am criticizing the systems in which the free and fluid motivation of independent labor is to be replaced by cooked-up wage-scales and minimum salaries and government commissions and labor federations and all that poppycock. "What is not generally understood is that this whole industrial matter isn't a question of economics. It's essentially and only a matter of Love, and of the practical application of the Christian religion! Imagine a factory--instead of committees of workmen alienating the boss, the boss goes among them smiling, and they smile back, the elder brother and the younger. Brothers, that's what they must be, loving brothers, and then strikes would be as inconceivable as hatred in the home!" It was at this point that Babbitt muttered, "Oh, rot!" "Huh?" said Chum Frink. "He doesn't know what he's talking about. It's just as clear as mud. It doesn't mean a darn thing." "Maybe, but--" Frink looked at him doubtfully, through all the service kept glancing at him doubtfully, till Babbitt was nervous. II The strikers had announced a parade for Tuesday morning, but Colonel Nixon had forbidden it, the newspapers said. When Babbitt drove west from his office at ten that morning he saw a drove of shabby men heading toward the tangled, dirty district beyond Court House Square. He hated them, because they were poor, because they made him feel insecure. "Damn loafers! Wouldn't be common workmen if they had any pep," he complained. He wondered if there was going to be a riot. He drove toward the starting-point of the parade, a triangle of limp and faded grass known as Moore Street Park, and halted his car. The park and streets were buzzing with strikers, young men in blue denim shirts, old men with caps. Through them, keeping them stirred like a boiling pot, moved the militiamen. Babbitt could hear the soldiers' monotonous orders: "Keep moving--move on, 'bo--keep your feet warm!" Babbitt admired their stolid good temper. The crowd shouted, "Tin soldiers," and "Dirty dogs--servants of the capitalists!" but the militiamen grinned and answered only, "Sure, that's right. Keep moving, Billy!" Babbitt thrilled over the citizen-soldiers, hated the scoundrels who were obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity, admired Colonel Nixon's striding contempt for the crowd; and as Captain Clarence Drum, that rather puffing shoe-dealer, came raging by, Babbitt respectfully clamored, "Great work, Captain! Don't let 'em march!" He watched the strikers filing from the park. Many of them bore posters with "They can't stop our peacefully walking." The militiamen tore away the posters, but the strikers fell in behind their leaders and straggled off, a thin unimpressive trickle between steel-glinting lines of soldiers. Babbitt saw with disappointment that there wasn't going to be any violence, nothing interesting at all. Then he gasped. Among the marchers, beside a bulky young workman, was Seneca Doane, smiling, content. In front of him was Professor Brockbank, head of the history department in the State University, an old man and white-bearded, known to come from a distinguished Massachusetts family. "Why, gosh," Babbitt marveled, "a swell like him in with the strikers? And good ole Senny Doane! They're fools to get mixed up with this bunch. They're parlor socialists! But they have got nerve. And nothing in it for them, not a cent! And--I don't know 's ALL the strikers look like such tough nuts. Look just about like anybody else to me!" The militiamen were turning the parade down a side street. "They got just as much right to march as anybody else! They own the streets as much as Clarence Drum or the American Legion does!" Babbitt grumbled. "Of course, they're--they're a bad element, but--Oh, rats!" At the Athletic Club, Babbitt was silent during lunch, while the others fretted, "I don't know what the world's coming to," or solaced their spirits with "kidding." Captain Clarence Drum came swinging by, splendid in khaki. "How's it going, Captain?" inquired Vergil Gunch. "Oh, we got 'em stopped. We worked 'em off on side streets and separated 'em and they got discouraged and went home." "Fine work. No violence." "Fine work nothing!" groaned Mr. Drum. "If I had my way, there'd be a whole lot of violence, and I'd start it, and then the whole thing would be over. I don't believe in standing back and wet-nursing these fellows and letting the disturbances drag on. I tell you these strikers are nothing in God's world but a lot of bomb-throwing socialists and thugs, and the only way to handle 'em is with a club! That's what I'd do; beat up the whole lot of 'em!" Babbitt heard himself saying, "Oh, rats, Clarence, they look just about like you and me, and I certainly didn't notice any bombs." Drum complained, "Oh, you didn't, eh? Well, maybe you'd like to take charge of the strike! Just tell Colonel Nixon what innocents the strikers are! He'd be glad to hear about it!" Drum strode on, while all the table stared at Babbitt. "What's the idea? Do you want us to give those hell-hounds love and kisses, or what?" said Orville Jones. "Do you defend a lot of hoodlums that are trying to take the bread and butter away from our families?" raged Professor Pumphrey. Vergil Gunch intimidatingly said nothing. He put on sternness like a mask; his jaw was hard, his bristly short hair seemed cruel, his silence was a ferocious thunder. While the others assured Babbitt that they must have misunderstood him, Gunch looked as though he had understood only too well. Like a robed judge he listened to Babbitt's stammering: "No, sure; course they're a bunch of toughs. But I just mean--Strikes me it's bad policy to talk about clubbing 'em. Cabe Nixon doesn't. He's got the fine Italian hand. And that's why he's colonel. Clarence Drum is jealous of him." "Well," said Professor Pumphrey, "you hurt Clarence's feelings, George. He's been out there all morning getting hot and dusty, and no wonder he wants to beat the tar out of those sons of guns!" Gunch said nothing, and watched; and Babbitt knew that he was being watched. III As he was leaving the club Babbitt heard Chum Frink protesting to Gunch, "--don't know what's got into him. Last Sunday Doc Drew preached a corking sermon about decency in business and Babbitt kicked about that, too. Near 's I can figure out--" Babbitt was vaguely frightened. IV He saw a crowd listening to a man who was talking from the rostrum of a kitchen-chair. He stopped his car. From newspaper pictures he knew that the speaker must be the notorious freelance preacher, Beecher Ingram, of whom Seneca Doane had spoken. Ingram was a gaunt man with flamboyant hair, weather-beaten cheeks, and worried eyes. He was pleading: "--if those telephone girls can hold out, living on one meal a day, doing their own washing, starving and smiling, you big hulking men ought to be able--" Babbitt saw that from the sidewalk Vergil Gunch was watching him. In vague disquiet he started the car and mechanically drove on, while Gunch's hostile eyes seemed to follow him all the way. V "There's a lot of these fellows," Babbitt was complaining to his wife, "that think if workmen go on strike they're a regular bunch of fiends. Now, of course, it's a fight between sound business and the destructive element, and we got to lick the stuffin's out of 'em when they challenge us, but doggoned if I see why we can't fight like gentlemen and not go calling 'em dirty dogs and saying they ought to be shot down." "Why, George," she said placidly, "I thought you always insisted that all strikers ought to be put in jail." "I never did! Well, I mean--Some of 'em, of course. Irresponsible leaders. But I mean a fellow ought to be broad-minded and liberal about things like--" "But dearie, I thought you always said these so-called 'liberal' people were the worst of--" "Rats! Woman never can understand the different definitions of a word. Depends on how you mean it. And it don't pay to be too cocksure about anything. Now, these strikers: Honest, they're not such bad people. Just foolish. They don't understand the complications of merchandizing and profit, the way we business men do, but sometimes I think they're about like the rest of us, and no more hogs for wages than we are for profits." "George! If people were to hear you talk like that--of course I KNOW you; I remember what a wild crazy boy you were; I know you don't mean a word you say--but if people that didn't understand you were to hear you talking, they'd think you were a regular socialist!" "What do I care what anybody thinks? And let me tell you right now--I want you to distinctly understand I never was a wild crazy kid, and when I say a thing, I mean it, and I stand by it and--Honest, do you think people would think I was too liberal if I just said the strikers were decent?" "Of course they would. But don't worry, dear; I know you don't mean a word of it. Time to trot up to bed now. Have you enough covers for to-night?" On the sleeping-porch he puzzled, "She doesn't understand me. Hardly understand myself. Why can't I take things easy, way I used to? "Wish I could go out to Senny Doane's house and talk things over with him. No! Suppose Verg Gunch saw me going in there! "Wish I knew some really smart woman, and nice, that would see what I'm trying to get at, and let me talk to her and--I wonder if Myra's right? Could the fellows think I've gone nutty just because I'm broad-minded and liberal? Way Verg looked at me--"

Chapter 27

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-27

Just when everything seems to be going well for the city of Zenith, there's a general workers' strike. This divides the city into two camps: the pro-workers camp and the pro-business camp. When the striking workers start attacking some of the replacement workers, the government calls in the National Guard to get things under control. While everyone in the Zenith Athletic Club is criticizing the workers, though, Babbitt becomes the lone voice that sticks up for them. Of course, his friends tend to think he's joking, since he's spent most of his life supporting pro-business agendas all over the city. At church, even the Reverend Drew starts giving sermons about how God is opposed to the striking workers. Babbitt is so bold as to call the speech garbage, even though his business buddy Chum Frink can hear him. After watching a march by the strikers, Babbitt goes back to the Athletic Club one afternoon and again defends the strikers in front of everybody. People want to know what's wrong with him. Babbitt, though, says that he's just trying to look at things moderately, instead of calling for workers' blood every time they stand up for themselves. As he leaves the club, Babbitt can hear Chum Frink whisper to Vergil Gunch about how he doesn't know what has gotten into Babbitt. When he gets home, he tries to talk to his wife about workers' rights. But Myra insists that he has always said that strikers ought to be thrown in jail. On top of that, she's not willing to follow him in his newfound liberalism. This, of course, just leaves Babbitt feeling like no one understands him. As he rambles on, his wife warns him against saying stuff like this in public, or else people are going to think he's a socialist. Babbitt goes to sleep feeling very unsure of himself and what he believes.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/28.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_27_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 28

chapter 28

{"name": "Chapter 28", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-28", "summary": "When Babbitt's in his office, his secretary comes in to inform him that Tanis Judique is calling to ask about some repairs to her apartment. He takes the call, and Tanis tells him that her roof is beginning to leak and that she'd like him to fix it. He offers to come over personally to do the work. Once he's off the phone, Babbitt reflects on how sophisticated a lady Tanis Judique is. He bets that she is just the woman to understand him and his new way of looking at things. When he gets to her apartment, she teases him about never taking her up on her offer to teach him dancing. He calls some plumbers from her apartment after realizing that he can't fix the leak. Once that's done, he gets ready to mosey, but she asks him to stay for a cup of tea. She tells him how nice it is to have him around, which of course makes him feel valued. He starts to tell her about his newfound liberal views, and she approves of how open-minded he is. She also reveals that she knows all about his reputation as a speechmaker from the newspapers. At this point, Babbitt feels overcome by the need to touch her. But he holds back and they continue to chat about everyday things like the weather. She says it's about time for supper and bids him goodbye. He asks her to let him stay, though, and offers to run out to grab some takeout and bring it back. She agrees, and they have dinner together in her apartment. As they eat supper together by the fireplace, they talk about how lonely they are and how great it is that they've found one another. Babbitt returns home the next morning, the implication being that he and Tanis have had sex. And there's not a shred of guilt in Babbitt's mind. In fact, he feels pretty great.", "analysis": ""}

I MISS McGOUN came into his private office at three in the afternoon with "Lissen, Mr. Babbitt; there's a Mrs. Judique on the 'phone--wants to see about some repairs, and the salesmen are all out. Want to talk to her?" "All right." The voice of Tanis Judique was clear and pleasant. The black cylinder of the telephone-receiver seemed to hold a tiny animated image of her: lustrous eyes, delicate nose, gentle chin. "This is Mrs. Judique. Do you remember me? You drove me up here to the Cavendish Apartments and helped me find such a nice flat." "Sure! Bet I remember! What can I do for you?" "Why, it's just a little--I don't know that I ought to bother you, but the janitor doesn't seem to be able to fix it. You know my flat is on the top floor, and with these autumn rains the roof is beginning to leak, and I'd be awfully glad if--" "Sure! I'll come up and take a look at it." Nervously, "When do you expect to be in?" "Why, I'm in every morning." "Be in this afternoon, in an hour or so?" "Ye-es. Perhaps I could give you a cup of tea. I think I ought to, after all your trouble." "Fine! I'll run up there soon as I can get away." He meditated, "Now there's a woman that's got refinement, savvy, CLASS! 'After all your trouble--give you a cup of tea.' She'd appreciate a fellow. I'm a fool, but I'm not such a bad cuss, get to know me. And not so much a fool as they think!" The great strike was over, the strikers beaten. Except that Vergil Gunch seemed less cordial, there were no visible effects of Babbitt's treachery to the clan. The oppressive fear of criticism was gone, but a diffident loneliness remained. Now he was so exhilarated that, to prove he wasn't, he droned about the office for fifteen minutes, looking at blue-prints, explaining to Miss McGoun that this Mrs. Scott wanted more money for her house--had raised the asking-price--raised it from seven thousand to eighty-five hundred--would Miss McGoun be sure and put it down on the card--Mrs. Scott's house--raise. When he had thus established himself as a person unemotional and interested only in business, he sauntered out. He took a particularly long time to start his car; he kicked the tires, dusted the glass of the speedometer, and tightened the screws holding the wind-shield spot-light. He drove happily off toward the Bellevue district, conscious of the presence of Mrs. Judique as of a brilliant light on the horizon. The maple leaves had fallen and they lined the gutters of the asphalted streets. It was a day of pale gold and faded green, tranquil and lingering. Babbitt was aware of the meditative day, and of the barrenness of Bellevue--blocks of wooden houses, garages, little shops, weedy lots. "Needs pepping up; needs the touch that people like Mrs. Judique could give a place," he ruminated, as he rattled through the long, crude, airy streets. The wind rose, enlivening, keen, and in a blaze of well-being he came to the flat of Tanis Judique. She was wearing, when she flutteringly admitted him, a frock of black chiffon cut modestly round at the base of her pretty throat. She seemed to him immensely sophisticated. He glanced at the cretonnes and colored prints in her living-room, and gurgled, "Gosh, you've fixed the place nice! Takes a clever woman to know how to make a home, all right!" "You really like it? I'm so glad! But you've neglected me, scandalously. You promised to come some time and learn to dance." Rather unsteadily, "Oh, but you didn't mean it seriously!" "Perhaps not. But you might have tried!" "Well, here I've come for my lesson, and you might just as well prepare to have me stay for supper!" They both laughed in a manner which indicated that of course he didn't mean it. "But first I guess I better look at that leak." She climbed with him to the flat roof of the apartment-house a detached world of slatted wooden walks, clotheslines, water-tank in a penthouse. He poked at things with his toe, and sought to impress her by being learned about copper gutters, the desirability of passing plumbing pipes through a lead collar and sleeve and flashing them with copper, and the advantages of cedar over boiler-iron for roof-tanks. "You have to know so much, in real estate!" she admired. He promised that the roof should be repaired within two days. "Do you mind my 'phoning from your apartment?" he asked. "Heavens, no!" He stood a moment at the coping, looking over a land of hard little bungalows with abnormally large porches, and new apartment-houses, small, but brave with variegated brick walls and terra-cotta trimmings. Beyond them was a hill with a gouge of yellow clay like a vast wound. Behind every apartment-house, beside each dwelling, were small garages. It was a world of good little people, comfortable, industrious, credulous. In the autumnal light the flat newness was mellowed, and the air was a sun-tinted pool. "Golly, it's one fine afternoon. You get a great view here, right up Tanner's Hill," said Babbitt. "Yes, isn't it nice and open." "So darn few people appreciate a View." "Don't you go raising my rent on that account! Oh, that was naughty of me! I was just teasing. Seriously though, there are so few who respond--who react to Views. I mean--they haven't any feeling of poetry and beauty." "That's a fact, they haven't," he breathed, admiring her slenderness and the absorbed, airy way in which she looked toward the hill, chin lifted, lips smiling. "Well, guess I'd better telephone the plumbers, so they'll get on the job first thing in the morning." When he had telephoned, making it conspicuously authoritative and gruff and masculine, he looked doubtful, and sighed, "S'pose I'd better be--" "Oh, you must have that cup of tea first!" "Well, it would go pretty good, at that." It was luxurious to loll in a deep green rep chair, his legs thrust out before him, to glance at the black Chinese telephone stand and the colored photograph of Mount Vernon which he had always liked so much, while in the tiny kitchen--so near--Mrs. Judique sang "My Creole Queen." In an intolerable sweetness, a contentment so deep that he was wistfully discontented, he saw magnolias by moonlight and heard plantation darkies crooning to the banjo. He wanted to be near her, on pretense of helping her, yet he wanted to remain in this still ecstasy. Languidly he remained. When she bustled in with the tea he smiled up at her. "This is awfully nice!" For the first time, he was not fencing; he was quietly and securely friendly; and friendly and quiet was her answer: "It's nice to have you here. You were so kind, helping me to find this little home." They agreed that the weather would soon turn cold. They agreed that prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was cultural. They agreed about everything. They even became bold. They hinted that these modern young girls, well, honestly, their short skirts were short. They were proud to find that they were not shocked by such frank speaking. Tanis ventured, "I know you'll understand--I mean--I don't quite know how to say it, but I do think that girls who pretend they're bad by the way they dress really never go any farther. They give away the fact that they haven't the instincts of a womanly woman." Remembering Ida Putiak, the manicure girl, and how ill she had used him, Babbitt agreed with enthusiasm; remembering how ill all the world had used him, he told of Paul Riesling, of Zilla, of Seneca Doane, of the strike: "See how it was? Course I was as anxious to have those beggars licked to a standstill as anybody else, but gosh, no reason for not seeing their side. For a fellow's own sake, he's got to be broad-minded and liberal, don't you think so?" "Oh, I do!" Sitting on the hard little couch, she clasped her hands beside her, leaned toward him, absorbed him; and in a glorious state of being appreciated he proclaimed: "So I up and said to the fellows at the club, 'Look here,' I--" "Do you belong to the Union Club? I think it's--" "No; the Athletic. Tell you: Course they're always asking me to join the Union, but I always say, 'No, sir! Nothing doing!' I don't mind the expense but I can't stand all the old fogies." "Oh, yes, that's so. But tell me: what did you say to them?" "Oh, you don't want to hear it. I'm probably boring you to death with my troubles! You wouldn't hardly think I was an old duffer; I sound like a kid!" "Oh, you're a boy yet. I mean--you can't be a day over forty-five." "Well, I'm not--much. But by golly I begin to feel middle-aged sometimes; all these responsibilities and all." "Oh, I know!" Her voice caressed him; it cloaked him like warm silk. "And I feel lonely, so lonely, some days, Mr. Babbitt." "We're a sad pair of birds! But I think we're pretty darn nice!" "Yes, I think we're lots nicer than most people I know!" They smiled. "But please tell me what you said at the Club." "Well, it was like this: Course Seneca Doane is a friend of mine--they can say what they want to, they can call him anything they please, but what most folks here don't know is that Senny is the bosom pal of some of the biggest statesmen in the world--Lord Wycombe, frinstance--you know, this big British nobleman. My friend Sir Gerald Doak told me that Lord Wycombe is one of the biggest guns in England--well, Doak or somebody told me." "Oh! Do you know Sir Gerald? The one that was here, at the McKelveys'?" "Know him? Well, say, I know him just well enough so we call each other George and Jerry, and we got so pickled together in Chicago--" "That must have been fun. But--" She shook a finger at him. "--I can't have you getting pickled! I'll have to take you in hand!" "Wish you would! . . . Well, zize saying: You see I happen to know what a big noise Senny Doane is outside of Zenith, but of course a prophet hasn't got any honor in his own country, and Senny, darn his old hide, he's so blame modest that he never lets folks know the kind of an outfit he travels with when he goes abroad. Well, during the strike Clarence Drum comes pee-rading up to our table, all dolled up fit to kill in his nice lil cap'n's uniform, and somebody says to him, 'Busting the strike, Clarence?' "Well, he swells up like a pouter-pigeon and he hollers, so 's you could hear him way up in the reading-room, 'Yes, sure; I told the strike-leaders where they got off, and so they went home.' "'Well,' I says to him, 'glad there wasn't any violence.' "'Yes,' he says, 'but if I hadn't kept my eye skinned there would 've been. All those fellows had bombs in their pockets. They're reg'lar anarchists.' "'Oh, rats, Clarence,' I says, 'I looked 'em all over carefully, and they didn't have any more bombs 'n a rabbit,' I says. 'Course,' I says, 'they're foolish, but they're a good deal like you and me, after all.' "And then Vergil Gunch or somebody--no, it was Chum Frink--you know, this famous poet--great pal of mine--he says to me, 'Look here,' he says, 'do you mean to say you advocate these strikes?' Well, I was so disgusted with a fellow whose mind worked that way that I swear, I had a good mind to not explain at all--just ignore him--" "Oh, that's so wise!" said Mrs. Judique. "--but finally I explains to him: 'If you'd done as much as I have on Chamber of Commerce committees and all,' I says, 'then you'd have the right to talk! But same time,' I says, 'I believe in treating your opponent like a gentleman!' Well, sir, that held 'em! Frink--Chum I always call him--he didn't have another word to say. But at that, I guess some of 'em kind o' thought I was too liberal. What do you think?" "Oh, you were so wise. And courageous! I love a man to have the courage of his convictions!" "But do you think it was a good stunt? After all, some of these fellows are so darn cautious and narrow-minded that they're prejudiced against a fellow that talks right out in meeting." "What do you care? In the long run they're bound to respect a man who makes them think, and with your reputation for oratory you--" "What do you know about my reputation for oratory?" "Oh, I'm not going to tell you everything I know! But seriously, you don't realize what a famous man you are." "Well--Though I haven't done much orating this fall. Too kind of bothered by this Paul Riesling business, I guess. But--Do you know, you're the first person that's really understood what I was getting at, Tanis--Listen to me, will you! Fat nerve I've got, calling you Tanis!" "Oh, do! And shall I call you George? Don't you think it's awfully nice when two people have so much--what shall I call it?--so much analysis that they can discard all these stupid conventions and understand each other and become acquainted right away, like ships that pass in the night?" "I certainly do! I certainly do!" He was no longer quiescent in his chair; he wandered about the room, he dropped on the couch beside her. But as he awkwardly stretched his hand toward her fragile, immaculate fingers, she said brightly, "Do give me a cigarette. Would you think poor Tanis was dreadfully naughty if she smoked?" "Lord, no! I like it!" He had often and weightily pondered flappers smoking in Zenith restaurants, but he knew only one woman who smoked--Mrs. Sam Doppelbrau, his flighty neighbor. He ceremoniously lighted Tanis's cigarette, looked for a place to deposit the burnt match, and dropped it into his pocket. "I'm sure you want a cigar, you poor man!" she crooned. "Do you mind one?" "Oh, no! I love the smell of a good cigar; so nice and--so nice and like a man. You'll find an ash-tray in my bedroom, on the table beside the bed, if you don't mind getting it." He was embarrassed by her bedroom: the broad couch with a cover of violet silk, mauve curtains striped with gold. Chinese Chippendale bureau, and an amazing row of slippers, with ribbon-wound shoe-trees, and primrose stockings lying across them. His manner of bringing the ash-tray had just the right note of easy friendliness, he felt. "A boob like Verg Gunch would try to get funny about seeing her bedroom, but I take it casually." He was not casual afterward. The contentment of companionship was gone, and he was restless with desire to touch her hand. But whenever he turned toward her, the cigarette was in his way. It was a shield between them. He waited till she should have finished, but as he rejoiced at her quick crushing of its light on the ashtray she said, "Don't you want to give me another cigarette?" and hopelessly he saw the screen of pale smoke and her graceful tilted hand again between them. He was not merely curious now to find out whether she would let him hold her hand (all in the purest friendship, naturally), but agonized with need of it. On the surface appeared none of all this fretful drama. They were talking cheerfully of motors, of trips to California, of Chum Frink. Once he said delicately, "I do hate these guys--I hate these people that invite themselves to meals, but I seem to have a feeling I'm going to have supper with the lovely Mrs. Tanis Judique to-night. But I suppose you probably have seven dates already." "Well, I was thinking some of going to the movies. Yes, I really think I ought to get out and get some fresh air." She did not encourage him to stay, but never did she discourage him. He considered, "I better take a sneak! She WILL let me stay--there IS something doing--and I mustn't get mixed up with--I mustn't--I've got to beat it." Then, "No. it's too late now." Suddenly, at seven, brushing her cigarette away, brusquely taking her hand: "Tanis! Stop teasing me! You know we--Here we are, a couple of lonely birds, and we're awful happy together. Anyway I am! Never been so happy! Do let me stay! I'll gallop down to the delicatessen and buy some stuff--cold chicken maybe--or cold turkey--and we can have a nice little supper, and afterwards, if you want to chase me out, I'll be good and go like a lamb." "Well--yes--it would be nice," she said. Nor did she withdraw her hand. He squeezed it, trembling, and blundered toward his coat. At the delicatessen he bought preposterous stores of food, chosen on the principle of expensiveness. From the drug store across the street he telephoned to his wife, "Got to get a fellow to sign a lease before he leaves town on the midnight. Won't be home till late. Don't wait up for me. Kiss Tinka good-night." He expectantly lumbered back to the flat. "Oh, you bad thing, to buy so much food!" was her greeting, and her voice was gay, her smile acceptant. He helped her in the tiny white kitchen; he washed the lettuce, he opened the olive bottle. She ordered him to set the table, and as he trotted into the living-room, as he hunted through the buffet for knives and forks, he felt utterly at home. "Now the only other thing," he announced, "is what you're going to wear. I can't decide whether you're to put on your swellest evening gown, or let your hair down and put on short skirts and make-believe you're a little girl." "I'm going to dine just as I am, in this old chiffon rag, and if you can't stand poor Tanis that way, you can go to the club for dinner!" "Stand you!" He patted her shoulder. "Child, you're the brainiest and the loveliest and finest woman I've ever met! Come now, Lady Wycombe, if you'll take the Duke of Zenith's arm, we will proambulate in to the magnolious feed!" "Oh, you do say the funniest, nicest things!" When they had finished the picnic supper he thrust his head out of the window and reported, "It's turned awful chilly, and I think it's going to rain. You don't want to go to the movies." "Well--" "I wish we had a fireplace! I wish it was raining like all get-out to-night, and we were in a funny little old-fashioned cottage, and the trees thrashing like everything outside, and a great big log fire and--I'll tell you! Let's draw this couch up to the radiator, and stretch our feet out, and pretend it's a wood-fire." "Oh, I think that's pathetic! You big child!" But they did draw up to the radiator, and propped their feet against it--his clumsy black shoes, her patent-leather slippers. In the dimness they talked of themselves; of how lonely she was, how bewildered he, and how wonderful that they had found each other. As they fell silent the room was stiller than a country lane. There was no sound from the street save the whir of motor-tires, the rumble of a distant freight-train. Self-contained was the room, warm, secure, insulated from the harassing world. He was absorbed by a rapture in which all fear and doubting were smoothed away; and when he reached home, at dawn, the rapture had mellowed to contentment serene and full of memories.

Chapter 28

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-28

When Babbitt's in his office, his secretary comes in to inform him that Tanis Judique is calling to ask about some repairs to her apartment. He takes the call, and Tanis tells him that her roof is beginning to leak and that she'd like him to fix it. He offers to come over personally to do the work. Once he's off the phone, Babbitt reflects on how sophisticated a lady Tanis Judique is. He bets that she is just the woman to understand him and his new way of looking at things. When he gets to her apartment, she teases him about never taking her up on her offer to teach him dancing. He calls some plumbers from her apartment after realizing that he can't fix the leak. Once that's done, he gets ready to mosey, but she asks him to stay for a cup of tea. She tells him how nice it is to have him around, which of course makes him feel valued. He starts to tell her about his newfound liberal views, and she approves of how open-minded he is. She also reveals that she knows all about his reputation as a speechmaker from the newspapers. At this point, Babbitt feels overcome by the need to touch her. But he holds back and they continue to chat about everyday things like the weather. She says it's about time for supper and bids him goodbye. He asks her to let him stay, though, and offers to run out to grab some takeout and bring it back. She agrees, and they have dinner together in her apartment. As they eat supper together by the fireplace, they talk about how lonely they are and how great it is that they've found one another. Babbitt returns home the next morning, the implication being that he and Tanis have had sex. And there's not a shred of guilt in Babbitt's mind. In fact, he feels pretty great.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_30_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 31

chapter 31

{"name": "Chapter 31", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-31", "summary": "While he's away from Myra, Babbitt feels guilty about the way he's treated her. Ultimately, he respects her way more than he respects Tanis Judique and The Bunch. When he tries to stay away from Tanis, though, she starts calling him at his office and asking why he doesn't come around anymore. She wants to know that he hasn't forgotten her and she promises not to call him at home again. Five more days go by before Tanis writes a letter to him asking why he still hasn't come around to her apartment. After debating with himself for a while, he decides to go see her. As the week goes by, Babbitt finds himself growing more and more fed up with the people at his Athletic Club and their dumb, rich-people problems. That night, he visits Tanis and finds that she's quite grumpy. He asks her what the matter is, and she answers by ordering him to say that he loves her. He agrees and says it. Shortly after that, though, he gets up to leave and thinks to himself that he'll never see Tanis again. She seems to know it, too, and she wants him to know that she has never wanted to force him into anything. She just feels lonely and likes having him around.", "analysis": ""}

I WHEN he was away from her, while he kicked about the garage and swept the snow off the running-board and examined a cracked hose-connection, he repented, he was alarmed and astonished that he could have flared out at his wife, and thought fondly how much more lasting she was than the flighty Bunch. He went in to mumble that he was "sorry, didn't mean to be grouchy," and to inquire as to her interest in movies. But in the darkness of the movie theater he brooded that he'd "gone and tied himself up to Myra all over again." He had some satisfaction in taking it out on Tanis Judique. "Hang Tanis anyway! Why'd she gone and got him into these mix-ups and made him all jumpy and nervous and cranky? Too many complications! Cut 'em out!" He wanted peace. For ten days he did not see Tanis nor telephone to her, and instantly she put upon him the compulsion which he hated. When he had stayed away from her for five days, hourly taking pride in his resoluteness and hourly picturing how greatly Tanis must miss him, Miss McGoun reported, "Mrs. Judique on the 'phone. Like t' speak t' you 'bout some repairs." Tanis was quick and quiet: "Mr. Babbitt? Oh, George, this is Tanis. I haven't seen you for weeks--days, anyway. You aren't sick, are you?" "No, just been terribly rushed. I, uh, I think there'll be a big revival of building this year. Got to, uh, got to work hard." "Of course, my man! I want you to. You know I'm terribly ambitious for you; much more than I am for myself. I just don't want you to forget poor Tanis. Will you call me up soon?" "Sure! Sure! You bet!" "Please do. I sha'n't call you again." He meditated, "Poor kid! . . . But gosh, she oughtn't to 'phone me at the office.... She's a wonder--sympathy 'ambitious for me.' . . . But gosh, I won't be made and compelled to call her up till I get ready. Darn these women, the way they make demands! It'll be one long old time before I see her! . . . But gosh, I'd like to see her to-night--sweet little thing.... Oh, cut that, son! Now you've broken away, be wise!" She did not telephone again, nor he, but after five more days she wrote to him: Have I offended you? You must know, dear, I didn't mean to. I'm so lonely and I need somebody to cheer me up. Why didn't you come to the nice party we had at Carrie's last evening I remember she invited you. Can't you come around here to-morrow Thur evening? I shall be alone and hope to see you. His reflections were numerous: "Doggone it, why can't she let me alone? Why can't women ever learn a fellow hates to be bulldozed? And they always take advantage of you by yelling how lonely they are. "Now that isn't nice of you, young fella. She's a fine, square, straight girl, and she does get lonely. She writes a swell hand. Nice-looking stationery. Plain. Refined. I guess I'll have to go see her. Well, thank God, I got till to-morrow night free of her, anyway. "She's nice but--Hang it, I won't be MADE to do things! I'm not married to her. No, nor by golly going to be! "Oh, rats, I suppose I better go see her." II Thursday, the to-morrow of Tanis's note, was full of emotional crises. At the Roughnecks' Table at the club, Verg Gunch talked of the Good Citizens' League and (it seemed to Babbitt) deliberately left him out of the invitations to join. Old Mat Penniman, the general utility man at Babbitt's office, had Troubles, and came in to groan about them: his oldest boy was "no good," his wife was sick, and he had quarreled with his brother-in-law. Conrad Lyte also had Troubles, and since Lyte was one of his best clients, Babbitt had to listen to them. Mr. Lyte, it appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia, and the garage had overcharged him. When Babbitt came home, everybody had Troubles: his wife was simultaneously thinking about discharging the impudent new maid, and worried lest the maid leave; and Tinka desired to denounce her teacher. "Oh, quit fussing!" Babbitt fussed. "You never hear me whining about my Troubles, and yet if you had to run a real-estate office--Why, to-day I found Miss Bannigan was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched my finger in my desk, and Lyte was in and just as unreasonable as ever." He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape to Tanis, he merely grumped to his wife, "Got to go out. Be back by eleven, should think." "Oh! You're going out again?" "Again! What do you mean 'again'! Haven't hardly been out of the house for a week!" "Are you--are you going to the Elks?" "Nope. Got to see some people." Though this time he heard his own voice and knew that it was curt, though she was looking at him with wide-eyed reproach, he stumped into the hall, jerked on his ulster and furlined gloves, and went out to start the car. He was relieved to find Tanis cheerful, unreproachful, and brilliant in a frock of brown net over gold tissue. "You poor man, having to come out on a night like this! It's terribly cold. Don't you think a small highball would be nice?" "Now, by golly, there's a woman with savvy! I think we could more or less stand a highball if it wasn't too long a one--not over a foot tall!" He kissed her with careless heartiness, he forgot the compulsion of her demands, he stretched in a large chair and felt that he had beautifully come home. He was suddenly loquacious; he told her what a noble and misunderstood man he was, and how superior to Pete, Fulton Bemis, and the other men of their acquaintance; and she, bending forward, chin in charming hand, brightly agreed. But when he forced himself to ask, "Well, honey, how's things with YOU," she took his duty-question seriously, and he discovered that she too had Troubles: "Oh, all right but--I did get so angry with Carrie. She told Minnie that I told her that Minnie was an awful tightwad, and Minnie told me Carrie had told her, and of course I told her I hadn't said anything of the kind, and then Carrie found Minnie had told me, and she was simply furious because Minnie had told me, and of course I was just boiling because Carrie had told her I'd told her, and then we all met up at Fulton's--his wife is away--thank heavens!--oh, there's the dandiest floor in his house to dance on--and we were all of us simply furious at each other and--Oh, I do hate that kind of a mix-up, don't you? I mean--it's so lacking in refinement, but--And Mother wants to come and stay with me for a whole month, and of course I do love her, I suppose I do, but honestly, she'll cramp my style something dreadful--she never can learn not to comment, and she always wants to know where I'm going when I go out evenings, and if I lie to her she always spies around and ferrets around and finds out where I've been, and then she looks like Patience on a Monument till I could just scream. And oh, I MUST tell you--You know I never talk about myself; I just hate people who do, don't you? But--I feel so stupid to-night, and I know I must be boring you with all this but--What would you do about Mother?" He gave her facile masculine advice. She was to put off her mother's stay. She was to tell Carrie to go to the deuce. For these valuable revelations she thanked him, and they ambled into the familiar gossip of the Bunch. Of what a sentimental fool was Carrie. Of what a lazy brat was Pete. Of how nice Fulton Bemis could be--"course lots of people think he's a regular old grouch when they meet him because he doesn't give 'em the glad hand the first crack out of the box, but when they get to know him, he's a corker." But as they had gone conscientiously through each of these analyses before, the conversation staggered. Babbitt tried to be intellectual and deal with General Topics. He said some thoroughly sound things about Disarmament, and broad-mindedness and liberalism; but it seemed to him that General Topics interested Tanis only when she could apply them to Pete, Carrie, or themselves. He was distressingly conscious of their silence. He tried to stir her into chattering again, but silence rose like a gray presence and hovered between them. "I, uh--" he labored. "It strikes me--it strikes me that unemployment is lessening." "Maybe Pete will get a decent job, then." Silence. Desperately he essayed, "What's the trouble, old honey? You seem kind of quiet to-night." "Am I? Oh, I'm not. But--do you really care whether I am or not?" "Care? Sure! Course I do!" "Do you really?" She swooped on him, sat on the arm of his chair. He hated the emotional drain of having to appear fond of her. He stroked her hand, smiled up at her dutifully, and sank back. "George, I wonder if you really like me at all?" "Course I do, silly." "Do you really, precious? Do you care a bit?" "Why certainly! You don't suppose I'd be here if I didn't!" "Now see here, young man, I won't have you speaking to me in that huffy way!" "I didn't mean to sound huffy. I just--" In injured and rather childish tones: "Gosh almighty, it makes me tired the way everybody says I sound huffy when I just talk natural! Do they expect me to sing it or something?" "Who do you mean by 'everybody'? How many other ladies have you been consoling?" "Look here now, I won't have this hinting!" Humbly: "I know, dear. I was only teasing. I know it didn't mean to talk huffy--it was just tired. Forgive bad Tanis. But say you love me, say it!" "I love you.... Course I do." "Yes, you do!" cynically. "Oh, darling, I don't mean to be rude but--I get so lonely. I feel so useless. Nobody needs me, nothing I can do for anybody. And you know, dear, I'm so active--I could be if there was something to do. And I am young, aren't I! I'm not an old thing! I'm not old and stupid, am I?" He had to assure her. She stroked his hair, and he had to look pleased under that touch, the more demanding in its beguiling softness. He was impatient. He wanted to flee out to a hard, sure, unemotional man-world. Through her delicate and caressing fingers she may have caught something of his shrugging distaste. She left him--he was for the moment buoyantly relieved--she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking beseechingly up at him. But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now as middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own thoughts, they rode him. She was old, he winced. Old! He noted how the soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin, below her eyes, at the base of her wrists. A patch of her throat had a minute roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser. Old! She was younger in years than himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up at him with rolling great eyes--as if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making love to him. He fretted inwardly, "I'm through with this asinine fooling around. I'm going to cut her out. She's a darn decent nice woman, and I don't want to hurt her, but it'll hurt a lot less to cut her right out, like a good clean surgical operation." He was on his feet. He was speaking urgently. By every rule of self-esteem, he had to prove to her, and to himself, that it was her fault. "I suppose maybe I'm kind of out of sorts to-night, but honest, honey, when I stayed away for a while to catch up on work and everything and figure out where I was at, you ought to have been cannier and waited till I came back. Can't you see, dear, when you MADE me come, I--being about an average bull-headed chump--my tendency was to resist? Listen, dear, I'm going now--" "Not for a while, precious! No!" "Yep. Right now. And then sometime we'll see about the future." "What do you mean, dear, 'about the future'? Have I done something I oughtn't to? Oh, I'm so dreadfully sorry!" He resolutely put his hands behind him. "Not a thing, God bless you, not a thing. You're as good as they make 'em. But it's just--Good Lord, do you realize I've got things to do in the world? I've got a business to attend to and, you might not believe it, but I've got a wife and kids that I'm awful fond of!" Then only during the murder he was committing was he able to feel nobly virtuous. "I want us to be friends but, gosh, I can't go on this way feeling I got to come up here every so often--" "Oh, darling, darling, and I've always told you, so carefully, that you were absolutely free. I just wanted you to come around when you were tired and wanted to talk to me, or when you could enjoy our parties--" She was so reasonable, she was so gently right! It took him an hour to make his escape, with nothing settled and everything horribly settled. In a barren freedom of icy Northern wind he sighed, "Thank God that's over! Poor Tanis, poor darling decent Tanis! But it is over. Absolute! I'm free!"

Chapter 31

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-31

While he's away from Myra, Babbitt feels guilty about the way he's treated her. Ultimately, he respects her way more than he respects Tanis Judique and The Bunch. When he tries to stay away from Tanis, though, she starts calling him at his office and asking why he doesn't come around anymore. She wants to know that he hasn't forgotten her and she promises not to call him at home again. Five more days go by before Tanis writes a letter to him asking why he still hasn't come around to her apartment. After debating with himself for a while, he decides to go see her. As the week goes by, Babbitt finds himself growing more and more fed up with the people at his Athletic Club and their dumb, rich-people problems. That night, he visits Tanis and finds that she's quite grumpy. He asks her what the matter is, and she answers by ordering him to say that he loves her. He agrees and says it. Shortly after that, though, he gets up to leave and thinks to himself that he'll never see Tanis again. She seems to know it, too, and she wants him to know that she has never wanted to force him into anything. She just feels lonely and likes having him around.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/33.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_32_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 33

chapter 33

{"name": "Chapter 33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-33", "summary": "The more Myra defends the business community to Babbitt, the more he can feel himself growing distant from his wife. One night, though, Myra is awakened by a terrible pain in her side. Babbitt calls the doctor, who comes and eventually diagnoses Myra with acute appendicitis. She has to go to the hospital instantly for an operation. Myra's condition is probably not fatal, but the possibility of her dying makes Babbitt ashamed of how selfish he's been. He rejects all of his rebelliousness from the past few months and promises to be a good little boy and start conforming again if his wife can make it. When Myra comes out of her operation fit as a fiddle, Babbitt turns over a new leaf and goes back to being his old self... sort of. While Myra is in the hospital, some of Babbitt's old friends visit. Vergil Gunch seems to realize that the incident has changed Babbitt's mind about things, and he uses the opportunity to mend some bridges with the guy. All is forgiven and the two become friends again. Within two weeks, there's no one in Zenith more aggressive about criticizing Seneca Doane and socialists than George F. Babbitt.", "analysis": ""}

I HE tried to explain to his wife, as they prepared for bed, how objectionable was Sheldon Smeeth, but all her answer was, "He has such a beautiful voice--so spiritual. I don't think you ought to speak of him like that just because you can't appreciate music!" He saw her then as a stranger; he stared bleakly at this plump and fussy woman with the broad bare arms, and wondered how she had ever come here. In his chilly cot, turning from aching side to side, he pondered of Tanis. "He'd been a fool to lose her. He had to have somebody he could really talk to. He'd--oh, he'd BUST if he went on stewing about things by himself. And Myra, useless to expect her to understand. Well, rats, no use dodging the issue. Darn shame for two married people to drift apart after all these years; darn rotten shame; but nothing could bring them together now, as long as he refused to let Zenith bully him into taking orders--and he was by golly not going to let anybody bully him into anything, or wheedle him or coax him either!" He woke at three, roused by a passing motor, and struggled out of bed for a drink of water. As he passed through the bedroom he heard his wife groan. His resentment was night-blurred; he was solicitous in inquiring, "What's the trouble, hon?" "I've got--such a pain down here in my side--oh, it's just--it tears at me." "Bad indigestion? Shall I get you some bicarb?" "Don't think--that would help. I felt funny last evening and yesterday, and then--oh!--it passed away and I got to sleep and--That auto woke me up." Her voice was laboring like a ship in a storm. He was alarmed. "I better call the doctor." "No, no! It'll go away. But maybe you might get me an ice-bag." He stalked to the bathroom for the ice-bag, down to the kitchen for ice. He felt dramatic in this late-night expedition, but as he gouged the chunk of ice with the dagger-like pick he was cool, steady, mature; and the old friendliness was in his voice as he patted the ice-bag into place on her groin, rumbling, "There, there, that'll be better now." He retired to bed, but he did not sleep. He heard her groan again. Instantly he was up, soothing her, "Still pretty bad, honey?" "Yes, it just gripes me, and I can't get to sleep." Her voice was faint. He knew her dread of doctors' verdicts and he did not inform her, but he creaked down-stairs, telephoned to Dr. Earl Patten, and waited, shivering, trying with fuzzy eyes to read a magazine, till he heard the doctor's car. The doctor was youngish and professionally breezy. He came in as though it were sunny noontime. "Well, George, little trouble, eh? How is she now?" he said busily as, with tremendous and rather irritating cheerfulness, he tossed his coat on a chair and warmed his hands at a radiator. He took charge of the house. Babbitt felt ousted and unimportant as he followed the doctor up to the bedroom, and it was the doctor who chuckled, "Oh, just little stomach-ache" when Verona peeped through her door, begging, "What is it, Dad, what is it?" To Mrs. Babbitt the doctor said with amiable belligerence, after his examination, "Kind of a bad old pain, eh? I'll give you something to make you sleep, and I think you'll feel better in the morning. I'll come in right after breakfast." But to Babbitt, lying in wait in the lower hall, the doctor sighed, "I don't like the feeling there in her belly. There's some rigidity and some inflammation. She's never had her appendix out has she? Um. Well, no use worrying. I'll be here first thing in the morning, and meantime she'll get some rest. I've given her a hypo. Good night." Then was Babbitt caught up in the black tempest. Instantly all the indignations which had been dominating him and the spiritual dramas through which he had struggled became pallid and absurd before the ancient and overwhelming realities, the standard and traditional realities, of sickness and menacing death, the long night, and the thousand steadfast implications of married life. He crept back to her. As she drowsed away in the tropic languor of morphia, he sat on the edge of her bed, holding her hand, and for the first time in many weeks her hand abode trustfully in his. He draped himself grotesquely in his toweling bathrobe and a pink and white couch-cover, and sat lumpishly in a wing-chair. The bedroom was uncanny in its half-light, which turned the curtains to lurking robbers, the dressing-table to a turreted castle. It smelled of cosmetics, of linen, of sleep. He napped and woke, napped and woke, a hundred times. He heard her move and sigh in slumber; he wondered if there wasn't some officious brisk thing he could do for her, and before he could quite form the thought he was asleep, racked and aching. The night was infinite. When dawn came and the waiting seemed at an end, he fell asleep, and was vexed to have been caught off his guard, to have been aroused by Verona's entrance and her agitated "Oh, what is it, Dad?" His wife was awake, her face sallow and lifeless in the morning light, but now he did not compare her with Tanis; she was not merely A Woman, to be contrasted with other women, but his own self, and though he might criticize her and nag her, it was only as he might criticize and nag himself, interestedly, unpatronizingly, without the expectation of changing--or any real desire to change--the eternal essence. With Verona he sounded fatherly again, and firm. He consoled Tinka, who satisfactorily pointed the excitement of the hour by wailing. He ordered early breakfast, and wanted to look at the newspaper, and felt somehow heroic and useful in not looking at it. But there were still crawling and totally unheroic hours of waiting before Dr. Patten returned. "Don't see much change," said Patten. "I'll be back about eleven, and if you don't mind, I think I'll bring in some other world-famous pill-pedler for consultation, just to be on the safe side. Now George, there's nothing you can do. I'll have Verona keep the ice-bag filled--might as well leave that on, I guess--and you, you better beat it to the office instead of standing around her looking as if you were the patient. The nerve of husbands! Lot more neurotic than the women! They always have to horn in and get all the credit for feeling bad when their wives are ailing. Now have another nice cup of coffee and git!" Under this derision Babbitt became more matter-of-fact. He drove to the office, tried to dictate letters, tried to telephone and, before the call was answered, forgot to whom he was telephoning. At a quarter after ten he returned home. As he left the down-town traffic and sped up the car, his face was as grimly creased as the mask of tragedy. His wife greeted him with surprise. "Why did you come back, dear? I think I feel a little better. I told Verona to skip off to her office. Was it wicked of me to go and get sick?" He knew that she wanted petting, and she got it, joyously. They were curiously happy when he heard Dr. Patten's car in front. He looked out of the window. He was frightened. With Patten was an impatient man with turbulent black hair and a hussar mustache--Dr. A. I. Dilling, the surgeon. Babbitt sputtered with anxiety, tried to conceal it, and hurried down to the door. Dr. Patten was profusely casual: "Don't want to worry you, old man, but I thought it might be a good stunt to have Dr. Dilling examine her." He gestured toward Dilling as toward a master. Dilling nodded in his curtest manner and strode up-stairs Babbitt tramped the living-room in agony. Except for his wife's confinements there had never been a major operation in the family, and to him surgery was at once a miracle and an abomination of fear. But when Dilling and Patten came down again he knew that everything was all right, and he wanted to laugh, for the two doctors were exactly like the bearded physicians in a musical comedy, both of them rubbing their hands and looking foolishly sagacious. Dr. Dilling spoke: "I'm sorry, old man, but it's acute appendicitis. We ought to operate. Of course you must decide, but there's no question as to what has to be done." Babbitt did not get all the force of it. He mumbled, "Well I suppose we could get her ready in a couple o' days. Probably Ted ought to come down from the university, just in case anything happened." Dr. Dilling growled, "Nope. If you don't want peritonitis to set in, we'll have to operate right away. I must advise it strongly. If you say go ahead, I'll 'phone for the St. Mary's ambulance at once, and we'll have her on the table in three-quarters of an hour." "I--I Of course, I suppose you know what--But great God, man, I can't get her clothes ready and everything in two seconds, you know! And in her state, so wrought-up and weak--" "Just throw her hair-brush and comb and tooth-brush in a bag; that's all she'll need for a day or two," said Dr. Dilling, and went to the telephone. Babbitt galloped desperately up-stairs. He sent the frightened Tinka out of the room. He said gaily to his wife, "Well, old thing, the doc thinks maybe we better have a little operation and get it over. Just take a few minutes--not half as serious as a confinement--and you'll be all right in a jiffy." She gripped his hand till the fingers ached. She said patiently, like a cowed child, "I'm afraid--to go into the dark, all alone!" Maturity was wiped from her eyes; they were pleading and terrified. "Will you stay with me? Darling, you don't have to go to the office now, do you? Could you just go down to the hospital with me? Could you come see me this evening--if everything's all right? You won't have to go out this evening, will you?" He was on his knees by the bed. While she feebly ruffled his hair, he sobbed, he kissed the lawn of her sleeve, and swore, "Old honey, I love you more than anything in the world! I've kind of been worried by business and everything, but that's all over now, and I'm back again." "Are you really? George, I was thinking, lying here, maybe it would be a good thing if I just WENT. I was wondering if anybody really needed me. Or wanted me. I was wondering what was the use of my living. I've been getting so stupid and ugly--" "Why, you old humbug! Fishing for compliments when I ought to be packing your bag! Me, sure, I'm young and handsome and a regular village cut-up and--" He could not go on. He sobbed again; and in muttered incoherencies they found each other. As he packed, his brain was curiously clear and swift. He'd have no more wild evenings, he realized. He admitted that he would regret them. A little grimly he perceived that this had been his last despairing fling before the paralyzed contentment of middle-age. Well, and he grinned impishly, "it was one doggone good party while it lasted!" And--how much was the operation going to cost? "I ought to have fought that out with Dilling. But no, damn it, I don't care how much it costs!" The motor ambulance was at the door. Even in his grief the Babbitt who admired all technical excellences was interested in the kindly skill with which the attendants slid Mrs. Babbitt upon a stretcher and carried her down-stairs. The ambulance was a huge, suave, varnished, white thing. Mrs. Babbitt moaned, "It frightens me. It's just like a hearse, just like being put in a hearse. I want you to stay with me." "I'll be right up front with the driver," Babbitt promised. "No, I want you to stay inside with me." To the attendants: "Can't he be inside?" "Sure, ma'am, you bet. There's a fine little camp-stool in there," the older attendant said, with professional pride. He sat beside her in that traveling cabin with its cot, its stool, its active little electric radiator, and its quite unexplained calendar, displaying a girl eating cherries, and the name of an enterprising grocer. But as he flung out his hand in hopeless cheerfulness it touched the radiator, and he squealed: "Ouch! Jesus!" "Why, George Babbitt, I won't have you cursing and swearing and blaspheming!" "I know, awful sorry but--Gosh all fish-hooks, look how I burned my hand! Gee whiz, it hurts! It hurts like the mischief! Why, that damn radiator is hot as--it's hot as--it's hotter 'n the hinges of Hades! Look! You can see the mark!" So, as they drove up to St. Mary's Hospital, with the nurses already laying out the instruments for an operation to save her life, it was she who consoled him and kissed the place to make it well, and though he tried to be gruff and mature, he yielded to her and was glad to be babied. The ambulance whirled under the hooded carriage-entrance of the hospital, and instantly he was reduced to a zero in the nightmare succession of cork-floored halls, endless doors open on old women sitting up in bed, an elevator, the anesthetizing room, a young interne contemptuous of husbands. He was permitted to kiss his wife; he saw a thin dark nurse fit the cone over her mouth and nose; he stiffened at a sweet and treacherous odor; then he was driven out, and on a high stool in a laboratory he sat dazed, longing to see her once again, to insist that he had always loved her, had never for a second loved anybody else or looked at anybody else. In the laboratory he was conscious only of a decayed object preserved in a bottle of yellowing alcohol. It made him very sick, but he could not take his eyes from it. He was more aware of it than of waiting. His mind floated in abeyance, coming back always to that horrible bottle. To escape it he opened the door to the right, hoping to find a sane and business-like office. He realized that he was looking into the operating-room; in one glance he took in Dr. Dilling, strange in white gown and bandaged head, bending over the steel table with its screws and wheels, then nurses holding basins and cotton sponges, and a swathed thing, just a lifeless chin and a mound of white in the midst of which was a square of sallow flesh with a gash a little bloody at the edges, protruding from the gash a cluster of forceps like clinging parasites. He shut the door with haste. It may be that his frightened repentance of the night and morning had not eaten in, but this dehumanizing interment of her who had been so pathetically human shook him utterly, and as he crouched again on the high stool in the laboratory he swore faith to his wife . . . to Zenith . . . to business efficiency . . . to the Boosters' Club . . . to every faith of the Clan of Good Fellows. Then a nurse was soothing, "All over! Perfect success! She'll come out fine! She'll be out from under the anesthetic soon, and you can see her." He found her on a curious tilted bed, her face an unwholesome yellow but her purple lips moving slightly. Then only did he really believe that she was alive. She was muttering. He bent, and heard her sighing, "Hard get real maple syrup for pancakes." He laughed inexhaustibly; he beamed on the nurse and proudly confided, "Think of her talking about maple syrup! By golly, I'm going to go and order a hundred gallons of it, right from Vermont!" II She was out of the hospital in seventeen days. He went to see her each afternoon, and in their long talks they drifted back to intimacy. Once he hinted something of his relations to Tanis and the Bunch, and she was inflated by the view that a Wicked Woman had captivated her poor George. If once he had doubted his neighbors and the supreme charm of the Good Fellows, he was convinced now. You didn't, he noted, "see Seneca Doane coming around with any flowers or dropping in to chat with the Missus," but Mrs. Howard Littlefield brought to the hospital her priceless wine jelly (flavored with real wine); Orville Jones spent hours in picking out the kind of novels Mrs. Babbitt liked--nice love stories about New York millionaries and Wyoming cowpunchers; Louetta Swanson knitted a pink bed-jacket; Sidney Finkelstein and his merry brown-eyed flapper of a wife selected the prettiest nightgown in all the stock of Parcher and Stein. All his friends ceased whispering about him, suspecting him. At the Athletic Club they asked after her daily. Club members whose names he did not know stopped him to inquire, "How's your good lady getting on?" Babbitt felt that he was swinging from bleak uplands down into the rich warm air of a valley pleasant with cottages. One noon Vergil Gunch suggested, "You planning to be at the hospital about six? The wife and I thought we'd drop in." They did drop in. Gunch was so humorous that Mrs. Babbitt said he must "stop making her laugh because honestly it was hurting her incision." As they passed down the hall Gunch demanded amiably, "George, old scout, you were soreheaded about something, here a while back. I don't know why, and it's none of my business. But you seem to be feeling all hunky-dory again, and why don't you come join us in the Good Citizens' League, old man? We have some corking times together, and we need your advice." Then did Babbitt, almost tearful with joy at being coaxed instead of bullied, at being permitted to stop fighting, at being able to desert without injuring his opinion of himself, cease utterly to be a domestic revolutionist. He patted Gunch's shoulder, and next day he became a member of the Good Citizens' League. Within two weeks no one in the League was more violent regarding the wickedness of Seneca Doane, the crimes of labor unions, the perils of immigration, and the delights of golf, morality, and bank-accounts than was George F. Babbitt.

Chapter 33

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-33

The more Myra defends the business community to Babbitt, the more he can feel himself growing distant from his wife. One night, though, Myra is awakened by a terrible pain in her side. Babbitt calls the doctor, who comes and eventually diagnoses Myra with acute appendicitis. She has to go to the hospital instantly for an operation. Myra's condition is probably not fatal, but the possibility of her dying makes Babbitt ashamed of how selfish he's been. He rejects all of his rebelliousness from the past few months and promises to be a good little boy and start conforming again if his wife can make it. When Myra comes out of her operation fit as a fiddle, Babbitt turns over a new leaf and goes back to being his old self... sort of. While Myra is in the hospital, some of Babbitt's old friends visit. Vergil Gunch seems to realize that the incident has changed Babbitt's mind about things, and he uses the opportunity to mend some bridges with the guy. All is forgiven and the two become friends again. Within two weeks, there's no one in Zenith more aggressive about criticizing Seneca Doane and socialists than George F. Babbitt.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/34.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Babbitt/section_33_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 34

chapter 34

{"name": "Chapter 34", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-34", "summary": "With Babbitt's support, The Good Citizens' League becomes one of the most powerful organizations in Zenith, ensuring that as many people as possible accept the gospel of free market capitalism. All over town, socialists are getting assaulted and their offices are being burned. During these weeks, his daughter Verona gets married to Ken Escott. Better yet, all of Babbitt's old business starts to flood back into his office. While all of this is happening, though, Babbitt promises himself that one day, he'll truly be his own man. Maybe after he retires, though. One Saturday evening, Babbitt's son Ted takes Eunice Littlefield out to a dance and the two of them don't come home. Both Babbitt and Myra are worried, but when the two finally show up, it turns out that they've gone off and had a midnight wedding. Immediately, Eunice's parents come over to the Babbitts' to denounce the marriage. Even some of the neighbors show up to weigh in. When things are at their most intense, though, Babbitt takes Ted aside privately and tells him he's proud of him for playing by his own rules. Put simply, Babbitt admires his son's ability to do what he thinks is right instead of conforming to the world around him. In this sense, Babbitt's hope for independence lives on in his son, even though he might have given up on himself.", "analysis": ""}

I THE Good Citizens' League had spread through the country, but nowhere was it so effective and well esteemed as in cities of the type of Zenith, commercial cities of a few hundred thousand inhabitants, most of which--though not all--lay inland, against a background of cornfields and mines and of small towns which depended upon them for mortgage-loans, table-manners, art, social philosophy and millinery. To the League belonged most of the prosperous citizens of Zenith. They were not all of the kind who called themselves "Regular Guys." Besides these hearty fellows, these salesmen of prosperity, there were the aristocrats, that is, the men who were richer or had been rich for more generations: the presidents of banks and of factories, the land-owners, the corporation lawyers, the fashionable doctors, and the few young-old men who worked not at all but, reluctantly remaining in Zenith, collected luster-ware and first editions as though they were back in Paris. All of them agreed that the working-classes must be kept in their place; and all of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary. In this they were like the ruling-class of any other country, particularly of Great Britain, but they differed in being more vigorous and in actually trying to produce the accepted standards which all classes, everywhere, desire, but usually despair of realizing. The longest struggle of the Good Citizens' League was against the Open Shop--which was secretly a struggle against all union labor. Accompanying it was an Americanization Movement, with evening classes in English and history and economics, and daily articles in the newspapers, so that newly arrived foreigners might learn that the true-blue and one hundred per cent. American way of settling labor-troubles was for workmen to trust and love their employers. The League was more than generous in approving other organizations which agreed with its aims. It helped the Y.M. C.A. to raise a two-hundred-thousand-dollar fund for a new building. Babbitt, Vergil Gunch, Sidney Finkelstein, and even Charles McKelvey told the spectators at movie theaters how great an influence for manly Christianity the "good old Y." had been in their own lives; and the hoar and mighty Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the Advocate-Times, was photographed clasping the hand of Sheldon Smeeth of the Y.M.C.A. It is true that afterward, when Smeeth lisped, "You must come to one of our prayer-meetings," the ferocious Colonel bellowed, "What the hell would I do that for? I've got a bar of my own," but this did not appear in the public prints. The League was of value to the American Legion at a time when certain of the lesser and looser newspapers were criticizing that organization of veterans of the Great War. One evening a number of young men raided the Zenith Socialist Headquarters, burned its records, beat the office staff, and agreeably dumped desks out of the window. All of the newspapers save the Advocate-Times and the Evening Advocate attributed this valuable but perhaps hasty direct-action to the American Legion. Then a flying squadron from the Good Citizens' League called on the unfair papers and explained that no ex-soldier could possibly do such a thing, and the editors saw the light, and retained their advertising. When Zenith's lone Conscientious Objector came home from prison and was righteously run out of town, the newspapers referred to the perpetrators as an "unidentified mob." II In all the activities and triumphs of the Good Citizens' League Babbitt took part, and completely won back to self-respect, placidity, and the affection of his friends. But he began to protest, "Gosh, I've done my share in cleaning up the city. I want to tend to business. Think I'll just kind of slacken up on this G.C.L. stuff now." He had returned to the church as he had returned to the Boosters' Club. He had even endured the lavish greeting which Sheldon Smeeth gave him. He was worried lest during his late discontent he had imperiled his salvation. He was not quite sure there was a Heaven to be attained, but Dr. John Jennison Drew said there was, and Babbitt was not going to take a chance. One evening when he was walking past Dr. Drew's parsonage he impulsively went in and found the pastor in his study. "Jus' minute--getting 'phone call," said Dr. Drew in businesslike tones, then, aggressively, to the telephone: "'Lo--'lo! This Berkey and Hannis? Reverend Drew speaking. Where the dickens is the proof for next Sunday's calendar? Huh? Y' ought to have it here. Well, I can't help it if they're ALL sick! I got to have it to-night. Get an A.D.T. boy and shoot it up here quick." He turned, without slackening his briskness. "Well, Brother Babbitt, what c'n I do for you?" "I just wanted to ask--Tell you how it is, dominie: Here a while ago I guess I got kind of slack. Took a few drinks and so on. What I wanted to ask is: How is it if a fellow cuts that all out and comes back to his senses? Does it sort of, well, you might say, does it score against him in the long run?" The Reverend Dr. Drew was suddenly interested. "And, uh, brother--the other things, too? Women?" "No, practically, you might say, practically not at all." "Don't hesitate to tell me, brother! That's what I'm here for. Been going on joy-rides? Squeezing girls in cars?" The reverend eyes glistened. "No--no--" "Well, I'll tell you. I've got a deputation from the Don't Make Prohibition a Joke Association coming to see me in a quarter of an hour, and one from the Anti-Birth-Control Union at a quarter of ten." He busily glanced at his watch. "But I can take five minutes off and pray with you. Kneel right down by your chair, brother. Don't be ashamed to seek the guidance of God." Babbitt's scalp itched and he longed to flee, but Dr. Drew had already flopped down beside his desk-chair and his voice had changed from rasping efficiency to an unctuous familiarity with sin and with the Almighty. Babbitt also knelt, while Drew gloated: "O Lord, thou seest our brother here, who has been led astray by manifold temptations. O Heavenly Father, make his heart to be pure, as pure as a little child's. Oh, let him know again the joy of a manly courage to abstain from evil--" Sheldon Smeeth came frolicking into the study. At the sight of the two men he smirked, forgivingly patted Babbitt on the shoulder, and knelt beside him, his arm about him, while he authorized Dr. Drew's imprecations with moans of "Yes, Lord! Help our brother, Lord!" Though he was trying to keep his eyes closed, Babbitt squinted between his fingers and saw the pastor glance at his watch as he concluded with a triumphant, "And let him never be afraid to come to Us for counsel and tender care, and let him know that the church can lead him as a little lamb." Dr. Drew sprang up, rolled his eyes in the general direction of Heaven, chucked his watch into his pocket, and demanded, "Has the deputation come yet, Sheldy?" "Yep, right outside," Sheldy answered, with equal liveliness; then, caressingly, to Babbitt, "Brother, if it would help, I'd love to go into the next room and pray with you while Dr. Drew is receiving the brothers from the Don't Make Prohibition a Joke Association." "No--no thanks--can't take the time!" yelped Babbitt, rushing toward the door. Thereafter he was often seen at the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church, but it is recorded that he avoided shaking hands with the pastor at the door. III If his moral fiber had been so weakened by rebellion that he was not quite dependable in the more rigorous campaigns of the Good Citizens' League nor quite appreciative of the church, yet there was no doubt of the joy with which Babbitt returned to the pleasures of his home and of the Athletic Club, the Boosters, the Elks. Verona and Kenneth Escott were eventually and hesitatingly married. For the wedding Babbitt was dressed as carefully as was Verona; he was crammed into the morning-coat he wore to teas thrice a year; and with a certain relief, after Verona and Kenneth had driven away in a limousine, he returned to the house, removed the morning coat, sat with his aching feet up on the davenport, and reflected that his wife and he could have the living-room to themselves now, and not have to listen to Verona and Kenneth worrying, in a cultured collegiate manner, about minimum wages and the Drama League. But even this sinking into peace was less consoling than his return to being one of the best-loved men in the Boosters' Club. IV President Willis Ijams began that Boosters' Club luncheon by standing quiet and staring at them so unhappily that they feared he was about to announce the death of a Brother Booster. He spoke slowly then, and gravely: "Boys, I have something shocking to reveal to you; something terrible about one of our own members." Several Boosters, including Babbitt, looked disconcerted. "A knight of the grip, a trusted friend of mine, recently made a trip up-state, and in a certain town, where a certain Booster spent his boyhood, he found out something which can no longer be concealed. In fact, he discovered the inward nature of a man whom we have accepted as a Real Guy and as one of us. Gentlemen, I cannot trust my voice to say it, so I have written it down." He uncovered a large blackboard and on it, in huge capitals, was the legend: George Follansbee Babbitt--oh you Folly! The Boosters cheered, they laughed, they wept, they threw rolls at Babbitt, they cried, "Speech, speech! Oh you Folly!" President Ijams continued: "That, gentlemen, is the awful thing Georgie Babbitt has been concealing all these years, when we thought he was just plain George F. Now I want you to tell us, taking it in turn, what you've always supposed the F. stood for." Flivver, they suggested, and Frog-face and Flathead and Farinaceous and Freezone and Flapdoodle and Foghorn. By the joviality of their insults Babbitt knew that he had been taken back to their hearts, and happily he rose. "Boys, I've got to admit it. I've never worn a wrist-watch, or parted my name in the middle, but I will confess to 'Follansbee.' My only justification is that my old dad--though otherwise he was perfectly sane, and packed an awful wallop when it came to trimming the City Fellers at checkers--named me after the family doc, old Dr. Ambrose Follansbee. I apologize, boys. In my next what-d'you-call-it I'll see to it that I get named something really practical--something that sounds swell and yet is good and virile--something, in fact, like that grand old name so familiar to every household--that bold and almost overpowering name, Willis Jimjams Ijams!" He knew by the cheer that he was secure again and popular; he knew that he would no more endanger his security and popularity by straying from the Clan of Good Fellows. V Henry Thompson dashed into the office, clamoring, "George! Big news! Jake Offutt says the Traction Bunch are dissatisfied with the way Sanders, Torrey and Wing handled their last deal, and they're willing to dicker with us!" Babbitt was pleased in the realization that the last scar of his rebellion was healed, yet as he drove home he was annoyed by such background thoughts as had never weakened him in his days of belligerent conformity. He discovered that he actually did not consider the Traction group quite honest. "Well, he'd carry out one more deal for them, but as soon as it was practicable, maybe as soon as old Henry Thompson died, he'd break away from all association from them. He was forty-eight; in twelve years he'd be sixty; he wanted to leave a clean business to his grandchildren. Course there was a lot of money in negotiating for the Traction people, and a fellow had to look at things in a practical way, only--" He wriggled uncomfortably. He wanted to tell the Traction group what he thought of them. "Oh, he couldn't do it, not now. If he offended them this second time, they would crush him. But--" He was conscious that his line of progress seemed confused. He wondered what he would do with his future. He was still young; was he through with all adventuring? He felt that he had been trapped into the very net from which he had with such fury escaped and, supremest jest of all, been made to rejoice in the trapping. "They've licked me; licked me to a finish!" he whimpered. The house was peaceful, that evening, and he enjoyed a game of pinochle with his wife. He indignantly told the Tempter that he was content to do things in the good old fashioned way. The day after, he went to see the purchasing-agent of the Street Traction Company and they made plans for the secret purchase of lots along the Evanston Road. But as he drove to his office he struggled, "I'm going to run things and figure out things to suit myself--when I retire." VI Ted had come down from the University for the week-end. Though he no longer spoke of mechanical engineering and though he was reticent about his opinion of his instructors, he seemed no more reconciled to college, and his chief interest was his wireless telephone set. On Saturday evening he took Eunice Littlefield to a dance at Devon Woods. Babbitt had a glimpse of her, bouncing in the seat of the car, brilliant in a scarlet cloak over a frock of thinnest creamy silk. They two had not returned when the Babbitts went to bed, at half-past eleven. At a blurred indefinite time of late night Babbitt was awakened by the ring of the telephone and gloomily crawled down-stairs. Howard Littlefield was speaking: "George, Euny isn't back yet. Is Ted?" "No--at least his door is open--" "They ought to be home. Eunice said the dance would be over at midnight. What's the name of those people where they're going?" "Why, gosh, tell the truth, I don't know, Howard. It's some classmate of Ted's, out in Devon Woods. Don't see what we can do. Wait, I'll skip up and ask Myra if she knows their name." Babbitt turned on the light in Ted's room. It was a brown boyish room; disordered dresser, worn books, a high-school pennant, photographs of basket-ball teams and baseball teams. Ted was decidedly not there. Mrs. Babbitt, awakened, irritably observed that she certainly did not know the name of Ted's host, that it was late, that Howard Littlefield was but little better than a born fool, and that she was sleepy. But she remained awake and worrying while Babbitt, on the sleeping-porch, struggled back into sleep through the incessant soft rain of her remarks. It was after dawn when he was aroused by her shaking him and calling "George! George!" in something like horror. "Wha--wha--what is it?" "Come here quick and see. Be quiet!" She led him down the hall to the door of Ted's room and pushed it gently open. On the worn brown rug he saw a froth of rose-colored chiffon lingerie; on the sedate Morris chair a girl's silver slipper. And on the pillows were two sleepy heads--Ted's and Eunice's. Ted woke to grin, and to mutter with unconvincing defiance, "Good morning! Let me introduce my wife--Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Eunice Littlefield Babbitt, Esquiress." "Good God!" from Babbitt, and from his wife a long wailing, "You've gone and--" "We got married last evening. Wife! Sit up and say a pretty good morning to mother-in-law." But Eunice hid her shoulders and her charming wild hair under the pillow. By nine o'clock the assembly which was gathered about Ted and Eunice in the living-room included Mr. and Mrs. George Babbitt, Dr. and Mrs. Howard Littlefield, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Escott, Mr. and Mrs. Henry T. Thompson, and Tinka Babbitt, who was the only pleased member of the inquisition. A crackling shower of phrases filled the room: "At their age--" "Ought to be annulled--" "Never heard of such a thing in--" "Fault of both of them and--" "Keep it out of the papers--" "Ought to be packed off to school--" "Do something about it at once, and what I say is--" "Damn good old-fashioned spanking--" Worst of them all was Verona. "TED! Some way MUST be found to make you understand how dreadfully SERIOUS this is, instead of standing AROUND with that silly foolish SMILE on your face!" He began to revolt. "Gee whittakers, Rone, you got married yourself, didn't you?" "That's entirely different." "You bet it is! They didn't have to work on Eu and me with a chain and tackle to get us to hold hands!" "Now, young man, we'll have no more flippancy," old Henry Thompson ordered. "You listen to me." "You listen to Grandfather!" said Verona. "Yes, listen to your Grandfather!" said Mrs. Babbitt. "Ted, you listen to Mr. Thompson!" said Howard Littlefield. "Oh, for the love o' Mike, I am listening!" Ted shouted. "But you look here, all of you! I'm getting sick and tired of being the corpse in this post mortem! If you want to kill somebody, go kill the preacher that married us! Why, he stung me five dollars, and all the money I had in the world was six dollars and two bits. I'm getting just about enough of being hollered at!" A new voice, booming, authoritative, dominated the room. It was Babbitt. "Yuh, there's too darn many putting in their oar! Rone, you dry up. Howard and I are still pretty strong, and able to do our own cussing. Ted, come into the dining-room and we'll talk this over." In the dining-room, the door firmly closed, Babbitt walked to his son, put both hands on his shoulders. "You're more or less right. They all talk too much. Now what do you plan to do, old man?" "Gosh, dad, are you really going to be human?" "Well, I--Remember one time you called us 'the Babbitt men' and said we ought to stick together? I want to. I don't pretend to think this isn't serious. The way the cards are stacked against a young fellow to-day, I can't say I approve of early marriages. But you couldn't have married a better girl than Eunice; and way I figure it, Littlefield is darn lucky to get a Babbitt for a son-in-law! But what do you plan to do? Course you could go right ahead with the U., and when you'd finished--" "Dad, I can't stand it any more. Maybe it's all right for some fellows. Maybe I'll want to go back some day. But me, I want to get into mechanics. I think I'd get to be a good inventor. There's a fellow that would give me twenty dollars a week in a factory right now." "Well--" Babbitt crossed the floor, slowly, ponderously, seeming a little old. "I've always wanted you to have a college degree." He meditatively stamped across the floor again. "But I've never--Now, for heaven's sake, don't repeat this to your mother, or she'd remove what little hair I've got left, but practically, I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life! I don't know 's I've accomplished anything except just get along. I figure out I've made about a quarter of an inch out of a possible hundred rods. Well, maybe you'll carry things on further. I don't know. But I do get a kind of sneaking pleasure out of the fact that you knew what you wanted to do and did it. Well, those folks in there will try to bully you, and tame you down. Tell 'em to go to the devil! I'll back you. Take your factory job, if you want to. Don't be scared of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I've been. Go ahead, old man! The world is yours!" Arms about each other's shoulders, the Babbitt men marched into the living-room and faced the swooping family.

Chapter 34

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219154059/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/babbitt/summary/chapter-34

With Babbitt's support, The Good Citizens' League becomes one of the most powerful organizations in Zenith, ensuring that as many people as possible accept the gospel of free market capitalism. All over town, socialists are getting assaulted and their offices are being burned. During these weeks, his daughter Verona gets married to Ken Escott. Better yet, all of Babbitt's old business starts to flood back into his office. While all of this is happening, though, Babbitt promises himself that one day, he'll truly be his own man. Maybe after he retires, though. One Saturday evening, Babbitt's son Ted takes Eunice Littlefield out to a dance and the two of them don't come home. Both Babbitt and Myra are worried, but when the two finally show up, it turns out that they've gone off and had a midnight wedding. Immediately, Eunice's parents come over to the Babbitts' to denounce the marriage. Even some of the neighbors show up to weigh in. When things are at their most intense, though, Babbitt takes Ted aside privately and tells him he's proud of him for playing by his own rules. Put simply, Babbitt admires his son's ability to do what he thinks is right instead of conforming to the world around him. In this sense, Babbitt's hope for independence lives on in his son, even though he might have given up on himself.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Babbitt/section_4_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 10

chapter 10

{"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101002903/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/babbitt/summary-and-analysis/chapter-10", "summary": "One evening, Babbitt and his wife visit the Rieslings in their modern apartment. They spend an enjoyable few hours until Zilla begins her usual complaints about Paul, criticizing and nagging him until he becomes nasty. The Babbitts try to patch matters up, but have no success. At last, Babbitt can stand it no longer. Rising to his feet, he shouts a series of denunciations at Zilla, causing her to break into tears. He demands that Zilla allow Paul to go to Maine with him, and she sobbingly agrees. She begs Babbitt to understand that she is sorry, that she means no harm, and that she will try to be a better wife in the future. On the way home, Myra accuses Babbitt of bullying Zilla and suggests that his only motive for doing so was to feel noble and self-righteous. Babbitt denies the charge, but later he realizes that Myra may have been right. The thought troubles him for a while, but he finally decides that his over-sensitivity is due to his nervousness. After the trip to Maine, both he and Paul will be emotionally healthier. Like two excited young boys, Babbitt and Riesling purchase all their fishing and camping equipment, and after a few more days, they begin their journey. They board the New York Express and ride in the smoking car with a number of other businessmen. Paul remains aloof and spends most of his time reading; Babbitt, however, has a rousing, satisfying time with some newly met cronies, discussing politics, business problems, and telling off-color jokes.", "analysis": "This chapter contains another of Lewis' sharp-edged portraits of smart, modern living, here exemplified by the Rieslings' apartment. The hidden sink, the hidden refrigerator, and the hidden bed are all caricatured. But the tone of the satire changes as soon as Zilla Riesling begins speaking. Bleached and rigidly corseted, Zilla Riesling shrieks, gibbers, and howls. She bays; her voice is a \"dagger of corroded brass.\" She revels in ridiculing her husband's quietness; she is \"vicious in the name of virtue,\" and she wallows in melodramatic, egotistical shame after Babbitt chastises her. In contrast, Paul Riesling is a quiet man, rubbing his fingers and twitching his hands; Mrs. Babbitt is maternal, fussy but placid, and she condemns her avenging husband for his outburst; and Babbitt himself is smug about his success in taming the shrew. We enjoy watching Zilla receive Babbitt's tongue-lashing; it is a perfect punishment for her, and it does not matter that she is neurotically enjoying Babbitt's upbraiding; she is getting exactly what she deserves. Yet the feeling that justice is being meted out is destroyed when Babbitt, scolded by Myra, begins to doubt his own actions. He sulks, he is outraged; then, excusing his actions on the grounds of fatigue, he makes a final effort at speaking the truth: he did it for his friend Paul. Ending Chapter 10, Lewis zeroes in on the man's world. The man's world, according to literary cliche, is one of rough, potent virility; in this chapter, however, the man's world is a smoking car. Babbitt and the men whom he talks with in the car become, under Lewis' pen, big men, the \"council\"; they give \"verdicts\" and nod \"sagely.\" Babbitt and his friends seem quite serious about their newfound fraternity, but it is not a man's seriousness; it is the seriousness of little boys bragging to one another. These men, like Babbitt, are Lewis' satirical targets, his representatives of the American middle-class male, displaying all the bad qualities of their social group; they are patriotic to the point of being chauvinistic, poorly educated, materialistic, intolerant, and conformist in all their ideas. Basically, they have never bothered to examine or evaluate any of their beliefs, but they are supremely self-confident and sanctimonious in their ignorance."}

No apartment-house in Zenith had more resolutely experimented in condensation than the Revelstoke Arms, in which Paul and Zilla Riesling had a flat. By sliding the beds into low closets the bedrooms were converted into living-rooms. The kitchens were cupboards each containing an electric range, a copper sink, a glass refrigerator, and, very intermittently, a Balkan maid. Everything about the Arms was excessively modern, and everything was compressed--except the garages. The Babbitts were calling on the Rieslings at the Arms. It was a speculative venture to call on the Rieslings; interesting and sometimes disconcerting. Zilla was an active, strident, full-blown, high-bosomed blonde. When she condescended to be good-humored she was nervously amusing. Her comments on people were saltily satiric and penetrative of accepted hypocrisies. "That's so!" you said, and looked sheepish. She danced wildly, and called on the world to be merry, but in the midst of it she would turn indignant. She was always becoming indignant. Life was a plot against her and she exposed it furiously. She was affable to-night. She merely hinted that Orville Jones wore a toupe, that Mrs. T. Cholmondeley Frink's singing resembled a Ford going into high, and that the Hon. Otis Deeble, mayor of Zenith and candidate for Congress, was a flatulent fool (which was quite true). The Babbitts and Rieslings sat doubtfully on stone-hard brocade chairs in the small living-room of the flat, with its mantel unprovided with a fireplace, and its strip of heavy gilt fabric upon a glaring new player-piano, till Mrs. Riesling shrieked, "Come on! Let's put some pep in it! Get out your fiddle, Paul, and I'll try to make Georgie dance decently." The Babbitts were in earnest. They were plotting for the escape to Maine. But when Mrs. Babbitt hinted with plump smilingness, "Does Paul get as tired after the winter's work as Georgie does?" then Zilla remembered an injury; and when Zilla Riesling remembered an injury the world stopped till something had been done about it. "Does he get tired? No, he doesn't get tired, he just goes crazy, that's all! You think Paul is so reasonable, oh, yes, and he loves to make out he's a little lamb, but he's stubborn as a mule. Oh, if you had to live with him--! You'd find out how sweet he is! He just pretends to be meek so he can have his own way. And me, I get the credit for being a terrible old crank, but if I didn't blow up once in a while and get something started, we'd die of dry-rot. He never wants to go any place and--Why, last evening, just because the car was out of order--and that was his fault, too, because he ought to have taken it to the service-station and had the battery looked at--and he didn't want to go down to the movies on the trolley. But we went, and then there was one of those impudent conductors, and Paul wouldn't do a thing. "I was standing on the platform waiting for the people to let me into the car, and this beast, this conductor, hollered at me, 'Come on, you, move up!' Why, I've never had anybody speak to me that way in all my life! I was so astonished I just turned to him and said--I thought there must be some mistake, and so I said to him, perfectly pleasant, 'Were you speaking to me?' and he went on and bellowed at me, 'Yes, I was! You're keeping the whole car from starting!' he said, and then I saw he was one of these dirty ill-bred hogs that kindness is wasted on, and so I stopped and looked right at him, and I said, 'I--beg--your--pardon, I am not doing anything of the kind,' I said, 'it's the people ahead of me, who won't move up,' I said, 'and furthermore, let me tell you, young man, that you're a low-down, foul-mouthed, impertinent skunk,' I said, 'and you're no gentleman! I certainly intend to report you, and we'll see,' I said, 'whether a lady is to be insulted by any drunken bum that chooses to put on a ragged uniform, and I'd thank you,' I said, 'to keep your filthy abuse to yourself.' And then I waited for Paul to show he was half a man and come to my defense, and he just stood there and pretended he hadn't heard a word, and so I said to him, 'Well,' I said--" "Oh, cut it, cut it, Zill!" Paul groaned. "We all know I'm a mollycoddle, and you're a tender bud, and let's let it go at that." "Let it go?" Zilla's face was wrinkled like the Medusa, her voice was a dagger of corroded brass. She was full of the joy of righteousness and bad temper. She was a crusader and, like every crusader, she exulted in the opportunity to be vicious in the name of virtue. "Let it go? If people knew how many things I've let go--" "Oh, quit being such a bully." "Yes, a fine figure you'd cut if I didn't bully you! You'd lie abed till noon and play your idiotic fiddle till midnight! You're born lazy, and you're born shiftless, and you're born cowardly, Paul Riesling--" "Oh, now, don't say that, Zilla; you don't mean a word of it!" protested Mrs. Babbitt. "I will say that, and I mean every single last word of it!" "Oh, now, Zilla, the idea!" Mrs. Babbitt was maternal and fussy. She was no older than Zilla, but she seemed so--at first. She was placid and puffy and mature, where Zilla, at forty-five, was so bleached and tight-corseted that you knew only that she was older than she looked. "The idea of talking to poor Paul like that!" "Poor Paul is right! We'd both be poor, we'd be in the poorhouse, if I didn't jazz him up!" "Why, now, Zilla, Georgie and I were just saying how hard Paul's been working all year, and we were thinking it would be lovely if the Boys could run off by themselves. I've been coaxing George to go up to Maine ahead of the rest of us, and get the tired out of his system before we come, and I think it would be lovely if Paul could manage to get away and join him." At this exposure of his plot to escape, Paul was startled out of impassivity. He rubbed his fingers. His hands twitched. Zilla bayed, "Yes! You're lucky! You can let George go, and not have to watch him. Fat old Georgie! Never peeps at another woman! Hasn't got the spunk!" "The hell I haven't!" Babbitt was fervently defending his priceless immorality when Paul interrupted him--and Paul looked dangerous. He rose quickly; he said gently to Zilla: "I suppose you imply I have a lot of sweethearts." "Yes, I do!" "Well, then, my dear, since you ask for it--There hasn't been a time in the last ten years when I haven't found some nice little girl to comfort me, and as long as you continue your amiability I shall probably continue to deceive you. It isn't hard. You're so stupid." Zilla gibbered; she howled; words could not be distinguished in her slaver of abuse. Then the bland George F. Babbitt was transformed. If Paul was dangerous, if Zilla was a snake-locked fury, if the neat emotions suitable to the Revelstoke Arms had been slashed into raw hatreds, it was Babbitt who was the most formidable. He leaped up. He seemed very large. He seized Zilla's shoulder. The cautions of the broker were wiped from his face, and his voice was cruel: "I've had enough of all this damn nonsense! I've known you for twenty-five years, Zil, and I never knew you to miss a chance to take your disappointments out on Paul. You're not wicked. You're worse. You're a fool. And let me tell you that Paul is the finest boy God ever made. Every decent person is sick and tired of your taking advantage of being a woman and springing every mean innuendo you can think of. Who the hell are you that a person like Paul should have to ask your PERMISSION to go with me? You act like you were a combination of Queen Victoria and Cleopatra. You fool, can't you see how people snicker at you, and sneer at you?" Zilla was sobbing, "I've never--I've never--nobody ever talked to me like this in all my life!" "No, but that's the way they talk behind your back! Always! They say you're a scolding old woman. Old, by God!" That cowardly attack broke her. Her eyes were blank. She wept. But Babbitt glared stolidly. He felt that he was the all-powerful official in charge; that Paul and Mrs. Babbitt looked on him with awe; that he alone could handle this case. Zilla writhed. She begged, "Oh, they don't!" "They certainly do!" "I've been a bad woman! I'm terribly sorry! I'll kill myself! I'll do anything. Oh, I'll--What do you want?" She abased herself completely. Also, she enjoyed it. To the connoisseur of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough, melodramatic, egoistic humility. "I want you to let Paul beat it off to Maine with me," Babbitt demanded. "How can I help his going? You've just said I was an idiot and nobody paid any attention to me." "Oh, you can help it, all right, all right! What you got to do is to cut out hinting that the minute he gets out of your sight, he'll go chasing after some petticoat. Matter fact, that's the way you start the boy off wrong. You ought to have more sense--" "Oh, I will, honestly, I will, George. I know I was bad. Oh, forgive me, all of you, forgive me--" She enjoyed it. So did Babbitt. He condemned magnificently and forgave piously, and as he went parading out with his wife he was grandly explanatory to her: "Kind of a shame to bully Zilla, but course it was the only way to handle her. Gosh, I certainly did have her crawling!" She said calmly, "Yes. You were horrid. You were showing off. You were having a lovely time thinking what a great fine person you were!" "Well, by golly! Can you beat it! Of course I might of expected you to not stand by me! I might of expected you'd stick up for your own sex!" "Yes. Poor Zilla, she's so unhappy. She takes it out on Paul. She hasn't a single thing to do, in that little flat. And she broods too much. And she used to be so pretty and gay, and she resents losing it. And you were just as nasty and mean as you could be. I'm not a bit proud of you--or of Paul, boasting about his horrid love-affairs!" He was sulkily silent; he maintained his bad temper at a high level of outraged nobility all the four blocks home. At the door he left her, in self-approving haughtiness, and tramped the lawn. With a shock it was revealed to him: "Gosh, I wonder if she was right--if she was partly right?" Overwork must have flayed him to abnormal sensitiveness; it was one of the few times in his life when he had queried his eternal excellence; and he perceived the summer night, smelled the wet grass. Then: "I don't care! I've pulled it off. We're going to have our spree. And for Paul, I'd do anything." II They were buying their Maine tackle at Ijams Brothers', the Sporting Goods Mart, with the help of Willis Ijams, fellow member of the Boosters' Club. Babbitt was completely mad. He trumpeted and danced. He muttered to Paul, "Say, this is pretty good, eh? To be buying the stuff, eh? And good old Willis Ijams himself coming down on the floor to wait on us! Say, if those fellows that are getting their kit for the North Lakes knew we were going clear up to Maine, they'd have a fit, eh? . . . Well, come on, Brother Ijams--Willis, I mean. Here's your chance! We're a couple of easy marks! Whee! Let me at it! I'm going to buy out the store!" He gloated on fly-rods and gorgeous rubber hip-boots, on tents with celluloid windows and folding chairs and ice-boxes. He simple-heartedly wanted to buy all of them. It was the Paul whom he was always vaguely protecting who kept him from his drunken desires. But even Paul lightened when Willis Ijams, a salesman with poetry and diplomacy, discussed flies. "Now, of course, you boys know." he said, "the great scrap is between dry flies and wet flies. Personally, I'm for dry flies. More sporting." "That's so. Lots more sporting," fulminated Babbitt, who knew very little about flies either wet or dry. "Now if you'll take my advice, Georgie, you'll stock up well on these pale evening dims, and silver sedges, and red ants. Oh, boy, there's a fly, that red ant!" "You bet! That's what it is--a fly!" rejoiced Babbitt. "Yes, sir, that red ant," said Ijams, "is a real honest-to-God FLY!" "Oh, I guess ole Mr. Trout won't come a-hustling when I drop one of those red ants on the water!" asserted Babbitt, and his thick wrists made a rapturous motion of casting. "Yes, and the landlocked salmon will take it, too," said Ijams, who had never seen a landlocked salmon. "Salmon! Trout! Say, Paul, can you see Uncle George with his khaki pants on haulin' 'em in, some morning 'bout seven? Whee!" III They were on the New York express, incredibly bound for Maine, incredibly without their families. They were free, in a man's world, in the smoking-compartment of the Pullman. Outside the car window was a glaze of darkness stippled with the gold of infrequent mysterious lights. Babbitt was immensely conscious, in the sway and authoritative clatter of the train, of going, of going on. Leaning toward Paul he grunted, "Gosh, pretty nice to be hiking, eh?" The small room, with its walls of ocher-colored steel, was filled mostly with the sort of men he classified as the Best Fellows You'll Ever Meet--Real Good Mixers. There were four of them on the long seat; a fat man with a shrewd fat face, a knife-edged man in a green velour hat, a very young young man with an imitation amber cigarette-holder, and Babbitt. Facing them, on two movable leather chairs, were Paul and a lanky, old-fashioned man, very cunning, with wrinkles bracketing his mouth. They all read newspapers or trade journals, boot-and-shoe journals, crockery journals, and waited for the joys of conversation. It was the very young man, now making his first journey by Pullman, who began it. "Say, gee, I had a wild old time in Zenith!" he gloried. "Say, if a fellow knows the ropes there he can have as wild a time as he can in New York!" "Yuh, I bet you simply raised the old Ned. I figured you were a bad man when I saw you get on the train!" chuckled the fat one. The others delightedly laid down their papers. "Well, that's all right now! I guess I seen some things in the Arbor you never seen!" complained the boy. "Oh, I'll bet you did! I bet you lapped up the malted milk like a reg'lar little devil!" Then, the boy having served as introduction, they ignored him and charged into real talk. Only Paul, sitting by himself, reading at a serial story in a newspaper, failed to join them and all but Babbitt regarded him as a snob, an eccentric, a person of no spirit. Which of them said which has never been determined, and does not matter, since they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderous and brassy assurance. If it was not Babbitt who was delivering any given verdict, at least he was beaming on the chancellor who did deliver it. "At that, though," announced the first "they're selling quite some booze in Zenith. Guess they are everywhere. I don't know how you fellows feel about prohibition, but the way it strikes me is that it's a mighty beneficial thing for the poor zob that hasn't got any will-power but for fellows like us, it's an infringement of personal liberty." "That's a fact. Congress has got no right to interfere with a fellow's personal liberty," contended the second. A man came in from the car, but as all the seats were full he stood up while he smoked his cigarette. He was an Outsider; he was not one of the Old Families of the smoking-compartment. They looked upon him bleakly and, after trying to appear at ease by examining his chin in the mirror, he gave it up and went out in silence. "Just been making a trip through the South. Business conditions not very good down there," said one of the council. "Is that a fact! Not very good, eh?" "No, didn't strike me they were up to normal." "Not up to normal, eh?" "No, I wouldn't hardly say they were." The whole council nodded sagely and decided, "Yump, not hardly up to snuff." "Well, business conditions ain't what they ought to be out West, neither, not by a long shot." "That's a fact. And I guess the hotel business feels it. That's one good thing, though: these hotels that've been charging five bucks a day--yes, and maybe six--seven!--for a rotten room are going to be darn glad to get four, and maybe give you a little service." "That's a fact. Say, uh, speaknubout hotels, I hit the St. Francis at San Francisco for the first time, the other day, and, say, it certainly is a first-class place." "You're right, brother! The St. Francis is a swell place--absolutely A1." "That's a fact. I'm right with you. It's a first-class place." "Yuh, but say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Rippleton, in Chicago? I don't want to knock--I believe in boosting wherever you can--but say, of all the rotten dumps that pass 'emselves off as first-class hotels, that's the worst. I'm going to get those guys, one of these days, and I told 'em so. You know how I am--well, maybe you don't know, but I'm accustomed to first-class accommodations, and I'm perfectly willing to pay a reasonable price. I got into Chicago late the other night, and the Rippleton's near the station--I'd never been there before, but I says to the taxi-driver--I always believe in taking a taxi when you get in late; may cost a little more money, but, gosh, it's worth it when you got to be up early next morning and out selling a lot of crabs--and I said to him, 'Oh, just drive me over to the Rippleton.' "Well, we got there, and I breezed up to the desk and said to the clerk, 'Well, brother, got a nice room with bath for Cousin Bill?' Saaaay! You'd 'a' thought I'd sold him a second, or asked him to work on Yom Kippur! He hands me the cold-boiled stare and yaps, 'I dunno, friend, I'll see,' and he ducks behind the rigamajig they keep track of the rooms on. Well, I guess he called up the Credit Association and the American Security League to see if I was all right--he certainly took long enough--or maybe he just went to sleep; but finally he comes out and looks at me like it hurts him, and croaks, 'I think I can let you have a room with bath.' 'Well, that's awful nice of you--sorry to trouble you--how much 'll it set me back?' I says, real sweet. 'It'll cost you seven bucks a day, friend,' he says. "Well, it was late, and anyway, it went down on my expense-account--gosh, if I'd been paying it instead of the firm, I'd 'a' tramped the streets all night before I'd 'a' let any hick tavern stick me seven great big round dollars, believe me! So I lets it go at that. Well, the clerk wakes a nice young bell hop--fine lad--not a day over seventy-nine years old--fought at the Battle of Gettysburg and doesn't know it's over yet--thought I was one of the Confederates, I guess, from the way he looked at me--and Rip van Winkle took me up to something--I found out afterwards they called it a room, but first I thought there'd been some mistake--I thought they were putting me in the Salvation Army collection-box! At seven per each and every diem! Gosh!" "Yuh, I've heard the Rippleton was pretty cheesy. Now, when I go to Chicago I always stay at the Blackstone or the La Salle--first-class places." "Say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Birchdale at Terre Haute? How is it?" "Oh, the Birchdale is a first-class hotel." (Twelve minutes of conference on the state of hotels in South Bend, Flint, Dayton, Tulsa, Wichita, Fort Worth, Winona, Erie, Fargo, and Moose Jaw.) "Speaknubout prices," the man in the velour hat observed, fingering the elk-tooth on his heavy watch-chain, "I'd like to know where they get this stuff about clothes coming down. Now, you take this suit I got on." He pinched his trousers-leg. "Four years ago I paid forty-two fifty for it, and it was real sure-'nough value. Well, here the other day I went into a store back home and asked to see a suit, and the fellow yanks out some hand-me-downs that, honest, I wouldn't put on a hired man. Just out of curiosity I asks him, 'What you charging for that junk?' 'Junk,' he says, 'what d' you mean junk? That's a swell piece of goods, all wool--' Like hell! It was nice vegetable wool, right off the Ole Plantation! 'It's all wool,' he says, 'and we get sixty-seven ninety for it.' 'Oh, you do, do you!' I says. 'Not from me you don't,' I says, and I walks right out on him. You bet! I says to the wife, 'Well,' I said, 'as long as your strength holds out and you can go on putting a few more patches on papa's pants, we'll just pass up buying clothes."' "That's right, brother. And just look at collars, frinstance--" "Hey! Wait!" the fat man protested. "What's the matter with collars? I'm selling collars! D' you realize the cost of labor on collars is still two hundred and seven per cent. above--" They voted that if their old friend the fat man sold collars, then the price of collars was exactly what it should be; but all other clothing was tragically too expensive. They admired and loved one another now. They went profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that the purpose of manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be sold. To them, the Romantic Hero was no longer the knight, the wandering poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young district attorney, but the great sales-manager, who had an Analysis of Merchandizing Problems on his glass-topped desk, whose title of nobility was "Go-getter," and who devoted himself and all his young samurai to the cosmic purpose of Selling--not of selling anything in particular, for or to anybody in particular, but pure Selling. The shop-talk roused Paul Riesling. Though he was a player of violins and an interestingly unhappy husband, he was also a very able salesman of tar-roofing. He listened to the fat man's remarks on "the value of house-organs and bulletins as a method of jazzing-up the Boys out on the road;" and he himself offered one or two excellent thoughts on the use of two-cent stamps on circulars. Then he committed an offense against the holy law of the Clan of Good Fellows. He became highbrow. They were entering a city. On the outskirts they passed a steel-mill which flared in scarlet and orange flame that licked at the cadaverous stacks, at the iron-sheathed walls and sullen converters. "My Lord, look at that--beautiful!" said Paul. "You bet it's beautiful, friend. That's the Shelling-Horton Steel Plant, and they tell me old John Shelling made a good three million bones out of munitions during the war!" the man with the velour hat said reverently. "I didn't mean--I mean it's lovely the way the light pulls that picturesque yard, all littered with junk, right out of the darkness," said Paul. They stared at him, while Babbitt crowed, "Paul there has certainly got one great little eye for picturesque places and quaint sights and all that stuff. 'D of been an author or something if he hadn't gone into the roofing line." Paul looked annoyed. (Babbitt sometimes wondered if Paul appreciated his loyal boosting.) The man in the velour hat grunted, "Well, personally, I think Shelling-Horton keep their works awful dirty. Bum routing. But I don't suppose there's any law against calling 'em 'picturesque' if it gets you that way!" Paul sulkily returned to his newspaper and the conversation logically moved on to trains. "What time do we get into Pittsburg?" asked Babbitt. "Pittsburg? I think we get in at--no, that was last year's schedule--wait a minute--let's see--got a time-table right here." "I wonder if we're on time?" "Yuh, sure, we must be just about on time." "No, we aren't--we were seven minutes late, last station." "Were we? Straight? Why, gosh, I thought we were right on time." "No, we're about seven minutes late." "Yuh, that's right; seven minutes late." The porter entered--a negro in white jacket with brass buttons. "How late are we, George?" growled the fat man. "'Deed, I don't know, sir. I think we're about on time," said the porter, folding towels and deftly tossing them up on the rack above the washbowls. The council stared at him gloomily and when he was gone they wailed: "I don't know what's come over these niggers, nowadays. They never give you a civil answer." "That's a fact. They're getting so they don't have a single bit of respect for you. The old-fashioned coon was a fine old cuss--he knew his place--but these young dinges don't want to be porters or cotton-pickers. Oh, no! They got to be lawyers and professors and Lord knows what all! I tell you, it's becoming a pretty serious problem. We ought to get together and show the black man, yes, and the yellow man, his place. Now, I haven't got one particle of race-prejudice. I'm the first to be glad when a nigger succeeds--so long as he stays where he belongs and doesn't try to usurp the rightful authority and business ability of the white man." "That's the i.! And another thing we got to do," said the man with the velour hat (whose name was Koplinsky), "is to keep these damn foreigners out of the country. Thank the Lord, we're putting a limit on immigration. These Dagoes and Hunkies have got to learn that this is a white man's country, and they ain't wanted here. When we've assimilated the foreigners we got here now and learned 'em the principles of Americanism and turned 'em into regular folks, why then maybe we'll let in a few more." "You bet. That's a fact," they observed, and passed on to lighter topics. They rapidly reviewed motor-car prices, tire-mileage, oil-stocks, fishing, and the prospects for the wheat-crop in Dakota. But the fat man was impatient at this waste of time. He was a veteran traveler and free of illusions. Already he had asserted that he was "an old he-one." He leaned forward, gathered in their attention by his expression of sly humor, and grumbled, "Oh, hell, boys, let's cut out the formality and get down to the stories!" They became very lively and intimate. Paul and the boy vanished. The others slid forward on the long seat, unbuttoned their vests, thrust their feet up on the chairs, pulled the stately brass cuspidors nearer, and ran the green window-shade down on its little trolley, to shut them in from the uncomfortable strangeness of night. After each bark of laughter they cried, "Say, jever hear the one about--" Babbitt was expansive and virile. When the train stopped at an important station, the four men walked up and down the cement platform, under the vast smoky train-shed roof, like a stormy sky, under the elevated footways, beside crates of ducks and sides of beef, in the mystery of an unknown city. They strolled abreast, old friends and well content. At the long-drawn "Alllll aboarrrrrd"--like a mountain call at dusk--they hastened back into the smoking-compartment, and till two of the morning continued the droll tales, their eyes damp with cigar-smoke and laughter. When they parted they shook hands, and chuckled, "Well, sir, it's been a great session. Sorry to bust it up. Mighty glad to met you." Babbitt lay awake in the close hot tomb of his Pullman berth, shaking with remembrance of the fat man's limerick about the lady who wished to be wild. He raised the shade; he lay with a puffy arm tucked between his head and the skimpy pillow, looking out on the sliding silhouettes of trees, and village lamps like exclamation-points. He was very happy.

Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101002903/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/babbitt/summary-and-analysis/chapter-10

One evening, Babbitt and his wife visit the Rieslings in their modern apartment. They spend an enjoyable few hours until Zilla begins her usual complaints about Paul, criticizing and nagging him until he becomes nasty. The Babbitts try to patch matters up, but have no success. At last, Babbitt can stand it no longer. Rising to his feet, he shouts a series of denunciations at Zilla, causing her to break into tears. He demands that Zilla allow Paul to go to Maine with him, and she sobbingly agrees. She begs Babbitt to understand that she is sorry, that she means no harm, and that she will try to be a better wife in the future. On the way home, Myra accuses Babbitt of bullying Zilla and suggests that his only motive for doing so was to feel noble and self-righteous. Babbitt denies the charge, but later he realizes that Myra may have been right. The thought troubles him for a while, but he finally decides that his over-sensitivity is due to his nervousness. After the trip to Maine, both he and Paul will be emotionally healthier. Like two excited young boys, Babbitt and Riesling purchase all their fishing and camping equipment, and after a few more days, they begin their journey. They board the New York Express and ride in the smoking car with a number of other businessmen. Paul remains aloof and spends most of his time reading; Babbitt, however, has a rousing, satisfying time with some newly met cronies, discussing politics, business problems, and telling off-color jokes.

This chapter contains another of Lewis' sharp-edged portraits of smart, modern living, here exemplified by the Rieslings' apartment. The hidden sink, the hidden refrigerator, and the hidden bed are all caricatured. But the tone of the satire changes as soon as Zilla Riesling begins speaking. Bleached and rigidly corseted, Zilla Riesling shrieks, gibbers, and howls. She bays; her voice is a "dagger of corroded brass." She revels in ridiculing her husband's quietness; she is "vicious in the name of virtue," and she wallows in melodramatic, egotistical shame after Babbitt chastises her. In contrast, Paul Riesling is a quiet man, rubbing his fingers and twitching his hands; Mrs. Babbitt is maternal, fussy but placid, and she condemns her avenging husband for his outburst; and Babbitt himself is smug about his success in taming the shrew. We enjoy watching Zilla receive Babbitt's tongue-lashing; it is a perfect punishment for her, and it does not matter that she is neurotically enjoying Babbitt's upbraiding; she is getting exactly what she deserves. Yet the feeling that justice is being meted out is destroyed when Babbitt, scolded by Myra, begins to doubt his own actions. He sulks, he is outraged; then, excusing his actions on the grounds of fatigue, he makes a final effort at speaking the truth: he did it for his friend Paul. Ending Chapter 10, Lewis zeroes in on the man's world. The man's world, according to literary cliche, is one of rough, potent virility; in this chapter, however, the man's world is a smoking car. Babbitt and the men whom he talks with in the car become, under Lewis' pen, big men, the "council"; they give "verdicts" and nod "sagely." Babbitt and his friends seem quite serious about their newfound fraternity, but it is not a man's seriousness; it is the seriousness of little boys bragging to one another. These men, like Babbitt, are Lewis' satirical targets, his representatives of the American middle-class male, displaying all the bad qualities of their social group; they are patriotic to the point of being chauvinistic, poorly educated, materialistic, intolerant, and conformist in all their ideas. Basically, they have never bothered to examine or evaluate any of their beliefs, but they are supremely self-confident and sanctimonious in their ignorance.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Babbitt/section_11_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 21

chapter 21

{"name": "Chapter 21", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101002903/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/babbitt/summary-and-analysis/chapter-21", "summary": "Babbitt is an active member of the Zenith Boosters' Club, the local chapter of a businessman's organization with thousands of branches in the United States and several foreign countries. At the second weekly club luncheon in March, the annual election of officers is held. To Babbitt's great surprise and joy, he is elected vice-president. That same day, he receives horrifying news. Paul has shot Zilla; he is in jail and she is in the hospital.", "analysis": "This is our first look at the workings of the Boosters' Club that we have heard so much about, but Lewis does not linger unduly over its inanities. He has more important matters to investigate, and he uses the Boosters' Club scene primarily to show us the greatest moment in Babbitt's life: Babbitt's being elected vice-president of the organization. Certainly, Babbitt is not being honored without cause. If anyone were entitled to the office, it would seem to be George F. Babbitt. He exudes optimism, ready pleasantries, and good business sense. People like his store of positive-thinking platitudes, the platitudes he has used for years to insulate himself from unhappy reflection. In fact, Babbitt has encased himself in so many layers of these banal platitudes that he has almost successfully protected himself from all anxiety and despondency. Meanwhile, Chum Frink is using his high-pressure tactics on the club, selling them on the financial, rather than the aesthetic advantages of forming a symphony orchestra. Babbitt is being nominated, seconded, and declared vice president, when -- suddenly -- Paul Riesling shoots his wife. While Babbitt is reveling at the peak of his professional success, his best friend commits an act that is unoptimistic, unmanly, unpleasant, and not good for business."}

THE International Organization of Boosters' Clubs has become a world-force for optimism, manly pleasantry, and good business. Chapters are to be found now in thirty countries. Nine hundred and twenty of the thousand chapters, however, are in the United States. None of these is more ardent than the Zenith Boosters' Club. The second March lunch of the Zenith Boosters was the most important of the year, as it was to be followed by the annual election of officers. There was agitation abroad. The lunch was held in the ballroom of the O'Hearn House. As each of the four hundred Boosters entered he took from a wall-board a huge celluloid button announcing his name, his nick name, and his business. There was a fine of ten cents for calling a Fellow Booster by anything but his nickname at a lunch, and as Babbitt jovially checked his hat the air was radiant with shouts of "Hello, Chet!" and "How're you, Shorty!" and "Top o' the mornin', Mac!" They sat at friendly tables for eight, choosing places by lot. Babbitt was with Albert Boos the merchant tailor, Hector Seybolt of the Little Sweetheart Condensed Milk Company, Emil Wengert the jeweler, Professor Pumphrey of the Riteway Business College, Dr. Walter Gorbutt, Roy Teegarten the photographer, and Ben Berkey the photo-engraver. One of the merits of the Boosters' Club was that only two persons from each department of business were permitted to join, so that you at once encountered the Ideals of other occupations, and realized the metaphysical oneness of all occupations--plumbing and portrait-painting, medicine and the manufacture of chewing-gum. Babbitt's table was particularly happy to-day, because Professor Pumphrey had just had a birthday, and was therefore open to teasing. "Let's pump Pump about how old he is!" said Emil Wengert. "No, let's paddle him with a dancing-pump!" said Ben Berkey. But it was Babbitt who had the applause, with "Don't talk about pumps to that guy! The only pump he knows is a bottle! Honest, they tell me he's starting a class in home-brewing at the ole college!" At each place was the Boosters' Club booklet, listing the members. Though the object of the club was good-fellowship, yet they never lost sight of the importance of doing a little more business. After each name was the member's occupation. There were scores of advertisements in the booklet, and on one page the admonition: "There's no rule that you have to trade with your Fellow Boosters, but get wise, boy--what's the use of letting all this good money get outside of our happy fambly?" And at each place, to-day, there was a present; a card printed in artistic red and black: SERVICE AND BOOSTERISM Service finds its finest opportunity and development only in its broadest and deepest application and the consideration of its perpetual action upon reaction. I believe the highest type of Service, like the most progressive tenets of ethics, senses unceasingly and is motived by active adherence and loyalty to that which is the essential principle of Boosterism--Good Citizenship in all its factors and aspects. DAD PETERSEN. Compliments of Dadbury Petersen Advertising Corp. "Ads, not Fads, at Dad's" The Boosters all read Mr. Peterson's aphorism and said they understood it perfectly. The meeting opened with the regular weekly "stunts." Retiring President Vergil Gunch was in the chair, his stiff hair like a hedge, his voice like a brazen gong of festival. Members who had brought guests introduced them publicly. "This tall red-headed piece of misinformation is the sporting editor of the Press," said Willis Ijams; and H. H. Hazen, the druggist, chanted, "Boys, when you're on a long motor tour and finally get to a romantic spot or scene and draw up and remark to the wife, 'This is certainly a romantic place,' it sends a glow right up and down your vertebrae. Well, my guest to-day is from such a place, Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in the beautiful Southland, with memories of good old General Robert E. Lee and of that brave soul, John Brown who, like every good Booster, goes marching on--" There were two especially distinguished guests: the leading man of the "Bird of Paradise" company, playing this week at the Dodsworth Theater, and the mayor of Zenith, the Hon. Lucas Prout. Vergil Gunch thundered, "When we manage to grab this celebrated Thespian off his lovely aggregation of beautiful actresses--and I got to admit I butted right into his dressing-room and told him how the Boosters appreciated the high-class artistic performance he's giving us--and don't forget that the treasurer of the Dodsworth is a Booster and will appreciate our patronage--and when on top of that we yank Hizzonor out of his multifarious duties at City Hall, then I feel we've done ourselves proud, and Mr. Prout will now say a few words about the problems and duties--" By rising vote the Boosters decided which was the handsomest and which the ugliest guest, and to each of them was given a bunch of carnations, donated, President Gunch noted, by Brother Booster H. G. Yeager, the Jennifer Avenue florist. Each week, in rotation, four Boosters were privileged to obtain the pleasures of generosity and of publicity by donating goods or services to four fellow-members, chosen by lot. There was laughter, this week, when it was announced that one of the contributors was Barnabas Joy, the undertaker. Everybody whispered, "I can think of a coupla good guys to be buried if his donation is a free funeral!" Through all these diversions the Boosters were lunching on chicken croquettes, peas, fried potatoes, coffee, apple pie, and American cheese. Gunch did not lump the speeches. Presently he called on the visiting secretary of the Zenith Rotary Club, a rival organization. The secretary had the distinction of possessing State Motor Car License Number 5. The Rotary secretary laughingly admitted that wherever he drove in the state so low a number created a sensation, and "though it was pretty nice to have the honor, yet traffic cops remembered it only too darn well, and sometimes he didn't know but what he'd almost as soon have just plain B56,876 or something like that. Only let any doggone Booster try to get Number 5 away from a live Rotarian next year, and watch the fur fly! And if they'd permit him, he'd wind up by calling for a cheer for the Boosters and Rotarians and the Kiwanis all together!" Babbitt sighed to Professor Pumphrey, "Be pretty nice to have as low a number as that! Everybody 'd say, 'He must be an important guy!' Wonder how he got it? I'll bet he wined and dined the superintendent of the Motor License Bureau to a fare-you-well!" Then Chum Frink addressed them: "Some of you may feel that it's out of place here to talk on a strictly highbrow and artistic subject, but I want to come out flatfooted and ask you boys to O.K. the proposition of a Symphony Orchestra for Zenith. Now, where a lot of you make your mistake is in assuming that if you don't like classical music and all that junk, you ought to oppose it. Now, I want to confess that, though I'm a literary guy by profession, I don't care a rap for all this long-haired music. I'd rather listen to a good jazz band any time than to some piece by Beethoven that hasn't any more tune to it than a bunch of fighting cats, and you couldn't whistle it to save your life! But that isn't the point. Culture has become as necessary an adornment and advertisement for a city to-day as pavements or bank-clearances. It's Culture, in theaters and art-galleries and so on, that brings thousands of visitors to New York every year and, to be frank, for all our splendid attainments we haven't yet got the Culture of a New York or Chicago or Boston--or at least we don't get the credit for it. The thing to do then, as a live bunch of go-getters, is to CAPITALIZE CULTURE; to go right out and grab it. "Pictures and books are fine for those that have the time to study 'em, but they don't shoot out on the road and holler 'This is what little old Zenith can put up in the way of Culture.' That's precisely what a Symphony Orchestra does do. Look at the credit Minneapolis and Cincinnati get. An orchestra with first-class musickers and a swell conductor--and I believe we ought to do the thing up brown and get one of the highest-paid conductors on the market, providing he ain't a Hun--it goes right into Beantown and New York and Washington; it plays at the best theaters to the most cultured and moneyed people; it gives such class-advertising as a town can get in no other way; and the guy who is so short-sighted as to crab this orchestra proposition is passing up the chance to impress the glorious name of Zenith on some big New York millionaire that might-that might establish a branch factory here! "I could also go into the fact that for our daughters who show an interest in highbrow music and may want to teach it, having an A1 local organization is of great benefit, but let's keep this on a practical basis, and I call on you good brothers to whoop it up for Culture and a World-beating Symphony Orchestra!" They applauded. To a rustle of excitement President Gunch proclaimed, "Gentlemen, we will now proceed to the annual election of officers." For each of the six offices, three candidates had been chosen by a committee. The second name among the candidates for vice-president was Babbitt's. He was surprised. He looked self-conscious. His heart pounded. He was still more agitated when the ballots were counted and Gunch said, "It's a pleasure to announce that Georgie Babbitt will be the next assistant gavel-wielder. I know of no man who stands more stanchly for common sense and enterprise than good old George. Come on, let's give him our best long yell!" As they adjourned, a hundred men crushed in to slap his back. He had never known a higher moment. He drove away in a blur of wonder. He lunged into his office, chuckling to Miss McGoun, "Well, I guess you better congratulate your boss! Been elected vice-president of the Boosters!" He was disappointed. She answered only, "Yes--Oh, Mrs. Babbitt's been trying to get you on the 'phone." But the new salesman, Fritz Weilinger, said, "By golly, chief, say, that's great, that's perfectly great! I'm tickled to death! Congratulations!" Babbitt called the house, and crowed to his wife, "Heard you were trying to get me, Myra. Say, you got to hand it to little Georgie, this time! Better talk careful! You are now addressing the vice-president of the Boosters' Club!" "Oh, Georgie--" "Pretty nice, huh? Willis Ijams is the new president, but when he's away, little ole Georgie takes the gavel and whoops 'em up and introduces the speakers--no matter if they're the governor himself--and--" "George! Listen!" "--It puts him in solid with big men like Doc Dilling and--" "George! Paul Riesling--" "Yes, sure, I'll 'phone Paul and let him know about it right away." "Georgie! LISTEN! Paul's in jail. He shot his wife, he shot Zilla, this noon. She may not live."

Chapter 21

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101002903/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/babbitt/summary-and-analysis/chapter-21

Babbitt is an active member of the Zenith Boosters' Club, the local chapter of a businessman's organization with thousands of branches in the United States and several foreign countries. At the second weekly club luncheon in March, the annual election of officers is held. To Babbitt's great surprise and joy, he is elected vice-president. That same day, he receives horrifying news. Paul has shot Zilla; he is in jail and she is in the hospital.

This is our first look at the workings of the Boosters' Club that we have heard so much about, but Lewis does not linger unduly over its inanities. He has more important matters to investigate, and he uses the Boosters' Club scene primarily to show us the greatest moment in Babbitt's life: Babbitt's being elected vice-president of the organization. Certainly, Babbitt is not being honored without cause. If anyone were entitled to the office, it would seem to be George F. Babbitt. He exudes optimism, ready pleasantries, and good business sense. People like his store of positive-thinking platitudes, the platitudes he has used for years to insulate himself from unhappy reflection. In fact, Babbitt has encased himself in so many layers of these banal platitudes that he has almost successfully protected himself from all anxiety and despondency. Meanwhile, Chum Frink is using his high-pressure tactics on the club, selling them on the financial, rather than the aesthetic advantages of forming a symphony orchestra. Babbitt is being nominated, seconded, and declared vice president, when -- suddenly -- Paul Riesling shoots his wife. While Babbitt is reveling at the peak of his professional success, his best friend commits an act that is unoptimistic, unmanly, unpleasant, and not good for business.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Babbitt/section_13_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 24

chapter 24

{"name": "Chapter 24", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101002903/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/babbitt/summary-and-analysis/chapter-24", "summary": "Babbitt visits Paul at the penitentiary and sadly realizes that his friend's spirit is dead, even though there is life in his body. Babbitt also perceives that his own faith in the goodness of the world is dead. He unashamedly admits to himself that he is glad Myra is away. One day, a very chic and sophisticated woman of Babbitt's age comes into his office to rent an apartment. Her name is Tanis Judique. Babbitt is charmed by her and decides to show her the rooms himself. He spends several hours with Tanis, behaving in his most suave manner. The two have many things in common, and they part on friendly terms. Afterward, Babbitt regrets that he did not develop their relationship further. One of the manicurists in Babbitt's barber shop is a pretty young girl named Ida Putiak. For the first time, Babbitt notices that she is an attractive woman, and he makes a date with her. Later that week, he and Ida go to dinner together, but the girl is evidently not too stimulated by his company and, afterwards, she fights off his amorous advances. On his way home, Babbitt realizes that he is old enough to be Ida's father and that the poverty-stricken girl probably agreed to go out with him only in order to get a good meal. He is deeply ashamed of his foolish behavior.", "analysis": "Babbitt's visit to the prison accomplishes an important change. After Babbitt leaves Paul, he accepts the reality of his friend's imprisonment. Paul and he have been parted and, whether or not it is just, Babbitt is soured on the world, on success, and on the quality of his own life. He feels dreadfully old and tired. We sense that money and success are no longer as satisfying as they once were. Besides material comfort, a man needs a friend -- someone he can easily talk to, can relax with -- someone who appreciates him. Paul filled that role for Babbitt. Now, with Paul behind prison walls and Myra far away with her relatives, Babbitt is adrift and must look for someone real to hang onto, someone with whom to begin a new, full relationship. Propitiously, Tanis Judique -- slender, fortyish, rosy-cheeked, and smartly dressed -- is also looking for a certain something, but Tanis' quest is far simpler than Babbitt's. All she needs is an apartment. And since Babbitt deals in apartments and she in friendliness, the exchange is made. But Babbitt wants more. He pursues Tanis Judique with all the eagerness of an adolescent. He changes from being a disillusioned, aging businessman into a frisky gallant youngster, and we understand Babbitt's actions, even though Lewis makes them seem ridiculous. This is Babbitt's last fling before he surrenders to old age. He brags about being vice president of the Boosters' Club and having a man's responsibility in the \"world's work.\" He orders elevator boys about as if he were nobility. In his awkward way, although he doesn't realize it, Babbitt is asking this pretty woman to look at him, to tell him that he is still handsome, that she needs him and that she loves him. Tanis Judique's attentiveness sparks Babbitt's zeal so keenly that Babbitt methodically decides to \"practice\" his newly stirring masculinity on the manicure girl at the Pompeian Barber Shop. But if Babbitt seemed bumbling in the scene with Tanis, in this scene he is ludicrous and then, finally, pitiful. He \"quakes\" before the manicurist; he speaks jerkily and is forced to date her in a taxi; then, as a reward, he is kissed and patted readily and mechanically. He has exchanged the price of a dinner for the manicurist's easy intimacy. The confidence that Babbitt had when he left Tanis Judique is gone."}

I HIS visit to Paul was as unreal as his night of fog and questioning. Unseeing he went through prison corridors stinking of carbolic acid to a room lined with pale yellow settees pierced in rosettes, like the shoe-store benches he had known as a boy. The guard led in Paul. Above his uniform of linty gray, Paul's face was pale and without expression. He moved timorously in response to the guard's commands; he meekly pushed Babbitt's gifts of tobacco and magazines across the table to the guard for examination. He had nothing to say but "Oh, I'm getting used to it" and "I'm working in the tailor shop; the stuff hurts my fingers." Babbitt knew that in this place of death Paul was already dead. And as he pondered on the train home something in his own self seemed to have died: a loyal and vigorous faith in the goodness of the world, a fear of public disfavor, a pride in success. He was glad that his wife was away. He admitted it without justifying it. He did not care. II Her card read "Mrs. Daniel Judique." Babbitt knew of her as the widow of a wholesale paper-dealer. She must have been forty or forty-two but he thought her younger when he saw her in the office, that afternoon. She had come to inquire about renting an apartment, and he took her away from the unskilled girl accountant. He was nervously attracted by her smartness. She was a slender woman, in a black Swiss frock dotted with white, a cool-looking graceful frock. A broad black hat shaded her face. Her eyes were lustrous, her soft chin of an agreeable plumpness, and her cheeks an even rose. Babbitt wondered afterward if she was made up, but no man living knew less of such arts. She sat revolving her violet parasol. Her voice was appealing without being coy. "I wonder if you can help me?" "Be delighted." "I've looked everywhere and--I want a little flat, just a bedroom, or perhaps two, and sitting-room and kitchenette and bath, but I want one that really has some charm to it, not these dingy places or these new ones with terrible gaudy chandeliers. And I can't pay so dreadfully much. My name's Tanis Judique." "I think maybe I've got just the thing for you. Would you like to chase around and look at it now?" "Yes. I have a couple of hours." In the new Cavendish Apartments, Babbitt had a flat which he had been holding for Sidney Finkelstein, but at the thought of driving beside this agreeable woman he threw over his friend Finkelstein, and with a note of gallantry he proclaimed, "I'll let you see what I can do!" He dusted the seat of the car for her, and twice he risked death in showing off his driving. "You do know how to handle a car!" she said. He liked her voice. There was, he thought, music in it and a hint of culture, not a bouncing giggle like Louetta Swanson's. He boasted, "You know, there's a lot of these fellows that are so scared and drive so slow that they get in everybody's way. The safest driver is a fellow that knows how to handle his machine and yet isn't scared to speed up when it's necessary, don't you think so?" "Oh, yes!" "I bet you drive like a wiz." "Oh, no--I mean--not really. Of course, we had a car--I mean, before my husband passed on--and I used to make believe drive it, but I don't think any woman ever learns to drive like a man." "Well, now, there's some mighty good woman drivers." "Oh, of course, these women that try to imitate men, and play golf and everything, and ruin their complexions and spoil their hands!" "That's so. I never did like these mannish females." "I mean--of course, I admire them, dreadfully, and I feel so weak and useless beside them." "Oh, rats now! I bet you play the piano like a wiz." "Oh, no--I mean--not really." "Well, I'll bet you do!" He glanced at her smooth hands, her diamond and ruby rings. She caught the glance, snuggled her hands together with a kittenish curving of slim white fingers which delighted him, and yearned: "I do love to play--I mean--I like to drum on the piano, but I haven't had any real training. Mr. Judique used to say I would 've been a good pianist if I'd had any training, but then, I guess he was just flattering me." "I'll bet he wasn't! I'll bet you've got temperament." "Oh--Do you like music, Mr Babbitt?" "You bet I do! Only I don't know 's I care so much for all this classical stuff." "Oh, I do! I just love Chopin and all those." "Do you, honest? Well, of course, I go to lots of these highbrow concerts, but I do like a good jazz orchestra, right up on its toes, with the fellow that plays the bass fiddle spinning it around and beating it up with the bow." "Oh, I know. I do love good dance music. I love to dance, don't you, Mr. Babbitt?" "Sure, you bet. Not that I'm very darn good at it, though." "Oh, I'm sure you are. You ought to let me teach you. I can teach anybody to dance." "Would you give me a lesson some time?" "Indeed I would." "Better be careful, or I'll be taking you up on that proposition. I'll be coming up to your flat and making you give me that lesson." "Ye-es." She was not offended, but she was non-committal. He warned himself, "Have some sense now, you chump! Don't go making a fool of yourself again!" and with loftiness he discoursed: "I wish I could dance like some of these young fellows, but I'll tell you: I feel it's a man's place to take a full, you might say, a creative share in the world's work and mold conditions and have something to show for his life, don't you think so?" "Oh, I do!" "And so I have to sacrifice some of the things I might like to tackle, though I do, by golly, play about as good a game of golf as the next fellow!" "Oh, I'm sure you do.... Are you married?" "Uh--yes.... And, uh, of course official duties I'm the vice-president of the Boosters' Club, and I'm running one of the committees of the State Association of Real Estate Boards, and that means a lot of work and responsibility--and practically no gratitude for it." "Oh, I know! Public men never do get proper credit." They looked at each other with a high degree of mutual respect, and at the Cavendish Apartments he helped her out in a courtly manner, waved his hand at the house as though he were presenting it to her, and ponderously ordered the elevator boy to "hustle and get the keys." She stood close to him in the elevator, and he was stirred but cautious. It was a pretty flat, of white woodwork and soft blue walls. Mrs. Judique gushed with pleasure as she agreed to take it, and as they walked down the hall to the elevator she touched his sleeve, caroling, "Oh, I'm so glad I went to you! It's such a privilege to meet a man who really Understands. Oh! The flats SOME people have showed me!" He had a sharp instinctive belief that he could put his arm around her, but he rebuked himself and with excessive politeness he saw her to the car, drove her home. All the way back to his office he raged: "Glad I had some sense for once.... Curse it, I wish I'd tried. She's a darling! A corker! A reg'lar charmer! Lovely eyes and darling lips and that trim waist--never get sloppy, like some women.... No, no, no! She's a real cultured lady. One of the brightest little women I've met these many moons. Understands about Public Topics and--But, darn it, why didn't I try? . . . Tanis!" III He was harassed and puzzled by it, but he found that he was turning toward youth, as youth. The girl who especially disturbed him--though he had never spoken to her--was the last manicure girl on the right in the Pompeian Barber Shop. She was small, swift, black-haired, smiling. She was nineteen, perhaps, or twenty. She wore thin salmon-colored blouses which exhibited her shoulders and her black-ribboned camisoles. He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly hair-trim. As always, he felt disloyal at deserting his neighbor, the Reeves Building Barber Shop. Then, for the first time, he overthrew his sense of guilt. "Doggone it, I don't have to go here if I don't want to! I don't own the Reeves Building! These barbers got nothing on me! I'll doggone well get my hair cut where I doggone well want to! Don't want to hear anything more about it! I'm through standing by people--unless I want to. It doesn't get you anywhere. I'm through!" The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the Hotel Thornleigh, largest and most dynamically modern hotel in Zenith. Curving marble steps with a rail of polished brass led from the hotel-lobby down to the barber shop. The interior was of black and white and crimson tiles, with a sensational ceiling of burnished gold, and a fountain in which a massive nymph forever emptied a scarlet cornucopia. Forty barbers and nine manicure girls worked desperately, and at the door six colored porters lurked to greet the customers, to care reverently for their hats and collars, to lead them to a place of waiting where, on a carpet like a tropic isle in the stretch of white stone floor, were a dozen leather chairs and a table heaped with magazines. Babbitt's porter was an obsequious gray-haired negro who did him an honor highly esteemed in the land of Zenith--greeted him by name. Yet Babbitt was unhappy. His bright particular manicure girl was engaged. She was doing the nails of an overdressed man and giggling with him. Babbitt hated him. He thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful system of the Pompeian was inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted into a chair. About him was luxury, rich and delicate. One votary was having a violet-ray facial treatment, the next an oil shampoo. Boys wheeled about miraculous electrical massage-machines. The barbers snatched steaming towels from a machine like a howitzer of polished nickel and disdainfully flung them away after a second's use. On the vast marble shelf facing the chairs were hundreds of tonics, amber and ruby and emerald. It was flattering to Babbitt to have two personal slaves at once--the barber and the bootblack. He would have been completely happy if he could also have had the manicure girl. The barber snipped at his hair and asked his opinion of the Havre de Grace races, the baseball season, and Mayor Prout. The young negro bootblack hummed "The Camp Meeting Blues" and polished in rhythm to his tune, drawing the shiny shoe-rag so taut at each stroke that it snapped like a banjo string. The barber was an excellent salesman. He made Babbitt feel rich and important by his manner of inquiring, "What is your favorite tonic, sir? Have you time to-day, sir, for a facial massage? Your scalp is a little tight; shall I give you a scalp massage?" Babbitt's best thrill was in the shampoo. The barber made his hair creamy with thick soap, then (as Babbitt bent over the bowl, muffled in towels) drenched it with hot water which prickled along his scalp, and at last ran the water ice-cold. At the shock, the sudden burning cold on his skull, Babbitt's heart thumped, his chest heaved, and his spine was an electric wire. It was a sensation which broke the monotony of life. He looked grandly about the shop as he sat up. The barber obsequiously rubbed his wet hair and bound it in a towel as in a turban, so that Babbitt resembled a plump pink calif on an ingenious and adjustable throne. The barber begged (in the manner of one who was a good fellow yet was overwhelmed by the splendors of the calif), "How about a little Eldorado Oil Rub, sir? Very beneficial to the scalp, sir. Didn't I give you one the last time?" He hadn't, but Babbitt agreed, "Well, all right." With quaking eagerness he saw that his manicure girl was free. "I don't know, I guess I'll have a manicure after all," he droned, and excitedly watched her coming, dark-haired, smiling, tender, little. The manicuring would have to be finished at her table, and he would be able to talk to her without the barber listening. He waited contentedly, not trying to peep at her, while she filed his nails and the barber shaved him and smeared on his burning cheeks all the interesting mixtures which the pleasant minds of barbers have devised through the revolving ages. When the barber was done and he sat opposite the girl at her table, he admired the marble slab of it, admired the sunken set bowl with its tiny silver taps, and admired himself for being able to frequent so costly a place. When she withdrew his wet hand from the bowl, it was so sensitive from the warm soapy water that he was abnormally aware of the clasp of her firm little paw. He delighted in the pinkness and glossiness of her nails. Her hands seemed to him more adorable than Mrs. Judique's thin fingers, and more elegant. He had a certain ecstasy in the pain when she gnawed at the cuticle of his nails with a sharp knife. He struggled not to look at the outline of her young bosom and her shoulders, the more apparent under a film of pink chiffon. He was conscious of her as an exquisite thing, and when he tried to impress his personality on her he spoke as awkwardly as a country boy at his first party: "Well, kinda hot to be working to-day." "Oh, yes, it is hot. You cut your own nails, last time, didn't you!" "Ye-es, guess I must 've." "You always ought to go to a manicure." "Yes, maybe that's so. I--" "There's nothing looks so nice as nails that are looked after good. I always think that's the best way to spot a real gent. There was an auto salesman in here yesterday that claimed you could always tell a fellow's class by the car he drove, but I says to him, 'Don't be silly,' I says; 'the wisenheimers grab a look at a fellow's nails when they want to tell if he's a tin-horn or a real gent!"' "Yes, maybe there's something to that. Course, that is--with a pretty kiddy like you, a man can't help coming to get his mitts done." "Yeh, I may be a kid, but I'm a wise bird, and I know nice folks when I see um--I can read character at a glance--and I'd never talk so frank with a fellow if I couldn't see he was a nice fellow." She smiled. Her eyes seemed to him as gentle as April pools. With great seriousness he informed himself that "there were some roughnecks who would think that just because a girl was a manicure girl and maybe not awful well educated, she was no good, but as for him, he was a democrat, and understood people," and he stood by the assertion that this was a fine girl, a good girl--but not too uncomfortably good. He inquired in a voice quick with sympathy: "I suppose you have a lot of fellows who try to get fresh with you." "Say, gee, do I! Say, listen, there's some of these cigar-store sports that think because a girl's working in a barber shop, they can get away with anything. The things they saaaaaay! But, believe me, I know how to hop those birds! I just give um the north and south and ask um, 'Say, who do you think you're talking to?' and they fade away like love's young nightmare and oh, don't you want a box of nail-paste? It will keep the nails as shiny as when first manicured, harmless to apply and lasts for days." "Sure, I'll try some. Say--Say, it's funny; I've been coming here ever since the shop opened and--" With arch surprise. "--I don't believe I know your name!" "Don't you? My, that's funny! I don't know yours!" "Now you quit kidding me! What's the nice little name?" "Oh, it ain't so darn nice. I guess it's kind of kike. But my folks ain't kikes. My papa's papa was a nobleman in Poland, and there was a gentleman in here one day, he was kind of a count or something--" "Kind of a no-account, I guess you mean!" "Who's telling this, smarty? And he said he knew my papa's papa's folks in Poland and they had a dandy big house. Right on a lake!" Doubtfully, "Maybe you don't believe it?" "Sure. No. Really. Sure I do. Why not? Don't think I'm kidding you, honey, but every time I've noticed you I've said to myself, 'That kid has Blue Blood in her veins!'" "Did you, honest?" "Honest I did. Well, well, come on--now we're friends--what's the darling little name?" "Ida Putiak. It ain't so much-a-much of a name. I always say to Ma, I say, 'Ma, why didn't you name me Doloress or something with some class to it?'" "Well, now, I think it's a scrumptious name. Ida!" "I bet I know your name!" "Well, now, not necessarily. Of course--Oh, it isn't so specially well known." "Aren't you Mr. Sondheim that travels for the Krackajack Kitchen Kutlery Ko.?" "I am not! I'm Mr. Babbitt, the real-estate broker!" "Oh, excuse me! Oh, of course. You mean here in Zenith." "Yep." With the briskness of one whose feelings have been hurt. "Oh, sure. I've read your ads. They're swell." "Um, well--You might have read about my speeches." "Course I have! I don't get much time to read but--I guess you think I'm an awfully silly little nit!" "I think you're a little darling!" "Well--There's one nice thing about this job. It gives a girl a chance to meet some awfully nice gentlemen and improve her mind with conversation, and you get so you can read a guy's character at the first glance." "Look here, Ida; please don't think I'm getting fresh--" He was hotly reflecting that it would be humiliating to be rejected by this child, and dangerous to be accepted. If he took her to dinner, if he were seen by censorious friends--But he went on ardently: "Don't think I'm getting fresh if I suggest it would be nice for us to go out and have a little dinner together some evening." "I don't know as I ought to but--My gentleman-friend's always wanting to take me out. But maybe I could to-night." IV There was no reason, he assured himself, why he shouldn't have a quiet dinner with a poor girl who would benefit by association with an educated and mature person like himself. But, lest some one see them and not understand, he would take her to Biddlemeier's Inn, on the outskirts of the city. They would have a pleasant drive, this hot lonely evening, and he might hold her hand--no, he wouldn't even do that. Ida was complaisant; her bare shoulders showed it only too clearly; but he'd be hanged if he'd make love to her merely because she expected it. Then his car broke down; something had happened to the ignition. And he HAD to have the car this evening! Furiously he tested the spark-plugs, stared at the commutator. His angriest glower did not seem to stir the sulky car, and in disgrace it was hauled off to a garage. With a renewed thrill he thought of a taxicab. There was something at once wealthy and interestingly wicked about a taxicab. But when he met her, on a corner two blocks from the Hotel Thornleigh, she said, "A taxi? Why, I thought you owned a car!" "I do. Of course I do! But it's out of commission to-night." "Oh," she remarked, as one who had heard that tale before. All the way out to Biddlemeier's Inn he tried to talk as an old friend, but he could not pierce the wall of her words. With interminable indignation she narrated her retorts to "that fresh head-barber" and the drastic things she would do to him if he persisted in saying that she was "better at gassing than at hoof-paring." At Biddlemeier's Inn they were unable to get anything to drink. The head-waiter refused to understand who George F. Babbitt was. They sat steaming before a vast mixed grill, and made conversation about baseball. When he tried to hold Ida's hand she said with bright friendliness, "Careful! That fresh waiter is rubbering." But they came out into a treacherous summer night, the air lazy and a little moon above transfigured maples. "Let's drive some other place, where we can get a drink and dance!" he demanded. "Sure, some other night. But I promised Ma I'd be home early to-night." "Rats! It's too nice to go home." "I'd just love to, but Ma would give me fits." He was trembling. She was everything that was young and exquisite. He put his arm about her. She snuggled against his shoulder, unafraid, and he was triumphant. Then she ran down the steps of the Inn, singing, "Come on, Georgie, we'll have a nice drive and get cool." It was a night of lovers. All along the highway into Zenith, under the low and gentle moon, motors were parked and dim figures were clasped in revery. He held out hungry hands to Ida, and when she patted them he was grateful. There was no sense of struggle and transition; he kissed her and simply she responded to his kiss, they two behind the stolid back of the chauffeur. Her hat fell off, and she broke from his embrace to reach for it. "Oh, let it be!" he implored. "Huh? My hat? Not a chance!" He waited till she had pinned it on, then his arm sank about her. She drew away from it, and said with maternal soothing, "Now, don't be a silly boy! Mustn't make Ittle Mama scold! Just sit back, dearie, and see what a swell night it is. If you're a good boy, maybe I'll kiss you when we say nighty-night. Now give me a cigarette." He was solicitous about lighting her cigarette and inquiring as to her comfort. Then he sat as far from her as possible. He was cold with failure. No one could have told Babbitt that he was a fool with more vigor, precision, and intelligence than he himself displayed. He reflected that from the standpoint of the Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew he was a wicked man, and from the standpoint of Miss Ida Putiak, an old bore who had to be endured as the penalty attached to eating a large dinner. "Dearie, you aren't going to go and get peevish, are you?" She spoke pertly. He wanted to spank her. He brooded, "I don't have to take anything off this gutter-pup! Darn immigrant! Well, let's get it over as quick as we can, and sneak home and kick ourselves for the rest of the night." He snorted, "Huh? Me peevish? Why, you baby, why should I be peevish? Now, listen, Ida; listen to Uncle George. I want to put you wise about this scrapping with your head-barber all the time. I've had a lot of experience with employees, and let me tell you it doesn't pay to antagonize--" At the drab wooden house in which she lived he said good-night briefly and amiably, but as the taxicab drove off he was praying "Oh, my God!"

Chapter 24

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101002903/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/babbitt/summary-and-analysis/chapter-24

Babbitt visits Paul at the penitentiary and sadly realizes that his friend's spirit is dead, even though there is life in his body. Babbitt also perceives that his own faith in the goodness of the world is dead. He unashamedly admits to himself that he is glad Myra is away. One day, a very chic and sophisticated woman of Babbitt's age comes into his office to rent an apartment. Her name is Tanis Judique. Babbitt is charmed by her and decides to show her the rooms himself. He spends several hours with Tanis, behaving in his most suave manner. The two have many things in common, and they part on friendly terms. Afterward, Babbitt regrets that he did not develop their relationship further. One of the manicurists in Babbitt's barber shop is a pretty young girl named Ida Putiak. For the first time, Babbitt notices that she is an attractive woman, and he makes a date with her. Later that week, he and Ida go to dinner together, but the girl is evidently not too stimulated by his company and, afterwards, she fights off his amorous advances. On his way home, Babbitt realizes that he is old enough to be Ida's father and that the poverty-stricken girl probably agreed to go out with him only in order to get a good meal. He is deeply ashamed of his foolish behavior.

Babbitt's visit to the prison accomplishes an important change. After Babbitt leaves Paul, he accepts the reality of his friend's imprisonment. Paul and he have been parted and, whether or not it is just, Babbitt is soured on the world, on success, and on the quality of his own life. He feels dreadfully old and tired. We sense that money and success are no longer as satisfying as they once were. Besides material comfort, a man needs a friend -- someone he can easily talk to, can relax with -- someone who appreciates him. Paul filled that role for Babbitt. Now, with Paul behind prison walls and Myra far away with her relatives, Babbitt is adrift and must look for someone real to hang onto, someone with whom to begin a new, full relationship. Propitiously, Tanis Judique -- slender, fortyish, rosy-cheeked, and smartly dressed -- is also looking for a certain something, but Tanis' quest is far simpler than Babbitt's. All she needs is an apartment. And since Babbitt deals in apartments and she in friendliness, the exchange is made. But Babbitt wants more. He pursues Tanis Judique with all the eagerness of an adolescent. He changes from being a disillusioned, aging businessman into a frisky gallant youngster, and we understand Babbitt's actions, even though Lewis makes them seem ridiculous. This is Babbitt's last fling before he surrenders to old age. He brags about being vice president of the Boosters' Club and having a man's responsibility in the "world's work." He orders elevator boys about as if he were nobility. In his awkward way, although he doesn't realize it, Babbitt is asking this pretty woman to look at him, to tell him that he is still handsome, that she needs him and that she loves him. Tanis Judique's attentiveness sparks Babbitt's zeal so keenly that Babbitt methodically decides to "practice" his newly stirring masculinity on the manicure girl at the Pompeian Barber Shop. But if Babbitt seemed bumbling in the scene with Tanis, in this scene he is ludicrous and then, finally, pitiful. He "quakes" before the manicurist; he speaks jerkily and is forced to date her in a taxi; then, as a reward, he is kissed and patted readily and mechanically. He has exchanged the price of a dinner for the manicurist's easy intimacy. The confidence that Babbitt had when he left Tanis Judique is gone.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/chapters_30_to_31.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Babbitt/section_17_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapters 30-31

chapters 30-31

{"name": "Chapters 30-31", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101002903/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/babbitt/summary-and-analysis/chapters-3031", "summary": "When Myra returns home, Babbitt tries his best to be attentive and warm. He finds it difficult, however, to restrain his impatience and irritability when he is in Myra's company. He is torn between wanting to be a good husband and also wanting to continue his relationship with Tanis and her friends. Babbitt reassesses his wife in the light of all that has happened, and he discovers, to his surprise, that she too is an individual and a worthwhile human being. This realization, though, does not ease the situation. The Babbitts have frequent disagreements. One Sunday afternoon, Myra induces him to come to a meeting of the American New Thought League. Babbitt attends, but is far less inspired than she anticipated. After the meeting, they quarrel violently. Myra accuses him of having become callous and inconsiderate. Babbitt guiltily denies the charge, and he pities her bewilderment. He begins to wonder whether his new way of life has any real value, and to what end it will lead him. Thus, he apologizes to Myra and silently vows not to see Tanis anymore. During the next few days, Babbitt strictly adheres to his decision. Tanis telephones him at the office, but his responses are brusque and vague. She writes him a letter and asks him to pay her a visit. Babbitt does not want to go, but he finally keeps the appointment. At Tanis' apartment, she asks Babbitt's forgiveness for anything she may have done to offend him, but it is too late. Babbitt sees her now as a foolish middle-aged woman who no longer attracts him. He does not dislike her, but sees no point in continuing their relationship. Despite her pleas, Babbitt bids Tanis farewell and leaves.", "analysis": "Babbitt wonders if it might be easier to keep his vows, to stay home and behave himself if Myra were not at her sister's. Clearly, Babbitt is still confused; he would like to \"play around . . . yet not make a fool\" of himself. Alternatives seem to be either black or white; either he's a good citizen -- law-abiding and spotless -- or else he's a libertine. Babbitt is struggling for a life that is comfortable and available between these extremes. This need to transcend pigeon-holed categories and create a gray area for his existence is painfully revolutionary for Babbitt. Likewise, Myra reveals a new dimension of herself, one which we have never seen before. For whatever reason, Myra rebels: She is tired of planning meals, tired of cooking and sewing, tired of being Babbitt's wife and Ted and Verona's mother, and tired of trying to save pennies day after day after day. Babbitt feels guilty when he argues with Myra, but he feels proud that he has not seen Tanis for ten days. His pride does not last long; he flees to Tanis because of business worries, Myra's whining, and the children's troubles. He comes \"home\" to Tanis -- only to be confronted with Tanis' own barrage of troubles. Eventually, he is able to escape from Tanis and breathe the sweet air of freedom. Ironically, Babbitt is far from free. Tanis has her claim on him -- as do Myra, Ted, Verona, and the Zenith Athletic Club. Babbitt used to be the same man to all of them: he was George F. Babbitt, solid citizen and Booster. Now he is a stranger to them and to himself."}

I THE summer before, Mrs. Babbitt's letters had crackled with desire to return to Zenith. Now they said nothing of returning, but a wistful "I suppose everything is going on all right without me" among her dry chronicles of weather and sicknesses hinted to Babbitt that he hadn't been very urgent about her coming. He worried it: "If she were here, and I went on raising cain like I been doing, she'd have a fit. I got to get hold of myself. I got to learn to play around and yet not make a fool of myself. I can do it, too, if folks like Verg Gunch 'll let me alone, and Myra 'll stay away. But--poor kid, she sounds lonely. Lord, I don't want to hurt her!" Impulsively he wrote that they missed her, and her next letter said happily that she was coming home. He persuaded himself that he was eager to see her. He bought roses for the house, he ordered squab for dinner, he had the car cleaned and polished. All the way home from the station with her he was adequate in his accounts of Ted's success in basket-ball at the university, but before they reached Floral Heights there was nothing more to say, and already he felt the force of her stolidity, wondered whether he could remain a good husband and still sneak out of the house this evening for half an hour with the Bunch. When he had housed the car he blundered upstairs, into the familiar talcum-scented warmth of her presence, blaring, "Help you unpack your bag?" "No, I can do it." Slowly she turned, holding up a small box, and slowly she said, "I brought you a present, just a new cigar-case. I don't know if you'd care to have it--" She was the lonely girl, the brown appealing Myra Thompson, whom he had married, and he almost wept for pity as he kissed her and besought, "Oh, honey, honey, CARE to have it? Of course I do! I'm awful proud you brought it to me. And I needed a new case badly." He wondered how he would get rid of the case he had bought the week before. "And you really are glad to see me back?" "Why, you poor kiddy, what you been worrying about?" "Well, you didn't seem to miss me very much." By the time he had finished his stint of lying they were firmly bound again. By ten that evening it seemed improbable that she had ever been away. There was but one difference: the problem of remaining a respectable husband, a Floral Heights husband, yet seeing Tanis and the Bunch with frequency. He had promised to telephone to Tanis that evening, and now it was melodramatically impossible. He prowled about the telephone, impulsively thrusting out a hand to lift the receiver, but never quite daring to risk it. Nor could he find a reason for slipping down to the drug store on Smith Street, with its telephone-booth. He was laden with responsibility till he threw it off with the speculation: "Why the deuce should I fret so about not being able to 'phone Tanis? She can get along without me. I don't owe her anything. She's a fine girl, but I've given her just as much as she has me. . . . Oh, damn these women and the way they get you all tied up in complications!" II For a week he was attentive to his wife, took her to the theater, to dinner at the Littlefields'; then the old weary dodging and shifting began and at least two evenings a week he spent with the Bunch. He still made pretense of going to the Elks and to committee-meetings but less and less did he trouble to have his excuses interesting, less and less did she affect to believe them. He was certain that she knew he was associating with what Floral Heights called "a sporty crowd," yet neither of them acknowledged it. In matrimonial geography the distance between the first mute recognition of a break and the admission thereof is as great as the distance between the first naive faith and the first doubting. As he began to drift away he also began to see her as a human being, to like and dislike her instead of accepting her as a comparatively movable part of the furniture, and he compassionated that husband-and-wife relation which, in twenty-five years of married life, had become a separate and real entity. He recalled their high lights: the summer vacation in Virginia meadows under the blue wall of the mountains; their motor tour through Ohio, and the exploration of Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus; the birth of Verona; their building of this new house, planned to comfort them through a happy old age--chokingly they had said that it might be the last home either of them would ever have. Yet his most softening remembrance of these dear moments did not keep him from barking at dinner, "Yep, going out f' few hours. Don't sit up for me." He did not dare now to come home drunk, and though he rejoiced in his return to high morality and spoke with gravity to Pete and Fulton Bemis about their drinking, he prickled at Myra's unexpressed criticisms and sulkily meditated that a "fellow couldn't ever learn to handle himself if he was always bossed by a lot of women." He no longer wondered if Tanis wasn't a bit worn and sentimental. In contrast to the complacent Myra he saw her as swift and air-borne and radiant, a fire-spirit tenderly stooping to the hearth, and however pitifully he brooded on his wife, he longed to be with Tanis. Then Mrs. Babbitt tore the decent cloak from her unhappiness and the astounded male discovered that she was having a small determined rebellion of her own. III They were beside the fireless fire-place, in the evening. "Georgie," she said, "you haven't given me the list of your household expenses while I was away." "No, I--Haven't made it out yet." Very affably: "Gosh, we must try to keep down expenses this year." "That's so. I don't know where all the money goes to. I try to economize, but it just seems to evaporate." "I suppose I oughtn't to spend so much on cigars. Don't know but what I'll cut down my smoking, maybe cut it out entirely. I was thinking of a good way to do it, the other day: start on these cubeb cigarettes, and they'd kind of disgust me with smoking." "Oh, I do wish you would! It isn't that I care, but honestly, George, it is so bad for you to smoke so much. Don't you think you could reduce the amount? And George--I notice now, when you come home from these lodges and all, that sometimes you smell of whisky. Dearie, you know I don't worry so much about the moral side of it, but you have a weak stomach and you can't stand all this drinking." "Weak stomach, hell! I guess I can carry my booze about as well as most folks!" "Well, I do think you ought to be careful. Don't you see, dear, I don't want you to get sick." "Sick, rats! I'm not a baby! I guess I ain't going to get sick just because maybe once a week I shoot a highball! That's the trouble with women. They always exaggerate so." "George, I don't think you ought to talk that way when I'm just speaking for your own good." "I know, but gosh all fishhooks, that's the trouble with women! They're always criticizing and commenting and bringing things up, and then they say it's 'for your own good'!" "Why, George, that's not a nice way to talk, to answer me so short." "Well, I didn't mean to answer short, but gosh, talking as if I was a kindergarten brat, not able to tote one highball without calling for the St. Mary's ambulance! A fine idea you must have of me!" "Oh, it isn't that; it's just--I don't want to see you get sick and--My, I didn't know it was so late! Don't forget to give me those household accounts for the time while I was away." "Oh, thunder, what's the use of taking the trouble to make 'em out now? Let's just skip 'em for that period." "Why, George Babbitt, in all the years we've been married we've never failed to keep a complete account of every penny we've spent!" "No. Maybe that's the trouble with us." "What in the world do you mean?" "Oh, I don't mean anything, only--Sometimes I get so darn sick and tired of all this routine and the accounting at the office and expenses at home and fussing and stewing and fretting and wearing myself out worrying over a lot of junk that doesn't really mean a doggone thing, and being so careful and--Good Lord, what do you think I'm made for? I could have been a darn good orator, and here I fuss and fret and worry--" "Don't you suppose I ever get tired of fussing? I get so bored with ordering three meals a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and ruining my eyes over that horrid sewing-machine, and looking after your clothes and Rone's and Ted's and Tinka's and everybody's, and the laundry, and darning socks, and going down to the Piggly Wiggly to market, and bringing my basket home to save money on the cash-and-carry and--EVERYTHING!" "Well, gosh," with a certain astonishment, "I suppose maybe you do! But talk about--Here I have to be in the office every single day, while you can go out all afternoon and see folks and visit with the neighbors and do any blinkin' thing you want to!" "Yes, and a fine lot of good that does me! Just talking over the same old things with the same old crowd, while you have all sorts of interesting people coming in to see you at the office." "Interesting! Cranky old dames that want to know why I haven't rented their dear precious homes for about seven times their value, and bunch of old crabs panning the everlasting daylights out of me because they don't receive every cent of their rentals by three G.M. on the second of the month! Sure! Interesting! Just as interesting as the small pox!" "Now, George, I will not have you shouting at me that way!" "Well, it gets my goat the way women figure out that a man doesn't do a darn thing but sit on his chair and have lovey-dovey conferences with a lot of classy dames and give 'em the glad eye!" "I guess you manage to give them a glad enough eye when they do come in." "What do you mean? Mean I'm chasing flappers?" "I should hope not--at your age!" "Now you look here! You may not believe it--Of course all you see is fat little Georgie Babbitt. Sure! Handy man around the house! Fixes the furnace when the furnace-man doesn't show up, and pays the bills, but dull, awful dull! Well, you may not believe it, but there's some women that think old George Babbitt isn't such a bad scout! They think he's not so bad-looking, not so bad that it hurts anyway, and he's got a pretty good line of guff, and some even think he shakes a darn wicked Walkover at dancing!" "Yes." She spoke slowly. "I haven't much doubt that when I'm away you manage to find people who properly appreciate you." "Well, I just mean--" he protested, with a sound of denial. Then he was angered into semi-honesty. "You bet I do! I find plenty of folks, and doggone nice ones, that don't think I'm a weak-stomached baby!" "That's exactly what I was saying! You can run around with anybody you please, but I'm supposed to sit here and wait for you. You have the chance to get all sorts of culture and everything, and I just stay home--" "Well, gosh almighty, there's nothing to prevent your reading books and going to lectures and all that junk, is there?" "George, I told you, I won't have you shouting at me like that! I don't know what's come over you. You never used to speak to me in this cranky way." "I didn't mean to sound cranky, but gosh, it certainly makes me sore to get the blame because you don't keep up with things." "I'm going to! Will you help me?" "Sure. Anything I can do to help you in the culture-grabbing line--yours to oblige, G. F. Babbitt." "Very well then, I want you to go to Mrs. Mudge's New Thought meeting with me, next Sunday afternoon." "Mrs. Who's which?" "Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge. The field-lecturer for the American New Thought League. She's going to speak on 'Cultivating the Sun Spirit' before the League of the Higher Illumination, at the Thornleigh." "Oh, punk! New Thought! Hashed thought with a poached egg! 'Cultivating the--' It sounds like 'Why is a mouse when it spins?' That's a fine spiel for a good Presbyterian to be going to, when you can hear Doc Drew!" "Reverend Drew is a scholar and a pulpit orator and all that, but he hasn't got the Inner Ferment, as Mrs. Mudge calls it; he hasn't any inspiration for the New Era. Women need inspiration now. So I want you to come, as you promised." IV The Zenith branch of the League of the Higher Illumination met in the smaller ballroom at the Hotel Thornleigh, a refined apartment with pale green walls and plaster wreaths of roses, refined parquet flooring, and ultra-refined frail gilt chairs. Here were gathered sixty-five women and ten men. Most of the men slouched in their chairs and wriggled, while their wives sat rigidly at attention, but two of them--red-necked, meaty men--were as respectably devout as their wives. They were newly rich contractors who, having bought houses, motors, hand-painted pictures, and gentlemanliness, were now buying a refined ready-made philosophy. It had been a toss-up with them whether to buy New Thought, Christian Science, or a good standard high-church model of Episcopalianism. In the flesh, Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge fell somewhat short of a prophetic aspect. She was pony-built and plump, with the face of a haughty Pekingese, a button of a nose, and arms so short that, despite her most indignant endeavors, she could not clasp her hands in front of her as she sat on the platform waiting. Her frock of taffeta and green velvet, with three strings of glass beads, and large folding eye-glasses dangling from a black ribbon, was a triumph of refinement. Mrs. Mudge was introduced by the president of the League of the Higher Illumination, an oldish young woman with a yearning voice, white spats, and a mustache. She said that Mrs. Mudge would now make it plain to the simplest intellect how the Sun Spirit could be cultivated, and they who had been thinking about cultivating one would do well to treasure Mrs. Mudge's words, because even Zenith (and everybody knew that Zenith stood in the van of spiritual and New Thought progress) didn't often have the opportunity to sit at the feet of such an inspiring Optimist and Metaphysical Seer as Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, who had lived the Life of Wider Usefulness through Concentration, and in the Silence found those Secrets of Mental Control and the Inner Key which were immediately going to transform and bring Peace, Power, and Prosperity to the unhappy nations; and so, friends, would they for this precious gem-studded hour forget the Illusions of the Seeming Real, and in the actualization of the deep-lying Veritas pass, along with Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, to the Realm Beautiful. If Mrs. Mudge was rather pudgier than one would like one's swamis, yogis, seers, and initiates, yet her voice had the real professional note. It was refined and optimistic; it was overpoweringly calm; it flowed on relentlessly, without one comma, till Babbitt was hypnotized. Her favorite word was "always," which she pronounced olllllle-ways. Her principal gesture was a pontifical but thoroughly ladylike blessing with two stubby fingers. She explained about this matter of Spiritual Saturation: "There are those--" Of "those" she made a linked sweetness long drawn out; a far-off delicate call in a twilight minor. It chastely rebuked the restless husbands, yet brought them a message of healing. "There are those who have seen the rim and outer seeming of the Logos there are those who have glimpsed and in enthusiasm possessed themselves of some segment and portion of the Logos there are those who thus flicked but not penetrated and radioactivated by the Dynamis go always to and fro assertative that they possess and are possessed of the Logos and the Metaphysikos but this word I bring you this concept I enlarge that those that are not utter are not even inceptive and that holiness is in its definitive essence always always always whole-iness and--" It proved that the Essence of the Sun Spirit was Truth, but its Aura and Effluxion were Cheerfulness: "Face always the day with the dawn-laugh with the enthusiasm of the initiate who perceives that all works together in the revolutions of the Wheel and who answers the strictures of the Soured Souls of the Destructionists with a Glad Affirmation--" It went on for about an hour and seven minutes. At the end Mrs. Mudge spoke with more vigor and punctuation: "Now let me suggest to all of you the advantages of the Theosophical and Pantheistic Oriental Reading Circle, which I represent. Our object is to unite all the manifestations of the New Era into one cohesive whole--New Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy, Vedanta, Bahaism, and the other sparks from the one New Light. The subscription is but ten dollars a year, and for this mere pittance the members receive not only the monthly magazine, Pearls of Healing, but the privilege of sending right to the president, our revered Mother Dobbs, any questions regarding spiritual progress, matrimonial problems, health and well-being questions, financial difficulties, and--" They listened to her with adoring attention. They looked genteel. They looked ironed-out. They coughed politely, and crossed their legs with quietness, and in expensive linen handkerchiefs they blew their noses with a delicacy altogether optimistic and refined. As for Babbitt, he sat and suffered. When they were blessedly out in the air again, when they drove home through a wind smelling of snow and honest sun, he dared not speak. They had been too near to quarreling, these days. Mrs. Babbitt forced it: "Did you enjoy Mrs. Mudge's talk?" "Well I--What did you get out of it?" "Oh, it starts a person thinking. It gets you out of a routine of ordinary thoughts." "Well, I'll hand it to Opal she isn't ordinary, but gosh--Honest, did that stuff mean anything to you?" "Of course I'm not trained in metaphysics, and there was lots I couldn't quite grasp, but I did feel it was inspiring. And she speaks so readily. I do think you ought to have got something out of it." "Well, I didn't! I swear, I was simply astonished, the way those women lapped it up! Why the dickens they want to put in their time listening to all that blaa when they--" "It's certainly better for them than going to roadhouses and smoking and drinking!" "I don't know whether it is or not! Personally I don't see a whole lot of difference. In both cases they're trying to get away from themselves--most everybody is, these days, I guess. And I'd certainly get a whole lot more out of hoofing it in a good lively dance, even in some dive, than sitting looking as if my collar was too tight, and feeling too scared to spit, and listening to Opal chewing her words." "I'm sure you do! You're very fond of dives. No doubt you saw a lot of them while I was away!" "Look here! You been doing a hell of a lot of insinuating and hinting around lately, as if I were leading a double life or something, and I'm damn sick of it, and I don't want to hear anything more about it!" "Why, George Babbitt! Do you realize what you're saying? Why, George, in all our years together you've never talked to me like that!" "It's about time then!" "Lately you've been getting worse and worse, and now, finally, you're cursing and swearing at me and shouting at me, and your voice so ugly and hateful--I just shudder!" "Oh, rats, quit exaggerating! I wasn't shouting, or swearing either." "I wish you could hear your own voice! Maybe you don't realize how it sounds. But even so--You never used to talk like that. You simply COULDN'T talk this way if something dreadful hadn't happened to you." His mind was hard. With amazement he found that he wasn't particularly sorry. It was only with an effort that he made himself more agreeable: "Well, gosh, I didn't mean to get sore." "George, do you realize that we can't go on like this, getting farther and farther apart, and you ruder and ruder to me? I just don't know what's going to happen." He had a moment's pity for her bewilderment; he thought of how many deep and tender things would be hurt if they really "couldn't go on like this." But his pity was impersonal, and he was wondering, "Wouldn't it maybe be a good thing if--Not a divorce and all that, o' course, but kind of a little more independence?" While she looked at him pleadingly he drove on in a dreadful silence. I WHEN he was away from her, while he kicked about the garage and swept the snow off the running-board and examined a cracked hose-connection, he repented, he was alarmed and astonished that he could have flared out at his wife, and thought fondly how much more lasting she was than the flighty Bunch. He went in to mumble that he was "sorry, didn't mean to be grouchy," and to inquire as to her interest in movies. But in the darkness of the movie theater he brooded that he'd "gone and tied himself up to Myra all over again." He had some satisfaction in taking it out on Tanis Judique. "Hang Tanis anyway! Why'd she gone and got him into these mix-ups and made him all jumpy and nervous and cranky? Too many complications! Cut 'em out!" He wanted peace. For ten days he did not see Tanis nor telephone to her, and instantly she put upon him the compulsion which he hated. When he had stayed away from her for five days, hourly taking pride in his resoluteness and hourly picturing how greatly Tanis must miss him, Miss McGoun reported, "Mrs. Judique on the 'phone. Like t' speak t' you 'bout some repairs." Tanis was quick and quiet: "Mr. Babbitt? Oh, George, this is Tanis. I haven't seen you for weeks--days, anyway. You aren't sick, are you?" "No, just been terribly rushed. I, uh, I think there'll be a big revival of building this year. Got to, uh, got to work hard." "Of course, my man! I want you to. You know I'm terribly ambitious for you; much more than I am for myself. I just don't want you to forget poor Tanis. Will you call me up soon?" "Sure! Sure! You bet!" "Please do. I sha'n't call you again." He meditated, "Poor kid! . . . But gosh, she oughtn't to 'phone me at the office.... She's a wonder--sympathy 'ambitious for me.' . . . But gosh, I won't be made and compelled to call her up till I get ready. Darn these women, the way they make demands! It'll be one long old time before I see her! . . . But gosh, I'd like to see her to-night--sweet little thing.... Oh, cut that, son! Now you've broken away, be wise!" She did not telephone again, nor he, but after five more days she wrote to him: Have I offended you? You must know, dear, I didn't mean to. I'm so lonely and I need somebody to cheer me up. Why didn't you come to the nice party we had at Carrie's last evening I remember she invited you. Can't you come around here to-morrow Thur evening? I shall be alone and hope to see you. His reflections were numerous: "Doggone it, why can't she let me alone? Why can't women ever learn a fellow hates to be bulldozed? And they always take advantage of you by yelling how lonely they are. "Now that isn't nice of you, young fella. She's a fine, square, straight girl, and she does get lonely. She writes a swell hand. Nice-looking stationery. Plain. Refined. I guess I'll have to go see her. Well, thank God, I got till to-morrow night free of her, anyway. "She's nice but--Hang it, I won't be MADE to do things! I'm not married to her. No, nor by golly going to be! "Oh, rats, I suppose I better go see her." II Thursday, the to-morrow of Tanis's note, was full of emotional crises. At the Roughnecks' Table at the club, Verg Gunch talked of the Good Citizens' League and (it seemed to Babbitt) deliberately left him out of the invitations to join. Old Mat Penniman, the general utility man at Babbitt's office, had Troubles, and came in to groan about them: his oldest boy was "no good," his wife was sick, and he had quarreled with his brother-in-law. Conrad Lyte also had Troubles, and since Lyte was one of his best clients, Babbitt had to listen to them. Mr. Lyte, it appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia, and the garage had overcharged him. When Babbitt came home, everybody had Troubles: his wife was simultaneously thinking about discharging the impudent new maid, and worried lest the maid leave; and Tinka desired to denounce her teacher. "Oh, quit fussing!" Babbitt fussed. "You never hear me whining about my Troubles, and yet if you had to run a real-estate office--Why, to-day I found Miss Bannigan was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched my finger in my desk, and Lyte was in and just as unreasonable as ever." He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape to Tanis, he merely grumped to his wife, "Got to go out. Be back by eleven, should think." "Oh! You're going out again?" "Again! What do you mean 'again'! Haven't hardly been out of the house for a week!" "Are you--are you going to the Elks?" "Nope. Got to see some people." Though this time he heard his own voice and knew that it was curt, though she was looking at him with wide-eyed reproach, he stumped into the hall, jerked on his ulster and furlined gloves, and went out to start the car. He was relieved to find Tanis cheerful, unreproachful, and brilliant in a frock of brown net over gold tissue. "You poor man, having to come out on a night like this! It's terribly cold. Don't you think a small highball would be nice?" "Now, by golly, there's a woman with savvy! I think we could more or less stand a highball if it wasn't too long a one--not over a foot tall!" He kissed her with careless heartiness, he forgot the compulsion of her demands, he stretched in a large chair and felt that he had beautifully come home. He was suddenly loquacious; he told her what a noble and misunderstood man he was, and how superior to Pete, Fulton Bemis, and the other men of their acquaintance; and she, bending forward, chin in charming hand, brightly agreed. But when he forced himself to ask, "Well, honey, how's things with YOU," she took his duty-question seriously, and he discovered that she too had Troubles: "Oh, all right but--I did get so angry with Carrie. She told Minnie that I told her that Minnie was an awful tightwad, and Minnie told me Carrie had told her, and of course I told her I hadn't said anything of the kind, and then Carrie found Minnie had told me, and she was simply furious because Minnie had told me, and of course I was just boiling because Carrie had told her I'd told her, and then we all met up at Fulton's--his wife is away--thank heavens!--oh, there's the dandiest floor in his house to dance on--and we were all of us simply furious at each other and--Oh, I do hate that kind of a mix-up, don't you? I mean--it's so lacking in refinement, but--And Mother wants to come and stay with me for a whole month, and of course I do love her, I suppose I do, but honestly, she'll cramp my style something dreadful--she never can learn not to comment, and she always wants to know where I'm going when I go out evenings, and if I lie to her she always spies around and ferrets around and finds out where I've been, and then she looks like Patience on a Monument till I could just scream. And oh, I MUST tell you--You know I never talk about myself; I just hate people who do, don't you? But--I feel so stupid to-night, and I know I must be boring you with all this but--What would you do about Mother?" He gave her facile masculine advice. She was to put off her mother's stay. She was to tell Carrie to go to the deuce. For these valuable revelations she thanked him, and they ambled into the familiar gossip of the Bunch. Of what a sentimental fool was Carrie. Of what a lazy brat was Pete. Of how nice Fulton Bemis could be--"course lots of people think he's a regular old grouch when they meet him because he doesn't give 'em the glad hand the first crack out of the box, but when they get to know him, he's a corker." But as they had gone conscientiously through each of these analyses before, the conversation staggered. Babbitt tried to be intellectual and deal with General Topics. He said some thoroughly sound things about Disarmament, and broad-mindedness and liberalism; but it seemed to him that General Topics interested Tanis only when she could apply them to Pete, Carrie, or themselves. He was distressingly conscious of their silence. He tried to stir her into chattering again, but silence rose like a gray presence and hovered between them. "I, uh--" he labored. "It strikes me--it strikes me that unemployment is lessening." "Maybe Pete will get a decent job, then." Silence. Desperately he essayed, "What's the trouble, old honey? You seem kind of quiet to-night." "Am I? Oh, I'm not. But--do you really care whether I am or not?" "Care? Sure! Course I do!" "Do you really?" She swooped on him, sat on the arm of his chair. He hated the emotional drain of having to appear fond of her. He stroked her hand, smiled up at her dutifully, and sank back. "George, I wonder if you really like me at all?" "Course I do, silly." "Do you really, precious? Do you care a bit?" "Why certainly! You don't suppose I'd be here if I didn't!" "Now see here, young man, I won't have you speaking to me in that huffy way!" "I didn't mean to sound huffy. I just--" In injured and rather childish tones: "Gosh almighty, it makes me tired the way everybody says I sound huffy when I just talk natural! Do they expect me to sing it or something?" "Who do you mean by 'everybody'? How many other ladies have you been consoling?" "Look here now, I won't have this hinting!" Humbly: "I know, dear. I was only teasing. I know it didn't mean to talk huffy--it was just tired. Forgive bad Tanis. But say you love me, say it!" "I love you.... Course I do." "Yes, you do!" cynically. "Oh, darling, I don't mean to be rude but--I get so lonely. I feel so useless. Nobody needs me, nothing I can do for anybody. And you know, dear, I'm so active--I could be if there was something to do. And I am young, aren't I! I'm not an old thing! I'm not old and stupid, am I?" He had to assure her. She stroked his hair, and he had to look pleased under that touch, the more demanding in its beguiling softness. He was impatient. He wanted to flee out to a hard, sure, unemotional man-world. Through her delicate and caressing fingers she may have caught something of his shrugging distaste. She left him--he was for the moment buoyantly relieved--she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking beseechingly up at him. But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now as middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own thoughts, they rode him. She was old, he winced. Old! He noted how the soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin, below her eyes, at the base of her wrists. A patch of her throat had a minute roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser. Old! She was younger in years than himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up at him with rolling great eyes--as if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making love to him. He fretted inwardly, "I'm through with this asinine fooling around. I'm going to cut her out. She's a darn decent nice woman, and I don't want to hurt her, but it'll hurt a lot less to cut her right out, like a good clean surgical operation." He was on his feet. He was speaking urgently. By every rule of self-esteem, he had to prove to her, and to himself, that it was her fault. "I suppose maybe I'm kind of out of sorts to-night, but honest, honey, when I stayed away for a while to catch up on work and everything and figure out where I was at, you ought to have been cannier and waited till I came back. Can't you see, dear, when you MADE me come, I--being about an average bull-headed chump--my tendency was to resist? Listen, dear, I'm going now--" "Not for a while, precious! No!" "Yep. Right now. And then sometime we'll see about the future." "What do you mean, dear, 'about the future'? Have I done something I oughtn't to? Oh, I'm so dreadfully sorry!" He resolutely put his hands behind him. "Not a thing, God bless you, not a thing. You're as good as they make 'em. But it's just--Good Lord, do you realize I've got things to do in the world? I've got a business to attend to and, you might not believe it, but I've got a wife and kids that I'm awful fond of!" Then only during the murder he was committing was he able to feel nobly virtuous. "I want us to be friends but, gosh, I can't go on this way feeling I got to come up here every so often--" "Oh, darling, darling, and I've always told you, so carefully, that you were absolutely free. I just wanted you to come around when you were tired and wanted to talk to me, or when you could enjoy our parties--" She was so reasonable, she was so gently right! It took him an hour to make his escape, with nothing settled and everything horribly settled. In a barren freedom of icy Northern wind he sighed, "Thank God that's over! Poor Tanis, poor darling decent Tanis! But it is over. Absolute! I'm free!"

Chapters 30-31

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101002903/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/babbitt/summary-and-analysis/chapters-3031

When Myra returns home, Babbitt tries his best to be attentive and warm. He finds it difficult, however, to restrain his impatience and irritability when he is in Myra's company. He is torn between wanting to be a good husband and also wanting to continue his relationship with Tanis and her friends. Babbitt reassesses his wife in the light of all that has happened, and he discovers, to his surprise, that she too is an individual and a worthwhile human being. This realization, though, does not ease the situation. The Babbitts have frequent disagreements. One Sunday afternoon, Myra induces him to come to a meeting of the American New Thought League. Babbitt attends, but is far less inspired than she anticipated. After the meeting, they quarrel violently. Myra accuses him of having become callous and inconsiderate. Babbitt guiltily denies the charge, and he pities her bewilderment. He begins to wonder whether his new way of life has any real value, and to what end it will lead him. Thus, he apologizes to Myra and silently vows not to see Tanis anymore. During the next few days, Babbitt strictly adheres to his decision. Tanis telephones him at the office, but his responses are brusque and vague. She writes him a letter and asks him to pay her a visit. Babbitt does not want to go, but he finally keeps the appointment. At Tanis' apartment, she asks Babbitt's forgiveness for anything she may have done to offend him, but it is too late. Babbitt sees her now as a foolish middle-aged woman who no longer attracts him. He does not dislike her, but sees no point in continuing their relationship. Despite her pleas, Babbitt bids Tanis farewell and leaves.

Babbitt wonders if it might be easier to keep his vows, to stay home and behave himself if Myra were not at her sister's. Clearly, Babbitt is still confused; he would like to "play around . . . yet not make a fool" of himself. Alternatives seem to be either black or white; either he's a good citizen -- law-abiding and spotless -- or else he's a libertine. Babbitt is struggling for a life that is comfortable and available between these extremes. This need to transcend pigeon-holed categories and create a gray area for his existence is painfully revolutionary for Babbitt. Likewise, Myra reveals a new dimension of herself, one which we have never seen before. For whatever reason, Myra rebels: She is tired of planning meals, tired of cooking and sewing, tired of being Babbitt's wife and Ted and Verona's mother, and tired of trying to save pennies day after day after day. Babbitt feels guilty when he argues with Myra, but he feels proud that he has not seen Tanis for ten days. His pride does not last long; he flees to Tanis because of business worries, Myra's whining, and the children's troubles. He comes "home" to Tanis -- only to be confronted with Tanis' own barrage of troubles. Eventually, he is able to escape from Tanis and breathe the sweet air of freedom. Ironically, Babbitt is far from free. Tanis has her claim on him -- as do Myra, Ted, Verona, and the Zenith Athletic Club. Babbitt used to be the same man to all of them: he was George F. Babbitt, solid citizen and Booster. Now he is a stranger to them and to himself.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/3.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Babbitt/section_1_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210125061821/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/babbitt/section2/", "summary": "Babbitt disdains his neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Doppelbrau as \"Bohemian,\" but he respects his neighbor Howard Littlefield, Ph.D. as a \"Great Scholar.\" Littlefield \"proves\" to the businessman the \"perfection\" of \"their system of industry and manners\" with elaborate arguments grounded in \"history, economics, and the confessions of reformed radicals.\" Babbitt and Littlefield make empty small talk about the weather and the upcoming presidential nominations. Littlefield voices a keen desire for a solid \"business administration. \" On the way to work Babbitt stops for gas. The attendant makes Babbitt feel like a \"man of weight. \" They engage in an empty discussion of politics, and Babbitt states his desire for a solid \"business administration.\" Babbitt gives a ride downtown to someone waiting for the streetcars. The man praises Babbitt for his generosity and Babbitt complains of those who make too much fuss over their charitable efforts. He complains about the service of the streetcars, and the man chimes in. Babbitt quickly defers his earlier criticism and explains that the Traction Company faces many difficulties because of the labor union's call for higher wages. Babbitt speeds to work, admiring Zenith's slick, modern, bustling appearance. He dictates a letter to his secretary, Miss McGoun. She reminds him of his fairy girl, but Babbitt's longing discomfits him. Ever since he married, he was uneasy in his admiration of women other than his wife.", "analysis": "Commentary Lewis further parodies the middle-class obsession with material objects in describing Babbitt's worship of his car. For Babbitt, his car represents \"poetry and tragedy, love and heroism.\" Every other prosperous businessman in Zenith ascribes the same poetry, tragedy, love, and heroism to his car. Lewis portrays even the passions of the middle class as mass-produced standards of empty commercialism. Babbitt attaches fantasized notions of poetry, tragedy, love, and heroism to a material possession because his life actually lacks all these characteristics. Moreover, these notions sound like the undefined, empty buzzwords of advertising. Babbitt contemptuously views the Doppelbraus as \"Bohemian,\" a term for people, usually artists, who rebel against social conventions. Lewis's parody of middle-class values becomes even more ironic with his description of Babbitt's shallow understanding of this term. Babbitt disdains the Doppelbraus because they drink a lot of bootleg whiskey, drive fast, and engage in \"midnight music and obscene laughter.\" Babbitt, however, has no room to complain: He spent the previous night playing poker and drinking with Vergil Gunch. Throughout Babbitt, Lewis satirizes the middle class's double standard regarding Prohibition laws. The Doppelbraus probably see themselves as \"rebels,\" but their \"rebellion\" against social conventions sounds like it is a flirtation with liberal behavior rather than real opposition to middle class conformity. After all, they live in the same affluent neighbor as Babbitt, and since all the houses in Floral Heights are the same, they are not really that different from their neighbors. Littlefield is supposedly an intellectual, but just like Babbitt, he expresses little capacity to form original opinions. His title as a Ph.D. merely gives him the appearance of intellectual authority. Babbitt's later repetition of Littlefield's words is an ingenious method by which Lewis can demonstrate and mock the inanity of middle-class society."}

To George F. Babbitt, as to most prosperous citizens of Zenith, his motor car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism. The office was his pirate ship but the car his perilous excursion ashore. Among the tremendous crises of each day none was more dramatic than starting the engine. It was slow on cold mornings; there was the long, anxious whirr of the starter; and sometimes he had to drip ether into the cocks of the cylinders, which was so very interesting that at lunch he would chronicle it drop by drop, and orally calculate how much each drop had cost him. This morning he was darkly prepared to find something wrong, and he felt belittled when the mixture exploded sweet and strong, and the car didn't even brush the door-jamb, gouged and splintery with many bruisings by fenders, as he backed out of the garage. He was confused. He shouted "Morning!" to Sam Doppelbrau with more cordiality than he had intended. Babbitt's green and white Dutch Colonial house was one of three in that block on Chatham Road. To the left of it was the residence of Mr. Samuel Doppelbrau, secretary of an excellent firm of bathroom-fixture jobbers. His was a comfortable house with no architectural manners whatever; a large wooden box with a squat tower, a broad porch, and glossy paint yellow as a yolk. Babbitt disapproved of Mr. and Mrs. Doppelbrau as "Bohemian." From their house came midnight music and obscene laughter; there were neighborhood rumors of bootlegged whisky and fast motor rides. They furnished Babbitt with many happy evenings of discussion, during which he announced firmly, "I'm not strait-laced, and I don't mind seeing a fellow throw in a drink once in a while, but when it comes to deliberately trying to get away with a lot of hell-raising all the while like the Doppelbraus do, it's too rich for my blood!" On the other side of Babbitt lived Howard Littlefield, Ph.D., in a strictly modern house whereof the lower part was dark red tapestry brick, with a leaded oriel, the upper part of pale stucco like spattered clay, and the roof red-tiled. Littlefield was the Great Scholar of the neighborhood; the authority on everything in the world except babies, cooking, and motors. He was a Bachelor of Arts of Blodgett College, and a Doctor of Philosophy in economics of Yale. He was the employment-manager and publicity-counsel of the Zenith Street Traction Company. He could, on ten hours' notice, appear before the board of aldermen or the state legislature and prove, absolutely, with figures all in rows and with precedents from Poland and New Zealand, that the street-car company loved the Public and yearned over its employees; that all its stock was owned by Widows and Orphans; and that whatever it desired to do would benefit property-owners by increasing rental values, and help the poor by lowering rents. All his acquaintances turned to Littlefield when they desired to know the date of the battle of Saragossa, the definition of the word "sabotage," the future of the German mark, the translation of "hinc illae lachrimae," or the number of products of coal tar. He awed Babbitt by confessing that he often sat up till midnight reading the figures and footnotes in Government reports, or skimming (with amusement at the author's mistakes) the latest volumes of chemistry, archeology, and ichthyology. But Littlefield's great value was as a spiritual example. Despite his strange learnings he was as strict a Presbyterian and as firm a Republican as George F. Babbitt. He confirmed the business men in the faith. Where they knew only by passionate instinct that their system of industry and manners was perfect, Dr. Howard Littlefield proved it to them, out of history, economics, and the confessions of reformed radicals. Babbitt had a good deal of honest pride in being the neighbor of such a savant, and in Ted's intimacy with Eunice Littlefield. At sixteen Eunice was interested in no statistics save those regarding the ages and salaries of motion-picture stars, but--as Babbitt definitively put it--"she was her father's daughter." The difference between a light man like Sam Doppelbrau and a really fine character like Littlefield was revealed in their appearances. Doppelbrau was disturbingly young for a man of forty-eight. He wore his derby on the back of his head, and his red face was wrinkled with meaningless laughter. But Littlefield was old for a man of forty-two. He was tall, broad, thick; his gold-rimmed spectacles were engulfed in the folds of his long face; his hair was a tossed mass of greasy blackness; he puffed and rumbled as he talked; his Phi Beta Kappa key shone against a spotty black vest; he smelled of old pipes; he was altogether funereal and archidiaconal; and to real-estate brokerage and the jobbing of bathroom-fixtures he added an aroma of sanctity. This morning he was in front of his house, inspecting the grass parking between the curb and the broad cement sidewalk. Babbitt stopped his car and leaned out to shout "Mornin'!" Littlefield lumbered over and stood with one foot up on the running-board. "Fine morning," said Babbitt, lighting--illegally early--his second cigar of the day. "Yes, it's a mighty fine morning," said Littlefield. "Spring coming along fast now." "Yes, it's real spring now, all right," said Littlefield. "Still cold nights, though. Had to have a couple blankets, on the sleeping-porch last night." "Yes, it wasn't any too warm last night," said Littlefield. "But I don't anticipate we'll have any more real cold weather now." "No, but still, there was snow at Tiflis, Montana, yesterday," said the Scholar, "and you remember the blizzard they had out West three days ago--thirty inches of snow at Greeley, Colorado--and two years ago we had a snow-squall right here in Zenith on the twenty-fifth of April." "Is that a fact! Say, old man, what do you think about the Republican candidate? Who'll they nominate for president? Don't you think it's about time we had a real business administration?" "In my opinion, what the country needs, first and foremost, is a good, sound, business-like conduct of its affairs. What we need is--a business administration!" said Littlefield. "I'm glad to hear you say that! I certainly am glad to hear you say that! I didn't know how you'd feel about it, with all your associations with colleges and so on, and I'm glad you feel that way. What the country needs--just at this present juncture--is neither a college president nor a lot of monkeying with foreign affairs, but a good--sound economical--business--administration, that will give us a chance to have something like a decent turnover." "Yes. It isn't generally realized that even in China the schoolmen are giving way to more practical men, and of course you can see what that implies." "Is that a fact! Well, well!" breathed Babbitt, feeling much calmer, and much happier about the way things were going in the world. "Well, it's been nice to stop and parleyvoo a second. Guess I'll have to get down to the office now and sting a few clients. Well, so long, old man. See you tonight. So long." II They had labored, these solid citizens. Twenty years before, the hill on which Floral Heights was spread, with its bright roofs and immaculate turf and amazing comfort, had been a wilderness of rank second-growth elms and oaks and maples. Along the precise streets were still a few wooded vacant lots, and the fragment of an old orchard. It was brilliant to-day; the apple boughs were lit with fresh leaves like torches of green fire. The first white of cherry blossoms flickered down a gully, and robins clamored. Babbitt sniffed the earth, chuckled at the hysteric robins as he would have chuckled at kittens or at a comic movie. He was, to the eye, the perfect office-going executive--a well-fed man in a correct brown soft hat and frameless spectacles, smoking a large cigar, driving a good motor along a semi-suburban parkway. But in him was some genius of authentic love for his neighborhood, his city, his clan. The winter was over; the time was come for the building, the visible growth, which to him was glory. He lost his dawn depression; he was ruddily cheerful when he stopped on Smith Street to leave the brown trousers, and to have the gasoline-tank filled. The familiarity of the rite fortified him: the sight of the tall red iron gasoline-pump, the hollow-tile and terra-cotta garage, the window full of the most agreeable accessories--shiny casings, spark-plugs with immaculate porcelain jackets tire-chains of gold and silver. He was flattered by the friendliness with which Sylvester Moon, dirtiest and most skilled of motor mechanics, came out to serve him. "Mornin', Mr. Babbitt!" said Moon, and Babbitt felt himself a person of importance, one whose name even busy garagemen remembered--not one of these cheap-sports flying around in flivvers. He admired the ingenuity of the automatic dial, clicking off gallon by gallon; admired the smartness of the sign: "A fill in time saves getting stuck--gas to-day 31 cents"; admired the rhythmic gurgle of the gasoline as it flowed into the tank, and the mechanical regularity with which Moon turned the handle. "How much we takin' to-day?" asked Moon, in a manner which combined the independence of the great specialist, the friendliness of a familiar gossip, and respect for a man of weight in the community, like George F. Babbitt. "Fill 'er up." "Who you rootin' for for Republican candidate, Mr. Babbitt?" "It's too early to make any predictions yet. After all, there's still a good month and two weeks--no, three weeks--must be almost three weeks--well, there's more than six weeks in all before the Republican convention, and I feel a fellow ought to keep an open mind and give all the candidates a show--look 'em all over and size 'em up, and then decide carefully." "That's a fact, Mr. Babbitt." "But I'll tell you--and my stand on this is just the same as it was four years ago, and eight years ago, and it'll be my stand four years from now--yes, and eight years from now! What I tell everybody, and it can't be too generally understood, is that what we need first, last, and all the time is a good, sound business administration!" "By golly, that's right!" "How do those front tires look to you?" "Fine! Fine! Wouldn't be much work for garages if everybody looked after their car the way you do." "Well, I do try and have some sense about it." Babbitt paid his bill, said adequately, "Oh, keep the change," and drove off in an ecstasy of honest self-appreciation. It was with the manner of a Good Samaritan that he shouted at a respectable-looking man who was waiting for a trolley car, "Have a lift?" As the man climbed in Babbitt condescended, "Going clear down-town? Whenever I see a fellow waiting for a trolley, I always make it a practice to give him a lift--unless, of course, he looks like a bum." "Wish there were more folks that were so generous with their machines," dutifully said the victim of benevolence. "Oh, no, 'tain't a question of generosity, hardly. Fact, I always feel--I was saying to my son just the other night--it's a fellow's duty to share the good things of this world with his neighbors, and it gets my goat when a fellow gets stuck on himself and goes around tooting his horn merely because he's charitable." The victim seemed unable to find the right answer. Babbitt boomed on: "Pretty punk service the Company giving us on these car-lines. Nonsense to only run the Portland Road cars once every seven minutes. Fellow gets mighty cold on a winter morning, waiting on a street corner with the wind nipping at his ankles." "That's right. The Street Car Company don't care a damn what kind of a deal they give us. Something ought to happen to 'em." Babbitt was alarmed. "But still, of course it won't do to just keep knocking the Traction Company and not realize the difficulties they're operating under, like these cranks that want municipal ownership. The way these workmen hold up the Company for high wages is simply a crime, and of course the burden falls on you and me that have to pay a seven-cent fare! Fact, there's remarkable service on all their lines--considering." "Well--" uneasily. "Darn fine morning," Babbitt explained. "Spring coming along fast." "Yes, it's real spring now." The victim had no originality, no wit, and Babbitt fell into a great silence and devoted himself to the game of beating trolley cars to the corner: a spurt, a tail-chase, nervous speeding between the huge yellow side of the trolley and the jagged row of parked motors, shooting past just as the trolley stopped--a rare game and valiant. And all the while he was conscious of the loveliness of Zenith. For weeks together he noticed nothing but clients and the vexing To Rent signs of rival brokers. To-day, in mysterious malaise, he raged or rejoiced with equal nervous swiftness, and to-day the light of spring was so winsome that he lifted his head and saw. He admired each district along his familiar route to the office: The bungalows and shrubs and winding irregular drive ways of Floral Heights. The one-story shops on Smith Street, a glare of plate-glass and new yellow brick; groceries and laundries and drug-stores to supply the more immediate needs of East Side housewives. The market gardens in Dutch Hollow, their shanties patched with corrugated iron and stolen doors. Billboards with crimson goddesses nine feet tall advertising cinema films, pipe tobacco, and talcum powder. The old "mansions" along Ninth Street, S. E., like aged dandies in filthy linen; wooden castles turned into boarding-houses, with muddy walks and rusty hedges, jostled by fast-intruding garages, cheap apartment-houses, and fruit-stands conducted by bland, sleek Athenians. Across the belt of railroad-tracks, factories with high-perched water-tanks and tall stacks-factories producing condensed milk, paper boxes, lighting-fixtures, motor cars. Then the business center, the thickening darting traffic, the crammed trolleys unloading, and high doorways of marble and polished granite. It was big--and Babbitt respected bigness in anything; in mountains, jewels, muscles, wealth, or words. He was, for a spring-enchanted moment, the lyric and almost unselfish lover of Zenith. He thought of the outlying factory suburbs; of the Chaloosa River with its strangely eroded banks; of the orchard-dappled Tonawanda Hills to the North, and all the fat dairy land and big barns and comfortable herds. As he dropped his passenger he cried, "Gosh, I feel pretty good this morning!" III Epochal as starting the car was the drama of parking it before he entered his office. As he turned from Oberlin Avenue round the corner into Third Street, N.E., he peered ahead for a space in the line of parked cars. He angrily just missed a space as a rival driver slid into it. Ahead, another car was leaving the curb, and Babbitt slowed up, holding out his hand to the cars pressing on him from behind, agitatedly motioning an old woman to go ahead, avoiding a truck which bore down on him from one side. With front wheels nicking the wrought-steel bumper of the car in front, he stopped, feverishly cramped his steering-wheel, slid back into the vacant space and, with eighteen inches of room, manoeuvered to bring the car level with the curb. It was a virile adventure masterfully executed. With satisfaction he locked a thief-proof steel wedge on the front wheel, and crossed the street to his real-estate office on the ground floor of the Reeves Building. The Reeves Building was as fireproof as a rock and as efficient as a typewriter; fourteen stories of yellow pressed brick, with clean, upright, unornamented lines. It was filled with the offices of lawyers, doctors, agents for machinery, for emery wheels, for wire fencing, for mining-stock. Their gold signs shone on the windows. The entrance was too modern to be flamboyant with pillars; it was quiet, shrewd, neat. Along the Third Street side were a Western Union Telegraph Office, the Blue Delft Candy Shop, Shotwell's Stationery Shop, and the Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company. Babbitt could have entered his office from the street, as customers did, but it made him feel an insider to go through the corridor of the building and enter by the back door. Thus he was greeted by the villagers. The little unknown people who inhabited the Reeves Building corridors--elevator-runners, starter, engineers, superintendent, and the doubtful-looking lame man who conducted the news and cigar stand--were in no way city-dwellers. They were rustics, living in a constricted valley, interested only in one another and in The Building. Their Main Street was the entrance hall, with its stone floor, severe marble ceiling, and the inner windows of the shops. The liveliest place on the street was the Reeves Building Barber Shop, but this was also Babbitt's one embarrassment. Himself, he patronized the glittering Pompeian Barber Shop in the Hotel Thornleigh, and every time he passed the Reeves shop--ten times a day, a hundred times--he felt untrue to his own village. Now, as one of the squirearchy, greeted with honorable salutations by the villagers, he marched into his office, and peace and dignity were upon him, and the morning's dissonances all unheard. They were heard again, immediately. Stanley Graff, the outside salesman, was talking on the telephone with tragic lack of that firm manner which disciplines clients: "Say, uh, I think I got just the house that would suit you--the Percival House, in Linton.... Oh, you've seen it. Well, how'd it strike you?... Huh? ...Oh," irresolutely, "oh, I see." As Babbitt marched into his private room, a coop with semi-partition of oak and frosted glass, at the back of the office, he reflected how hard it was to find employees who had his own faith that he was going to make sales. There were nine members of the staff, besides Babbitt and his partner and father-in-law, Henry Thompson, who rarely came to the office. The nine were Stanley Graff, the outside salesman--a youngish man given to cigarettes and the playing of pool; old Mat Penniman, general utility man, collector of rents and salesman of insurance--broken, silent, gray; a mystery, reputed to have been a "crack" real-estate man with a firm of his own in haughty Brooklyn; Chester Kirby Laylock, resident salesman out at the Glen Oriole acreage development--an enthusiastic person with a silky mustache and much family; Miss Theresa McGoun, the swift and rather pretty stenographer; Miss Wilberta Bannigan, the thick, slow, laborious accountant and file-clerk; and four freelance part-time commission salesmen. As he looked from his own cage into the main room Babbitt mourned, "McGoun's a good stenog., smart's a whip, but Stan Graff and all those bums--" The zest of the spring morning was smothered in the stale office air. Normally he admired the office, with a pleased surprise that he should have created this sure lovely thing; normally he was stimulated by the clean newness of it and the air of bustle; but to-day it seemed flat--the tiled floor, like a bathroom, the ocher-colored metal ceiling, the faded maps on the hard plaster walls, the chairs of varnished pale oak, the desks and filing-cabinets of steel painted in olive drab. It was a vault, a steel chapel where loafing and laughter were raw sin. He hadn't even any satisfaction in the new water-cooler! And it was the very best of water-coolers, up-to-date, scientific, and right-thinking. It had cost a great deal of money (in itself a virtue). It possessed a non-conducting fiber ice-container, a porcelain water-jar (guaranteed hygienic), a drip-less non-clogging sanitary faucet, and machine-painted decorations in two tones of gold. He looked down the relentless stretch of tiled floor at the water-cooler, and assured himself that no tenant of the Reeves Building had a more expensive one, but he could not recapture the feeling of social superiority it had given him. He astoundingly grunted, "I'd like to beat it off to the woods right now. And loaf all day. And go to Gunch's again to-night, and play poker, and cuss as much as I feel like, and drink a hundred and nine-thousand bottles of beer." He sighed; he read through his mail; he shouted "Msgoun," which meant "Miss McGoun"; and began to dictate. This was his own version of his first letter: "Omar Gribble, send it to his office, Miss McGoun, yours of twentieth to hand and in reply would say look here, Gribble, I'm awfully afraid if we go on shilly-shallying like this we'll just naturally lose the Allen sale, I had Allen up on carpet day before yesterday and got right down to cases and think I can assure you--uh, uh, no, change that: all my experience indicates he is all right, means to do business, looked into his financial record which is fine--that sentence seems to be a little balled up, Miss McGoun; make a couple sentences out of it if you have to, period, new paragraph. "He is perfectly willing to pro rate the special assessment and strikes me, am dead sure there will be no difficulty in getting him to pay for title insurance, so now for heaven's sake let's get busy--no, make that: so now let's go to it and get down--no, that's enough--you can tie those sentences up a little better when you type 'em, Miss McGoun--your sincerely, etcetera." This is the version of his letter which he received, typed, from Miss McGoun that afternoon: BABBITT-THOMPSON REALTY CO. Homes for Folks Reeves Bldg., Oberlin Avenue & 3d St., N.E Zenith Omar Gribble, Esq., 376 North American Building, Zenith. Dear Mr. Gribble: Your letter of the twentieth to hand. I must say I'm awfully afraid that if we go on shilly-shallying like this we'll just naturally lose the Allen sale. I had Allen up on the carpet day before yesterday, and got right down to cases. All my experience indicates that he means to do business. I have also looked into his financial record, which is fine. He is perfectly willing to pro rate the special assessment and there will be no difficulty in getting him to pay for title insurance. SO LET'S GO! Yours sincerely, As he read and signed it, in his correct flowing business-college hand, Babbitt reflected, "Now that's a good, strong letter, and clear's a bell. Now what the--I never told McGoun to make a third paragraph there! Wish she'd quit trying to improve on my dictation! But what I can't understand is: why can't Stan Graff or Chet Laylock write a letter like that? With punch! With a kick!" The most important thing he dictated that morning was the fortnightly form-letter, to be mimeographed and sent out to a thousand "prospects." It was diligently imitative of the best literary models of the day; of heart-to-heart-talk advertisements, "sales-pulling" letters, discourses on the "development of Will-power," and hand-shaking house-organs, as richly poured forth by the new school of Poets of Business. He had painfully written out a first draft, and he intoned it now like a poet delicate and distrait: SAY, OLD MAN! I just want to know can I do you a whaleuva favor? Honest! No kidding! I know you're interested in getting a house, not merely a place where you hang up the old bonnet but a love-nest for the wife and kiddies--and maybe for the flivver out beyant (be sure and spell that b-e-y-a-n-t, Miss McGoun) the spud garden. Say, did you ever stop to think that we're here to save you trouble? That's how we make a living--folks don't pay us for our lovely beauty! Now take a look: Sit right down at the handsome carved mahogany escritoire and shoot us in a line telling us just what you want, and if we can find it we'll come hopping down your lane with the good tidings, and if we can't, we won't bother you. To save your time, just fill out the blank enclosed. On request will also send blank regarding store properties in Floral Heights, Silver Grove, Linton, Bellevue, and all East Side residential districts. Yours for service, P.S.--Just a hint of some plums we can pick for you--some genuine bargains that came in to-day: SILVER GROVE.--Cute four-room California bungalow, a.m.i., garage, dandy shade tree, swell neighborhood, handy car line. $3700, $780 down and balance liberal, Babbitt-Thompson terms, cheaper than rent. DORCHESTER.--A corker! Artistic two-family house, all oak trim, parquet floors, lovely gas log, big porches, colonial, HEATED ALL-WEATHER GARAGE, a bargain at $11,250. Dictation over, with its need of sitting and thinking instead of bustling around and making a noise and really doing something, Babbitt sat creakily back in his revolving desk-chair and beamed on Miss McGoun. He was conscious of her as a girl, of black bobbed hair against demure cheeks. A longing which was indistinguishable from loneliness enfeebled him. While she waited, tapping a long, precise pencil-point on the desk-tablet, he half identified her with the fairy girl of his dreams. He imagined their eyes meeting with terrifying recognition; imagined touching her lips with frightened reverence and--She was chirping, "Any more, Mist' Babbitt?" He grunted, "That winds it up, I guess," and turned heavily away. For all his wandering thoughts, they had never been more intimate than this. He often reflected, "Nev' forget how old Jake Offutt said a wise bird never goes love-making in his own office or his own home. Start trouble. Sure. But--" In twenty-three years of married life he had peered uneasily at every graceful ankle, every soft shoulder; in thought he had treasured them; but not once had he hazarded respectability by adventuring. Now, as he calculated the cost of repapering the Styles house, he was restless again, discontented about nothing and everything, ashamed of his discontentment, and lonely for the fairy girl.

Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210125061821/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/babbitt/section2/

Babbitt disdains his neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Doppelbrau as "Bohemian," but he respects his neighbor Howard Littlefield, Ph.D. as a "Great Scholar." Littlefield "proves" to the businessman the "perfection" of "their system of industry and manners" with elaborate arguments grounded in "history, economics, and the confessions of reformed radicals." Babbitt and Littlefield make empty small talk about the weather and the upcoming presidential nominations. Littlefield voices a keen desire for a solid "business administration. " On the way to work Babbitt stops for gas. The attendant makes Babbitt feel like a "man of weight. " They engage in an empty discussion of politics, and Babbitt states his desire for a solid "business administration." Babbitt gives a ride downtown to someone waiting for the streetcars. The man praises Babbitt for his generosity and Babbitt complains of those who make too much fuss over their charitable efforts. He complains about the service of the streetcars, and the man chimes in. Babbitt quickly defers his earlier criticism and explains that the Traction Company faces many difficulties because of the labor union's call for higher wages. Babbitt speeds to work, admiring Zenith's slick, modern, bustling appearance. He dictates a letter to his secretary, Miss McGoun. She reminds him of his fairy girl, but Babbitt's longing discomfits him. Ever since he married, he was uneasy in his admiration of women other than his wife.

Commentary Lewis further parodies the middle-class obsession with material objects in describing Babbitt's worship of his car. For Babbitt, his car represents "poetry and tragedy, love and heroism." Every other prosperous businessman in Zenith ascribes the same poetry, tragedy, love, and heroism to his car. Lewis portrays even the passions of the middle class as mass-produced standards of empty commercialism. Babbitt attaches fantasized notions of poetry, tragedy, love, and heroism to a material possession because his life actually lacks all these characteristics. Moreover, these notions sound like the undefined, empty buzzwords of advertising. Babbitt contemptuously views the Doppelbraus as "Bohemian," a term for people, usually artists, who rebel against social conventions. Lewis's parody of middle-class values becomes even more ironic with his description of Babbitt's shallow understanding of this term. Babbitt disdains the Doppelbraus because they drink a lot of bootleg whiskey, drive fast, and engage in "midnight music and obscene laughter." Babbitt, however, has no room to complain: He spent the previous night playing poker and drinking with Vergil Gunch. Throughout Babbitt, Lewis satirizes the middle class's double standard regarding Prohibition laws. The Doppelbraus probably see themselves as "rebels," but their "rebellion" against social conventions sounds like it is a flirtation with liberal behavior rather than real opposition to middle class conformity. After all, they live in the same affluent neighbor as Babbitt, and since all the houses in Floral Heights are the same, they are not really that different from their neighbors. Littlefield is supposedly an intellectual, but just like Babbitt, he expresses little capacity to form original opinions. His title as a Ph.D. merely gives him the appearance of intellectual authority. Babbitt's later repetition of Littlefield's words is an ingenious method by which Lewis can demonstrate and mock the inanity of middle-class society.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/1156-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Babbitt/section_6_part_0.txt

Babbitt.chapter 13

chapter 13

{"name": "Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210125061821/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/babbitt/section7/", "summary": "Babbitt is elected as an official delegate to the annual convention for the State Association of Real Estate Boards. When Cecil Rountree, the chairman of the convention program-committee, asks Babbitt to write a paper espousing his views about real estate for the convention, Babbitt eagerly accepts the honor. However, he encounters trouble in writing the paper because he becomes mired in concerns about \"Style, Order, and other mysteries. \" Finally, he dispenses with all of these concerns and produces a concise, clear presentation on his thoughts about the real estate business. Babbitt reads his paper before the convention and is instantly hailed as the equal of Cecil Rountree, who is known as a \"diplomat of business.\" Babbitt revels in his newfound respect and decides not to return home right away. He remains behind to drink, smoke, attend a burlesque show, and visit a brothel with some of the other delegates. Afterwards, Babbitt never tells anyone about that evening. When he returns to Zenith, it is business as usual.", "analysis": "Commentary When Babbitt is asked to write a speech, he is forced to actually organize his opinions and beliefs. Unsurprisingly, he finds it extremely difficult. The basic thrust of his speech is that real estate brokers should have more respect and status. The S.A.R.E.B. convention exposes the shameless competition for status in the middle class. The convention has little to do with market analysis. Mostly, it serves as an opportunity for real estate businessmen to tout the virtues of their respective cities. While they live it up at someone else's expense, Lewis notes that they are surrounded by the less fortunate members of the working class. These individuals serve as a reminder that not everyone enjoys the benefits of the post-World War I economic prosperity. Throughout Babbitt, Lewis contrasts the opulence of his characters lives with the emptiness that they sense in their lives. Many of these characters, like Babbitt and Riesling, are unsure that the price for material success was worth paying. And yet the physical rewards, and the status those rewards provide, are too enticing for the characters to pass up. They have given up their personal dreams for a broader dream of social success, and when they discover that this new dream affords them no real happiness, they are unable to return to their original plans or desires. In this emptiness, the middle class characters become even further engaged in protecting what they do have: status. Babbitt, disillusioned with the constant search for status, nonetheless tries to move himself up through the ranks by talking with Lucile McKelvey. When he is snubbed, he lessens the pain by acting haughtily toward those of status below his. Through these incidents, Lewis charges middle-class values with perpetuating a cycle of petty antagonism and insensitivity. In the midst of the empty optimism and banal slogans of the convention, Lewis shows how many of the delegates suffer the same dissatisfaction that plagues Babbitt and Riesling, even as they tout the glory of the middle-class lifestyles. One delegate wanted to be a chemist in his youth, but he somehow ended up as a middle-aged salesman. Riesling wanted to be a violinist, and Babbitt once dreamed of becoming a lawyer. Therefore, disappointed dreams and lost opportunities are a recurring theme in Lewis's satire on the American middle class. Babbitt and some of the delegates stay behind to engage in activities that would inspire great disapproval in their hometowns. This outright rebellion against the moral values of their class reveals their moral hypocrisy, as well as their dissatisfaction with their lives. A foreign town allows the men to break free of the repression embedded in their home communities; their response is juvenile, unenlightening, and quite similar to the behavior of the working class that these middle class men so ruthlessly despise."}

I IT was by accident that Babbitt had his opportunity to address the S. A. R. E. B. The S. A. R. E. B., as its members called it, with the universal passion for mysterious and important-sounding initials, was the State Association of Real Estate Boards; the organization of brokers and operators. It was to hold its annual convention at Monarch, Zenith's chief rival among the cities of the state. Babbitt was an official delegate; another was Cecil Rountree, whom Babbitt admired for his picaresque speculative building, and hated for his social position, for being present at the smartest dances on Royal Ridge. Rountree was chairman of the convention program-committee. Babbitt had growled to him, "Makes me tired the way these doctors and profs and preachers put on lugs about being 'professional men.' A good realtor has to have more knowledge and finesse than any of 'em." "Right you are! I say: Why don't you put that into a paper, and give it at the S. A. R. E. B.?" suggested Rountree. "Well, if it would help you in making up the program--Tell you: the way I look at it is this: First place, we ought to insist that folks call us 'realtors' and not 'real-estate men.' Sounds more like a reg'lar profession. Second place--What is it distinguishes a profession from a mere trade, business, or occupation? What is it? Why, it's the public service and the skill, the trained skill, and the knowledge and, uh, all that, whereas a fellow that merely goes out for the jack, he never considers the-public service and trained skill and so on. Now as a professional--" "Rather! That's perfectly bully! Perfectly corking! Now you write it in a paper," said Rountree, as he rapidly and firmly moved away. II However accustomed to the literary labors of advertisements and correspondence, Babbitt was dismayed on the evening when he sat down to prepare a paper which would take a whole ten minutes to read. He laid out a new fifteen-cent school exercise-book on his wife's collapsible sewing-table, set up for the event in the living-room. The household had been bullied into silence; Verona and Ted requested to disappear, and Tinka threatened with "If I hear one sound out of you--if you holler for a glass of water one single solitary time--You better not, that's all!" Mrs. Babbitt sat over by the piano, making a nightgown and gazing with respect while Babbitt wrote in the exercise-book, to the rhythmical wiggling and squeaking of the sewing-table. When he rose, damp and jumpy, and his throat dusty from cigarettes, she marveled, "I don't see how you can just sit down and make up things right out of your own head!" "Oh, it's the training in constructive imagination that a fellow gets in modern business life." He had written seven pages, whereof the first page set forth: {illustration omitted: consists of several doodles and "(1) a profession (2) Not just a trade crossed out (3) Skill & vision (3) Shd be called "realtor" & not just real est man"} The other six pages were rather like the first. For a week he went about looking important. Every morning, as he dressed, he thought aloud: "Jever stop to consider, Myra, that before a town can have buildings or prosperity or any of those things, some realtor has got to sell 'em the land? All civilization starts with him. Jever realize that?" At the Athletic Club he led unwilling men aside to inquire, "Say, if you had to read a paper before a big convention, would you start in with the funny stories or just kind of scatter 'em all through?" He asked Howard Littlefield for a "set of statistics about real-estate sales; something good and impressive," and Littlefield provided something exceedingly good and impressive. But it was to T. Cholmondeley Frink that Babbitt most often turned. He caught Frink at the club every noon, and demanded, while Frink looked hunted and evasive, "Say, Chum--you're a shark on this writing stuff--how would you put this sentence, see here in my manuscript--manuscript now where the deuce is that?--oh, yes, here. Would you say 'We ought not also to alone think?' or 'We ought also not to think alone?' or--" One evening when his wife was away and he had no one to impress, Babbitt forgot about Style, Order, and the other mysteries, and scrawled off what he really thought about the real-estate business and about himself, and he found the paper written. When he read it to his wife she yearned, "Why, dear, it's splendid; beautifully written, and so clear and interesting, and such splendid ideas! Why, it's just--it's just splendid!" Next day he cornered Chum Frink and crowed, "Well, old son, I finished it last evening! Just lammed it out! I used to think you writing-guys must have a hard job making up pieces, but Lord, it's a cinch. Pretty soft for you fellows; you certainly earn your money easy! Some day when I get ready to retire, guess I'll take to writing and show you boys how to do it. I always used to think I could write better stuff, and more punch and originality, than all this stuff you see printed, and now I'm doggone sure of it!" He had four copies of the paper typed in black with a gorgeous red title, had them bound in pale blue manilla, and affably presented one to old Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the Advocate-Times, who said yes, indeed yes, he was very glad to have it, and he certainly would read it all through--as soon as he could find time. Mrs. Babbitt could not go to Monarch. She had a women's-club meeting. Babbitt said that he was very sorry. III Besides the five official delegates to the convention--Babbitt, Rountree, W. A. Rogers, Alvin Thayer, and Elbert Wing--there were fifty unofficial delegates, most of them with their wives. They met at the Union Station for the midnight train to Monarch. All of them, save Cecil Rountree, who was such a snob that he never wore badges, displayed celluloid buttons the size of dollars and lettered "We zoom for Zenith." The official delegates were magnificent with silver and magenta ribbons. Martin Lumsen's little boy Willy carried a tasseled banner inscribed "Zenith the Zip City--Zeal, Zest and Zowie--1,000,000 in 1935." As the delegates arrived, not in taxicabs but in the family automobile driven by the oldest son or by Cousin Fred, they formed impromptu processions through the station waiting-room. It was a new and enormous waiting-room, with marble pilasters, and frescoes depicting the exploration of the Chaloosa River Valley by Pere Emile Fauthoux in 1740. The benches were shelves of ponderous mahogany; the news-stand a marble kiosk with a brass grill. Down the echoing spaces of the hall the delegates paraded after Willy Lumsen's banner, the men waving their cigars, the women conscious of their new frocks and strings of beads, all singing to the tune of Auld Lang Syne the official City Song, written by Chum Frink: Good old Zenith, Our kin and kith, Wherever we may be, Hats in the ring, We blithely sing Of thy Prosperity. Warren Whitby, the broker, who had a gift of verse for banquets and birthdays, had added to Frink's City Song a special verse for the realtors' convention: Oh, here we come, The fellows from Zenith, the Zip Citee. We wish to state In real estate There's none so live as we. Babbitt was stirred to hysteric patriotism. He leaped on a bench, shouting to the crowd: "What's the matter with Zenith?" "She's all right!" "What's best ole town in the U. S. A.?" "Zeeeeeen-ith!" The patient poor people waiting for the midnight train stared in unenvious wonder--Italian women with shawls, old weary men with broken shoes, roving road-wise boys in suits which had been flashy when they were new but which were faded now and wrinkled. Babbitt perceived that as an official delegate he must be more dignified. With Wing and Rogers he tramped up and down the cement platform beside the waiting Pullmans. Motor-driven baggage-trucks and red-capped porters carrying bags sped down the platform with an agreeable effect of activity. Arc-lights glared and stammered overhead. The glossy yellow sleeping-cars shone impressively. Babbitt made his voice to be measured and lordly; he thrust out his abdomen and rumbled, "We got to see to it that the convention lets the Legislature understand just where they get off in this matter of taxing realty transfers." Wing uttered approving grunts and Babbitt swelled--gloated. The blind of a Pullman compartment was raised, and Babbitt looked into an unfamiliar world. The occupant of the compartment was Lucile McKelvey, the pretty wife of the millionaire contractor. Possibly, Babbitt thrilled, she was going to Europe! On the seat beside her was a bunch of orchids and violets, and a yellow paper-bound book which seemed foreign. While he stared, she picked up the book, then glanced out of the window as though she was bored. She must have looked straight at him, and he had met her, but she gave no sign. She languidly pulled down the blind, and he stood still, a cold feeling of insignificance in his heart. But on the train his pride was restored by meeting delegates from Sparta, Pioneer, and other smaller cities of the state, who listened respectfully when, as a magnifico from the metropolis of Zenith, he explained politics and the value of a Good Sound Business Administration. They fell joyfully into shop-talk, the purest and most rapturous form of conversation: "How'd this fellow Rountree make out with this big apartment-hotel he was going to put up? Whadde do? Get out bonds to finance it?" asked a Sparta broker. "Well, I'll tell you," said Babbitt. "Now if I'd been handling it--" "So," Elbert Wing was droning, "I hired this shop-window for a week, and put up a big sign, 'Toy Town for Tiny Tots,' and stuck in a lot of doll houses and some dinky little trees, and then down at the bottom, 'Baby Likes This Dollydale, but Papa and Mama Will Prefer Our Beautiful Bungalows,' and you know, that certainly got folks talking, and first week we sold--" The trucks sang "lickety-lick, lickety-lick" as the train ran through the factory district. Furnaces spurted flame, and power-hammers were clanging. Red lights, green lights, furious white lights rushed past, and Babbitt was important again, and eager. IV He did a voluptuous thing: he had his clothes pressed on the train. In the morning, half an hour before they reached Monarch, the porter came to his berth and whispered, "There's a drawing-room vacant, sir. I put your suit in there." In tan autumn overcoat over his pajamas, Babbitt slipped down the green-curtain-lined aisle to the glory of his first private compartment. The porter indicated that he knew Babbitt was used to a man-servant; he held the ends of Babbitt's trousers, that the beautifully sponged garment might not be soiled, filled the bowl in the private washroom, and waited with a towel. To have a private washroom was luxurious. However enlivening a Pullman smoking-compartment was by night, even to Babbitt it was depressing in the morning, when it was jammed with fat men in woolen undershirts, every hook filled with wrinkled cottony shirts, the leather seat piled with dingy toilet-kits, and the air nauseating with the smell of soap and toothpaste. Babbitt did not ordinarily think much of privacy, but now he reveled in it, reveled in his valet, and purred with pleasure as he gave the man a tip of a dollar and a half. He rather hoped that he was being noticed as, in his newly pressed clothes, with the adoring porter carrying his suit-case, he disembarked at Monarch. He was to share a room at the Hotel Sedgwick with W. A. Rogers, that shrewd, rustic-looking Zenith dealer in farm-lands. Together they had a noble breakfast, with waffles, and coffee not in exiguous cups but in large pots. Babbitt grew expansive, and told Rogers about the art of writing; he gave a bellboy a quarter to fetch a morning newspaper from the lobby, and sent to Tinka a post-card: "Papa wishes you were here to bat round with him." V The meetings of the convention were held in the ballroom of the Allen House. In an anteroom was the office of the chairman of the executive committee. He was the busiest man in the convention; he was so busy that he got nothing done whatever. He sat at a marquetry table, in a room littered with crumpled paper and, all day long, town-boosters and lobbyists and orators who wished to lead debates came and whispered to him, whereupon he looked vague, and said rapidly, "Yes, yes, that's a fine idea; we'll do that," and instantly forgot all about it, lighted a cigar and forgot that too, while the telephone rang mercilessly and about him men kept beseeching, "Say, Mr. Chairman--say, Mr. Chairman!" without penetrating his exhausted hearing. In the exhibit-room were plans of the new suburbs of Sparta, pictures of the new state capitol, at Galop de Vache, and large ears of corn with the label, "Nature's Gold, from Shelby County, the Garden Spot of God's Own Country." The real convention consisted of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in groups amid the badge-spotted crowd in the hotel-lobby, but there was a show of public meetings. The first of them opened with a welcome by the mayor of Monarch. The pastor of the First Christian Church of Monarch, a large man with a long damp frontal lock, informed God that the real-estate men were here now. The venerable Minnemagantic realtor, Major Carlton Tuke, read a paper in which he denounced cooperative stores. William A. Larkin of Eureka gave a comforting prognosis of "The Prospects for Increased Construction," and reminded them that plate-glass prices were two points lower. The convention was on. The delegates were entertained, incessantly and firmly. The Monarch Chamber of Commerce gave them a banquet, and the Manufacturers' Association an afternoon reception, at which a chrysanthemum was presented to each of the ladies, and to each of the men a leather bill-fold inscribed "From Monarch the Mighty Motor Mart." Mrs. Crosby Knowlton, wife of the manufacturer of Fleetwing Automobiles, opened her celebrated Italian garden and served tea. Six hundred real-estate men and wives ambled down the autumnal paths. Perhaps three hundred of them were quietly inconspicuous; perhaps three hundred vigorously exclaimed, "This is pretty slick, eh?" surreptitiously picked the late asters and concealed them in their pockets, and tried to get near enough to Mrs. Knowlton to shake her lovely hand. Without request, the Zenith delegates (except Rountree) gathered round a marble dancing nymph and sang "Here we come, the fellows from Zenith, the Zip Citee." It chanced that all the delegates from Pioneer belonged to the Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks, and they produced an enormous banner lettered: "B. P. O. E.--Best People on Earth--Boost Pioneer, Oh Eddie." Nor was Galop de Vache, the state capital, to be slighted. The leader of the Galop de Vache delegation was a large, reddish, roundish man, but active. He took off his coat, hurled his broad black felt hat on the ground, rolled up his sleeves, climbed upon the sundial, spat, and bellowed: "We'll tell the world, and the good lady who's giving the show this afternoon, that the bonniest burg in this man's state is Galop de Vache. You boys can talk about your zip, but jus' lemme murmur that old Galop has the largest proportion of home-owning citizens in the state; and when folks own their homes, they ain't starting labor-troubles, and they're raising kids instead of raising hell! Galop de Vache! The town for homey folks! The town that eats 'em alive oh, Bosco! We'll--tell--the--world!" The guests drove off; the garden shivered into quiet. But Mrs. Crosby Knowlton sighed as she looked at a marble seat warm from five hundred summers of Amalfi. On the face of a winged sphinx which supported it some one had drawn a mustache in lead-pencil. Crumpled paper napkins were dumped among the Michaelmas daisies. On the walk, like shredded lovely flesh, were the petals of the last gallant rose. Cigarette stubs floated in the goldfish pool, trailing an evil stain as they swelled and disintegrated, and beneath the marble seat, the fragments carefully put together, was a smashed teacup. VI As he rode back to the hotel Babbitt reflected, "Myra would have enjoyed all this social agony." For himself he cared less for the garden party than for the motor tours which the Monarch Chamber of Commerce had arranged. Indefatigably he viewed water-reservoirs, suburban trolley-stations, and tanneries. He devoured the statistics which were given to him, and marveled to his roommate, W. A. Rogers, "Of course this town isn't a patch on Zenith; it hasn't got our outlook and natural resources; but did you know--I nev' did till to-day--that they manufactured seven hundred and sixty-three million feet of lumber last year? What d' you think of that!" He was nervous as the time for reading his paper approached. When he stood on the low platform before the convention, he trembled and saw only a purple haze. But he was in earnest, and when he had finished the formal paper he talked to them, his hands in his pockets, his spectacled face a flashing disk, like a plate set up on edge in the lamplight. They shouted "That's the stuff!" and in the discussion afterward they referred with impressiveness to "our friend and brother, Mr. George F. Babbitt." He had in fifteen minutes changed from a minor delegate to a personage almost as well known as that diplomat of business, Cecil Rountree. After the meeting, delegates from all over the state said, "Hower you, Brother Babbitt?" Sixteen complete strangers called him "George," and three men took him into corners to confide, "Mighty glad you had the courage to stand up and give the Profession a real boost. Now I've always maintained--" Next morning, with tremendous casualness, Babbitt asked the girl at the hotel news-stand for the newspapers from Zenith. There was nothing in the Press, but in the Advocate-Times, on the third page--He gasped. They had printed his picture and a half-column account. The heading was "Sensation at Annual Land-men's Convention. G. F. Babbitt, Prominent Ziptown Realtor, Keynoter in Fine Address." He murmured reverently, "I guess some of the folks on Floral Heights will sit up and take notice now, and pay a little attention to old Georgie!" VII It was the last meeting. The delegations were presenting the claims of their several cities to the next year's convention. Orators were announcing that "Galop de Vache, the Capital City, the site of Kremer College and of the Upholtz Knitting Works, is the recognized center of culture and high-class enterprise;" and that "Hamburg, the Big Little City with the Logical Location, where every man is open-handed and every woman a heaven-born hostess, throws wide to you her hospitable gates." In the midst of these more diffident invitations, the golden doors of the ballroom opened with a blatting of trumpets, and a circus parade rolled in. It was composed of the Zenith brokers, dressed as cowpunchers, bareback riders, Japanese jugglers. At the head was big Warren Whitby, in the bearskin and gold-and-crimson coat of a drum-major. Behind him, as a clown, beating a bass drum, extraordinarily happy and noisy, was Babbitt. Warren Whitby leaped on the platform, made merry play with his baton, and observed, "Boyses and girlses, the time has came to get down to cases. A dyed-in-the-wool Zenithite sure loves his neighbors, but we've made up our minds to grab this convention off our neighbor burgs like we've grabbed the condensed-milk business and the paper-box business and--" J. Harry Barmhill, the convention chairman, hinted, "We're grateful to you, Mr. Uh, but you must give the other boys a chance to hand in their bids now." A fog-horn voice blared, "In Eureka we'll promise free motor rides through the prettiest country--" Running down the aisle, clapping his hands, a lean bald young man cried, "I'm from Sparta! Our Chamber of Commerce has wired me they've set aside eight thousand dollars, in real money, for the entertainment of the convention!" A clerical-looking man rose to clamor, "Money talks! Move we accept the bid from Sparta!" It was accepted. VIII The Committee on Resolutions was reporting. They said that Whereas Almighty God in his beneficent mercy had seen fit to remove to a sphere of higher usefulness some thirty-six realtors of the state the past year, Therefore it was the sentiment of this convention assembled that they were sorry God had done it, and the secretary should be, and hereby was, instructed to spread these resolutions on the minutes, and to console the bereaved families by sending them each a copy. A second resolution authorized the president of the S.A.R.E.B. to spend fifteen thousand dollars in lobbying for sane tax measures in the State Legislature. This resolution had a good deal to say about Menaces to Sound Business and clearing the Wheels of Progress from ill-advised and shortsighted obstacles. The Committee on Committees reported, and with startled awe Babbitt learned that he had been appointed a member of the Committee on Torrens Titles. He rejoiced, "I said it was going to be a great year! Georgie, old son, you got big things ahead of you! You're a natural-born orator and a good mixer and--Zowie!" IX There was no formal entertainment provided for the last evening. Babbitt had planned to go home, but that afternoon the Jered Sassburgers of Pioneer suggested that Babbitt and W. A. Rogers have tea with them at the Catalpa Inn. Teas were not unknown to Babbitt--his wife and he earnestly attended them at least twice a year--but they were sufficiently exotic to make him feel important. He sat at a glass-covered table in the Art Room of the Inn, with its painted rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce sandwiches, and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as smooth and large-eyed as a cloak-model. Sassburger and he had met two days before, so they were calling each other "Georgie" and "Sassy." Sassburger said prayerfully, "Say, boys, before you go, seeing this is the last chance, I've GOT IT, up in my room, and Miriam here is the best little mixelogist in the Stati Unidos like us Italians say." With wide flowing gestures, Babbitt and Rogers followed the Sassburgers to their room. Mrs. Sassburger shrieked, "Oh, how terrible!" when she saw that she had left a chemise of sheer lavender crepe on the bed. She tucked it into a bag, while Babbitt giggled, "Don't mind us; we're a couple o' little divvils!" Sassburger telephoned for ice, and the bell-boy who brought it said, prosaically and unprompted, "Highball glasses or cocktail?" Miriam Sassburger mixed the cocktails in one of those dismal, nakedly white water-pitchers which exist only in hotels. When they had finished the first round she proved by intoning "Think you boys could stand another--you got a dividend coming" that, though she was but a woman, she knew the complete and perfect rite of cocktail-drinking. Outside, Babbitt hinted to Rogers, "Say, W. A., old rooster, it comes over me that I could stand it if we didn't go back to the lovin' wives, this handsome ABEND, but just kind of stayed in Monarch and threw a party, heh?" "George, you speak with the tongue of wisdom and sagashiteriferousness. El Wing's wife has gone on to Pittsburg. Let's see if we can't gather him in." At half-past seven they sat in their room, with Elbert Wing and two up-state delegates. Their coats were off, their vests open, their faces red, their voices emphatic. They were finishing a bottle of corrosive bootlegged whisky and imploring the bell-boy, "Say, son, can you get us some more of this embalming fluid?" They were smoking large cigars and dropping ashes and stubs on the carpet. With windy guffaws they were telling stories. They were, in fact, males in a happy state of nature. Babbitt sighed, "I don't know how it strikes you hellions, but personally I like this busting loose for a change, and kicking over a couple of mountains and climbing up on the North Pole and waving the aurora borealis around." The man from Sparta, a grave, intense youngster, babbled, "Say! I guess I'm as good a husband as the run of the mill, but God, I do get so tired of going home every evening, and nothing to see but the movies. That's why I go out and drill with the National Guard. I guess I got the nicest little wife in my burg, but--Say! Know what I wanted to do as a kid? Know what I wanted to do? Wanted to be a big chemist. Tha's what I wanted to do. But Dad chased me out on the road selling kitchenware, and here I'm settled down--settled for LIFE--not a chance! Oh, who the devil started this funeral talk? How 'bout 'nother lil drink? 'And a-noth-er drink wouldn' do 's 'ny harmmmmmmm.'" "Yea. Cut the sob-stuff," said W. A. Rogers genially. "You boys know I'm the village songster? Come on now--sing up: Said the old Obadiah to the young Obadiah, 'I am dry, Obadiah, I am dry.' Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah, 'So am I, Obadiah, so am I.'" X They had dinner in the Moorish Grillroom of the Hotel Sedgwick. Somewhere, somehow, they seemed to have gathered in two other comrades: a manufacturer of fly-paper and a dentist. They all drank whisky from tea-cups, and they were humorous, and never listened to one another, except when W. A. Rogers "kidded" the Italian waiter. "Say, Gooseppy," he said innocently, "I want a couple o' fried elephants' ears." "Sorry, sir, we haven't any." "Huh? No elephants' ears? What do you know about that!" Rogers turned to Babbitt. "Pedro says the elephants' ears are all out!" "Well, I'll be switched!" said the man from Sparta, with difficulty hiding his laughter. "Well, in that case, Carlo, just bring me a hunk o' steak and a couple o' bushels o' French fried potatoes and some peas," Rogers went on. "I suppose back in dear old sunny It' the Eyetalians get their fresh garden peas out of the can." "No, sir, we have very nice peas in Italy." "Is that a fact! Georgie, do you hear that? They get their fresh garden peas out of the garden, in Italy! By golly, you live and learn, don't you, Antonio, you certainly do live and learn, if you live long enough and keep your strength. All right, Garibaldi, just shoot me in that steak, with about two printers'-reams of French fried spuds on the promenade deck, comprehenez-vous, Michelovitch Angeloni?" Afterward Elbert Wing admired, "Gee, you certainly did have that poor Dago going, W. A. He couldn't make you out at all!" In the Monarch Herald, Babbitt found an advertisement which he read aloud, to applause and laughter: Old Colony Theatre Shake the Old Dogs to the WROLLICKING WRENS The bonniest bevy of beauteous bathing babes in burlesque. Pete Menutti and his Oh, Gee, Kids. This is the straight steer, Benny, the painless chicklets of the Wrollicking Wrens are the cuddlingest bunch that ever hit town. Steer the feet, get the card board, and twist the pupils to the PDQest show ever. You will get 111% on your kale in this fun-fest. The Calroza Sisters are sure some lookers and will give you a run for your gelt. Jock Silbersteen is one of the pepper lads and slips you a dose of real laughter. Shoot the up and down to Jackson and West for graceful tappers. They run 1-2 under the wire. Provin and Adams will blow the blues in their laugh skit "Hootch Mon!" Something doing, boys. Listen to what the Hep Bird twitters. "Sounds like a juicy show to me. Let's all take it in," said Babbitt. But they put off departure as long as they could. They were safe while they sat here, legs firmly crossed under the table, but they felt unsteady; they were afraid of navigating the long and slippery floor of the grillroom under the eyes of the other guests and the too-attentive waiters. When they did venture, tables got in their way, and they sought to cover embarrassment by heavy jocularity at the coatroom. As the girl handed out their hats, they smiled at her, and hoped that she, a cool and expert judge, would feel that they were gentlemen. They croaked at one another, "Who owns the bum lid?" and "You take a good one, George; I'll take what's left," and to the check-girl they stammered, "Better come along, sister! High, wide, and fancy evening ahead!" All of them tried to tip her, urging one another, "No! Wait! Here! I got it right here!" Among them, they gave her three dollars. XI Flamboyantly smoking cigars they sat in a box at the burlesque show, their feet up on the rail, while a chorus of twenty daubed, worried, and inextinguishably respectable grandams swung their legs in the more elementary chorus-evolutions, and a Jewish comedian made vicious fun of Jews. In the entr'actes they met other lone delegates. A dozen of them went in taxicabs out to Bright Blossom Inn, where the blossoms were made of dusty paper festooned along a room low and stinking, like a cow-stable no longer wisely used. Here, whisky was served openly, in glasses. Two or three clerks, who on pay-day longed to be taken for millionaires, sheepishly danced with telephone-girls and manicure-girls in the narrow space between the tables. Fantastically whirled the professionals, a young man in sleek evening-clothes and a slim mad girl in emerald silk, with amber hair flung up as jaggedly as flames. Babbitt tried to dance with her. He shuffled along the floor, too bulky to be guided, his steps unrelated to the rhythm of the jungle music, and in his staggering he would have fallen, had she not held him with supple kindly strength. He was blind and deaf from prohibition-era alcohol; he could not see the tables, the faces. But he was overwhelmed by the girl and her young pliant warmth. When she had firmly returned him to his group, he remembered, by a connection quite untraceable, that his mother's mother had been Scotch, and with head thrown back, eyes closed, wide mouth indicating ecstasy, he sang, very slowly and richly, "Loch Lomond." But that was the last of his mellowness and jolly companionship. The man from Sparta said he was a "bum singer," and for ten minutes Babbitt quarreled with him, in a loud, unsteady, heroic indignation. They called for drinks till the manager insisted that the place was closed. All the while Babbitt felt a hot raw desire for more brutal amusements. When W. A. Rogers drawled, "What say we go down the line and look over the girls?" he agreed savagely. Before they went, three of them secretly made appointments with the professional dancing girl, who agreed "Yes, yes, sure, darling" to everything they said, and amiably forgot them. As they drove back through the outskirts of Monarch, down streets of small brown wooden cottages of workmen, characterless as cells, as they rattled across warehouse-districts which by drunken night seemed vast and perilous, as they were borne toward the red lights and violent automatic pianos and the stocky women who simpered, Babbitt was frightened. He wanted to leap from the taxicab, but all his body was a murky fire, and he groaned, "Too late to quit now," and knew that he did not want to quit. There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on the way. A broker from Minnemagantic said, "Monarch is a lot sportier than Zenith. You Zenith tightwads haven't got any joints like these here." Babbitt raged, "That's a dirty lie! Snothin' you can't find in Zenith. Believe me, we got more houses and hootch-parlors an' all kinds o' dives than any burg in the state." He realized they were laughing at him; he desired to fight; and forgot it in such musty unsatisfying experiments as he had not known since college. In the morning, when he returned to Zenith, his desire for rebellion was partly satisfied. He had retrograded to a shamefaced contentment. He was irritable. He did not smile when W. A. Rogers complained, "Ow, what a head! I certainly do feel like the wrath of God this morning. Say! I know what was the trouble! Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze last night." Babbitt's excursion was never known to his family, nor to any one in Zenith save Rogers and Wing. It was not officially recognized even by himself. If it had any consequences, they have not been discovered.

Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20210125061821/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/babbitt/section7/

Babbitt is elected as an official delegate to the annual convention for the State Association of Real Estate Boards. When Cecil Rountree, the chairman of the convention program-committee, asks Babbitt to write a paper espousing his views about real estate for the convention, Babbitt eagerly accepts the honor. However, he encounters trouble in writing the paper because he becomes mired in concerns about "Style, Order, and other mysteries. " Finally, he dispenses with all of these concerns and produces a concise, clear presentation on his thoughts about the real estate business. Babbitt reads his paper before the convention and is instantly hailed as the equal of Cecil Rountree, who is known as a "diplomat of business." Babbitt revels in his newfound respect and decides not to return home right away. He remains behind to drink, smoke, attend a burlesque show, and visit a brothel with some of the other delegates. Afterwards, Babbitt never tells anyone about that evening. When he returns to Zenith, it is business as usual.

Commentary When Babbitt is asked to write a speech, he is forced to actually organize his opinions and beliefs. Unsurprisingly, he finds it extremely difficult. The basic thrust of his speech is that real estate brokers should have more respect and status. The S.A.R.E.B. convention exposes the shameless competition for status in the middle class. The convention has little to do with market analysis. Mostly, it serves as an opportunity for real estate businessmen to tout the virtues of their respective cities. While they live it up at someone else's expense, Lewis notes that they are surrounded by the less fortunate members of the working class. These individuals serve as a reminder that not everyone enjoys the benefits of the post-World War I economic prosperity. Throughout Babbitt, Lewis contrasts the opulence of his characters lives with the emptiness that they sense in their lives. Many of these characters, like Babbitt and Riesling, are unsure that the price for material success was worth paying. And yet the physical rewards, and the status those rewards provide, are too enticing for the characters to pass up. They have given up their personal dreams for a broader dream of social success, and when they discover that this new dream affords them no real happiness, they are unable to return to their original plans or desires. In this emptiness, the middle class characters become even further engaged in protecting what they do have: status. Babbitt, disillusioned with the constant search for status, nonetheless tries to move himself up through the ranks by talking with Lucile McKelvey. When he is snubbed, he lessens the pain by acting haughtily toward those of status below his. Through these incidents, Lewis charges middle-class values with perpetuating a cycle of petty antagonism and insensitivity. In the midst of the empty optimism and banal slogans of the convention, Lewis shows how many of the delegates suffer the same dissatisfaction that plagues Babbitt and Riesling, even as they tout the glory of the middle-class lifestyles. One delegate wanted to be a chemist in his youth, but he somehow ended up as a middle-aged salesman. Riesling wanted to be a violinist, and Babbitt once dreamed of becoming a lawyer. Therefore, disappointed dreams and lost opportunities are a recurring theme in Lewis's satire on the American middle class. Babbitt and some of the delegates stay behind to engage in activities that would inspire great disapproval in their hometowns. This outright rebellion against the moral values of their class reveals their moral hypocrisy, as well as their dissatisfaction with their lives. A foreign town allows the men to break free of the repression embedded in their home communities; their response is juvenile, unenlightening, and quite similar to the behavior of the working class that these middle class men so ruthlessly despise.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/217-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Sons and Lovers/section_13_part_0.txt

Sons and Lovers.part 2.chapter 14

chapter 14 the release

{"name": "Chapter 14 The Release", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210226133826/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sonsandlovers/section14/", "summary": "Dr. Ansell tells Paul that Baxter Dawes is in the fever hospital in Sheffield, and Paul decides to visit him. Paul tells Dawes that he can recommend him a convalescent home in Seathorpe. He tells Clara that he has been to visit Dawes in the hospital, and she becomes upset and realizes that she has treated her husband badly. She goes to see him to try to make amends, but at first they do not get on well. Paul also visits Dawes a few times, and the two men begin to develop a sort of friendship. Paul does not spend much time with Clara now, because he is occupied with his mother's illness. Mrs. Morel gets gradually worse, and Paul spends much time caring for her. When Clara reminds him that it is her birthday, he takes her to the seashore, but spends most of the time talking about his mother and how he wishes that she would die. The next time he sees Dawes, Paul mentions that he has been with Clara, and this is the first mention the two men make of Clara. He tells Dawes that he will go abroad after his mother dies. Time passes, and Mrs. Morel stays the same. Miriam writes to Paul and he visits her. She kisses him, believing he will be comforted, but he does not want that kind of comfort from her and finally manages to get away. Paul and Annie share the nursing of their mother. They begin to feel as if they can no longer go on, and Paul decides to give her an overdose of morphia to put an end to all their suffering. He crushes all the pills they have into his mother' milk, and she drinks it obediently, believing it to be a new sleeping draught. She lasts through the night and finally dies the next morning. Dawes is now in a convalescent home, and Paul goes to see him again and suggests that he has plenty of life left in him and that he should try to get Clara back so that he can regain something of his former life. The next day, he and Clara bring Dawes to his lodging and Paul leaves them together.", "analysis": "Commentary This chapter is an excellent example of the way that the novel is not always narrated in chronological order, since the first episode in which Paul visits Baxter Dawes in the hospital actually occurs before Mrs. Morel is taken home, an episode which is included in the previous chapter. Mrs. Morel's desire to be with Paul is so strong that he tells Clara he believes she refuses to die so that she can stay with him. \" And she looks at me, and she wants to stay with me . . . She's got such a will, it seems as if she would never go - never!\" Even though he says he wishes she would die, Paul's strong bond to his mother remains. He feels as though a part of him were dying also. After she dies, Paul still feels this connection: \"Looking at her, he felt he could never, never let her go.\" Morel shows his vulnerability after his wife dies, when he waits up for Paul to return home, so that he is not alone in the house with the dead body. Paul, who had considered Morel to be fearless, is taken by surprise."}

THE RELEASE "By the way," said Dr. Ansell one evening when Morel was in Sheffield, "we've got a man in the fever hospital here who comes from Nottingham--Dawes. He doesn't seem to have many belongings in this world." "Baxter Dawes!" Paul exclaimed. "That's the man--has been a fine fellow, physically, I should think. Been in a bit of a mess lately. You know him?" "He used to work at the place where I am." "Did he? Do you know anything about him? He's just sulking, or he'd be a lot better than he is by now." "I don't know anything of his home circumstances, except that he's separated from his wife and has been a bit down, I believe. But tell him about me, will you? Tell him I'll come and see him." The next time Morel saw the doctor he said: "And what about Dawes?" "I said to him," answered the other, "'Do you know a man from Nottingham named Morel?' and he looked at me as if he'd jump at my throat. So I said: 'I see you know the name; it's Paul Morel.' Then I told him about your saying you would go and see him. 'What does he want?' he said, as if you were a policeman." "And did he say he would see me?" asked Paul. "He wouldn't say anything--good, bad or indifferent," replied the doctor. "Why not?" "That's what I want to know. There he lies and sulks, day in, day out. Can't get a word of information out of him." "Do you think I might go?" asked Paul. "You might." There was a feeling of connection between the rival men, more than ever since they had fought. In a way Morel felt guilty towards the other, and more or less responsible. And being in such a state of soul himself, he felt an almost painful nearness to Dawes, who was suffering and despairing, too. Besides, they had met in a naked extremity of hate, and it was a bond. At any rate, the elemental man in each had met. He went down to the isolation hospital, with Dr. Ansell's card. This sister, a healthy young Irishwoman, led him down the ward. "A visitor to see you, Jim Crow," she said. Dawes turned over suddenly with a startled grunt. "Eh?" "Caw!" she mocked. "He can only say 'Caw!' I have brought you a gentleman to see you. Now say 'Thank you,' and show some manners." Dawes looked swiftly with his dark, startled eyes beyond the sister at Paul. His look was full of fear, mistrust, hate, and misery. Morel met the swift, dark eyes, and hesitated. The two men were afraid of the naked selves they had been. "Dr. Ansell told me you were here," said Morel, holding out his hand. Dawes mechanically shook hands. "So I thought I'd come in," continued Paul. There was no answer. Dawes lay staring at the opposite wall. "Say 'Caw!"' mocked the nurse. "Say 'Caw!' Jim Crow." "He is getting on all right?" said Paul to her. "Oh yes! He lies and imagines he's going to die," said the nurse, "and it frightens every word out of his mouth." "And you MUST have somebody to talk to," laughed Morel. "That's it!" laughed the nurse. "Only two old men and a boy who always cries. It is hard lines! Here am I dying to hear Jim Crow's voice, and nothing but an odd 'Caw!' will he give!" "So rough on you!" said Morel. "Isn't it?" said the nurse. "I suppose I am a godsend," he laughed. "Oh, dropped straight from heaven!" laughed the nurse. Presently she left the two men alone. Dawes was thinner, and handsome again, but life seemed low in him. As the doctor said, he was lying sulking, and would not move forward towards convalescence. He seemed to grudge every beat of his heart. "Have you had a bad time?" asked Paul. Suddenly again Dawes looked at him. "What are you doing in Sheffield?" he asked. "My mother was taken ill at my sister's in Thurston Street. What are you doing here?" There was no answer. "How long have you been in?" Morel asked. "I couldn't say for sure," Dawes answered grudgingly. He lay staring across at the wall opposite, as if trying to believe Morel was not there. Paul felt his heart go hard and angry. "Dr. Ansell told me you were here," he said coldly. The other man did not answer. "Typhoid's pretty bad, I know," Morel persisted. Suddenly Dawes said: "What did you come for?" "Because Dr. Ansell said you didn't know anybody here. Do you?" "I know nobody nowhere," said Dawes. "Well," said Paul, "it's because you don't choose to, then." There was another silence. "We s'll be taking my mother home as soon as we can," said Paul. "What's a-matter with her?" asked Dawes, with a sick man's interest in illness. "She's got a cancer." There was another silence. "But we want to get her home," said Paul. "We s'll have to get a motor-car." Dawes lay thinking. "Why don't you ask Thomas Jordan to lend you his?" said Dawes. "It's not big enough," Morel answered. Dawes blinked his dark eyes as he lay thinking. "Then ask Jack Pilkington; he'd lend it you. You know him." "I think I s'll hire one," said Paul. "You're a fool if you do," said Dawes. The sick man was gaunt and handsome again. Paul was sorry for him because his eyes looked so tired. "Did you get a job here?" he asked. "I was only here a day or two before I was taken bad," Dawes replied. "You want to get in a convalescent home," said Paul. The other's face clouded again. "I'm goin' in no convalescent home," he said. "My father's been in the one at Seathorpe, an' he liked it. Dr. Ansell would get you a recommend." Dawes lay thinking. It was evident he dared not face the world again. "The seaside would be all right just now," Morel said. "Sun on those sandhills, and the waves not far out." The other did not answer. "By Gad!" Paul concluded, too miserable to bother much; "it's all right when you know you're going to walk again, and swim!" Dawes glanced at him quickly. The man's dark eyes were afraid to meet any other eyes in the world. But the real misery and helplessness in Paul's tone gave him a feeling of relief. "Is she far gone?" he asked. "She's going like wax," Paul answered; "but cheerful--lively!" He bit his lip. After a minute he rose. "Well, I'll be going," he said. "I'll leave you this half-crown." "I don't want it," Dawes muttered. Morel did not answer, but left the coin on the table. "Well," he said, "I'll try and run in when I'm back in Sheffield. Happen you might like to see my brother-in-law? He works in Pyecrofts." "I don't know him," said Dawes. "He's all right. Should I tell him to come? He might bring you some papers to look at." The other man did not answer. Paul went. The strong emotion that Dawes aroused in him, repressed, made him shiver. He did not tell his mother, but next day he spoke to Clara about this interview. It was in the dinner-hour. The two did not often go out together now, but this day he asked her to go with him to the Castle grounds. There they sat while the scarlet geraniums and the yellow calceolarias blazed in the sunlight. She was now always rather protective, and rather resentful towards him. "Did you know Baxter was in Sheffield Hospital with typhoid?" he asked. She looked at him with startled grey eyes, and her face went pale. "No," she said, frightened. "He's getting better. I went to see him yesterday--the doctor told me." Clara seemed stricken by the news. "Is he very bad?" she asked guiltily. "He has been. He's mending now." "What did he say to you?" "Oh, nothing! He seems to be sulking." There was a distance between the two of them. He gave her more information. She went about shut up and silent. The next time they took a walk together, she disengaged herself from his arm, and walked at a distance from him. He was wanting her comfort badly. "Won't you be nice with me?" he asked. She did not answer. "What's the matter?" he said, putting his arm across her shoulder. "Don't!" she said, disengaging herself. He left her alone, and returned to his own brooding. "Is it Baxter that upsets you?" he asked at length. "I HAVE been VILE to him!" she said. "I've said many a time you haven't treated him well," he replied. And there was a hostility between them. Each pursued his own train of thought. "I've treated him--no, I've treated him badly," she said. "And now you treat ME badly. It serves me right." "How do I treat you badly?" he said. "It serves me right," she repeated. "I never considered him worth having, and now you don't consider ME. But it serves me right. He loved me a thousand times better than you ever did." "He didn't!" protested Paul. "He did! At any rate, he did respect me, and that's what you don't do." "It looked as if he respected you!" he said. "He did! And I MADE him horrid--I know I did! You've taught me that. And he loved me a thousand times better than ever you do." "All right," said Paul. He only wanted to be left alone now. He had his own trouble, which was almost too much to bear. Clara only tormented him and made him tired. He was not sorry when he left her. She went on the first opportunity to Sheffield to see her husband. The meeting was not a success. But she left him roses and fruit and money. She wanted to make restitution. It was not that she loved him. As she looked at him lying there her heart did not warm with love. Only she wanted to humble herself to him, to kneel before him. She wanted now to be self-sacrificial. After all, she had failed to make Morel really love her. She was morally frightened. She wanted to do penance. So she kneeled to Dawes, and it gave him a subtle pleasure. But the distance between them was still very great--too great. It frightened the man. It almost pleased the woman. She liked to feel she was serving him across an insuperable distance. She was proud now. Morel went to see Dawes once or twice. There was a sort of friendship between the two men, who were all the while deadly rivals. But they never mentioned the woman who was between them. Mrs. Morel got gradually worse. At first they used to carry her downstairs, sometimes even into the garden. She sat propped in her chair, smiling, and so pretty. The gold wedding-ring shone on her white hand; her hair was carefully brushed. And she watched the tangled sunflowers dying, the chrysanthemums coming out, and the dahlias. Paul and she were afraid of each other. He knew, and she knew, that she was dying. But they kept up a pretence of cheerfulness. Every morning, when he got up, he went into her room in his pyjamas. "Did you sleep, my dear?" he asked. "Yes," she answered. "Not very well?" "Well, yes!" Then he knew she had lain awake. He saw her hand under the bedclothes, pressing the place on her side where the pain was. "Has it been bad?" he asked. "No. It hurt a bit, but nothing to mention." And she sniffed in her old scornful way. As she lay she looked like a girl. And all the while her blue eyes watched him. But there were the dark pain-circles beneath that made him ache again. "It's a sunny day," he said. "It's a beautiful day." "Do you think you'll be carried down?" "I shall see." Then he went away to get her breakfast. All day long he was conscious of nothing but her. It was a long ache that made him feverish. Then, when he got home in the early evening, he glanced through the kitchen window. She was not there; she had not got up. He ran straight upstairs and kissed her. He was almost afraid to ask: "Didn't you get up, pigeon?" "No," she said, "it was that morphia; it made me tired." "I think he gives you too much," he said. "I think he does," she answered. He sat down by the bed, miserably. She had a way of curling and lying on her side, like a child. The grey and brown hair was loose over her ear. "Doesn't it tickle you?" he said, gently putting it back. "It does," she replied. His face was near hers. Her blue eyes smiled straight into his, like a girl's--warm, laughing with tender love. It made him pant with terror, agony, and love. "You want your hair doing in a plait," he said. "Lie still." And going behind her, he carefully loosened her hair, brushed it out. It was like fine long silk of brown and grey. Her head was snuggled between her shoulders. As he lightly brushed and plaited her hair, he bit his lip and felt dazed. It all seemed unreal, he could not understand it. At night he often worked in her room, looking up from time to time. And so often he found her blue eyes fixed on him. And when their eyes met, she smiled. He worked away again mechanically, producing good stuff without knowing what he was doing. Sometimes he came in, very pale and still, with watchful, sudden eyes, like a man who is drunk almost to death. They were both afraid of the veils that were ripping between them. Then she pretended to be better, chattered to him gaily, made a great fuss over some scraps of news. For they had both come to the condition when they had to make much of the trifles, lest they should give in to the big thing, and their human independence would go smash. They were afraid, so they made light of things and were gay. Sometimes as she lay he knew she was thinking of the past. Her mouth gradually shut hard in a line. She was holding herself rigid, so that she might die without ever uttering the great cry that was tearing from her. He never forgot that hard, utterly lonely and stubborn clenching of her mouth, which persisted for weeks. Sometimes, when it was lighter, she talked about her husband. Now she hated him. She did not forgive him. She could not bear him to be in the room. And a few things, the things that had been most bitter to her, came up again so strongly that they broke from her, and she told her son. He felt as if his life were being destroyed, piece by piece, within him. Often the tears came suddenly. He ran to the station, the tear-drops falling on the pavement. Often he could not go on with his work. The pen stopped writing. He sat staring, quite unconscious. And when he came round again he felt sick, and trembled in his limbs. He never questioned what it was. His mind did not try to analyse or understand. He merely submitted, and kept his eyes shut; let the thing go over him. His mother did the same. She thought of the pain, of the morphia, of the next day; hardly ever of the death. That was coming, she knew. She had to submit to it. But she would never entreat it or make friends with it. Blind, with her face shut hard and blind, she was pushed towards the door. The days passed, the weeks, the months. Sometimes, in the sunny afternoons, she seemed almost happy. "I try to think of the nice times--when we went to Mablethorpe, and Robin Hood's Bay, and Shanklin," she said. "After all, not everybody has seen those beautiful places. And wasn't it beautiful! I try to think of that, not of the other things." Then, again, for a whole evening she spoke not a word; neither did he. They were together, rigid, stubborn, silent. He went into his room at last to go to bed, and leaned against the doorway as if paralysed, unable to go any farther. His consciousness went. A furious storm, he knew not what, seemed to ravage inside him. He stood leaning there, submitting, never questioning. In the morning they were both normal again, though her face was grey with the morphia, and her body felt like ash. But they were bright again, nevertheless. Often, especially if Annie or Arthur were at home, he neglected her. He did not see much of Clara. Usually he was with men. He was quick and active and lively; but when his friends saw him go white to the gills, his eyes dark and glittering, they had a certain mistrust of him. Sometimes he went to Clara, but she was almost cold to him. "Take me!" he said simply. Occasionally she would. But she was afraid. When he had her then, there was something in it that made her shrink away from him--something unnatural. She grew to dread him. He was so quiet, yet so strange. She was afraid of the man who was not there with her, whom she could feel behind this make-belief lover; somebody sinister, that filled her with horror. She began to have a kind of horror of him. It was almost as if he were a criminal. He wanted her--he had her--and it made her feel as if death itself had her in its grip. She lay in horror. There was no man there loving her. She almost hated him. Then came little bouts of tenderness. But she dared not pity him. Dawes had come to Colonel Seely's Home near Nottingham. There Paul visited him sometimes, Clara very occasionally. Between the two men the friendship developed peculiarly. Dawes, who mended very slowly and seemed very feeble, seemed to leave himself in the hands of Morel. In the beginning of November Clara reminded Paul that it was her birthday. "I'd nearly forgotten," he said. "I'd thought quite," she replied. "No. Shall we go to the seaside for the week-end?" They went. It was cold and rather dismal. She waited for him to be warm and tender with her, instead of which he seemed hardly aware of her. He sat in the railway-carriage, looking out, and was startled when she spoke to him. He was not definitely thinking. Things seemed as if they did not exist. She went across to him. "What is it dear?" she asked. "Nothing!" he said. "Don't those windmill sails look monotonous?" He sat holding her hand. He could not talk nor think. It was a comfort, however, to sit holding her hand. She was dissatisfied and miserable. He was not with her; she was nothing. And in the evening they sat among the sandhills, looking at the black, heavy sea. "She will never give in," he said quietly. Clara's heart sank. "No," she replied. "There are different ways of dying. My father's people are frightened, and have to be hauled out of life into death like cattle into a slaughter-house, pulled by the neck; but my mother's people are pushed from behind, inch by inch. They are stubborn people, and won't die." "Yes," said Clara. "And she won't die. She can't. Mr. Renshaw, the parson, was in the other day. 'Think!' he said to her; 'you will have your mother and father, and your sisters, and your son, in the Other Land.' And she said: 'I have done without them for a long time, and CAN do without them now. It is the living I want, not the dead.' She wants to live even now." "Oh, how horrible!" said Clara, too frightened to speak. "And she looks at me, and she wants to stay with me," he went on monotonously. "She's got such a will, it seems as if she would never go--never!" "Don't think of it!" cried Clara. "And she was religious--she is religious now--but it is no good. She simply won't give in. And do you know, I said to her on Thursday: 'Mother, if I had to die, I'd die. I'd WILL to die.' And she said to me, sharp: 'Do you think I haven't? Do you think you can die when you like?'" His voice ceased. He did not cry, only went on speaking monotonously. Clara wanted to run. She looked round. There was the black, re-echoing shore, the dark sky down on her. She got up terrified. She wanted to be where there was light, where there were other people. She wanted to be away from him. He sat with his head dropped, not moving a muscle. "And I don't want her to eat," he said, "and she knows it. When I ask her: 'Shall you have anything' she's almost afraid to say 'Yes.' 'I'll have a cup of Benger's,' she says. 'It'll only keep your strength up,' I said to her. 'Yes'--and she almost cried--'but there's such a gnawing when I eat nothing, I can't bear it.' So I went and made her the food. It's the cancer that gnaws like that at her. I wish she'd die!" "Come!" said Clara roughly. "I'm going." He followed her down the darkness of the sands. He did not come to her. He seemed scarcely aware of her existence. And she was afraid of him, and disliked him. In the same acute daze they went back to Nottingham. He was always busy, always doing something, always going from one to the other of his friends. On the Monday he went to see Baxter Dawes. Listless and pale, the man rose to greet the other, clinging to his chair as he held out his hand. "You shouldn't get up," said Paul. Dawes sat down heavily, eyeing Morel with a sort of suspicion. "Don't you waste your time on me," he said, "if you've owt better to do." "I wanted to come," said Paul. "Here! I brought you some sweets." The invalid put them aside. "It's not been much of a week-end," said Morel. "How's your mother?" asked the other. "Hardly any different." "I thought she was perhaps worse, being as you didn't come on Sunday." "I was at Skegness," said Paul. "I wanted a change." The other looked at him with dark eyes. He seemed to be waiting, not quite daring to ask, trusting to be told. "I went with Clara," said Paul. "I knew as much," said Dawes quietly. "It was an old promise," said Paul. "You have it your own way," said Dawes. This was the first time Clara had been definitely mentioned between them. "Nay," said Morel slowly; "she's tired of me." Again Dawes looked at him. "Since August she's been getting tired of me," Morel repeated. The two men were very quiet together. Paul suggested a game of draughts. They played in silence. "I s'll go abroad when my mother's dead," said Paul. "Abroad!" repeated Dawes. "Yes; I don't care what I do." They continued the game. Dawes was winning. "I s'll have to begin a new start of some sort," said Paul; "and you as well, I suppose." He took one of Dawes's pieces. "I dunno where," said the other. "Things have to happen," Morel said. "It's no good doing anything--at least--no, I don't know. Give me some toffee." The two men ate sweets, and began another game of draughts. "What made that scar on your mouth?" asked Dawes. Paul put his hand hastily to his lips, and looked over the garden. "I had a bicycle accident," he said. Dawes's hand trembled as he moved the piece. "You shouldn't ha' laughed at me," he said, very low. "When?" "That night on Woodborough Road, when you and her passed me--you with your hand on her shoulder." "I never laughed at you," said Paul. Dawes kept his fingers on the draught-piece. "I never knew you were there till the very second when you passed," said Morel. "It was that as did me," Dawes said, very low. Paul took another sweet. "I never laughed," he said, "except as I'm always laughing." They finished the game. That night Morel walked home from Nottingham, in order to have something to do. The furnaces flared in a red blotch over Bulwell; the black clouds were like a low ceiling. As he went along the ten miles of highroad, he felt as if he were walking out of life, between the black levels of the sky and the earth. But at the end was only the sick-room. If he walked and walked for ever, there was only that place to come to. He was not tired when he got near home, or He did not know it. Across the field he could see the red firelight leaping in her bedroom window. "When she's dead," he said to himself, "that fire will go out." He took off his boots quietly and crept upstairs. His mothers door was wide open, because she slept alone still. The red firelight dashed its glow on the landing. Soft as a shadow, he peeped in her doorway. "Paul!" she murmured. His heart seemed to break again. He went in and sat by the bed. "How late you are!" she murmured. "Not very," he said. "Why, what time is it?" The murmur came plaintive and helpless. "It's only just gone eleven." That was not true; it was nearly one o'clock. "Oh!" she said; "I thought it was later." And he knew the unutterable misery of her nights that would not go. "Can't you sleep, my pigeon?" he said. "No, I can't," she wailed. "Never mind, Little!" He said crooning. "Never mind, my love. I'll stop with you half an hour, my pigeon; then perhaps it will be better." And he sat by the bedside, slowly, rhythmically stroking her brows with his finger-tips, stroking her eyes shut, soothing her, holding her fingers in his free hand. They could hear the sleepers' breathing in the other rooms. "Now go to bed," she murmured, lying quite still under his fingers and his love. "Will you sleep?" he asked. "Yes, I think so." "You feel better, my Little, don't you?" "Yes," she said, like a fretful, half-soothed child. Still the days and the weeks went by. He hardly ever went to see Clara now. But he wandered restlessly from one person to another for some help, and there was none anywhere. Miriam had written to him tenderly. He went to see her. Her heart was very sore when she saw him, white, gaunt, with his eyes dark and bewildered. Her pity came up, hurting her till she could not bear it. "How is she?" she asked. "The same--the same!" he said. "The doctor says she can't last, but I know she will. She'll be here at Christmas." Miriam shuddered. She drew him to her; she pressed him to her bosom; she kissed him and kissed him. He submitted, but it was torture. She could not kiss his agony. That remained alone and apart. She kissed his face, and roused his blood, while his soul was apart writhing with the agony of death. And she kissed him and fingered his body, till at last, feeling he would go mad, he got away from her. It was not what he wanted just then--not that. And she thought she had soothed him and done him good. December came, and some snow. He stayed at home all the while now. They could not afford a nurse. Annie came to look after her mother; the parish nurse, whom they loved, came in morning and evening. Paul shared the nursing with Annie. Often, in the evenings, when friends were in the kitchen with them, they all laughed together and shook with laughter. It was reaction. Paul was so comical, Annie was so quaint. The whole party laughed till they cried, trying to subdue the sound. And Mrs. Morel, lying alone in the darkness heard them, and among her bitterness was a feeling of relief. Then Paul would go upstairs gingerly, guiltily, to see if she had heard. "Shall I give you some milk?" he asked. "A little," she replied plaintively. And he would put some water with it, so that it should not nourish her. Yet he loved her more than his own life. She had morphia every night, and her heart got fitful. Annie slept beside her. Paul would go in in the early morning, when his sister got up. His mother was wasted and almost ashen in the morning with the morphia. Darker and darker grew her eyes, all pupil, with the torture. In the mornings the weariness and ache were too much to bear. Yet she could not--would not--weep, or even complain much. "You slept a bit later this morning, little one," he would say to her. "Did I?" she answered, with fretful weariness. "Yes; it's nearly eight o'clock." He stood looking out of the window. The whole country was bleak and pallid under the snow. Then he felt her pulse. There was a strong stroke and a weak one, like a sound and its echo. That was supposed to betoken the end. She let him feel her wrist, knowing what he wanted. Sometimes they looked in each other's eyes. Then they almost seemed to make an agreement. It was almost as if he were agreeing to die also. But she did not consent to die; she would not. Her body was wasted to a fragment of ash. Her eyes were dark and full of torture. "Can't you give her something to put an end to it?" he asked the doctor at last. But the doctor shook his head. "She can't last many days now, Mr. Morel," he said. Paul went indoors. "I can't bear it much longer; we shall all go mad," said Annie. The two sat down to breakfast. "Go and sit with her while we have breakfast, Minnie," said Annie. But the girl was frightened. Paul went through the country, through the woods, over the snow. He saw the marks of rabbits and birds in the white snow. He wandered miles and miles. A smoky red sunset came on slowly, painfully, lingering. He thought she would die that day. There was a donkey that came up to him over the snow by the wood's edge, and put its head against him, and walked with him alongside. He put his arms round the donkey's neck, and stroked his cheeks against his ears. His mother, silent, was still alive, with her hard mouth gripped grimly, her eyes of dark torture only living. It was nearing Christmas; there was more snow. Annie and he felt as if they could go on no more. Still her dark eyes were alive. Morel, silent and frightened, obliterated himself. Sometimes he would go into the sick-room and look at her. Then he backed out, bewildered. She kept her hold on life still. The miners had been out on strike, and returned a fortnight or so before Christmas. Minnie went upstairs with the feeding-cup. It was two days after the men had been in. "Have the men been saying their hands are sore, Minnie?" she asked, in the faint, querulous voice that would not give in. Minnie stood surprised. "Not as I know of, Mrs. Morel," she answered. "But I'll bet they are sore," said the dying woman, as she moved her head with a sigh of weariness. "But, at any rate, there'll be something to buy in with this week." Not a thing did she let slip. "Your father's pit things will want well airing, Annie," she said, when the men were going back to work. "Don't you bother about that, my dear," said Annie. One night Annie and Paul were alone. Nurse was upstairs. "She'll live over Christmas," said Annie. They were both full of horror. "She won't," he replied grimly. "I s'll give her morphia." "Which?" said Annie. "All that came from Sheffield," said Paul. "Ay--do!" said Annie. The next day he was painting in the bedroom. She seemed to be asleep. He stepped softly backwards and forwards at his painting. Suddenly her small voice wailed: "Don't walk about, Paul." He looked round. Her eyes, like dark bubbles in her face, were looking at him. "No, my dear," he said gently. Another fibre seemed to snap in his heart. That evening he got all the morphia pills there were, and took them downstairs. Carefully he crushed them to powder. "What are you doing?" said Annie. "I s'll put 'em in her night milk." Then they both laughed together like two conspiring children. On top of all their horror flicked this little sanity. Nurse did not come that night to settle Mrs. Morel down. Paul went up with the hot milk in a feeding-cup. It was nine o'clock. She was reared up in bed, and he put the feeding-cup between her lips that he would have died to save from any hurt. She took a sip, then put the spout of the cup away and looked at him with her dark, wondering eyes. He looked at her. "Oh, it IS bitter, Paul!" she said, making a little grimace. "It's a new sleeping draught the doctor gave me for you," he said. "He thought it would leave you in such a state in the morning." "And I hope it won't," she said, like a child. She drank some more of the milk. "But it IS horrid!" she said. He saw her frail fingers over the cup, her lips making a little move. "I know--I tasted it," he said. "But I'll give you some clean milk afterwards." "I think so," she said, and she went on with the draught. She was obedient to him like a child. He wondered if she knew. He saw her poor wasted throat moving as she drank with difficulty. Then he ran downstairs for more milk. There were no grains in the bottom of the cup. "Has she had it?" whispered Annie. "Yes--and she said it was bitter." "Oh!" laughed Annie, putting her under lip between her teeth. "And I told her it was a new draught. Where's that milk?" They both went upstairs. "I wonder why nurse didn't come to settle me down?" complained the mother, like a child, wistfully. "She said she was going to a concert, my love," replied Annie. "Did she?" They were silent a minute. Mrs. Morel gulped the little clean milk. "Annie, that draught WAS horrid!" she said plaintively. "Was it, my love? Well, never mind." The mother sighed again with weariness. Her pulse was very irregular. "Let US settle you down," said Annie. "Perhaps nurse will be so late." "Ay," said the mother--"try." They turned the clothes back. Paul saw his mother like a girl curled up in her flannel nightdress. Quickly they made one half of the bed, moved her, made the other, straightened her nightgown over her small feet, and covered her up. "There," said Paul, stroking her softly. "There!--now you'll sleep." "Yes," she said. "I didn't think you could do the bed so nicely," she added, almost gaily. Then she curled up, with her cheek on her hand, her head snugged between her shoulders. Paul put the long thin plait of grey hair over her shoulder and kissed her. "You'll sleep, my love," he said. "Yes," she answered trustfully. "Good-night." They put out the light, and it was still. Morel was in bed. Nurse did not come. Annie and Paul came to look at her at about eleven. She seemed to be sleeping as usual after her draught. Her mouth had come a bit open. "Shall we sit up?" said Paul. "I s'll lie with her as I always do," said Annie. "She might wake up." "All right. And call me if you see any difference." "Yes." They lingered before the bedroom fire, feeling the night big and black and snowy outside, their two selves alone in the world. At last he went into the next room and went to bed. He slept almost immediately, but kept waking every now and again. Then he went sound asleep. He started awake at Annie's whispered, "Paul, Paul!" He saw his sister in her white nightdress, with her long plait of hair down her back, standing in the darkness. "Yes?" he whispered, sitting up. "Come and look at her." He slipped out of bed. A bud of gas was burning in the sick chamber. His mother lay with her cheek on her hand, curled up as she had gone to sleep. But her mouth had fallen open, and she breathed with great, hoarse breaths, like snoring, and there were long intervals between. "She's going!" he whispered. "Yes," said Annie. "How long has she been like it?" "I only just woke up." Annie huddled into the dressing-gown, Paul wrapped himself in a brown blanket. It was three o'clock. He mended the fire. Then the two sat waiting. The great, snoring breath was taken--held awhile--then given back. There was a space--a long space. Then they started. The great, snoring breath was taken again. He bent close down and looked at her. "Isn't it awful!" whispered Annie. He nodded. They sat down again helplessly. Again came the great, snoring breath. Again they hung suspended. Again it was given back, long and harsh. The sound, so irregular, at such wide intervals, sounded through the house. Morel, in his room, slept on. Paul and Annie sat crouched, huddled, motionless. The great snoring sound began again--there was a painful pause while the breath was held--back came the rasping breath. Minute after minute passed. Paul looked at her again, bending low over her. "She may last like this," he said. They were both silent. He looked out of the window, and could faintly discern the snow on the garden. "You go to my bed," he said to Annie. "I'll sit up." "No," she said, "I'll stop with you." "I'd rather you didn't," he said. At last Annie crept out of the room, and he was alone. He hugged himself in his brown blanket, crouched in front of his mother, watching. She looked dreadful, with the bottom jaw fallen back. He watched. Sometimes he thought the great breath would never begin again. He could not bear it--the waiting. Then suddenly, startling him, came the great harsh sound. He mended the fire again, noiselessly. She must not be disturbed. The minutes went by. The night was going, breath by breath. Each time the sound came he felt it wring him, till at last he could not feel so much. His father got up. Paul heard the miner drawing his stockings on, yawning. Then Morel, in shirt and stockings, entered. "Hush!" said Paul. Morel stood watching. Then he looked at his son, helplessly, and in horror. "Had I better stop a-whoam?" he whispered. "No. Go to work. She'll last through to-morrow." "I don't think so." "Yes. Go to work." The miner looked at her again, in fear, and went obediently out of the room. Paul saw the tape of his garters swinging against his legs. After another half-hour Paul went downstairs and drank a cup of tea, then returned. Morel, dressed for the pit, came upstairs again. "Am I to go?" he said. "Yes." And in a few minutes Paul heard his father's heavy steps go thudding over the deadening snow. Miners called in the streets as they tramped in gangs to work. The terrible, long-drawn breaths continued--heave--heave--heave; then a long pause--then--ah-h-h-h-h! as it came back. Far away over the snow sounded the hooters of the ironworks. One after another they crowed and boomed, some small and far away, some near, the blowers of the collieries and the other works. Then there was silence. He mended the fire. The great breaths broke the silence--she looked just the same. He put back the blind and peered out. Still it was dark. Perhaps there was a lighter tinge. Perhaps the snow was bluer. He drew up the blind and got dressed. Then, shuddering, he drank brandy from the bottle on the wash-stand. The snow WAS growing blue. He heard a cart clanking down the street. Yes, it was seven o'clock, and it was coming a little bit light. He heard some people calling. The world was waking. A grey, deathly dawn crept over the snow. Yes, he could see the houses. He put out the gas. It seemed very dark. The breathing came still, but he was almost used to it. He could see her. She was just the same. He wondered if he piled heavy clothes on top of her it would stop. He looked at her. That was not her--not her a bit. If he piled the blanket and heavy coats on her-- Suddenly the door opened, and Annie entered. She looked at him questioningly. "Just the same," he said calmly. They whispered together a minute, then he went downstairs to get breakfast. It was twenty to eight. Soon Annie came down. "Isn't it awful! Doesn't she look awful!" she whispered, dazed with horror. He nodded. "If she looks like that!" said Annie. "Drink some tea," he said. They went upstairs again. Soon the neighbours came with their frightened question: "How is she?" It went on just the same. She lay with her cheek in her hand, her mouth fallen open, and the great, ghastly snores came and went. At ten o'clock nurse came. She looked strange and woebegone. "Nurse," cried Paul, "she'll last like this for days?" "She can't, Mr. Morel," said nurse. "She can't." There was a silence. "Isn't it dreadful!" wailed the nurse. "Who would have thought she could stand it? Go down now, Mr. Morel, go down." At last, at about eleven o'clock, he went downstairs and sat in the neighbour's house. Annie was downstairs also. Nurse and Arthur were upstairs. Paul sat with his head in his hand. Suddenly Annie came flying across the yard crying, half mad: "Paul--Paul--she's gone!" In a second he was back in his own house and upstairs. She lay curled up and still, with her face on her hand, and nurse was wiping her mouth. They all stood back. He kneeled down, and put his face to hers and his arms round her: "My love--my love--oh, my love!" he whispered again and again. "My love--oh, my love!" Then he heard the nurse behind him, crying, saying: "She's better, Mr. Morel, she's better." When he took his face up from his warm, dead mother he went straight downstairs and began blacking his boots. There was a good deal to do, letters to write, and so on. The doctor came and glanced at her, and sighed. "Ay--poor thing!" he said, then turned away. "Well, call at the surgery about six for the certificate." The father came home from work at about four o'clock. He dragged silently into the house and sat down. Minnie bustled to give him his dinner. Tired, he laid his black arms on the table. There were swede turnips for his dinner, which he liked. Paul wondered if he knew. It was some time, and nobody had spoken. At last the son said: "You noticed the blinds were down?" Morel looked up. "No," he said. "Why--has she gone?" "Yes." "When wor that?" "About twelve this morning." "H'm!" The miner sat still for a moment, then began his dinner. It was as if nothing had happened. He ate his turnips in silence. Afterwards he washed and went upstairs to dress. The door of her room was shut. "Have you seen her?" Annie asked of him when he came down. "No," he said. In a little while he went out. Annie went away, and Paul called on the undertaker, the clergyman, the doctor, the registrar. It was a long business. He got back at nearly eight o'clock. The undertaker was coming soon to measure for the coffin. The house was empty except for her. He took a candle and went upstairs. The room was cold, that had been warm for so long. Flowers, bottles, plates, all sick-room litter was taken away; everything was harsh and austere. She lay raised on the bed, the sweep of the sheet from the raised feet was like a clean curve of snow, so silent. She lay like a maiden asleep. With his candle in his hand, he bent over her. She lay like a girl asleep and dreaming of her love. The mouth was a little open as if wondering from the suffering, but her face was young, her brow clear and white as if life had never touched it. He looked again at the eyebrows, at the small, winsome nose a bit on one side. She was young again. Only the hair as it arched so beautifully from her temples was mixed with silver, and the two simple plaits that lay on her shoulders were filigree of silver and brown. She would wake up. She would lift her eyelids. She was with him still. He bent and kissed her passionately. But there was coldness against his mouth. He bit his lips with horror. Looking at her, he felt he could never, never let her go. No! He stroked the hair from her temples. That, too, was cold. He saw the mouth so dumb and wondering at the hurt. Then he crouched on the floor, whispering to her: "Mother, mother!" He was still with her when the undertakers came, young men who had been to school with him. They touched her reverently, and in a quiet, businesslike fashion. They did not look at her. He watched jealously. He and Annie guarded her fiercely. They would not let anybody come to see her, and the neighbours were offended. After a while Paul went out of the house, and played cards at a friend's. It was midnight when he got back. His father rose from the couch as he entered, saying in a plaintive way: "I thought tha wor niver comin', lad." "I didn't think you'd sit up," said Paul. His father looked so forlorn. Morel had been a man without fear--simply nothing frightened him. Paul realised with a start that he had been afraid to go to bed, alone in the house with his dead. He was sorry. "I forgot you'd be alone, father," he said. "Dost want owt to eat?" asked Morel. "No." "Sithee--I made thee a drop o' hot milk. Get it down thee; it's cold enough for owt." Paul drank it. After a while Morel went to bed. He hurried past the closed door, and left his own door open. Soon the son came upstairs also. He went in to kiss her good-night, as usual. It was cold and dark. He wished they had kept her fire burning. Still she dreamed her young dream. But she would be cold. "My dear!" he whispered. "My dear!" And he did not kiss her, for fear she should be cold and strange to him. It eased him she slept so beautifully. He shut her door softly, not to wake her, and went to bed. In the morning Morel summoned his courage, hearing Annie downstairs and Paul coughing in the room across the landing. He opened her door, and went into the darkened room. He saw the white uplifted form in the twilight, but her he dared not see. Bewildered, too frightened to possess any of his faculties, he got out of the room again and left her. He never looked at her again. He had not seen her for months, because he had not dared to look. And she looked like his young wife again. "Have you seen her?" Annie asked of him sharply after breakfast. "Yes," he said. "And don't you think she looks nice?" "Yes." He went out of the house soon after. And all the time he seemed to be creeping aside to avoid it. Paul went about from place to place, doing the business of the death. He met Clara in Nottingham, and they had tea together in a cafe, when they were quite jolly again. She was infinitely relieved to find he did not take it tragically. Later, when the relatives began to come for the funeral, the affair became public, and the children became social beings. They put themselves aside. They buried her in a furious storm of rain and wind. The wet clay glistened, all the white flowers were soaked. Annie gripped his arm and leaned forward. Down below she saw a dark corner of William's coffin. The oak box sank steadily. She was gone. The rain poured in the grave. The procession of black, with its umbrellas glistening, turned away. The cemetery was deserted under the drenching cold rain. Paul went home and busied himself supplying the guests with drinks. His father sat in the kitchen with Mrs. Morel's relatives, "superior" people, and wept, and said what a good lass she'd been, and how he'd tried to do everything he could for her--everything. He had striven all his life to do what he could for her, and he'd nothing to reproach himself with. She was gone, but he'd done his best for her. He wiped his eyes with his white handkerchief. He'd nothing to reproach himself for, he repeated. All his life he'd done his best for her. And that was how he tried to dismiss her. He never thought of her personally. Everything deep in him he denied. Paul hated his father for sitting sentimentalising over her. He knew he would do it in the public-houses. For the real tragedy went on in Morel in spite of himself. Sometimes, later, he came down from his afternoon sleep, white and cowering. "I HAVE been dreaming of thy mother," he said in a small voice. "Have you, father? When I dream of her it's always just as she was when she was well. I dream of her often, but it seems quite nice and natural, as if nothing had altered." But Morel crouched in front of the fire in terror. The weeks passed half-real, not much pain, not much of anything, perhaps a little relief, mostly a _nuit blanche_. Paul went restless from place to place. For some months, since his mother had been worse, he had not made love to Clara. She was, as it were, dumb to him, rather distant. Dawes saw her very occasionally, but the two could not get an inch across the great distance between them. The three of them were drifting forward. Dawes mended very slowly. He was in the convalescent home at Skegness at Christmas, nearly well again. Paul went to the seaside for a few days. His father was with Annie in Sheffield. Dawes came to Paul's lodgings. His time in the home was up. The two men, between whom was such a big reserve, seemed faithful to each other. Dawes depended on Morel now. He knew Paul and Clara had practically separated. Two days after Christmas Paul was to go back to Nottingham. The evening before he sat with Dawes smoking before the fire. "You know Clara's coming down for the day to-morrow?" he said. The other man glanced at him. "Yes, you told me," he replied. Paul drank the remainder of his glass of whisky. "I told the landlady your wife was coming," he said. "Did you?" said Dawes, shrinking, but almost leaving himself in the other's hands. He got up rather stiffly, and reached for Morel's glass. "Let me fill you up," he said. Paul jumped up. "You sit still," he said. But Dawes, with rather shaky hand, continued to mix the drink. "Say when," he said. "Thanks!" replied the other. "But you've no business to get up." "It does me good, lad," replied Dawes. "I begin to think I'm right again, then." "You are about right, you know." "I am, certainly I am," said Dawes, nodding to him. "And Len says he can get you on in Sheffield." Dawes glanced at him again, with dark eyes that agreed with everything the other would say, perhaps a trifle dominated by him. "It's funny," said Paul, "starting again. I feel in a lot bigger mess than you." "In what way, lad?" "I don't know. I don't know. It's as if I was in a tangled sort of hole, rather dark and dreary, and no road anywhere." "I know--I understand it," Dawes said, nodding. "But you'll find it'll come all right." He spoke caressingly. "I suppose so," said Paul. Dawes knocked his pipe in a hopeless fashion. "You've not done for yourself like I have," he said. Morel saw the wrist and the white hand of the other man gripping the stem of the pipe and knocking out the ash, as if he had given up. "How old are you?" Paul asked. "Thirty-nine," replied Dawes, glancing at him. Those brown eyes, full of the consciousness of failure, almost pleading for reassurance, for someone to re-establish the man in himself, to warm him, to set him up firm again, troubled Paul. "You'll just be in your prime," said Morel. "You don't look as if much life had gone out of you." The brown eyes of the other flashed suddenly. "It hasn't," he said. "The go is there." Paul looked up and laughed. "We've both got plenty of life in us yet to make things fly," he said. The eyes of the two men met. They exchanged one look. Having recognised the stress of passion each in the other, they both drank their whisky. "Yes, begod!" said Dawes, breathless. There was a pause. "And I don't see," said Paul, "why you shouldn't go on where you left off." "What--" said Dawes, suggestively. "Yes--fit your old home together again." Dawes hid his face and shook his head. "Couldn't be done," he said, and looked up with an ironic smile. "Why? Because you don't want?" "Perhaps." They smoked in silence. Dawes showed his teeth as he bit his pipe stem. "You mean you don't want her?" asked Paul. Dawes stared up at the picture with a caustic expression on his face. "I hardly know," he said. The smoke floated softly up. "I believe she wants you," said Paul. "Do you?" replied the other, soft, satirical, abstract. "Yes. She never really hitched on to me--you were always there in the background. That's why she wouldn't get a divorce." Dawes continued to stare in a satirical fashion at the picture over the mantelpiece. "That's how women are with me," said Paul. "They want me like mad, but they don't want to belong to me. And she BELONGED to you all the time. I knew." The triumphant male came up in Dawes. He showed his teeth more distinctly. "Perhaps I was a fool," he said. "You were a big fool," said Morel. "But perhaps even THEN you were a bigger fool," said Dawes. There was a touch of triumph and malice in it. "Do you think so?" said Paul. They were silent for some time. "At any rate, I'm clearing out to-morrow," said Morel. "I see," answered Dawes. Then they did not talk any more. The instinct to murder each other had returned. They almost avoided each other. They shared the same bedroom. When they retired Dawes seemed abstract, thinking of something. He sat on the side of the bed in his shirt, looking at his legs. "Aren't you getting cold?" asked Morel. "I was lookin' at these legs," replied the other. "What's up with 'em? They look all right," replied Paul, from his bed. "They look all right. But there's some water in 'em yet." "And what about it?" "Come and look." Paul reluctantly got out of bed and went to look at the rather handsome legs of the other man that were covered with glistening, dark gold hair. "Look here," said Dawes, pointing to his shin. "Look at the water under here." "Where?" said Paul. The man pressed in his finger-tips. They left little dents that filled up slowly. "It's nothing," said Paul. "You feel," said Dawes. Paul tried with his fingers. It made little dents. "H'm!" he said. "Rotten, isn't it?" said Dawes. "Why? It's nothing much." "You're not much of a man with water in your legs." "I can't see as it makes any difference," said Morel. "I've got a weak chest." He returned to his own bed. "I suppose the rest of me's all right," said Dawes, and he put out the light. In the morning it was raining. Morel packed his bag. The sea was grey and shaggy and dismal. He seemed to be cutting himself off from life more and more. It gave him a wicked pleasure to do it. The two men were at the station. Clara stepped out of the train, and came along the platform, very erect and coldly composed. She wore a long coat and a tweed hat. Both men hated her for her composure. Paul shook hands with her at the barrier. Dawes was leaning against the bookstall, watching. His black overcoat was buttoned up to the chin because of the rain. He was pale, with almost a touch of nobility in his quietness. He came forward, limping slightly. "You ought to look better than this," she said. "Oh, I'm all right now." The three stood at a loss. She kept the two men hesitating near her. "Shall we go to the lodging straight off," said Paul, "or somewhere else?" "We may as well go home," said Dawes. Paul walked on the outside of the pavement, then Dawes, then Clara. They made polite conversation. The sitting-room faced the sea, whose tide, grey and shaggy, hissed not far off. Morel swung up the big arm-chair. "Sit down, Jack," he said. "I don't want that chair," said Dawes. "Sit down!" Morel repeated. Clara took off her things and laid them on the couch. She had a slight air of resentment. Lifting her hair with her fingers, she sat down, rather aloof and composed. Paul ran downstairs to speak to the landlady. "I should think you're cold," said Dawes to his wife. "Come nearer to the fire." "Thank you, I'm quite warm," she answered. She looked out of the window at the rain and at the sea. "When are you going back?" she asked. "Well, the rooms are taken until to-morrow, so he wants me to stop. He's going back to-night." "And then you're thinking of going to Sheffield?" "Yes." "Are you fit to start work?" "I'm going to start." "You've really got a place?" "Yes--begin on Monday." "You don't look fit." "Why don't I?" She looked again out of the window instead of answering. "And have you got lodgings in Sheffield?" "Yes." Again she looked away out of the window. The panes were blurred with streaming rain. "And can you manage all right?" she asked. "I s'd think so. I s'll have to!" They were silent when Morel returned. "I shall go by the four-twenty," he said as he entered. Nobody answered. "I wish you'd take your boots off," he said to Clara. "There's a pair of slippers of mine." "Thank you," she said. "They aren't wet." He put the slippers near her feet. She left them there. Morel sat down. Both the men seemed helpless, and each of them had a rather hunted look. But Dawes now carried himself quietly, seemed to yield himself, while Paul seemed to screw himself up. Clara thought she had never seen him look so small and mean. He was as if trying to get himself into the smallest possible compass. And as he went about arranging, and as he sat talking, there seemed something false about him and out of tune. Watching him unknown, she said to herself there was no stability about him. He was fine in his way, passionate, and able to give her drinks of pure life when he was in one mood. And now he looked paltry and insignificant. There was nothing stable about him. Her husband had more manly dignity. At any rate HE did not waft about with any wind. There was something evanescent about Morel, she thought, something shifting and false. He would never make sure ground for any woman to stand on. She despised him rather for his shrinking together, getting smaller. Her husband at least was manly, and when he was beaten gave in. But this other would never own to being beaten. He would shift round and round, prowl, get smaller. She despised him. And yet she watched him rather than Dawes, and it seemed as if their three fates lay in his hands. She hated him for it. She seemed to understand better now about men, and what they could or would do. She was less afraid of them, more sure of herself. That they were not the small egoists she had imagined them made her more comfortable. She had learned a good deal--almost as much as she wanted to learn. Her cup had been full. It was still as full as she could carry. On the whole, she would not be sorry when he was gone. They had dinner, and sat eating nuts and drinking by the fire. Not a serious word had been spoken. Yet Clara realised that Morel was withdrawing from the circle, leaving her the option to stay with her husband. It angered her. He was a mean fellow, after all, to take what he wanted and then give her back. She did not remember that she herself had had what she wanted, and really, at the bottom of her heart, wished to be given back. Paul felt crumpled up and lonely. His mother had really supported his life. He had loved her; they two had, in fact, faced the world together. Now she was gone, and for ever behind him was the gap in life, the tear in the veil, through which his life seemed to drift slowly, as if he were drawn towards death. He wanted someone of their own free initiative to help him. The lesser things he began to let go from him, for fear of this big thing, the lapse towards death, following in the wake of his beloved. Clara could not stand for him to hold on to. She wanted him, but not to understand him. He felt she wanted the man on top, not the real him that was in trouble. That would be too much trouble to her; he dared not give it her. She could not cope with him. It made him ashamed. So, secretly ashamed because he was in such a mess, because his own hold on life was so unsure, because nobody held him, feeling unsubstantial, shadowy, as if he did not count for much in this concrete world, he drew himself together smaller and smaller. He did not want to die; he would not give in. But he was not afraid of death. If nobody would help, he would go on alone. Dawes had been driven to the extremity of life, until he was afraid. He could go to the brink of death, he could lie on the edge and look in. Then, cowed, afraid, he had to crawl back, and like a beggar take what offered. There was a certain nobility in it. As Clara saw, he owned himself beaten, and he wanted to be taken back whether or not. That she could do for him. It was three o'clock. "I am going by the four-twenty," said Paul again to Clara. "Are you coming then or later?" "I don't know," she said. "I'm meeting my father in Nottingham at seven-fifteen," he said. "Then," she answered, "I'll come later." Dawes jerked suddenly, as if he had been held on a strain. He looked out over the sea, but he saw nothing. "There are one or two books in the corner," said Morel. "I've done with 'em." At about four o'clock he went. "I shall see you both later," he said, as he shook hands. "I suppose so," said Dawes. "An' perhaps--one day--I s'll be able to pay you back the money as--" "I shall come for it, you'll see," laughed Paul. "I s'll be on the rocks before I'm very much older." "Ay--well--" said Dawes. "Good-bye," he said to Clara. "Good-bye," she said, giving him her hand. Then she glanced at him for the last time, dumb and humble. He was gone. Dawes and his wife sat down again. "It's a nasty day for travelling," said the man. "Yes," she answered. They talked in a desultory fashion until it grew dark. The landlady brought in the tea. Dawes drew up his chair to the table without being invited, like a husband. Then he sat humbly waiting for his cup. She served him as she would, like a wife, not consulting his wish. After tea, as it drew near to six o'clock, he went to the window. All was dark outside. The sea was roaring. "It's raining yet," he said. "Is it?" she answered. "You won't go to-night, shall you?" he said, hesitating. She did not answer. He waited. "I shouldn't go in this rain," he said. "Do you WANT me to stay?" she asked. His hand as he held the dark curtain trembled. "Yes," he said. He remained with his back to her. She rose and went slowly to him. He let go the curtain, turned, hesitating, towards her. She stood with her hands behind her back, looking up at him in a heavy, inscrutable fashion. "Do you want me, Baxter?" she asked. His voice was hoarse as he answered: "Do you want to come back to me?" She made a moaning noise, lifted her arms, and put them round his neck, drawing him to her. He hid his face on her shoulder, holding her clasped. "Take me back!" she whispered, ecstatic. "Take me back, take me back!" And she put her fingers through his fine, thin dark hair, as if she were only semi-conscious. He tightened his grasp on her. "Do you want me again?" he murmured, broken.

Chapter 14 The Release

https://web.archive.org/web/20210226133826/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sonsandlovers/section14/

Dr. Ansell tells Paul that Baxter Dawes is in the fever hospital in Sheffield, and Paul decides to visit him. Paul tells Dawes that he can recommend him a convalescent home in Seathorpe. He tells Clara that he has been to visit Dawes in the hospital, and she becomes upset and realizes that she has treated her husband badly. She goes to see him to try to make amends, but at first they do not get on well. Paul also visits Dawes a few times, and the two men begin to develop a sort of friendship. Paul does not spend much time with Clara now, because he is occupied with his mother's illness. Mrs. Morel gets gradually worse, and Paul spends much time caring for her. When Clara reminds him that it is her birthday, he takes her to the seashore, but spends most of the time talking about his mother and how he wishes that she would die. The next time he sees Dawes, Paul mentions that he has been with Clara, and this is the first mention the two men make of Clara. He tells Dawes that he will go abroad after his mother dies. Time passes, and Mrs. Morel stays the same. Miriam writes to Paul and he visits her. She kisses him, believing he will be comforted, but he does not want that kind of comfort from her and finally manages to get away. Paul and Annie share the nursing of their mother. They begin to feel as if they can no longer go on, and Paul decides to give her an overdose of morphia to put an end to all their suffering. He crushes all the pills they have into his mother' milk, and she drinks it obediently, believing it to be a new sleeping draught. She lasts through the night and finally dies the next morning. Dawes is now in a convalescent home, and Paul goes to see him again and suggests that he has plenty of life left in him and that he should try to get Clara back so that he can regain something of his former life. The next day, he and Clara bring Dawes to his lodging and Paul leaves them together.

Commentary This chapter is an excellent example of the way that the novel is not always narrated in chronological order, since the first episode in which Paul visits Baxter Dawes in the hospital actually occurs before Mrs. Morel is taken home, an episode which is included in the previous chapter. Mrs. Morel's desire to be with Paul is so strong that he tells Clara he believes she refuses to die so that she can stay with him. " And she looks at me, and she wants to stay with me . . . She's got such a will, it seems as if she would never go - never!" Even though he says he wishes she would die, Paul's strong bond to his mother remains. He feels as though a part of him were dying also. After she dies, Paul still feels this connection: "Looking at her, he felt he could never, never let her go." Morel shows his vulnerability after his wife dies, when he waits up for Paul to return home, so that he is not alone in the house with the dead body. Paul, who had considered Morel to be fearless, is taken by surprise.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/217-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Sons and Lovers/section_14_part_0.txt

Sons and Lovers.part 2.chapter 15

chapter 15 derelict

{"name": "Chapter 15 Derelict", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210226133826/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sonsandlovers/section15/", "summary": "Clara goes back to Sheffield with her husband, and Paul is left alone with his father. There is no point in keeping their house any longer, so they each take lodgings nearby. Paul is lost without his mother. He can no longer paint, and he puts all of his energy into his work at the factory. He has debates within himself, telling himself that he must stay alive for his mother's sake. However, he wants to give up. One Sunday evening, however, he sees Miriam at the Unitarian Church. He asks her to have supper with him quickly and she agrees. She tells him that she has been going to a farming college and will probably be kept on as a teacher there. She says that she thinks they should be married, and he says he's not sure that would be much good. He says he does not want it very much, and so she gives up. That is the end between them. She leaves him, realizing that \"his soul could not leave her, wherever she was.\" Paul, alone, yearns for his mother and considers following her into death. However, he decides to leave off thinking about suicide, and instead walks toward the town.", "analysis": "Commentary This chapter is Miriam's last attempt finally to possess Paul, now that the obstacle of his mother is out of the way. However, by the end she sees the futility of her efforts and realizes that, even in death, Mrs. Morel still owns Paul and he can never be hers. Paul says of his mother that, \"She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid all this. And she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him alongside with her.\" This completes the book's treatment of the relationship between Paul and Mrs. Morel and illustrates the way that his love for her has remained constant throughout."}

DERELICT CLARA went with her husband to Sheffield, and Paul scarcely saw her again. Walter Morel seemed to have let all the trouble go over him, and there he was, crawling about on the mud of it, just the same. There was scarcely any bond between father and son, save that each felt he must not let the other go in any actual want. As there was no one to keep on the home, and as they could neither of them bear the emptiness of the house, Paul took lodgings in Nottingham, and Morel went to live with a friendly family in Bestwood. Everything seemed to have gone smash for the young man. He could not paint. The picture he finished on the day of his mother's death--one that satisfied him--was the last thing he did. At work there was no Clara. When he came home he could not take up his brushes again. There was nothing left. So he was always in the town at one place or another, drinking, knocking about with the men he knew. It really wearied him. He talked to barmaids, to almost any woman, but there was that dark, strained look in his eyes, as if he were hunting something. Everything seemed so different, so unreal. There seemed no reason why people should go along the street, and houses pile up in the daylight. There seemed no reason why these things should occupy the space, instead of leaving it empty. His friends talked to him: he heard the sounds, and he answered. But why there should be the noise of speech he could not understand. He was most himself when he was alone, or working hard and mechanically at the factory. In the latter case there was pure forgetfulness, when he lapsed from consciousness. But it had to come to an end. It hurt him so, that things had lost their reality. The first snowdrops came. He saw the tiny drop-pearls among the grey. They would have given him the liveliest emotion at one time. Now they were there, but they did not seem to mean anything. In a few moments they would cease to occupy that place, and just the space would be, where they had been. Tall, brilliant tram-cars ran along the street at night. It seemed almost a wonder they should trouble to rustle backwards and forwards. "Why trouble to go tilting down to Trent Bridges?" he asked of the big trams. It seemed they just as well might NOT be as be. The realest thing was the thick darkness at night. That seemed to him whole and comprehensible and restful. He could leave himself to it. Suddenly a piece of paper started near his feet and blew along down the pavement. He stood still, rigid, with clenched fists, a flame of agony going over him. And he saw again the sick-room, his mother, her eyes. Unconsciously he had been with her, in her company. The swift hop of the paper reminded him she was gone. But he had been with her. He wanted everything to stand still, so that he could be with her again. The days passed, the weeks. But everything seemed to have fused, gone into a conglomerated mass. He could not tell one day from another, one week from another, hardly one place from another. Nothing was distinct or distinguishable. Often he lost himself for an hour at a time, could not remember what he had done. One evening he came home late to his lodging. The fire was burning low; everybody was in bed. He threw on some more coal, glanced at the table, and decided he wanted no supper. Then he sat down in the arm-chair. It was perfectly still. He did not know anything, yet he saw the dim smoke wavering up the chimney. Presently two mice came out, cautiously, nibbling the fallen crumbs. He watched them as it were from a long way off. The church clock struck two. Far away he could hear the sharp clinking of the trucks on the railway. No, it was not they that were far away. They were there in their places. But where was he himself? The time passed. The two mice, careering wildly, scampered cheekily over his slippers. He had not moved a muscle. He did not want to move. He was not thinking of anything. It was easier so. There was no wrench of knowing anything. Then, from time to time, some other consciousness, working mechanically, flashed into sharp phrases. "What am I doing?" And out of the semi-intoxicated trance came the answer: "Destroying myself." Then a dull, live feeling, gone in an instant, told him that it was wrong. After a while, suddenly came the question: "Why wrong?" Again there was no answer, but a stroke of hot stubbornness inside his chest resisted his own annihilation. There was a sound of a heavy cart clanking down the road. Suddenly the electric light went out; there was a bruising thud in the penny-in-the-slot meter. He did not stir, but sat gazing in front of him. Only the mice had scuttled, and the fire glowed red in the dark room. Then, quite mechanically and more distinctly, the conversation began again inside him. "She's dead. What was it all for--her struggle?" That was his despair wanting to go after her. "You're alive." "She's not." "She is--in you." Suddenly he felt tired with the burden of it. "You've got to keep alive for her sake," said his will in him. Something felt sulky, as if it would not rouse. "You've got to carry forward her living, and what she had done, go on with it." But he did not want to. He wanted to give up. "But you can go on with your painting," said the will in him. "Or else you can beget children. They both carry on her effort." "Painting is not living." "Then live." "Marry whom?" came the sulky question. "As best you can." "Miriam?" But he did not trust that. He rose suddenly, went straight to bed. When he got inside his bedroom and closed the door, he stood with clenched fist. "Mater, my dear--" he began, with the whole force of his soul. Then he stopped. He would not say it. He would not admit that he wanted to die, to have done. He would not own that life had beaten him, or that death had beaten him. Going straight to bed, he slept at once, abandoning himself to the sleep. So the weeks went on. Always alone, his soul oscillated, first on the side of death, then on the side of life, doggedly. The real agony was that he had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to say, and WAS nothing himself. Sometimes he ran down the streets as if he were mad: sometimes he was mad; things weren't there, things were there. It made him pant. Sometimes he stood before the bar of the public-house where he called for a drink. Everything suddenly stood back away from him. He saw the face of the barmaid, the gobbling drinkers, his own glass on the slopped, mahogany board, in the distance. There was something between him and them. He could not get into touch. He did not want them; he did not want his drink. Turning abruptly, he went out. On the threshold he stood and looked at the lighted street. But he was not of it or in it. Something separated him. Everything went on there below those lamps, shut away from him. He could not get at them. He felt he couldn't touch the lamp-posts, not if he reached. Where could he go? There was nowhere to go, neither back into the inn, or forward anywhere. He felt stifled. There was nowhere for him. The stress grew inside him; he felt he should smash. "I mustn't," he said; and, turning blindly, he went in and drank. Sometimes the drink did him good; sometimes it made him worse. He ran down the road. For ever restless, he went here, there, everywhere. He determined to work. But when he had made six strokes, he loathed the pencil violently, got up, and went away, hurried off to a club where he could play cards or billiards, to a place where he could flirt with a barmaid who was no more to him than the brass pump-handle she drew. He was very thin and lantern-jawed. He dared not meet his own eyes in the mirror; he never looked at himself. He wanted to get away from himself, but there was nothing to get hold of. In despair he thought of Miriam. Perhaps--perhaps--? Then, happening to go into the Unitarian Church one Sunday evening, when they stood up to sing the second hymn he saw her before him. The light glistened on her lower lip as she sang. She looked as if she had got something, at any rate: some hope in heaven, if not in earth. Her comfort and her life seemed in the after-world. A warm, strong feeling for her came up. She seemed to yearn, as she sang, for the mystery and comfort. He put his hope in her. He longed for the sermon to be over, to speak to her. The throng carried her out just before him. He could nearly touch her. She did not know he was there. He saw the brown, humble nape of her neck under its black curls. He would leave himself to her. She was better and bigger than he. He would depend on her. She went wandering, in her blind way, through the little throngs of people outside the church. She always looked so lost and out of place among people. He went forward and put his hand on her arm. She started violently. Her great brown eyes dilated in fear, then went questioning at the sight of him. He shrank slightly from her. "I didn't know--" she faltered. "Nor I," he said. He looked away. His sudden, flaring hope sank again. "What are you doing in town?" he asked. "I'm staying at Cousin Anne's." "Ha! For long?" "No; only till to-morrow." "Must you go straight home?" She looked at him, then hid her face under her hat-brim. "No," she said--"no; it's not necessary." He turned away, and she went with him. They threaded through the throng of church people. The organ was still sounding in St. Mary's. Dark figures came through the lighted doors; people were coming down the steps. The large coloured windows glowed up in the night. The church was like a great lantern suspended. They went down Hollow Stone, and he took the car for the Bridges. "You will just have supper with me," he said: "then I'll bring you back." "Very well," she replied, low and husky. They scarcely spoke while they were on the car. The Trent ran dark and full under the bridge. Away towards Colwick all was black night. He lived down Holme Road, on the naked edge of the town, facing across the river meadows towards Sneinton Hermitage and the steep scrap of Colwick Wood. The floods were out. The silent water and the darkness spread away on their left. Almost afraid, they hurried along by the houses. Supper was laid. He swung the curtain over the window. There was a bowl of freesias and scarlet anemones on the table. She bent to them. Still touching them with her finger-tips, she looked up at him, saying: "Aren't they beautiful?" "Yes," he said. "What will you drink--coffee?" "I should like it," she said. "Then excuse me a moment." He went out to the kitchen. Miriam took off her things and looked round. It was a bare, severe room. Her photo, Clara's, Annie's, were on the wall. She looked on the drawing-board to see what he was doing. There were only a few meaningless lines. She looked to see what books he was reading. Evidently just an ordinary novel. The letters in the rack she saw were from Annie, Arthur, and from some man or other she did not know. Everything he had touched, everything that was in the least personal to him, she examined with lingering absorption. He had been gone from her for so long, she wanted to rediscover him, his position, what he was now. But there was not much in the room to help her. It only made her feel rather sad, it was so hard and comfortless. She was curiously examining a sketch-book when he returned with the coffee. "There's nothing new in it," he said, "and nothing very interesting." He put down the tray, and went to look over her shoulder. She turned the pages slowly, intent on examining everything. "H'm!" he said, as she paused at a sketch. "I'd forgotten that. It's not bad, is it?" "No," she said. "I don't quite understand it." He took the book from her and went through it. Again he made a curious sound of surprise and pleasure. "There's some not bad stuff in there," he said. "Not at all bad," she answered gravely. He felt again her interest in his work. Or was it for himself? Why was she always most interested in him as he appeared in his work? They sat down to supper. "By the way," he said, "didn't I hear something about your earning your own living?" "Yes," she replied, bowing her dark head over her cup. "And what of it?" "I'm merely going to the farming college at Broughton for three months, and I shall probably be kept on as a teacher there." "I say--that sounds all right for you! You always wanted to be independent." "Yes. "Why didn't you tell me?" "I only knew last week." "But I heard a month ago," he said. "Yes; but nothing was settled then." "I should have thought," he said, "you'd have told me you were trying." She ate her food in the deliberate, constrained way, almost as if she recoiled a little from doing anything so publicly, that he knew so well. "I suppose you're glad," he said. "Very glad." "Yes--it will be something." He was rather disappointed. "I think it will be a great deal," she said, almost haughtily, resentfully. He laughed shortly. "Why do you think it won't?" she asked. "Oh, I don't think it won't be a great deal. Only you'll find earning your own living isn't everything." "No," she said, swallowing with difficulty; "I don't suppose it is." "I suppose work CAN be nearly everything to a man," he said, "though it isn't to me. But a woman only works with a part of herself. The real and vital part is covered up." "But a man can give ALL himself to work?" she asked. "Yes, practically." "And a woman only the unimportant part of herself?" "That's it." She looked up at him, and her eyes dilated with anger. "Then," she said, "if it's true, it's a great shame." "It is. But I don't know everything," he answered. After supper they drew up to the fire. He swung her a chair facing him, and they sat down. She was wearing a dress of dark claret colour, that suited her dark complexion and her large features. Still, the curls were fine and free, but her face was much older, the brown throat much thinner. She seemed old to him, older than Clara. Her bloom of youth had quickly gone. A sort of stiffness, almost of woodenness, had come upon her. She meditated a little while, then looked at him. "And how are things with you?" she asked. "About all right," he answered. She looked at him, waiting. "Nay," she said, very low. Her brown, nervous hands were clasped over her knee. They had still the lack of confidence or repose, the almost hysterical look. He winced as he saw them. Then he laughed mirthlessly. She put her fingers between her lips. His slim, black, tortured body lay quite still in the chair. She suddenly took her finger from her mouth and looked at him. "And you have broken off with Clara?" "Yes." His body lay like an abandoned thing, strewn in the chair. "You know," she said, "I think we ought to be married." He opened his eyes for the first time since many months, and attended to her with respect. "Why?" he said. "See," she said, "how you waste yourself! You might be ill, you might die, and I never know--be no more then than if I had never known you." "And if we married?" he asked. "At any rate, I could prevent you wasting yourself and being a prey to other women--like--like Clara." "A prey?" he repeated, smiling. She bowed her head in silence. He lay feeling his despair come up again. "I'm not sure," he said slowly, "that marriage would be much good." "I only think of you," she replied. "I know you do. But--you love me so much, you want to put me in your pocket. And I should die there smothered." She bent her head, put her fingers between her lips, while the bitterness surged up in her heart. "And what will you do otherwise?" she asked. "I don't know--go on, I suppose. Perhaps I shall soon go abroad." The despairing doggedness in his tone made her go on her knees on the rug before the fire, very near to him. There she crouched as if she were crushed by something, and could not raise her head. His hands lay quite inert on the arms of his chair. She was aware of them. She felt that now he lay at her mercy. If she could rise, take him, put her arms round him, and say, "You are mine," then he would leave himself to her. But dare she? She could easily sacrifice herself. But dare she assert herself? She was aware of his dark-clothed, slender body, that seemed one stroke of life, sprawled in the chair close to her. But no; she dared not put her arms round it, take it up, and say, "It is mine, this body. Leave it to me." And she wanted to. It called to all her woman's instinct. But she crouched, and dared not. She was afraid he would not let her. She was afraid it was too much. It lay there, his body, abandoned. She knew she ought to take it up and claim it, and claim every right to it. But--could she do it? Her impotence before him, before the strong demand of some unknown thing in him, was her extremity. Her hands fluttered; she half-lifted her head. Her eyes, shuddering, appealing, gone, almost distracted, pleaded to him suddenly. His heart caught with pity. He took her hands, drew her to him, and comforted her. "Will you have me, to marry me?" he said very low. Oh, why did not he take her? Her very soul belonged to him. Why would he not take what was his? She had borne so long the cruelty of belonging to him and not being claimed by him. Now he was straining her again. It was too much for her. She drew back her head, held his face between her hands, and looked him in the eyes. No, he was hard. He wanted something else. She pleaded to him with all her love not to make it her choice. She could not cope with it, with him, she knew not with what. But it strained her till she felt she would break. "Do you want it?" she asked, very gravely. "Not much," he replied, with pain. She turned her face aside; then, raising herself with dignity, she took his head to her bosom, and rocked him softly. She was not to have him, then! So she could comfort him. She put her fingers through his hair. For her, the anguished sweetness of self-sacrifice. For him, the hate and misery of another failure. He could not bear it--that breast which was warm and which cradled him without taking the burden of him. So much he wanted to rest on her that the feint of rest only tortured him. He drew away. "And without marriage we can do nothing?" he asked. His mouth was lifted from his teeth with pain. She put her little finger between her lips. "No," she said, low and like the toll of a bell. "No, I think not." It was the end then between them. She could not take him and relieve him of the responsibility of himself. She could only sacrifice herself to him--sacrifice herself every day, gladly. And that he did not want. He wanted her to hold him and say, with joy and authority: "Stop all this restlessness and beating against death. You are mine for a mate." She had not the strength. Or was it a mate she wanted? or did she want a Christ in him? He felt, in leaving her, he was defrauding her of life. But he knew that, in staying, stilling the inner, desperate man, he was denying his own life. And he did not hope to give life to her by denying his own. She sat very quiet. He lit a cigarette. The smoke went up from it, wavering. He was thinking of his mother, and had forgotten Miriam. She suddenly looked at him. Her bitterness came surging up. Her sacrifice, then, was useless. He lay there aloof, careless about her. Suddenly she saw again his lack of religion, his restless instability. He would destroy himself like a perverse child. Well, then, he would! "I think I must go," she said softly. By her tone he knew she was despising him. He rose quietly. "I'll come along with you," he answered. She stood before the mirror pinning on her hat. How bitter, how unutterably bitter, it made her that he rejected her sacrifice! Life ahead looked dead, as if the glow were gone out. She bowed her face over the flowers--the freesias so sweet and spring-like, the scarlet anemones flaunting over the table. It was like him to have those flowers. He moved about the room with a certain sureness of touch, swift and relentless and quiet. She knew she could not cope with him. He would escape like a weasel out of her hands. Yet without him her life would trail on lifeless. Brooding, she touched the flowers. "Have them!" he said; and he took them out of the jar, dripping as they were, and went quickly into the kitchen. She waited for him, took the flowers, and they went out together, he talking, she feeling dead. She was going from him now. In her misery she leaned against him as they sat on the car. He was unresponsive. Where would he go? What would be the end of him? She could not bear it, the vacant feeling where he should be. He was so foolish, so wasteful, never at peace with himself. And now where would he go? And what did he care that he wasted her? He had no religion; it was all for the moment's attraction that he cared, nothing else, nothing deeper. Well, she would wait and see how it turned out with him. When he had had enough he would give in and come to her. He shook hands and left her at the door of her cousin's house. When he turned away he felt the last hold for him had gone. The town, as he sat upon the car, stretched away over the bay of railway, a level fume of lights. Beyond the town the country, little smouldering spots for more towns--the sea--the night--on and on! And he had no place in it! Whatever spot he stood on, there he stood alone. From his breast, from his mouth, sprang the endless space, and it was there behind him, everywhere. The people hurrying along the streets offered no obstruction to the void in which he found himself. They were small shadows whose footsteps and voices could be heard, but in each of them the same night, the same silence. He got off the car. In the country all was dead still. Little stars shone high up; little stars spread far away in the flood-waters, a firmament below. Everywhere the vastness and terror of the immense night which is roused and stirred for a brief while by the day, but which returns, and will remain at last eternal, holding everything in its silence and its living gloom. There was no Time, only Space. Who could say his mother had lived and did not live? She had been in one place, and was in another; that was all. And his soul could not leave her, wherever she was. Now she was gone abroad into the night, and he was with her still. They were together. But yet there was his body, his chest, that leaned against the stile, his hands on the wooden bar. They seemed something. Where was he?--one tiny upright speck of flesh, less than an ear of wheat lost in the field. He could not bear it. On every side the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny a spark, into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be extinct. Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core a nothingness, and yet not nothing. "Mother!" he whispered--"mother!" She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid all this. And she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him alongside with her. But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city's gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly. THE END

Chapter 15 Derelict

https://web.archive.org/web/20210226133826/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sonsandlovers/section15/

Clara goes back to Sheffield with her husband, and Paul is left alone with his father. There is no point in keeping their house any longer, so they each take lodgings nearby. Paul is lost without his mother. He can no longer paint, and he puts all of his energy into his work at the factory. He has debates within himself, telling himself that he must stay alive for his mother's sake. However, he wants to give up. One Sunday evening, however, he sees Miriam at the Unitarian Church. He asks her to have supper with him quickly and she agrees. She tells him that she has been going to a farming college and will probably be kept on as a teacher there. She says that she thinks they should be married, and he says he's not sure that would be much good. He says he does not want it very much, and so she gives up. That is the end between them. She leaves him, realizing that "his soul could not leave her, wherever she was." Paul, alone, yearns for his mother and considers following her into death. However, he decides to leave off thinking about suicide, and instead walks toward the town.

Commentary This chapter is Miriam's last attempt finally to possess Paul, now that the obstacle of his mother is out of the way. However, by the end she sees the futility of her efforts and realizes that, even in death, Mrs. Morel still owns Paul and he can never be hers. Paul says of his mother that, "She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid all this. And she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him alongside with her." This completes the book's treatment of the relationship between Paul and Mrs. Morel and illustrates the way that his love for her has remained constant throughout.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/1.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_0_part_1.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 1

book 1, chapter 1

{"name": "book 1, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-1-4", "summary": "The Period The year is 1775 and the settings are London and Paris, two lands ruled by monarchs. England is on the brink of the American Revolution. The French Revolution seems inevitable, with trees waiting to be converted to guillotines and the spirit of rebellion silently infecting the countryside. Similar disturbances are common across England, with highway robberies on the increase and thievery reaching all the way into high society. Executions are common for both minor and major offenses", "analysis": "In what is one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature , Dickens captures the extremes of idealism and terror of the revolutionary period of the late 18th century. With the exception of figures of historical significance, in particular the monarchs, no characters directly related to the plot are introduced in this opening, reflecting Dickens's choice to focus on the setting rather than the characterization of individuals in this historical novel. Dickens refers obliquely, rather than directly, to the historical figures and events of the period, giving his introduction a fable-like quality. Rather than naming the monarchs and openly discussing the American Revolution, he refers to the \"king with a large jaw and queen with a plain face\" in England, the \"king with a large jaw and queen with a fair face\" in France, and a \"congress of British subjects in America.\" Death is personified as a Farmer and Fate as a Woodman, powers who silently work their way through the French countryside. The distance provided by the tone of a fable was desirable for Dickens since his novel followed the historical events so closely in time. A Tale of Two Cities was published just 67 years after the events it describes. While the horrors of the French Revolution have been eclipsed for modern readers by the world wars and genocides of the twentieth century, the terrors of the French Revolution were the horror story of Dickens's time. His indirect tone helps his readers gain distance from an event that they would have contemplated and debated many times before. Dickens postulates the historical inevitability of the French Revolution, illustrating that despite the monarchs' complacency in their divine right, discontentment was growing in the countryside. He does not describe the same inevitability of rebellion in England, however, just the widespread feeling of lawlessness exemplified in the second chapter. Knowing that there was no comparable rebellion or even labor unrest in England at the end of the eighteenth century, Dickens portrays English society as dangerous but not lethal. Even so, there is a lack of proportion in England as demonstrated by executions for offenders ranging from murderers to \"wretched pilferers.\" The injustice of equal treatment for unequal crimes reflects Dickens' ever-present concern with social justice, but it hardly compares with the unrest and injustices in France. With this contrast in the direness of social and criminal situations in the two countries, Dickens sets up a dichotomy that is to dominate the rest of the novel. With likeable but somewhat undeveloped individuals, the focus of the text is ever on the setting and the communities, the historical period as much as the plot itself. The title of A Tale of Two Cities is crucial for interpretation of the novel, suggesting that the opposing cities of Paris and London constitute the true protagonists of the novel, transcending the importance of the main characters. The first chapter only acknowledges in the last sentence that the narrative is to be a \"chronicle\" rather than pure history, when the narrator recognizes that the year 1775 included profound changes not only for the monarchs of France and England, but also for the \"myriad of small creatures-the creatures of this chronicle among the rest-along the roads that lay before them.\" The historical novelist's role will humanize the great historical events of the day by narrating them through the lives of individuals. He links the inevitability of the Revolution to the inevitability of smaller events in individual lives, and the heavy hand of Fate will remain highly visible throughout the rest of the novel. The real story begins in Chapter 2, introducing the setting of misty fear that permeates the rest of the novel. This gloom links Dickens's work with the earlier Gothic movement in literature. The sense of fear and uncertainty that the characters feel on the road is picked up later in the plot line of Charles Darnay's accusation. A highway was one of the most fearful places that a gentleman could travel, because they were plagued by highway robbers who would hold up and raid the coaches. Dickens evokes this sense of fear by projecting it onto the natural characteristics of the road, using figures of speech: the mist is \"like an evil spirit\" and \"as the waves of an unwholesome sea.\" Such dangerous or supernatural imagery helps build up the horror of the arrival of Jerry Cruncher on horseback, making his entrance quite dramatic. A Tale of Two Cities was produced in serial form, so it was in Dickens's interest to end each chapter with a cliffhanger so that his readers would purchase the next installment. The cliffhanger in \"The Mail\" is the suggestion that Jerry Cruncher is a killer because he is haunted by the great amount of trouble he would be in, should the dead come back to life. His mannerisms reveal this guilt, as he unmuffles himself only to pour liquor into his mouth, and then quickly covers his face again. His eyes betray his inner guilt, \"being...much too near together-as if they were afraid of being found out in something singly if they kept too far apart.\" In Chapter 3, an unidentified first-person narrator elaborates the theme of disjunction between people's appearance and their nature, giving it a political gloss. The fear caused by the unknown seems to be justified, because the multiplicity of people's secret hearts is associated with an \"awfulness\" akin to \"Death itself.\" Urban settings, which Dickens criticized greatly, exacerbate this horror by putting many dark secrets in close proximity. The narrator bemoans the fact that he will never get to know a person thoroughly--a part will always remain secret. Still, these secrets are equally available to all men, in that the messenger has \"the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London.\" Despite people's secrets, the facades of Dickensian characters usually reflects their inner lives quite fairly. For example, in Oliver Twist, the great scene of betrayal occurs when Nancy uses her attractive and honest appearance to attract Oliver into a group of bandits. That her outer beauty echoes an inner beauty is vindicated by the fact that she later repents and deceives Sikes to assist Oliver. Mr. Lorry's first dream identifies the motif of money and business that characterizes him for the rest of the novel. Mr. Lorry uses business as a watchword of comfort when he gets into situations that make him nervous. He is rattled by the business that he must undertake when he arrives in Dover, so he comforts himself by imagining the sound of the harness as the \"chink of money\" and the carriage as a strong-room where he could check that his customers' valuables are safe. That business is a safety net for Mr. Lorry, a neutral place that no one should fear, is illustrated later in the text when he is confronted with emotionally charged situations. At such times, Mr. Lorry mutters the word \"business\" repeatedly to brace himself for a challenge or to try to reassure others. The dominant theme of Chapter 4 is that of disorder overcoming order. Mr. Lorry's actions upon his arrival in Dover reinforce the reader's previous impression of him as a man who can be trusted to act according to convention and pattern. He turns down the head drawer's suggestion that he rest, saying that he won't go to bed until night. But the orderliness of his person is opposed by outside forces, as manifest in the small detail of the regular ticking of his watch, \"as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the fire.\" In the beginning of Chapter 4, everything is ordered according to Mr. Lorry's expectations. When he drops off to sleep, this \"completes his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait.\" The waiter watches Mr. Lorry comfortably, \"according to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.\" This orderliness is disturbed when the ritual of his meal is interrupted by Miss Mannette's request to see him immediately. The extent to which he relies on familiar patterns is hyperbolized in the description of his reaction to this too early summons as \"stolid desperation.\" Though he is at first pleased with her, recognizing the meaning of her social conventions , he becomes rapidly distressed when recognizable social conventions break down. When she becomes distraught and kneels as she hears the truth, he gets quite upset with the breach of convention, asking, \"In heaven's name why should you kneel to me?\" This triumph of disorder is associated with the novel's geographic movement toward France. The dichotomy described in the first chapter between England the dangerous and France the truly lethal is again evident; the details associated with disorder are particularly French. The closeness of location to France is evident in that the weather occasionally clears up enough to allow a view of the French coast. The wild sea, a symbol of disorder, rages at the cliffs \"madly,\" seemingly sent from France. Corruption, evidenced by the fact that men who did no trade would suddenly become wealthy, is connected to the sea trade--and thus also with France. Mr. Lorry highlights corruption as particularly French, insinuating that the horror of Dr. Manette's predicament was only possible \"across the water.\" The atmosphere that Dickens creates is revealed in smaller details first. Dickens wants to emphasize the death and burial themes. Darkness represents death; hence, the room in which Lorry and Miss Manette meet is a very dark room, ill lit and filled with dark trimmings. Any light that shines in the rooms in absorbed, or \"buried\" by the mahogany table. The cupids in the room are made of dark materials, and they are in varying states of \"death\" , from maimed to decapitated. The beheaded cupids also hint at the final source of death within the novel: the terror of the guillotine. As a writer of serialized popular novels, Dickens uses not only cliffhangers, but also extensive foreshadowing, which creates further suspense. Reading in the nineteenth century was a more social activity than it is in modern times, and it was not uncommon for installments to be read out loud for the benefit of members of the family who were illiterate. Heavy foreshadowing complemented this social reception of the novels, allowing the group to argue over the implications of what was written and what might happen next. Dickens foreshadows the fact that the \"recalled to life\" message is related to Miss Manette in the description of her room. Her connection with the once \"buried\" man is evident in the dark \"funereal\" furnishings of her room, and the candles on the burnished dark table are \"gloomily reflected on every leaf as if they were buried.\""}

I. The Period It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever. It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood. France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous. In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:" after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence. All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures--the creatures of this chronicle among the rest--along the roads that lay before them.

book 1, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-1-4

The Period The year is 1775 and the settings are London and Paris, two lands ruled by monarchs. England is on the brink of the American Revolution. The French Revolution seems inevitable, with trees waiting to be converted to guillotines and the spirit of rebellion silently infecting the countryside. Similar disturbances are common across England, with highway robberies on the increase and thievery reaching all the way into high society. Executions are common for both minor and major offenses

In what is one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature , Dickens captures the extremes of idealism and terror of the revolutionary period of the late 18th century. With the exception of figures of historical significance, in particular the monarchs, no characters directly related to the plot are introduced in this opening, reflecting Dickens's choice to focus on the setting rather than the characterization of individuals in this historical novel. Dickens refers obliquely, rather than directly, to the historical figures and events of the period, giving his introduction a fable-like quality. Rather than naming the monarchs and openly discussing the American Revolution, he refers to the "king with a large jaw and queen with a plain face" in England, the "king with a large jaw and queen with a fair face" in France, and a "congress of British subjects in America." Death is personified as a Farmer and Fate as a Woodman, powers who silently work their way through the French countryside. The distance provided by the tone of a fable was desirable for Dickens since his novel followed the historical events so closely in time. A Tale of Two Cities was published just 67 years after the events it describes. While the horrors of the French Revolution have been eclipsed for modern readers by the world wars and genocides of the twentieth century, the terrors of the French Revolution were the horror story of Dickens's time. His indirect tone helps his readers gain distance from an event that they would have contemplated and debated many times before. Dickens postulates the historical inevitability of the French Revolution, illustrating that despite the monarchs' complacency in their divine right, discontentment was growing in the countryside. He does not describe the same inevitability of rebellion in England, however, just the widespread feeling of lawlessness exemplified in the second chapter. Knowing that there was no comparable rebellion or even labor unrest in England at the end of the eighteenth century, Dickens portrays English society as dangerous but not lethal. Even so, there is a lack of proportion in England as demonstrated by executions for offenders ranging from murderers to "wretched pilferers." The injustice of equal treatment for unequal crimes reflects Dickens' ever-present concern with social justice, but it hardly compares with the unrest and injustices in France. With this contrast in the direness of social and criminal situations in the two countries, Dickens sets up a dichotomy that is to dominate the rest of the novel. With likeable but somewhat undeveloped individuals, the focus of the text is ever on the setting and the communities, the historical period as much as the plot itself. The title of A Tale of Two Cities is crucial for interpretation of the novel, suggesting that the opposing cities of Paris and London constitute the true protagonists of the novel, transcending the importance of the main characters. The first chapter only acknowledges in the last sentence that the narrative is to be a "chronicle" rather than pure history, when the narrator recognizes that the year 1775 included profound changes not only for the monarchs of France and England, but also for the "myriad of small creatures-the creatures of this chronicle among the rest-along the roads that lay before them." The historical novelist's role will humanize the great historical events of the day by narrating them through the lives of individuals. He links the inevitability of the Revolution to the inevitability of smaller events in individual lives, and the heavy hand of Fate will remain highly visible throughout the rest of the novel. The real story begins in Chapter 2, introducing the setting of misty fear that permeates the rest of the novel. This gloom links Dickens's work with the earlier Gothic movement in literature. The sense of fear and uncertainty that the characters feel on the road is picked up later in the plot line of Charles Darnay's accusation. A highway was one of the most fearful places that a gentleman could travel, because they were plagued by highway robbers who would hold up and raid the coaches. Dickens evokes this sense of fear by projecting it onto the natural characteristics of the road, using figures of speech: the mist is "like an evil spirit" and "as the waves of an unwholesome sea." Such dangerous or supernatural imagery helps build up the horror of the arrival of Jerry Cruncher on horseback, making his entrance quite dramatic. A Tale of Two Cities was produced in serial form, so it was in Dickens's interest to end each chapter with a cliffhanger so that his readers would purchase the next installment. The cliffhanger in "The Mail" is the suggestion that Jerry Cruncher is a killer because he is haunted by the great amount of trouble he would be in, should the dead come back to life. His mannerisms reveal this guilt, as he unmuffles himself only to pour liquor into his mouth, and then quickly covers his face again. His eyes betray his inner guilt, "being...much too near together-as if they were afraid of being found out in something singly if they kept too far apart." In Chapter 3, an unidentified first-person narrator elaborates the theme of disjunction between people's appearance and their nature, giving it a political gloss. The fear caused by the unknown seems to be justified, because the multiplicity of people's secret hearts is associated with an "awfulness" akin to "Death itself." Urban settings, which Dickens criticized greatly, exacerbate this horror by putting many dark secrets in close proximity. The narrator bemoans the fact that he will never get to know a person thoroughly--a part will always remain secret. Still, these secrets are equally available to all men, in that the messenger has "the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London." Despite people's secrets, the facades of Dickensian characters usually reflects their inner lives quite fairly. For example, in Oliver Twist, the great scene of betrayal occurs when Nancy uses her attractive and honest appearance to attract Oliver into a group of bandits. That her outer beauty echoes an inner beauty is vindicated by the fact that she later repents and deceives Sikes to assist Oliver. Mr. Lorry's first dream identifies the motif of money and business that characterizes him for the rest of the novel. Mr. Lorry uses business as a watchword of comfort when he gets into situations that make him nervous. He is rattled by the business that he must undertake when he arrives in Dover, so he comforts himself by imagining the sound of the harness as the "chink of money" and the carriage as a strong-room where he could check that his customers' valuables are safe. That business is a safety net for Mr. Lorry, a neutral place that no one should fear, is illustrated later in the text when he is confronted with emotionally charged situations. At such times, Mr. Lorry mutters the word "business" repeatedly to brace himself for a challenge or to try to reassure others. The dominant theme of Chapter 4 is that of disorder overcoming order. Mr. Lorry's actions upon his arrival in Dover reinforce the reader's previous impression of him as a man who can be trusted to act according to convention and pattern. He turns down the head drawer's suggestion that he rest, saying that he won't go to bed until night. But the orderliness of his person is opposed by outside forces, as manifest in the small detail of the regular ticking of his watch, "as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the fire." In the beginning of Chapter 4, everything is ordered according to Mr. Lorry's expectations. When he drops off to sleep, this "completes his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait." The waiter watches Mr. Lorry comfortably, "according to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages." This orderliness is disturbed when the ritual of his meal is interrupted by Miss Mannette's request to see him immediately. The extent to which he relies on familiar patterns is hyperbolized in the description of his reaction to this too early summons as "stolid desperation." Though he is at first pleased with her, recognizing the meaning of her social conventions , he becomes rapidly distressed when recognizable social conventions break down. When she becomes distraught and kneels as she hears the truth, he gets quite upset with the breach of convention, asking, "In heaven's name why should you kneel to me?" This triumph of disorder is associated with the novel's geographic movement toward France. The dichotomy described in the first chapter between England the dangerous and France the truly lethal is again evident; the details associated with disorder are particularly French. The closeness of location to France is evident in that the weather occasionally clears up enough to allow a view of the French coast. The wild sea, a symbol of disorder, rages at the cliffs "madly," seemingly sent from France. Corruption, evidenced by the fact that men who did no trade would suddenly become wealthy, is connected to the sea trade--and thus also with France. Mr. Lorry highlights corruption as particularly French, insinuating that the horror of Dr. Manette's predicament was only possible "across the water." The atmosphere that Dickens creates is revealed in smaller details first. Dickens wants to emphasize the death and burial themes. Darkness represents death; hence, the room in which Lorry and Miss Manette meet is a very dark room, ill lit and filled with dark trimmings. Any light that shines in the rooms in absorbed, or "buried" by the mahogany table. The cupids in the room are made of dark materials, and they are in varying states of "death" , from maimed to decapitated. The beheaded cupids also hint at the final source of death within the novel: the terror of the guillotine. As a writer of serialized popular novels, Dickens uses not only cliffhangers, but also extensive foreshadowing, which creates further suspense. Reading in the nineteenth century was a more social activity than it is in modern times, and it was not uncommon for installments to be read out loud for the benefit of members of the family who were illiterate. Heavy foreshadowing complemented this social reception of the novels, allowing the group to argue over the implications of what was written and what might happen next. Dickens foreshadows the fact that the "recalled to life" message is related to Miss Manette in the description of her room. Her connection with the once "buried" man is evident in the dark "funereal" furnishings of her room, and the candles on the burnished dark table are "gloomily reflected on every leaf as if they were buried."

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/2.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_0_part_2.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 2

book 1, chapter 2

{"name": "book 1, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-1-4", "summary": "The Mail Mr. Jarvis Lorry, a confidential clerk at Tellson's Bank of London, is on his way to Dover in a mail-coach. It is a cold night and he is wrapped up to the ears, so his physical appearance is concealed from his fellow-passengers, all of whom are strangers. The coachman fears his passengers just as they fear one another, since highway robberies are exceedingly common and any of them could be in league with robbers. So when he hears a horse galloping towards the coach on the road, he becomes fearful. Jerry Cruncher, the rider of the horse, asks for Mr. Lorry, giving him a paper message to wait at Dover for a young lady. Mr. Lorry's cryptic reply is, \"recalled to life. After this exchange, Mr. Lorry gets back in the coach, which continues to Dover. Jerry pauses and reflects on the long, hard gallop he had from London and muses to himself that he has been given a very strange message", "analysis": "In what is one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature , Dickens captures the extremes of idealism and terror of the revolutionary period of the late 18th century. With the exception of figures of historical significance, in particular the monarchs, no characters directly related to the plot are introduced in this opening, reflecting Dickens's choice to focus on the setting rather than the characterization of individuals in this historical novel. Dickens refers obliquely, rather than directly, to the historical figures and events of the period, giving his introduction a fable-like quality. Rather than naming the monarchs and openly discussing the American Revolution, he refers to the \"king with a large jaw and queen with a plain face\" in England, the \"king with a large jaw and queen with a fair face\" in France, and a \"congress of British subjects in America.\" Death is personified as a Farmer and Fate as a Woodman, powers who silently work their way through the French countryside. The distance provided by the tone of a fable was desirable for Dickens since his novel followed the historical events so closely in time. A Tale of Two Cities was published just 67 years after the events it describes. While the horrors of the French Revolution have been eclipsed for modern readers by the world wars and genocides of the twentieth century, the terrors of the French Revolution were the horror story of Dickens's time. His indirect tone helps his readers gain distance from an event that they would have contemplated and debated many times before. Dickens postulates the historical inevitability of the French Revolution, illustrating that despite the monarchs' complacency in their divine right, discontentment was growing in the countryside. He does not describe the same inevitability of rebellion in England, however, just the widespread feeling of lawlessness exemplified in the second chapter. Knowing that there was no comparable rebellion or even labor unrest in England at the end of the eighteenth century, Dickens portrays English society as dangerous but not lethal. Even so, there is a lack of proportion in England as demonstrated by executions for offenders ranging from murderers to \"wretched pilferers.\" The injustice of equal treatment for unequal crimes reflects Dickens' ever-present concern with social justice, but it hardly compares with the unrest and injustices in France. With this contrast in the direness of social and criminal situations in the two countries, Dickens sets up a dichotomy that is to dominate the rest of the novel. With likeable but somewhat undeveloped individuals, the focus of the text is ever on the setting and the communities, the historical period as much as the plot itself. The title of A Tale of Two Cities is crucial for interpretation of the novel, suggesting that the opposing cities of Paris and London constitute the true protagonists of the novel, transcending the importance of the main characters. The first chapter only acknowledges in the last sentence that the narrative is to be a \"chronicle\" rather than pure history, when the narrator recognizes that the year 1775 included profound changes not only for the monarchs of France and England, but also for the \"myriad of small creatures-the creatures of this chronicle among the rest-along the roads that lay before them.\" The historical novelist's role will humanize the great historical events of the day by narrating them through the lives of individuals. He links the inevitability of the Revolution to the inevitability of smaller events in individual lives, and the heavy hand of Fate will remain highly visible throughout the rest of the novel. The real story begins in Chapter 2, introducing the setting of misty fear that permeates the rest of the novel. This gloom links Dickens's work with the earlier Gothic movement in literature. The sense of fear and uncertainty that the characters feel on the road is picked up later in the plot line of Charles Darnay's accusation. A highway was one of the most fearful places that a gentleman could travel, because they were plagued by highway robbers who would hold up and raid the coaches. Dickens evokes this sense of fear by projecting it onto the natural characteristics of the road, using figures of speech: the mist is \"like an evil spirit\" and \"as the waves of an unwholesome sea.\" Such dangerous or supernatural imagery helps build up the horror of the arrival of Jerry Cruncher on horseback, making his entrance quite dramatic. A Tale of Two Cities was produced in serial form, so it was in Dickens's interest to end each chapter with a cliffhanger so that his readers would purchase the next installment. The cliffhanger in \"The Mail\" is the suggestion that Jerry Cruncher is a killer because he is haunted by the great amount of trouble he would be in, should the dead come back to life. His mannerisms reveal this guilt, as he unmuffles himself only to pour liquor into his mouth, and then quickly covers his face again. His eyes betray his inner guilt, \"being...much too near together-as if they were afraid of being found out in something singly if they kept too far apart.\" In Chapter 3, an unidentified first-person narrator elaborates the theme of disjunction between people's appearance and their nature, giving it a political gloss. The fear caused by the unknown seems to be justified, because the multiplicity of people's secret hearts is associated with an \"awfulness\" akin to \"Death itself.\" Urban settings, which Dickens criticized greatly, exacerbate this horror by putting many dark secrets in close proximity. The narrator bemoans the fact that he will never get to know a person thoroughly--a part will always remain secret. Still, these secrets are equally available to all men, in that the messenger has \"the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London.\" Despite people's secrets, the facades of Dickensian characters usually reflects their inner lives quite fairly. For example, in Oliver Twist, the great scene of betrayal occurs when Nancy uses her attractive and honest appearance to attract Oliver into a group of bandits. That her outer beauty echoes an inner beauty is vindicated by the fact that she later repents and deceives Sikes to assist Oliver. Mr. Lorry's first dream identifies the motif of money and business that characterizes him for the rest of the novel. Mr. Lorry uses business as a watchword of comfort when he gets into situations that make him nervous. He is rattled by the business that he must undertake when he arrives in Dover, so he comforts himself by imagining the sound of the harness as the \"chink of money\" and the carriage as a strong-room where he could check that his customers' valuables are safe. That business is a safety net for Mr. Lorry, a neutral place that no one should fear, is illustrated later in the text when he is confronted with emotionally charged situations. At such times, Mr. Lorry mutters the word \"business\" repeatedly to brace himself for a challenge or to try to reassure others. The dominant theme of Chapter 4 is that of disorder overcoming order. Mr. Lorry's actions upon his arrival in Dover reinforce the reader's previous impression of him as a man who can be trusted to act according to convention and pattern. He turns down the head drawer's suggestion that he rest, saying that he won't go to bed until night. But the orderliness of his person is opposed by outside forces, as manifest in the small detail of the regular ticking of his watch, \"as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the fire.\" In the beginning of Chapter 4, everything is ordered according to Mr. Lorry's expectations. When he drops off to sleep, this \"completes his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait.\" The waiter watches Mr. Lorry comfortably, \"according to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.\" This orderliness is disturbed when the ritual of his meal is interrupted by Miss Mannette's request to see him immediately. The extent to which he relies on familiar patterns is hyperbolized in the description of his reaction to this too early summons as \"stolid desperation.\" Though he is at first pleased with her, recognizing the meaning of her social conventions , he becomes rapidly distressed when recognizable social conventions break down. When she becomes distraught and kneels as she hears the truth, he gets quite upset with the breach of convention, asking, \"In heaven's name why should you kneel to me?\" This triumph of disorder is associated with the novel's geographic movement toward France. The dichotomy described in the first chapter between England the dangerous and France the truly lethal is again evident; the details associated with disorder are particularly French. The closeness of location to France is evident in that the weather occasionally clears up enough to allow a view of the French coast. The wild sea, a symbol of disorder, rages at the cliffs \"madly,\" seemingly sent from France. Corruption, evidenced by the fact that men who did no trade would suddenly become wealthy, is connected to the sea trade--and thus also with France. Mr. Lorry highlights corruption as particularly French, insinuating that the horror of Dr. Manette's predicament was only possible \"across the water.\" The atmosphere that Dickens creates is revealed in smaller details first. Dickens wants to emphasize the death and burial themes. Darkness represents death; hence, the room in which Lorry and Miss Manette meet is a very dark room, ill lit and filled with dark trimmings. Any light that shines in the rooms in absorbed, or \"buried\" by the mahogany table. The cupids in the room are made of dark materials, and they are in varying states of \"death\" , from maimed to decapitated. The beheaded cupids also hint at the final source of death within the novel: the terror of the guillotine. As a writer of serialized popular novels, Dickens uses not only cliffhangers, but also extensive foreshadowing, which creates further suspense. Reading in the nineteenth century was a more social activity than it is in modern times, and it was not uncommon for installments to be read out loud for the benefit of members of the family who were illiterate. Heavy foreshadowing complemented this social reception of the novels, allowing the group to argue over the implications of what was written and what might happen next. Dickens foreshadows the fact that the \"recalled to life\" message is related to Miss Manette in the description of her room. Her connection with the once \"buried\" man is evident in the dark \"funereal\" furnishings of her room, and the candles on the burnished dark table are \"gloomily reflected on every leaf as if they were buried.\""}

II. The Mail It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November, before the first of the persons with whom this history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter's Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brute animals are endued with Reason; and the team had capitulated and returned to their duty. With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a wary "Wo-ho! so-ho-then!" the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it--like an unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind. 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. Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, from anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days, travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter, when every posting-house and ale-house could produce somebody in "the Captain's" pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable non-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter's Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass. The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey. "Wo-ho!" said the coachman. "So, then! One more pull and you're at the top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you to it!--Joe!" "Halloa!" the guard replied. "What o'clock do you make it, Joe?" "Ten minutes, good, past eleven." "My blood!" ejaculated the vexed coachman, "and not atop of Shooter's yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!" The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its passengers squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the coach stopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of the three had had the hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little ahead into the mist and darkness, he would have put himself in a fair way of getting shot instantly as a highwayman. The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in. "Tst! Joe!" cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking down from his box. "What do you say, Tom?" They both listened. "I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe." "_I_ say a horse at a gallop, Tom," returned the guard, leaving his hold of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. "Gentlemen! In the king's name, all of you!" With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on the offensive. The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in; the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without contradicting. The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and labouring of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quiet indeed. The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion to the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate, the quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out of breath, and holding the breath, and having the pulses quickened by expectation. The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill. "So-ho!" the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. "Yo there! Stand! I shall fire!" The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering, a man's voice called from the mist, "Is that the Dover mail?" "Never you mind what it is!" the guard retorted. "What are you?" "_Is_ that the Dover mail?" "Why do you want to know?" "I want a passenger, if it is." "What passenger?" "Mr. Jarvis Lorry." Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him distrustfully. "Keep where you are," the guard called to the voice in the mist, "because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight." "What is the matter?" asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering speech. "Who wants me? Is it Jerry?" ("I don't like Jerry's voice, if it is Jerry," growled the guard to himself. "He's hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.") "Yes, Mr. Lorry." "What is the matter?" "A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co." "I know this messenger, guard," said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the road--assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. "He may come close; there's nothing wrong." "I hope there ain't, but I can't make so 'Nation sure of that," said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. "Hallo you!" "Well! And hallo you!" said Jerry, more hoarsely than before. "Come on at a footpace! d'ye mind me? And if you've got holsters to that saddle o' yourn, don't let me see your hand go nigh 'em. For I'm a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So now let's look at you." The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man. "Guard!" said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence. The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman, answered curtly, "Sir." "There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson's Bank. You must know Tellson's Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?" "If so be as you're quick, sir." He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and read--first to himself and then aloud: "'Wait at Dover for Mam'selle.' It's not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE." Jerry started in his saddle. "That's a Blazing strange answer, too," said he, at his hoarsest. "Take that message back, and they will know that I received this, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night." With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general pretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of action. The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing round it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents, and having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a few smith's tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five minutes. "Tom!" softly over the coach roof. "Hallo, Joe." "Did you hear the message?" "I did, Joe." "What did you make of it, Tom?" "Nothing at all, Joe." "That's a coincidence, too," the guard mused, "for I made the same of it myself." Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of holding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer within hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk down the hill. "After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won't trust your fore-legs till I get you on the level," said this hoarse messenger, glancing at his mare. "'Recalled to life.' That's a Blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn't do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You'd be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!"

book 1, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-1-4

The Mail Mr. Jarvis Lorry, a confidential clerk at Tellson's Bank of London, is on his way to Dover in a mail-coach. It is a cold night and he is wrapped up to the ears, so his physical appearance is concealed from his fellow-passengers, all of whom are strangers. The coachman fears his passengers just as they fear one another, since highway robberies are exceedingly common and any of them could be in league with robbers. So when he hears a horse galloping towards the coach on the road, he becomes fearful. Jerry Cruncher, the rider of the horse, asks for Mr. Lorry, giving him a paper message to wait at Dover for a young lady. Mr. Lorry's cryptic reply is, "recalled to life. After this exchange, Mr. Lorry gets back in the coach, which continues to Dover. Jerry pauses and reflects on the long, hard gallop he had from London and muses to himself that he has been given a very strange message

In what is one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature , Dickens captures the extremes of idealism and terror of the revolutionary period of the late 18th century. With the exception of figures of historical significance, in particular the monarchs, no characters directly related to the plot are introduced in this opening, reflecting Dickens's choice to focus on the setting rather than the characterization of individuals in this historical novel. Dickens refers obliquely, rather than directly, to the historical figures and events of the period, giving his introduction a fable-like quality. Rather than naming the monarchs and openly discussing the American Revolution, he refers to the "king with a large jaw and queen with a plain face" in England, the "king with a large jaw and queen with a fair face" in France, and a "congress of British subjects in America." Death is personified as a Farmer and Fate as a Woodman, powers who silently work their way through the French countryside. The distance provided by the tone of a fable was desirable for Dickens since his novel followed the historical events so closely in time. A Tale of Two Cities was published just 67 years after the events it describes. While the horrors of the French Revolution have been eclipsed for modern readers by the world wars and genocides of the twentieth century, the terrors of the French Revolution were the horror story of Dickens's time. His indirect tone helps his readers gain distance from an event that they would have contemplated and debated many times before. Dickens postulates the historical inevitability of the French Revolution, illustrating that despite the monarchs' complacency in their divine right, discontentment was growing in the countryside. He does not describe the same inevitability of rebellion in England, however, just the widespread feeling of lawlessness exemplified in the second chapter. Knowing that there was no comparable rebellion or even labor unrest in England at the end of the eighteenth century, Dickens portrays English society as dangerous but not lethal. Even so, there is a lack of proportion in England as demonstrated by executions for offenders ranging from murderers to "wretched pilferers." The injustice of equal treatment for unequal crimes reflects Dickens' ever-present concern with social justice, but it hardly compares with the unrest and injustices in France. With this contrast in the direness of social and criminal situations in the two countries, Dickens sets up a dichotomy that is to dominate the rest of the novel. With likeable but somewhat undeveloped individuals, the focus of the text is ever on the setting and the communities, the historical period as much as the plot itself. The title of A Tale of Two Cities is crucial for interpretation of the novel, suggesting that the opposing cities of Paris and London constitute the true protagonists of the novel, transcending the importance of the main characters. The first chapter only acknowledges in the last sentence that the narrative is to be a "chronicle" rather than pure history, when the narrator recognizes that the year 1775 included profound changes not only for the monarchs of France and England, but also for the "myriad of small creatures-the creatures of this chronicle among the rest-along the roads that lay before them." The historical novelist's role will humanize the great historical events of the day by narrating them through the lives of individuals. He links the inevitability of the Revolution to the inevitability of smaller events in individual lives, and the heavy hand of Fate will remain highly visible throughout the rest of the novel. The real story begins in Chapter 2, introducing the setting of misty fear that permeates the rest of the novel. This gloom links Dickens's work with the earlier Gothic movement in literature. The sense of fear and uncertainty that the characters feel on the road is picked up later in the plot line of Charles Darnay's accusation. A highway was one of the most fearful places that a gentleman could travel, because they were plagued by highway robbers who would hold up and raid the coaches. Dickens evokes this sense of fear by projecting it onto the natural characteristics of the road, using figures of speech: the mist is "like an evil spirit" and "as the waves of an unwholesome sea." Such dangerous or supernatural imagery helps build up the horror of the arrival of Jerry Cruncher on horseback, making his entrance quite dramatic. A Tale of Two Cities was produced in serial form, so it was in Dickens's interest to end each chapter with a cliffhanger so that his readers would purchase the next installment. The cliffhanger in "The Mail" is the suggestion that Jerry Cruncher is a killer because he is haunted by the great amount of trouble he would be in, should the dead come back to life. His mannerisms reveal this guilt, as he unmuffles himself only to pour liquor into his mouth, and then quickly covers his face again. His eyes betray his inner guilt, "being...much too near together-as if they were afraid of being found out in something singly if they kept too far apart." In Chapter 3, an unidentified first-person narrator elaborates the theme of disjunction between people's appearance and their nature, giving it a political gloss. The fear caused by the unknown seems to be justified, because the multiplicity of people's secret hearts is associated with an "awfulness" akin to "Death itself." Urban settings, which Dickens criticized greatly, exacerbate this horror by putting many dark secrets in close proximity. The narrator bemoans the fact that he will never get to know a person thoroughly--a part will always remain secret. Still, these secrets are equally available to all men, in that the messenger has "the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London." Despite people's secrets, the facades of Dickensian characters usually reflects their inner lives quite fairly. For example, in Oliver Twist, the great scene of betrayal occurs when Nancy uses her attractive and honest appearance to attract Oliver into a group of bandits. That her outer beauty echoes an inner beauty is vindicated by the fact that she later repents and deceives Sikes to assist Oliver. Mr. Lorry's first dream identifies the motif of money and business that characterizes him for the rest of the novel. Mr. Lorry uses business as a watchword of comfort when he gets into situations that make him nervous. He is rattled by the business that he must undertake when he arrives in Dover, so he comforts himself by imagining the sound of the harness as the "chink of money" and the carriage as a strong-room where he could check that his customers' valuables are safe. That business is a safety net for Mr. Lorry, a neutral place that no one should fear, is illustrated later in the text when he is confronted with emotionally charged situations. At such times, Mr. Lorry mutters the word "business" repeatedly to brace himself for a challenge or to try to reassure others. The dominant theme of Chapter 4 is that of disorder overcoming order. Mr. Lorry's actions upon his arrival in Dover reinforce the reader's previous impression of him as a man who can be trusted to act according to convention and pattern. He turns down the head drawer's suggestion that he rest, saying that he won't go to bed until night. But the orderliness of his person is opposed by outside forces, as manifest in the small detail of the regular ticking of his watch, "as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the fire." In the beginning of Chapter 4, everything is ordered according to Mr. Lorry's expectations. When he drops off to sleep, this "completes his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait." The waiter watches Mr. Lorry comfortably, "according to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages." This orderliness is disturbed when the ritual of his meal is interrupted by Miss Mannette's request to see him immediately. The extent to which he relies on familiar patterns is hyperbolized in the description of his reaction to this too early summons as "stolid desperation." Though he is at first pleased with her, recognizing the meaning of her social conventions , he becomes rapidly distressed when recognizable social conventions break down. When she becomes distraught and kneels as she hears the truth, he gets quite upset with the breach of convention, asking, "In heaven's name why should you kneel to me?" This triumph of disorder is associated with the novel's geographic movement toward France. The dichotomy described in the first chapter between England the dangerous and France the truly lethal is again evident; the details associated with disorder are particularly French. The closeness of location to France is evident in that the weather occasionally clears up enough to allow a view of the French coast. The wild sea, a symbol of disorder, rages at the cliffs "madly," seemingly sent from France. Corruption, evidenced by the fact that men who did no trade would suddenly become wealthy, is connected to the sea trade--and thus also with France. Mr. Lorry highlights corruption as particularly French, insinuating that the horror of Dr. Manette's predicament was only possible "across the water." The atmosphere that Dickens creates is revealed in smaller details first. Dickens wants to emphasize the death and burial themes. Darkness represents death; hence, the room in which Lorry and Miss Manette meet is a very dark room, ill lit and filled with dark trimmings. Any light that shines in the rooms in absorbed, or "buried" by the mahogany table. The cupids in the room are made of dark materials, and they are in varying states of "death" , from maimed to decapitated. The beheaded cupids also hint at the final source of death within the novel: the terror of the guillotine. As a writer of serialized popular novels, Dickens uses not only cliffhangers, but also extensive foreshadowing, which creates further suspense. Reading in the nineteenth century was a more social activity than it is in modern times, and it was not uncommon for installments to be read out loud for the benefit of members of the family who were illiterate. Heavy foreshadowing complemented this social reception of the novels, allowing the group to argue over the implications of what was written and what might happen next. Dickens foreshadows the fact that the "recalled to life" message is related to Miss Manette in the description of her room. Her connection with the once "buried" man is evident in the dark "funereal" furnishings of her room, and the candles on the burnished dark table are "gloomily reflected on every leaf as if they were buried."

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/3.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_0_part_3.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 3

book 1, chapter 3

{"name": "book 1, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-1-4", "summary": "The Night Shadows The chapter opens with a reflection on the fact that all humans are mysteries to one another, despite the availability of their outer appearances. The three passengers remain a mystery to one another as they advance upon Dover. Jerry Cruncher returns to Temple Bar remaining uneasy about the cryptic message. Mr. Lorry dozes off and begins to dream in the coach, imagining the comforting environment of Tellson's Bank. He is then confronted by what he calls a spectre: a man who has been buried for eighteen years and has dug his way out. A conversation that Mr. Lorry's brain repeats three times with this spectre confirms that he has been buried for eighteen years. As the sun rises, Mr. Lorry wakes up from his dream and surveys the vivid countryside, pitying a man who would be locked away from nature for eighteen years", "analysis": "In what is one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature , Dickens captures the extremes of idealism and terror of the revolutionary period of the late 18th century. With the exception of figures of historical significance, in particular the monarchs, no characters directly related to the plot are introduced in this opening, reflecting Dickens's choice to focus on the setting rather than the characterization of individuals in this historical novel. Dickens refers obliquely, rather than directly, to the historical figures and events of the period, giving his introduction a fable-like quality. Rather than naming the monarchs and openly discussing the American Revolution, he refers to the \"king with a large jaw and queen with a plain face\" in England, the \"king with a large jaw and queen with a fair face\" in France, and a \"congress of British subjects in America.\" Death is personified as a Farmer and Fate as a Woodman, powers who silently work their way through the French countryside. The distance provided by the tone of a fable was desirable for Dickens since his novel followed the historical events so closely in time. A Tale of Two Cities was published just 67 years after the events it describes. While the horrors of the French Revolution have been eclipsed for modern readers by the world wars and genocides of the twentieth century, the terrors of the French Revolution were the horror story of Dickens's time. His indirect tone helps his readers gain distance from an event that they would have contemplated and debated many times before. Dickens postulates the historical inevitability of the French Revolution, illustrating that despite the monarchs' complacency in their divine right, discontentment was growing in the countryside. He does not describe the same inevitability of rebellion in England, however, just the widespread feeling of lawlessness exemplified in the second chapter. Knowing that there was no comparable rebellion or even labor unrest in England at the end of the eighteenth century, Dickens portrays English society as dangerous but not lethal. Even so, there is a lack of proportion in England as demonstrated by executions for offenders ranging from murderers to \"wretched pilferers.\" The injustice of equal treatment for unequal crimes reflects Dickens' ever-present concern with social justice, but it hardly compares with the unrest and injustices in France. With this contrast in the direness of social and criminal situations in the two countries, Dickens sets up a dichotomy that is to dominate the rest of the novel. With likeable but somewhat undeveloped individuals, the focus of the text is ever on the setting and the communities, the historical period as much as the plot itself. The title of A Tale of Two Cities is crucial for interpretation of the novel, suggesting that the opposing cities of Paris and London constitute the true protagonists of the novel, transcending the importance of the main characters. The first chapter only acknowledges in the last sentence that the narrative is to be a \"chronicle\" rather than pure history, when the narrator recognizes that the year 1775 included profound changes not only for the monarchs of France and England, but also for the \"myriad of small creatures-the creatures of this chronicle among the rest-along the roads that lay before them.\" The historical novelist's role will humanize the great historical events of the day by narrating them through the lives of individuals. He links the inevitability of the Revolution to the inevitability of smaller events in individual lives, and the heavy hand of Fate will remain highly visible throughout the rest of the novel. The real story begins in Chapter 2, introducing the setting of misty fear that permeates the rest of the novel. This gloom links Dickens's work with the earlier Gothic movement in literature. The sense of fear and uncertainty that the characters feel on the road is picked up later in the plot line of Charles Darnay's accusation. A highway was one of the most fearful places that a gentleman could travel, because they were plagued by highway robbers who would hold up and raid the coaches. Dickens evokes this sense of fear by projecting it onto the natural characteristics of the road, using figures of speech: the mist is \"like an evil spirit\" and \"as the waves of an unwholesome sea.\" Such dangerous or supernatural imagery helps build up the horror of the arrival of Jerry Cruncher on horseback, making his entrance quite dramatic. A Tale of Two Cities was produced in serial form, so it was in Dickens's interest to end each chapter with a cliffhanger so that his readers would purchase the next installment. The cliffhanger in \"The Mail\" is the suggestion that Jerry Cruncher is a killer because he is haunted by the great amount of trouble he would be in, should the dead come back to life. His mannerisms reveal this guilt, as he unmuffles himself only to pour liquor into his mouth, and then quickly covers his face again. His eyes betray his inner guilt, \"being...much too near together-as if they were afraid of being found out in something singly if they kept too far apart.\" In Chapter 3, an unidentified first-person narrator elaborates the theme of disjunction between people's appearance and their nature, giving it a political gloss. The fear caused by the unknown seems to be justified, because the multiplicity of people's secret hearts is associated with an \"awfulness\" akin to \"Death itself.\" Urban settings, which Dickens criticized greatly, exacerbate this horror by putting many dark secrets in close proximity. The narrator bemoans the fact that he will never get to know a person thoroughly--a part will always remain secret. Still, these secrets are equally available to all men, in that the messenger has \"the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London.\" Despite people's secrets, the facades of Dickensian characters usually reflects their inner lives quite fairly. For example, in Oliver Twist, the great scene of betrayal occurs when Nancy uses her attractive and honest appearance to attract Oliver into a group of bandits. That her outer beauty echoes an inner beauty is vindicated by the fact that she later repents and deceives Sikes to assist Oliver. Mr. Lorry's first dream identifies the motif of money and business that characterizes him for the rest of the novel. Mr. Lorry uses business as a watchword of comfort when he gets into situations that make him nervous. He is rattled by the business that he must undertake when he arrives in Dover, so he comforts himself by imagining the sound of the harness as the \"chink of money\" and the carriage as a strong-room where he could check that his customers' valuables are safe. That business is a safety net for Mr. Lorry, a neutral place that no one should fear, is illustrated later in the text when he is confronted with emotionally charged situations. At such times, Mr. Lorry mutters the word \"business\" repeatedly to brace himself for a challenge or to try to reassure others. The dominant theme of Chapter 4 is that of disorder overcoming order. Mr. Lorry's actions upon his arrival in Dover reinforce the reader's previous impression of him as a man who can be trusted to act according to convention and pattern. He turns down the head drawer's suggestion that he rest, saying that he won't go to bed until night. But the orderliness of his person is opposed by outside forces, as manifest in the small detail of the regular ticking of his watch, \"as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the fire.\" In the beginning of Chapter 4, everything is ordered according to Mr. Lorry's expectations. When he drops off to sleep, this \"completes his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait.\" The waiter watches Mr. Lorry comfortably, \"according to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.\" This orderliness is disturbed when the ritual of his meal is interrupted by Miss Mannette's request to see him immediately. The extent to which he relies on familiar patterns is hyperbolized in the description of his reaction to this too early summons as \"stolid desperation.\" Though he is at first pleased with her, recognizing the meaning of her social conventions , he becomes rapidly distressed when recognizable social conventions break down. When she becomes distraught and kneels as she hears the truth, he gets quite upset with the breach of convention, asking, \"In heaven's name why should you kneel to me?\" This triumph of disorder is associated with the novel's geographic movement toward France. The dichotomy described in the first chapter between England the dangerous and France the truly lethal is again evident; the details associated with disorder are particularly French. The closeness of location to France is evident in that the weather occasionally clears up enough to allow a view of the French coast. The wild sea, a symbol of disorder, rages at the cliffs \"madly,\" seemingly sent from France. Corruption, evidenced by the fact that men who did no trade would suddenly become wealthy, is connected to the sea trade--and thus also with France. Mr. Lorry highlights corruption as particularly French, insinuating that the horror of Dr. Manette's predicament was only possible \"across the water.\" The atmosphere that Dickens creates is revealed in smaller details first. Dickens wants to emphasize the death and burial themes. Darkness represents death; hence, the room in which Lorry and Miss Manette meet is a very dark room, ill lit and filled with dark trimmings. Any light that shines in the rooms in absorbed, or \"buried\" by the mahogany table. The cupids in the room are made of dark materials, and they are in varying states of \"death\" , from maimed to decapitated. The beheaded cupids also hint at the final source of death within the novel: the terror of the guillotine. As a writer of serialized popular novels, Dickens uses not only cliffhangers, but also extensive foreshadowing, which creates further suspense. Reading in the nineteenth century was a more social activity than it is in modern times, and it was not uncommon for installments to be read out loud for the benefit of members of the family who were illiterate. Heavy foreshadowing complemented this social reception of the novels, allowing the group to argue over the implications of what was written and what might happen next. Dickens foreshadows the fact that the \"recalled to life\" message is related to Miss Manette in the description of her room. Her connection with the once \"buried\" man is evident in the dark \"funereal\" furnishings of her room, and the candles on the burnished dark table are \"gloomily reflected on every leaf as if they were buried.\""}

III. The Night Shadows A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them? As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So with the three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one lumbering old mail coach; they were mysteries to one another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county between him and the next. The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often at ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep his own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface black, with no depth in the colour or form, and much too near together--as if they were afraid of being found out in something, singly, if they kept too far apart. They had a sinister expression, under an old cocked-hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and throat, which descended nearly to the wearer's knees. When he stopped for drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand, only while he poured his liquor in with his right; as soon as that was done, he muffled again. "No, Jerry, no!" said the messenger, harping on one theme as he rode. "It wouldn't do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honest tradesman, it wouldn't suit _your_ line of business! Recalled--! Bust me if I don't think he'd been a drinking!" His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over. While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson's Bank, by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of _her_ private topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road. What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested. Tellson's Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank passenger--with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger, and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special jolt--nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson's, with all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson's, with such of their valuable stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them. But, though the bank was almost always with him, and though the coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain under an opiate) was always with him, there was another current of impression that never ceased to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig some one out of a grave. Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves before him was the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the night did not indicate; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by years, and they differed principally in the passions they expressed, and in the ghastliness of their worn and wasted state. Pride, contempt, defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation, succeeded one another; so did varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour, emaciated hands and figures. But the face was in the main one face, and every head was prematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger inquired of this spectre: "Buried how long?" The answer was always the same: "Almost eighteen years." "You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?" "Long ago." "You know that you are recalled to life?" "They tell me so." "I hope you care to live?" "I can't say." "Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?" The answers to this question were various and contradictory. Sometimes the broken reply was, "Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too soon." Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was, "Take me to her." Sometimes it was staring and bewildered, and then it was, "I don't know her. I don't understand." After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancy would dig, and dig, dig--now with a spade, now with a great key, now with his hands--to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with earth hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fan away to dust. The passenger would then start to himself, and lower the window, to get the reality of mist and rain on his cheek. Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the moving patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadside retreating by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall into the train of the night shadows within. The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, the real business of the past day, the real strong rooms, the real express sent after him, and the real message returned, would all be there. Out of the midst of them, the ghostly face would rise, and he would accost it again. "Buried how long?" "Almost eighteen years." "I hope you care to live?" "I can't say." Dig--dig--dig--until an impatient movement from one of the two passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his arm securely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the two slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and they again slid away into the bank and the grave. "Buried how long?" "Almost eighteen years." "You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?" "Long ago." The words were still in his hearing as just spoken--distinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life--when the weary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the shadows of the night were gone. He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful. "Eighteen years!" said the passenger, looking at the sun. "Gracious Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!"

book 1, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-1-4

The Night Shadows The chapter opens with a reflection on the fact that all humans are mysteries to one another, despite the availability of their outer appearances. The three passengers remain a mystery to one another as they advance upon Dover. Jerry Cruncher returns to Temple Bar remaining uneasy about the cryptic message. Mr. Lorry dozes off and begins to dream in the coach, imagining the comforting environment of Tellson's Bank. He is then confronted by what he calls a spectre: a man who has been buried for eighteen years and has dug his way out. A conversation that Mr. Lorry's brain repeats three times with this spectre confirms that he has been buried for eighteen years. As the sun rises, Mr. Lorry wakes up from his dream and surveys the vivid countryside, pitying a man who would be locked away from nature for eighteen years

In what is one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature , Dickens captures the extremes of idealism and terror of the revolutionary period of the late 18th century. With the exception of figures of historical significance, in particular the monarchs, no characters directly related to the plot are introduced in this opening, reflecting Dickens's choice to focus on the setting rather than the characterization of individuals in this historical novel. Dickens refers obliquely, rather than directly, to the historical figures and events of the period, giving his introduction a fable-like quality. Rather than naming the monarchs and openly discussing the American Revolution, he refers to the "king with a large jaw and queen with a plain face" in England, the "king with a large jaw and queen with a fair face" in France, and a "congress of British subjects in America." Death is personified as a Farmer and Fate as a Woodman, powers who silently work their way through the French countryside. The distance provided by the tone of a fable was desirable for Dickens since his novel followed the historical events so closely in time. A Tale of Two Cities was published just 67 years after the events it describes. While the horrors of the French Revolution have been eclipsed for modern readers by the world wars and genocides of the twentieth century, the terrors of the French Revolution were the horror story of Dickens's time. His indirect tone helps his readers gain distance from an event that they would have contemplated and debated many times before. Dickens postulates the historical inevitability of the French Revolution, illustrating that despite the monarchs' complacency in their divine right, discontentment was growing in the countryside. He does not describe the same inevitability of rebellion in England, however, just the widespread feeling of lawlessness exemplified in the second chapter. Knowing that there was no comparable rebellion or even labor unrest in England at the end of the eighteenth century, Dickens portrays English society as dangerous but not lethal. Even so, there is a lack of proportion in England as demonstrated by executions for offenders ranging from murderers to "wretched pilferers." The injustice of equal treatment for unequal crimes reflects Dickens' ever-present concern with social justice, but it hardly compares with the unrest and injustices in France. With this contrast in the direness of social and criminal situations in the two countries, Dickens sets up a dichotomy that is to dominate the rest of the novel. With likeable but somewhat undeveloped individuals, the focus of the text is ever on the setting and the communities, the historical period as much as the plot itself. The title of A Tale of Two Cities is crucial for interpretation of the novel, suggesting that the opposing cities of Paris and London constitute the true protagonists of the novel, transcending the importance of the main characters. The first chapter only acknowledges in the last sentence that the narrative is to be a "chronicle" rather than pure history, when the narrator recognizes that the year 1775 included profound changes not only for the monarchs of France and England, but also for the "myriad of small creatures-the creatures of this chronicle among the rest-along the roads that lay before them." The historical novelist's role will humanize the great historical events of the day by narrating them through the lives of individuals. He links the inevitability of the Revolution to the inevitability of smaller events in individual lives, and the heavy hand of Fate will remain highly visible throughout the rest of the novel. The real story begins in Chapter 2, introducing the setting of misty fear that permeates the rest of the novel. This gloom links Dickens's work with the earlier Gothic movement in literature. The sense of fear and uncertainty that the characters feel on the road is picked up later in the plot line of Charles Darnay's accusation. A highway was one of the most fearful places that a gentleman could travel, because they were plagued by highway robbers who would hold up and raid the coaches. Dickens evokes this sense of fear by projecting it onto the natural characteristics of the road, using figures of speech: the mist is "like an evil spirit" and "as the waves of an unwholesome sea." Such dangerous or supernatural imagery helps build up the horror of the arrival of Jerry Cruncher on horseback, making his entrance quite dramatic. A Tale of Two Cities was produced in serial form, so it was in Dickens's interest to end each chapter with a cliffhanger so that his readers would purchase the next installment. The cliffhanger in "The Mail" is the suggestion that Jerry Cruncher is a killer because he is haunted by the great amount of trouble he would be in, should the dead come back to life. His mannerisms reveal this guilt, as he unmuffles himself only to pour liquor into his mouth, and then quickly covers his face again. His eyes betray his inner guilt, "being...much too near together-as if they were afraid of being found out in something singly if they kept too far apart." In Chapter 3, an unidentified first-person narrator elaborates the theme of disjunction between people's appearance and their nature, giving it a political gloss. The fear caused by the unknown seems to be justified, because the multiplicity of people's secret hearts is associated with an "awfulness" akin to "Death itself." Urban settings, which Dickens criticized greatly, exacerbate this horror by putting many dark secrets in close proximity. The narrator bemoans the fact that he will never get to know a person thoroughly--a part will always remain secret. Still, these secrets are equally available to all men, in that the messenger has "the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London." Despite people's secrets, the facades of Dickensian characters usually reflects their inner lives quite fairly. For example, in Oliver Twist, the great scene of betrayal occurs when Nancy uses her attractive and honest appearance to attract Oliver into a group of bandits. That her outer beauty echoes an inner beauty is vindicated by the fact that she later repents and deceives Sikes to assist Oliver. Mr. Lorry's first dream identifies the motif of money and business that characterizes him for the rest of the novel. Mr. Lorry uses business as a watchword of comfort when he gets into situations that make him nervous. He is rattled by the business that he must undertake when he arrives in Dover, so he comforts himself by imagining the sound of the harness as the "chink of money" and the carriage as a strong-room where he could check that his customers' valuables are safe. That business is a safety net for Mr. Lorry, a neutral place that no one should fear, is illustrated later in the text when he is confronted with emotionally charged situations. At such times, Mr. Lorry mutters the word "business" repeatedly to brace himself for a challenge or to try to reassure others. The dominant theme of Chapter 4 is that of disorder overcoming order. Mr. Lorry's actions upon his arrival in Dover reinforce the reader's previous impression of him as a man who can be trusted to act according to convention and pattern. He turns down the head drawer's suggestion that he rest, saying that he won't go to bed until night. But the orderliness of his person is opposed by outside forces, as manifest in the small detail of the regular ticking of his watch, "as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the fire." In the beginning of Chapter 4, everything is ordered according to Mr. Lorry's expectations. When he drops off to sleep, this "completes his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait." The waiter watches Mr. Lorry comfortably, "according to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages." This orderliness is disturbed when the ritual of his meal is interrupted by Miss Mannette's request to see him immediately. The extent to which he relies on familiar patterns is hyperbolized in the description of his reaction to this too early summons as "stolid desperation." Though he is at first pleased with her, recognizing the meaning of her social conventions , he becomes rapidly distressed when recognizable social conventions break down. When she becomes distraught and kneels as she hears the truth, he gets quite upset with the breach of convention, asking, "In heaven's name why should you kneel to me?" This triumph of disorder is associated with the novel's geographic movement toward France. The dichotomy described in the first chapter between England the dangerous and France the truly lethal is again evident; the details associated with disorder are particularly French. The closeness of location to France is evident in that the weather occasionally clears up enough to allow a view of the French coast. The wild sea, a symbol of disorder, rages at the cliffs "madly," seemingly sent from France. Corruption, evidenced by the fact that men who did no trade would suddenly become wealthy, is connected to the sea trade--and thus also with France. Mr. Lorry highlights corruption as particularly French, insinuating that the horror of Dr. Manette's predicament was only possible "across the water." The atmosphere that Dickens creates is revealed in smaller details first. Dickens wants to emphasize the death and burial themes. Darkness represents death; hence, the room in which Lorry and Miss Manette meet is a very dark room, ill lit and filled with dark trimmings. Any light that shines in the rooms in absorbed, or "buried" by the mahogany table. The cupids in the room are made of dark materials, and they are in varying states of "death" , from maimed to decapitated. The beheaded cupids also hint at the final source of death within the novel: the terror of the guillotine. As a writer of serialized popular novels, Dickens uses not only cliffhangers, but also extensive foreshadowing, which creates further suspense. Reading in the nineteenth century was a more social activity than it is in modern times, and it was not uncommon for installments to be read out loud for the benefit of members of the family who were illiterate. Heavy foreshadowing complemented this social reception of the novels, allowing the group to argue over the implications of what was written and what might happen next. Dickens foreshadows the fact that the "recalled to life" message is related to Miss Manette in the description of her room. Her connection with the once "buried" man is evident in the dark "funereal" furnishings of her room, and the candles on the burnished dark table are "gloomily reflected on every leaf as if they were buried."

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/4.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_0_part_4.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 4

book 1, chapter 4

{"name": "book 1, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-1-4", "summary": "The Preparation Mr. Lorry arrives in Dover in the mail coach, settles in, and takes his breakfast alone in the coffee-room. A conversation with a waiter establishes that Tellson's Bank operates both in London and Paris, but Mr. Lorry has not traveled to Paris for fifteen years. Mr. Lorry finishes his breakfast, strolls by the ocean, and then returns for a bottle of claret. His peace is disrupted by a lady referred to as Mam'selle , who requests to see him immediately. He sees her in her room and expresses emotion at the sight of her, recalling that he carried her as a babe in arms across the Channel. Miss Manette is an orphan whose financial affairs are managed by Tellson's Bank, and she was informed that Mr. Lorry would accompany her on a journey to France--and that he would have some surprising news for her. After a few false starts, Mr. Lorry manages to compose himself and tell Miss Manette that her French father was still alive in France. He was recovered after years of imprisonment and is now living in the house of an old servant in Paris. Miss Manette understands what a wreck her father must be, and she is distressed to imagine that she is being carried to see her father's ghost, rather than her real father. Mr. Lorry describes their mission as one to spirit him away from France to England--and that they should avoid naming the matter, explaining the rescue as the enigmatic experience of being \"recalled to life. Miss Manette is overcome, and she swoons. Her servant comes to her rescue, pushing Mr. Lorry out of the way to administer smelling-salts", "analysis": "In what is one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature , Dickens captures the extremes of idealism and terror of the revolutionary period of the late 18th century. With the exception of figures of historical significance, in particular the monarchs, no characters directly related to the plot are introduced in this opening, reflecting Dickens's choice to focus on the setting rather than the characterization of individuals in this historical novel. Dickens refers obliquely, rather than directly, to the historical figures and events of the period, giving his introduction a fable-like quality. Rather than naming the monarchs and openly discussing the American Revolution, he refers to the \"king with a large jaw and queen with a plain face\" in England, the \"king with a large jaw and queen with a fair face\" in France, and a \"congress of British subjects in America.\" Death is personified as a Farmer and Fate as a Woodman, powers who silently work their way through the French countryside. The distance provided by the tone of a fable was desirable for Dickens since his novel followed the historical events so closely in time. A Tale of Two Cities was published just 67 years after the events it describes. While the horrors of the French Revolution have been eclipsed for modern readers by the world wars and genocides of the twentieth century, the terrors of the French Revolution were the horror story of Dickens's time. His indirect tone helps his readers gain distance from an event that they would have contemplated and debated many times before. Dickens postulates the historical inevitability of the French Revolution, illustrating that despite the monarchs' complacency in their divine right, discontentment was growing in the countryside. He does not describe the same inevitability of rebellion in England, however, just the widespread feeling of lawlessness exemplified in the second chapter. Knowing that there was no comparable rebellion or even labor unrest in England at the end of the eighteenth century, Dickens portrays English society as dangerous but not lethal. Even so, there is a lack of proportion in England as demonstrated by executions for offenders ranging from murderers to \"wretched pilferers.\" The injustice of equal treatment for unequal crimes reflects Dickens' ever-present concern with social justice, but it hardly compares with the unrest and injustices in France. With this contrast in the direness of social and criminal situations in the two countries, Dickens sets up a dichotomy that is to dominate the rest of the novel. With likeable but somewhat undeveloped individuals, the focus of the text is ever on the setting and the communities, the historical period as much as the plot itself. The title of A Tale of Two Cities is crucial for interpretation of the novel, suggesting that the opposing cities of Paris and London constitute the true protagonists of the novel, transcending the importance of the main characters. The first chapter only acknowledges in the last sentence that the narrative is to be a \"chronicle\" rather than pure history, when the narrator recognizes that the year 1775 included profound changes not only for the monarchs of France and England, but also for the \"myriad of small creatures-the creatures of this chronicle among the rest-along the roads that lay before them.\" The historical novelist's role will humanize the great historical events of the day by narrating them through the lives of individuals. He links the inevitability of the Revolution to the inevitability of smaller events in individual lives, and the heavy hand of Fate will remain highly visible throughout the rest of the novel. The real story begins in Chapter 2, introducing the setting of misty fear that permeates the rest of the novel. This gloom links Dickens's work with the earlier Gothic movement in literature. The sense of fear and uncertainty that the characters feel on the road is picked up later in the plot line of Charles Darnay's accusation. A highway was one of the most fearful places that a gentleman could travel, because they were plagued by highway robbers who would hold up and raid the coaches. Dickens evokes this sense of fear by projecting it onto the natural characteristics of the road, using figures of speech: the mist is \"like an evil spirit\" and \"as the waves of an unwholesome sea.\" Such dangerous or supernatural imagery helps build up the horror of the arrival of Jerry Cruncher on horseback, making his entrance quite dramatic. A Tale of Two Cities was produced in serial form, so it was in Dickens's interest to end each chapter with a cliffhanger so that his readers would purchase the next installment. The cliffhanger in \"The Mail\" is the suggestion that Jerry Cruncher is a killer because he is haunted by the great amount of trouble he would be in, should the dead come back to life. His mannerisms reveal this guilt, as he unmuffles himself only to pour liquor into his mouth, and then quickly covers his face again. His eyes betray his inner guilt, \"being...much too near together-as if they were afraid of being found out in something singly if they kept too far apart.\" In Chapter 3, an unidentified first-person narrator elaborates the theme of disjunction between people's appearance and their nature, giving it a political gloss. The fear caused by the unknown seems to be justified, because the multiplicity of people's secret hearts is associated with an \"awfulness\" akin to \"Death itself.\" Urban settings, which Dickens criticized greatly, exacerbate this horror by putting many dark secrets in close proximity. The narrator bemoans the fact that he will never get to know a person thoroughly--a part will always remain secret. Still, these secrets are equally available to all men, in that the messenger has \"the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London.\" Despite people's secrets, the facades of Dickensian characters usually reflects their inner lives quite fairly. For example, in Oliver Twist, the great scene of betrayal occurs when Nancy uses her attractive and honest appearance to attract Oliver into a group of bandits. That her outer beauty echoes an inner beauty is vindicated by the fact that she later repents and deceives Sikes to assist Oliver. Mr. Lorry's first dream identifies the motif of money and business that characterizes him for the rest of the novel. Mr. Lorry uses business as a watchword of comfort when he gets into situations that make him nervous. He is rattled by the business that he must undertake when he arrives in Dover, so he comforts himself by imagining the sound of the harness as the \"chink of money\" and the carriage as a strong-room where he could check that his customers' valuables are safe. That business is a safety net for Mr. Lorry, a neutral place that no one should fear, is illustrated later in the text when he is confronted with emotionally charged situations. At such times, Mr. Lorry mutters the word \"business\" repeatedly to brace himself for a challenge or to try to reassure others. The dominant theme of Chapter 4 is that of disorder overcoming order. Mr. Lorry's actions upon his arrival in Dover reinforce the reader's previous impression of him as a man who can be trusted to act according to convention and pattern. He turns down the head drawer's suggestion that he rest, saying that he won't go to bed until night. But the orderliness of his person is opposed by outside forces, as manifest in the small detail of the regular ticking of his watch, \"as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the fire.\" In the beginning of Chapter 4, everything is ordered according to Mr. Lorry's expectations. When he drops off to sleep, this \"completes his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait.\" The waiter watches Mr. Lorry comfortably, \"according to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.\" This orderliness is disturbed when the ritual of his meal is interrupted by Miss Mannette's request to see him immediately. The extent to which he relies on familiar patterns is hyperbolized in the description of his reaction to this too early summons as \"stolid desperation.\" Though he is at first pleased with her, recognizing the meaning of her social conventions , he becomes rapidly distressed when recognizable social conventions break down. When she becomes distraught and kneels as she hears the truth, he gets quite upset with the breach of convention, asking, \"In heaven's name why should you kneel to me?\" This triumph of disorder is associated with the novel's geographic movement toward France. The dichotomy described in the first chapter between England the dangerous and France the truly lethal is again evident; the details associated with disorder are particularly French. The closeness of location to France is evident in that the weather occasionally clears up enough to allow a view of the French coast. The wild sea, a symbol of disorder, rages at the cliffs \"madly,\" seemingly sent from France. Corruption, evidenced by the fact that men who did no trade would suddenly become wealthy, is connected to the sea trade--and thus also with France. Mr. Lorry highlights corruption as particularly French, insinuating that the horror of Dr. Manette's predicament was only possible \"across the water.\" The atmosphere that Dickens creates is revealed in smaller details first. Dickens wants to emphasize the death and burial themes. Darkness represents death; hence, the room in which Lorry and Miss Manette meet is a very dark room, ill lit and filled with dark trimmings. Any light that shines in the rooms in absorbed, or \"buried\" by the mahogany table. The cupids in the room are made of dark materials, and they are in varying states of \"death\" , from maimed to decapitated. The beheaded cupids also hint at the final source of death within the novel: the terror of the guillotine. As a writer of serialized popular novels, Dickens uses not only cliffhangers, but also extensive foreshadowing, which creates further suspense. Reading in the nineteenth century was a more social activity than it is in modern times, and it was not uncommon for installments to be read out loud for the benefit of members of the family who were illiterate. Heavy foreshadowing complemented this social reception of the novels, allowing the group to argue over the implications of what was written and what might happen next. Dickens foreshadows the fact that the \"recalled to life\" message is related to Miss Manette in the description of her room. Her connection with the once \"buried\" man is evident in the dark \"funereal\" furnishings of her room, and the candles on the burnished dark table are \"gloomily reflected on every leaf as if they were buried.\""}

IV. The Preparation When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon, the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveller upon. By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left be congratulated: for the two others had been set down at their respective roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a larger sort of dog. "There will be a packet to Calais, tomorrow, drawer?" "Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair. The tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir. Bed, sir?" "I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, and a barber." "And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please. Show Concord! Gentleman's valise and hot water to Concord. Pull off gentleman's boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.) Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord!" The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a passenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room had the odd interest for the establishment of the Royal George, that although but one kind of man was seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it. Consequently, another drawer, and two porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all loitering by accident at various points of the road between the Concord and the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with large square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on his way to his breakfast. The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than the gentleman in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the fire, and as he sat, with its light shining on him, waiting for the meal, he sat so still, that he might have been sitting for his portrait. Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waist-coat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a little vain of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or glass. His linen, though not of a fineness in accordance with his stockings, was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighbouring beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. A face habitually suppressed and quieted, was still lighted up under the quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have cost their owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the composed and reserved expression of Tellson's Bank. He had a healthy colour in his cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson's Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on. Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. The arrival of his breakfast roused him, and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it: "I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who may come here at any time to-day. She may ask for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, or she may only ask for a gentleman from Tellson's Bank. Please to let me know." "Yes, sir. Tellson's Bank in London, sir?" "Yes." "Yes, sir. We have oftentimes the honour to entertain your gentlemen in their travelling backwards and forwards betwixt London and Paris, sir. A vast deal of travelling, sir, in Tellson and Company's House." "Yes. We are quite a French House, as well as an English one." "Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling yourself, I think, sir?" "Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we--since I--came last from France." "Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir. Before our people's time here, sir. The George was in other hands at that time, sir." "I believe so." "But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like Tellson and Company was flourishing, a matter of fifty, not to speak of fifteen years ago?" "You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty, yet not be far from the truth." "Indeed, sir!" Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped backward from the table, the waiter shifted his napkin from his right arm to his left, dropped into a comfortable attitude, and stood surveying the guest while he ate and drank, as from an observatory or watchtower. According to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages. When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll on the beach. The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide made, and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes, and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter. As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had been at intervals clear enough to allow the French coast to be seen, became again charged with mist and vapour, Mr. Lorry's thoughts seemed to cloud too. When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was busily digging, digging, digging, in the live red coals. A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a long time, and had just poured out his last glassful of wine with as complete an appearance of satisfaction as is ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who has got to the end of a bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow street, and rumbled into the inn-yard. He set down his glass untouched. "This is Mam'selle!" said he. In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce that Miss Manette had arrived from London, and would be happy to see the gentleman from Tellson's. "So soon?" Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, and required none then, and was extremely anxious to see the gentleman from Tellson's immediately, if it suited his pleasure and convenience. The gentleman from Tellson's had nothing left for it but to empty his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to Miss Manette's apartment. It was a large, dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with black horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled and oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle of the room were gloomily reflected on every leaf; as if _they_ were buried, in deep graves of black mahogany, and no light to speak of could be expected from them until they were dug out. The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr. Lorry, picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past the two tall candles, he saw standing to receive him by the table between them and the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and smooth it was), of rifting and knitting itself into an expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all the four expressions--as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high. The likeness passed away, like a breath along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which, a hospital procession of negro cupids, several headless and all cripples, were offering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender--and he made his formal bow to Miss Manette. "Pray take a seat, sir." In a very clear and pleasant young voice; a little foreign in its accent, but a very little indeed. "I kiss your hand, miss," said Mr. Lorry, with the manners of an earlier date, as he made his formal bow again, and took his seat. "I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, informing me that some intelligence--or discovery--" "The word is not material, miss; either word will do." "--respecting the small property of my poor father, whom I never saw--so long dead--" Mr. Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look towards the hospital procession of negro cupids. As if _they_ had any help for anybody in their absurd baskets! "--rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris, there to communicate with a gentleman of the Bank, so good as to be despatched to Paris for the purpose." "Myself." "As I was prepared to hear, sir." She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in those days), with a pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he was than she. He made her another bow. "I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered necessary, by those who know, and who are so kind as to advise me, that I should go to France, and that as I am an orphan and have no friend who could go with me, I should esteem it highly if I might be permitted to place myself, during the journey, under that worthy gentleman's protection. The gentleman had left London, but I think a messenger was sent after him to beg the favour of his waiting for me here." "I was happy," said Mr. Lorry, "to be entrusted with the charge. I shall be more happy to execute it." "Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gratefully. It was told me by the Bank that the gentleman would explain to me the details of the business, and that I must prepare myself to find them of a surprising nature. I have done my best to prepare myself, and I naturally have a strong and eager interest to know what they are." "Naturally," said Mr. Lorry. "Yes--I--" After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at the ears, "It is very difficult to begin." He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. The young forehead lifted itself into that singular expression--but it was pretty and characteristic, besides being singular--and she raised her hand, as if with an involuntary action she caught at, or stayed some passing shadow. "Are you quite a stranger to me, sir?" "Am I not?" Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and extended them outwards with an argumentative smile. Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose, the line of which was as delicate and fine as it was possible to be, the expression deepened itself as she took her seat thoughtfully in the chair by which she had hitherto remained standing. He watched her as she mused, and the moment she raised her eyes again, went on: "In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than address you as a young English lady, Miss Manette?" "If you please, sir." "Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business charge to acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don't heed me any more than if I was a speaking machine--truly, I am not much else. I will, with your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of our customers." "Story!" He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he added, in a hurry, "Yes, customers; in the banking business we usually call our connection our customers. He was a French gentleman; a scientific gentleman; a man of great acquirements--a Doctor." "Not of Beauvais?" "Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honour of knowing him there. Our relations were business relations, but confidential. I was at that time in our French House, and had been--oh! twenty years." "At that time--I may ask, at what time, sir?" "I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married--an English lady--and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs of many other French gentlemen and French families, were entirely in Tellson's hands. In a similar way I am, or I have been, trustee of one kind or other for scores of our customers. These are mere business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our customers to another in the course of my business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine. To go on--" "But this is my father's story, sir; and I begin to think"--the curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon him--"that when I was left an orphan through my mother's surviving my father only two years, it was you who brought me to England. I am almost sure it was you." Mr. Lorry took the hesitating little hand that confidingly advanced to take his, and he put it with some ceremony to his lips. He then conducted the young lady straightway to her chair again, and, holding the chair-back with his left hand, and using his right by turns to rub his chin, pull his wig at the ears, or point what he said, stood looking down into her face while she sat looking up into his. "Miss Manette, it _was_ I. And you will see how truly I spoke of myself just now, in saying I had no feelings, and that all the relations I hold with my fellow-creatures are mere business relations, when you reflect that I have never seen you since. No; you have been the ward of Tellson's House since, and I have been busy with the other business of Tellson's House since. Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle." After this odd description of his daily routine of employment, Mr. Lorry flattened his flaxen wig upon his head with both hands (which was most unnecessary, for nothing could be flatter than its shining surface was before), and resumed his former attitude. "So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the story of your regretted father. Now comes the difference. If your father had not died when he did--Don't be frightened! How you start!" She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with both her hands. "Pray," said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the supplicatory fingers that clasped him in so violent a tremble: "pray control your agitation--a matter of business. As I was saying--" Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, and began anew: "As I was saying; if Monsieur Manette had not died; if he had suddenly and silently disappeared; if he had been spirited away; if it had not been difficult to guess to what dreadful place, though no art could trace him; if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could exercise a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water there; for instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his wife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any tidings of him, and all quite in vain;--then the history of your father would have been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor of Beauvais." "I entreat you to tell me more, sir." "I will. I am going to. You can bear it?" "I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me in at this moment." "You speak collectedly, and you--_are_ collected. That's good!" (Though his manner was less satisfied than his words.) "A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of business--business that must be done. Now if this doctor's wife, though a lady of great courage and spirit, had suffered so intensely from this cause before her little child was born--" "The little child was a daughter, sir." "A daughter. A-a-matter of business--don't be distressed. Miss, if the poor lady had suffered so intensely before her little child was born, that she came to the determination of sparing the poor child the inheritance of any part of the agony she had known the pains of, by rearing her in the belief that her father was dead--No, don't kneel! In Heaven's name why should you kneel to me!" "For the truth. O dear, good, compassionate sir, for the truth!" "A--a matter of business. You confuse me, and how can I transact business if I am confused? Let us be clear-headed. If you could kindly mention now, for instance, what nine times ninepence are, or how many shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should be so much more at my ease about your state of mind." Without directly answering to this appeal, she sat so still when he had very gently raised her, and the hands that had not ceased to clasp his wrists were so much more steady than they had been, that she communicated some reassurance to Mr. Jarvis Lorry. "That's right, that's right. Courage! Business! You have business before you; useful business. Miss Manette, your mother took this course with you. And when she died--I believe broken-hearted--having never slackened her unavailing search for your father, she left you, at two years old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy, without the dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty whether your father soon wore his heart out in prison, or wasted there through many lingering years." As he said the words he looked down, with an admiring pity, on the flowing golden hair; as if he pictured to himself that it might have been already tinged with grey. "You know that your parents had no great possession, and that what they had was secured to your mother and to you. There has been no new discovery, of money, or of any other property; but--" He felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The expression in the forehead, which had so particularly attracted his notice, and which was now immovable, had deepened into one of pain and horror. "But he has been--been found. He is alive. Greatly changed, it is too probable; almost a wreck, it is possible; though we will hope the best. Still, alive. Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and we are going there: I, to identify him if I can: you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort." A shiver ran through her frame, and from it through his. She said, in a low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as if she were saying it in a dream, "I am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost--not him!" Mr. Lorry quietly chafed the hands that held his arm. "There, there, there! See now, see now! The best and the worst are known to you, now. You are well on your way to the poor wronged gentleman, and, with a fair sea voyage, and a fair land journey, you will be soon at his dear side." She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, "I have been free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has never haunted me!" "Only one thing more," said Mr. Lorry, laying stress upon it as a wholesome means of enforcing her attention: "he has been found under another name; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It would be worse than useless now to inquire which; worse than useless to seek to know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always designedly held prisoner. It would be worse than useless now to make any inquiries, because it would be dangerous. Better not to mention the subject, anywhere or in any way, and to remove him--for a while at all events--out of France. Even I, safe as an Englishman, and even Tellson's, important as they are to French credit, avoid all naming of the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of writing openly referring to it. This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, 'Recalled to Life;' which may mean anything. But what is the matter! She doesn't notice a word! Miss Manette!" Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her chair, she sat under his hand, utterly insensible; with her eyes open and fixed upon him, and with that last expression looking as if it were carved or branded into her forehead. So close was her hold upon his arm, that he feared to detach himself lest he should hurt her; therefore he called out loudly for assistance without moving. A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. Lorry observed to be all of a red colour, and to have red hair, and to be dressed in some extraordinary tight-fitting fashion, and to have on her head a most wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came running into the room in advance of the inn servants, and soon settled the question of his detachment from the poor young lady, by laying a brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him flying back against the nearest wall. ("I really think this must be a man!" was Mr. Lorry's breathless reflection, simultaneously with his coming against the wall.) "Why, look at you all!" bawled this figure, addressing the inn servants. "Why don't you go and fetch things, instead of standing there staring at me? I am not so much to look at, am I? Why don't you go and fetch things? I'll let you know, if you don't bring smelling-salts, cold water, and vinegar, quick, I will." There was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives, and she softly laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her with great skill and gentleness: calling her "my precious!" and "my bird!" and spreading her golden hair aside over her shoulders with great pride and care. "And you in brown!" she said, indignantly turning to Mr. Lorry; "couldn't you tell her what you had to tell her, without frightening her to death? Look at her, with her pretty pale face and her cold hands. Do you call _that_ being a Banker?" Mr. Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a question so hard to answer, that he could only look on, at a distance, with much feebler sympathy and humility, while the strong woman, having banished the inn servants under the mysterious penalty of "letting them know" something not mentioned if they stayed there, staring, recovered her charge by a regular series of gradations, and coaxed her to lay her drooping head upon her shoulder. "I hope she will do well now," said Mr. Lorry. "No thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling pretty!" "I hope," said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of feeble sympathy and humility, "that you accompany Miss Manette to France?" "A likely thing, too!" replied the strong woman. "If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island?" This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis Lorry withdrew to consider it.

book 1, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-1-4

The Preparation Mr. Lorry arrives in Dover in the mail coach, settles in, and takes his breakfast alone in the coffee-room. A conversation with a waiter establishes that Tellson's Bank operates both in London and Paris, but Mr. Lorry has not traveled to Paris for fifteen years. Mr. Lorry finishes his breakfast, strolls by the ocean, and then returns for a bottle of claret. His peace is disrupted by a lady referred to as Mam'selle , who requests to see him immediately. He sees her in her room and expresses emotion at the sight of her, recalling that he carried her as a babe in arms across the Channel. Miss Manette is an orphan whose financial affairs are managed by Tellson's Bank, and she was informed that Mr. Lorry would accompany her on a journey to France--and that he would have some surprising news for her. After a few false starts, Mr. Lorry manages to compose himself and tell Miss Manette that her French father was still alive in France. He was recovered after years of imprisonment and is now living in the house of an old servant in Paris. Miss Manette understands what a wreck her father must be, and she is distressed to imagine that she is being carried to see her father's ghost, rather than her real father. Mr. Lorry describes their mission as one to spirit him away from France to England--and that they should avoid naming the matter, explaining the rescue as the enigmatic experience of being "recalled to life. Miss Manette is overcome, and she swoons. Her servant comes to her rescue, pushing Mr. Lorry out of the way to administer smelling-salts

In what is one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature , Dickens captures the extremes of idealism and terror of the revolutionary period of the late 18th century. With the exception of figures of historical significance, in particular the monarchs, no characters directly related to the plot are introduced in this opening, reflecting Dickens's choice to focus on the setting rather than the characterization of individuals in this historical novel. Dickens refers obliquely, rather than directly, to the historical figures and events of the period, giving his introduction a fable-like quality. Rather than naming the monarchs and openly discussing the American Revolution, he refers to the "king with a large jaw and queen with a plain face" in England, the "king with a large jaw and queen with a fair face" in France, and a "congress of British subjects in America." Death is personified as a Farmer and Fate as a Woodman, powers who silently work their way through the French countryside. The distance provided by the tone of a fable was desirable for Dickens since his novel followed the historical events so closely in time. A Tale of Two Cities was published just 67 years after the events it describes. While the horrors of the French Revolution have been eclipsed for modern readers by the world wars and genocides of the twentieth century, the terrors of the French Revolution were the horror story of Dickens's time. His indirect tone helps his readers gain distance from an event that they would have contemplated and debated many times before. Dickens postulates the historical inevitability of the French Revolution, illustrating that despite the monarchs' complacency in their divine right, discontentment was growing in the countryside. He does not describe the same inevitability of rebellion in England, however, just the widespread feeling of lawlessness exemplified in the second chapter. Knowing that there was no comparable rebellion or even labor unrest in England at the end of the eighteenth century, Dickens portrays English society as dangerous but not lethal. Even so, there is a lack of proportion in England as demonstrated by executions for offenders ranging from murderers to "wretched pilferers." The injustice of equal treatment for unequal crimes reflects Dickens' ever-present concern with social justice, but it hardly compares with the unrest and injustices in France. With this contrast in the direness of social and criminal situations in the two countries, Dickens sets up a dichotomy that is to dominate the rest of the novel. With likeable but somewhat undeveloped individuals, the focus of the text is ever on the setting and the communities, the historical period as much as the plot itself. The title of A Tale of Two Cities is crucial for interpretation of the novel, suggesting that the opposing cities of Paris and London constitute the true protagonists of the novel, transcending the importance of the main characters. The first chapter only acknowledges in the last sentence that the narrative is to be a "chronicle" rather than pure history, when the narrator recognizes that the year 1775 included profound changes not only for the monarchs of France and England, but also for the "myriad of small creatures-the creatures of this chronicle among the rest-along the roads that lay before them." The historical novelist's role will humanize the great historical events of the day by narrating them through the lives of individuals. He links the inevitability of the Revolution to the inevitability of smaller events in individual lives, and the heavy hand of Fate will remain highly visible throughout the rest of the novel. The real story begins in Chapter 2, introducing the setting of misty fear that permeates the rest of the novel. This gloom links Dickens's work with the earlier Gothic movement in literature. The sense of fear and uncertainty that the characters feel on the road is picked up later in the plot line of Charles Darnay's accusation. A highway was one of the most fearful places that a gentleman could travel, because they were plagued by highway robbers who would hold up and raid the coaches. Dickens evokes this sense of fear by projecting it onto the natural characteristics of the road, using figures of speech: the mist is "like an evil spirit" and "as the waves of an unwholesome sea." Such dangerous or supernatural imagery helps build up the horror of the arrival of Jerry Cruncher on horseback, making his entrance quite dramatic. A Tale of Two Cities was produced in serial form, so it was in Dickens's interest to end each chapter with a cliffhanger so that his readers would purchase the next installment. The cliffhanger in "The Mail" is the suggestion that Jerry Cruncher is a killer because he is haunted by the great amount of trouble he would be in, should the dead come back to life. His mannerisms reveal this guilt, as he unmuffles himself only to pour liquor into his mouth, and then quickly covers his face again. His eyes betray his inner guilt, "being...much too near together-as if they were afraid of being found out in something singly if they kept too far apart." In Chapter 3, an unidentified first-person narrator elaborates the theme of disjunction between people's appearance and their nature, giving it a political gloss. The fear caused by the unknown seems to be justified, because the multiplicity of people's secret hearts is associated with an "awfulness" akin to "Death itself." Urban settings, which Dickens criticized greatly, exacerbate this horror by putting many dark secrets in close proximity. The narrator bemoans the fact that he will never get to know a person thoroughly--a part will always remain secret. Still, these secrets are equally available to all men, in that the messenger has "the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London." Despite people's secrets, the facades of Dickensian characters usually reflects their inner lives quite fairly. For example, in Oliver Twist, the great scene of betrayal occurs when Nancy uses her attractive and honest appearance to attract Oliver into a group of bandits. That her outer beauty echoes an inner beauty is vindicated by the fact that she later repents and deceives Sikes to assist Oliver. Mr. Lorry's first dream identifies the motif of money and business that characterizes him for the rest of the novel. Mr. Lorry uses business as a watchword of comfort when he gets into situations that make him nervous. He is rattled by the business that he must undertake when he arrives in Dover, so he comforts himself by imagining the sound of the harness as the "chink of money" and the carriage as a strong-room where he could check that his customers' valuables are safe. That business is a safety net for Mr. Lorry, a neutral place that no one should fear, is illustrated later in the text when he is confronted with emotionally charged situations. At such times, Mr. Lorry mutters the word "business" repeatedly to brace himself for a challenge or to try to reassure others. The dominant theme of Chapter 4 is that of disorder overcoming order. Mr. Lorry's actions upon his arrival in Dover reinforce the reader's previous impression of him as a man who can be trusted to act according to convention and pattern. He turns down the head drawer's suggestion that he rest, saying that he won't go to bed until night. But the orderliness of his person is opposed by outside forces, as manifest in the small detail of the regular ticking of his watch, "as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the fire." In the beginning of Chapter 4, everything is ordered according to Mr. Lorry's expectations. When he drops off to sleep, this "completes his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait." The waiter watches Mr. Lorry comfortably, "according to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages." This orderliness is disturbed when the ritual of his meal is interrupted by Miss Mannette's request to see him immediately. The extent to which he relies on familiar patterns is hyperbolized in the description of his reaction to this too early summons as "stolid desperation." Though he is at first pleased with her, recognizing the meaning of her social conventions , he becomes rapidly distressed when recognizable social conventions break down. When she becomes distraught and kneels as she hears the truth, he gets quite upset with the breach of convention, asking, "In heaven's name why should you kneel to me?" This triumph of disorder is associated with the novel's geographic movement toward France. The dichotomy described in the first chapter between England the dangerous and France the truly lethal is again evident; the details associated with disorder are particularly French. The closeness of location to France is evident in that the weather occasionally clears up enough to allow a view of the French coast. The wild sea, a symbol of disorder, rages at the cliffs "madly," seemingly sent from France. Corruption, evidenced by the fact that men who did no trade would suddenly become wealthy, is connected to the sea trade--and thus also with France. Mr. Lorry highlights corruption as particularly French, insinuating that the horror of Dr. Manette's predicament was only possible "across the water." The atmosphere that Dickens creates is revealed in smaller details first. Dickens wants to emphasize the death and burial themes. Darkness represents death; hence, the room in which Lorry and Miss Manette meet is a very dark room, ill lit and filled with dark trimmings. Any light that shines in the rooms in absorbed, or "buried" by the mahogany table. The cupids in the room are made of dark materials, and they are in varying states of "death" , from maimed to decapitated. The beheaded cupids also hint at the final source of death within the novel: the terror of the guillotine. As a writer of serialized popular novels, Dickens uses not only cliffhangers, but also extensive foreshadowing, which creates further suspense. Reading in the nineteenth century was a more social activity than it is in modern times, and it was not uncommon for installments to be read out loud for the benefit of members of the family who were illiterate. Heavy foreshadowing complemented this social reception of the novels, allowing the group to argue over the implications of what was written and what might happen next. Dickens foreshadows the fact that the "recalled to life" message is related to Miss Manette in the description of her room. Her connection with the once "buried" man is evident in the dark "funereal" furnishings of her room, and the candles on the burnished dark table are "gloomily reflected on every leaf as if they were buried."

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/5.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_1_part_1.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 5

book 1, chapter 5

{"name": "book 1, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-5-6", "summary": "The Wine-Shop Outside Monsieur Defarge's wine-shop in Paris, a cask of wine is dropped and broken. The wine spills over the cobblestones, and people stop what they were doing to drink the wine off the street. When the wine runs out and people return to the activities of their daily lives, the mark of hunger is visible on all of them. Even the street signs reflect this hunger, with the butcher's sign painted with only a scrap of meat, the baker's with a tiny loaf. The only thing with the appearance of strength and robustness are weapons: axes, knives, guns. Monsieur Defarge watches the incident with the wine cask, talking to Gaspard, who dips his finger in the wine and mud and writes \"blood\" on a wall. Defarge wipes this word away. When Defarge returns to his shop, his wife coughs slightly and gestures with her eyebrow that he should take a look around the store. He sees Mr. Lorry and Miss Manette seated in his store, as well as three men apparently named Jacques, which is also Monsieur Defarge's own name. He sends the three to view a room that they wish to see, and Mr. Lorry requests a word with him. He reveals his and Miss Manette's identities and asks to see Dr. Manette, and Defarge accordingly conducts them to the fifth-floor apartment. Mr. Lorry is displeased both by the fact that Dr. Manette is locked in, and that they can see the three Jacqueses spying on him through chinks in the wall. Miss Manette enters although she is afraid. She finds her white-haired father in a garret, making shoes", "analysis": "The spilled red wine is an obvious cipher for spilled blood, and Dickens uses the crowd's enthusiasm for its spillage as an indication of how they will greet the coming revolution. They are wine-thirsty and bloodthirsy. Their reaction to the spill is notable not only for its eagerness but also for the social ties that it creates among the lower class--who rarely, if ever, drink wine. Under its influence, they sing, dance, and drink further to one another's health. In this scene the reason for the revolution is clear, as Dickens artfully describes the conditions of the poor. Before the wine is spilled, and after the wine is gone, the people return to their states of hunger, to their brutal manual work for no pay, to their gloomy and lonely states of existence. The spilling of the wine is the one thing that gives these people spirit. Yet it also takes away a portion of their humanity. When they finish drinking the wine, they become animals, \"acquiring a tigerish smear about the mouth.\" The very thing that brings them together also makes them bestial and dangerous. All the men of this chapter are not actually named Jacques. Instead, the name serves as a code word that identifies all the followers of the coming revolution. Here the revolutionaries actually have an elaborate code that reveals itself in subtle ways. For instance, later Madame Defarge's coughs and hair ornaments mean that someone dangerous is in the shop. Because the underground movements can work in secret codes and ways, they become more dangerous. Monsieur Defarge's character is evident in his face. For Dickens, the distance between the eyes is a crucial indicator of whether a man is a criminal or not. Monsieur Defarge's eyes are set a good distance apart, and it is later revealed that Madame Defarge encourages his criminal activities. Madame Defarge is a much more interesting and mysterious character than her husband. Her every gesture is watched by her husband and the other patrons of the bar, she is the one who gives him cues, and it is her initiative that guides the course of events. Mr. Lorry's agitation at the breaches of convention in Dover increase multifold, since there is no social pattern for the extraordinary introduction that takes place in Paris. Monsieur Defarge takes care to follow social patterns, but he does so in a way that reveals his more sinister intentions. When he recognizes Miss Manette as his former master's daughter, Defarge bends on one knee, putting her hand to his lips. It is \"a gentle action not at all gently done.\" In an ordered world, the gentility of an action reflects the gentility of its intention; here, Dickens shows that this balance is undermined. Mr. Lorry tries to reassure Miss Manette, repeating the words \"courage\" and \"business\"--which to him are related and reassuring concepts. His constant repetition of the word \"business\" is farcical, given the very un-businesslike role in which he once again finds himself. Lightness overcoming darkness is a consistent pattern in this chapter, and it represents his daughter's role in his life from this point forward. In the previous chapter, the garret was described as extremely dark, but the entrance of the visitors now causes a \"broad ray of light\" to fall into the garret. Details of her father's person include his lead-colored nails, which contrast with Miss Manette's \"fair\" and free visage. That she will remain impervious to his darkness, and that she will affect him with her own light rather than the reverse, is depicted in the passage: \"His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.\" The very fact that Manette is alive is a great miracle, but his resurrection is not complete until he is exposed to the lightness of his daughter. The touching scene between Doctor Manette and his daughter is typical of the sentimental novel. The genre of the sentimental novel was popular in Britain in the eighteenth century. It usually depicted virtue in affliction, which seldom fails to elicit emotional responses from readers. Some of the most famous sentimental novels prior to the explosion of literary Romanticism include Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey and Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. A family reunited after years of suffering would be a typical theme of these novels, as would a beautiful but afflicted heroine. Lucie's hair in particular will return as a common theme. As one will see through the novel, Lucie will be the one factor that links all the disparate lives together; this linkage is represented by the golden strands of her hair. Here the hair physically links her to her father and to the past. Upon seeing the strands of her hair, Dr. Manette believes that Lucie is actually her long dead mother, who also had long, golden hair. Although Dickens has set part of Book One in France, the great majority of the Book has taken place in England. This is part of an overarching mirror image. Book Two will be the linking Book, with actions taking place in both England and France. In Book Three, all the action will take place in France. The relative peacefulness of England and all it represents in this Book can be compared to the wildness of France in the Third Book."}

V. The Wine-shop A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell. All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence. A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices--voices of men, women, and children--resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine. The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees--BLOOD. The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there. And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy--cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence--nobles of great power all of them; but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil. Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or inflicting. The trade signs (and they were almost as many as the shops) were, all, grim illustrations of Want. The butcher and the porkman painted up, only the leanest scrags of meat; the baker, the coarsest of meagre loaves. The people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops, croaked over their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, and were gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was represented in a flourishing condition, save tools and weapons; but, the cutler's knives and axes were sharp and bright, the smith's hammers were heavy, and the gunmaker's stock was murderous. The crippling stones of the pavement, with their many little reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but broke off abruptly at the doors. The kennel, to make amends, ran down the middle of the street--when it ran at all: which was only after heavy rains, and then it ran, by many eccentric fits, into the houses. Across the streets, at wide intervals, one clumsy lamp was slung by a rope and pulley; at night, when the lamplighter had let these down, and lighted, and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim wicks swung in a sickly manner overhead, as if they were at sea. Indeed they were at sea, and the ship and crew were in peril of tempest. For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that region should have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their condition. But, the time was not come yet; and every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather, took no warning. The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others in its appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at the struggle for the lost wine. "It's not my affair," said he, with a final shrug of the shoulders. "The people from the market did it. Let them bring another." There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his joke, he called to him across the way: "Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?" The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completely failed, as is often the way with his tribe too. "What now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital?" said the wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with a handful of mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it. "Why do you write in the public streets? Is there--tell me thou--is there no other place to write such words in?" In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) upon the joker's heart. The joker rapped it with his own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a fantastic dancing attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot into his hand, and held out. A joker of an extremely, not to say wolfishly practical character, he looked, under those circumstances. "Put it on, put it on," said the other. "Call wine, wine; and finish there." With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker's dress, such as it was--quite deliberately, as having dirtied the hand on his account; and then recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop. This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn the man. Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as he came in. Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure of manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which one might have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided. Madame Defarge being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large earrings. Her knitting was before her, but she had laid it down to pick her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the way. The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated in a corner. Other company were there: two playing cards, two playing dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, "This is our man." "What the devil do _you_ do in that galley there?" said Monsieur Defarge to himself; "I don't know you." But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter. "How goes it, Jacques?" said one of these three to Monsieur Defarge. "Is all the spilt wine swallowed?" "Every drop, Jacques," answered Monsieur Defarge. When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. "It is not often," said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur Defarge, "that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?" "It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned. At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Defarge, still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips. "Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques?" "You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur Defarge. This third interchange of the Christian name was completed at the moment when Madame Defarge put her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in her seat. "Hold then! True!" muttered her husband. "Gentlemen--my wife!" The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it. "Gentlemen," said her husband, who had kept his bright eye observantly upon her, "good day. The chamber, furnished bachelor-fashion, that you wished to see, and were inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little courtyard close to the left here," pointing with his hand, "near to the window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, one of you has already been there, and can show the way. Gentlemen, adieu!" They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes of Monsieur Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favour of a word. "Willingly, sir," said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly stepped with him to the door. Their conference was very short, but very decided. Almost at the first word, Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out. Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing. Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the wine-shop thus, joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway to which he had directed his own company just before. It opened from a stinking little black courtyard, and was the general public entrance to a great pile of houses, inhabited by a great number of people. In the gloomy tile-paved entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge bent down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to his lips. It was a gentle action, but not at all gently done; a very remarkable transformation had come over him in a few seconds. He had no good-humour in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but had become a secret, angry, dangerous man. "It is very high; it is a little difficult. Better to begin slowly." Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice, to Mr. Lorry, as they began ascending the stairs. "Is he alone?" the latter whispered. "Alone! God help him, who should be with him!" said the other, in the same low voice. "Is he always alone, then?" "Yes." "Of his own desire?" "Of his own necessity. As he was, when I first saw him after they found me and demanded to know if I would take him, and, at my peril be discreet--as he was then, so he is now." "He is greatly changed?" "Changed!" The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the wall with his hand, and mutter a tremendous curse. No direct answer could have been half so forcible. Mr. Lorry's spirits grew heavier and heavier, as he and his two companions ascended higher and higher. Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and more crowded parts of Paris, would be bad enough now; but, at that time, it was vile indeed to unaccustomed and unhardened senses. Every little habitation within the great foul nest of one high building--that is to say, the room or rooms within every door that opened on the general staircase--left its own heap of refuse on its own landing, besides flinging other refuse from its own windows. The uncontrollable and hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would have polluted the air, even if poverty and deprivation had not loaded it with their intangible impurities; the two bad sources combined made it almost insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft of dirt and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his own disturbance of mind, and to his young companion's agitation, which became greater every instant, Mr. Jarvis Lorry twice stopped to rest. Each of these stoppages was made at a doleful grating, by which any languishing good airs that were left uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all spoilt and sickly vapours seemed to crawl in. Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations. At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they stopped for the third time. There was yet an upper staircase, of a steeper inclination and of contracted dimensions, to be ascended, before the garret story was reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going a little in advance, and always going on the side which Mr. Lorry took, as though he dreaded to be asked any question by the young lady, turned himself about here, and, carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat he carried over his shoulder, took out a key. "The door is locked then, my friend?" said Mr. Lorry, surprised. "Ay. Yes," was the grim reply of Monsieur Defarge. "You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate gentleman so retired?" "I think it necessary to turn the key." Monsieur Defarge whispered it closer in his ear, and frowned heavily. "Why?" "Why! Because he has lived so long, locked up, that he would be frightened--rave--tear himself to pieces--die--come to I know not what harm--if his door was left open." "Is it possible!" exclaimed Mr. Lorry. "Is it possible!" repeated Defarge, bitterly. "Yes. And a beautiful world we live in, when it _is_ possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done--done, see you!--under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on." This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper, that not a word of it had reached the young lady's ears. But, by this time she trembled under such strong emotion, and her face expressed such deep anxiety, and, above all, such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry felt it incumbent on him to speak a word or two of reassurance. "Courage, dear miss! Courage! Business! The worst will be over in a moment; it is but passing the room-door, and the worst is over. Then, all the good you bring to him, all the relief, all the happiness you bring to him, begin. Let our good friend here, assist you on that side. That's well, friend Defarge. Come, now. Business, business!" They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was short, and they were soon at the top. There, as it had an abrupt turn in it, they came all at once in sight of three men, whose heads were bent down close together at the side of a door, and who were intently looking into the room to which the door belonged, through some chinks or holes in the wall. On hearing footsteps close at hand, these three turned, and rose, and showed themselves to be the three of one name who had been drinking in the wine-shop. "I forgot them in the surprise of your visit," explained Monsieur Defarge. "Leave us, good boys; we have business here." The three glided by, and went silently down. There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a whisper, with a little anger: "Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette?" "I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few." "Is that well?" "_I_ think it is well." "Who are the few? How do you choose them?" "I choose them as real men, of my name--Jacques is my name--to whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough; you are English; that is another thing. Stay there, if you please, a little moment." With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice upon the door--evidently with no other object than to make a noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key across it, three or four times, before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could. The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into the room and said something. A faint voice answered something. Little more than a single syllable could have been spoken on either side. He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the daughter's waist, and held her; for he felt that she was sinking. "A-a-a-business, business!" he urged, with a moisture that was not of business shining on his cheek. "Come in, come in!" "I am afraid of it," she answered, shuddering. "Of it? What?" "I mean of him. Of my father." Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He sat her down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him. Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there, and faced round. The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim and dark: for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.

book 1, Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-5-6

The Wine-Shop Outside Monsieur Defarge's wine-shop in Paris, a cask of wine is dropped and broken. The wine spills over the cobblestones, and people stop what they were doing to drink the wine off the street. When the wine runs out and people return to the activities of their daily lives, the mark of hunger is visible on all of them. Even the street signs reflect this hunger, with the butcher's sign painted with only a scrap of meat, the baker's with a tiny loaf. The only thing with the appearance of strength and robustness are weapons: axes, knives, guns. Monsieur Defarge watches the incident with the wine cask, talking to Gaspard, who dips his finger in the wine and mud and writes "blood" on a wall. Defarge wipes this word away. When Defarge returns to his shop, his wife coughs slightly and gestures with her eyebrow that he should take a look around the store. He sees Mr. Lorry and Miss Manette seated in his store, as well as three men apparently named Jacques, which is also Monsieur Defarge's own name. He sends the three to view a room that they wish to see, and Mr. Lorry requests a word with him. He reveals his and Miss Manette's identities and asks to see Dr. Manette, and Defarge accordingly conducts them to the fifth-floor apartment. Mr. Lorry is displeased both by the fact that Dr. Manette is locked in, and that they can see the three Jacqueses spying on him through chinks in the wall. Miss Manette enters although she is afraid. She finds her white-haired father in a garret, making shoes

The spilled red wine is an obvious cipher for spilled blood, and Dickens uses the crowd's enthusiasm for its spillage as an indication of how they will greet the coming revolution. They are wine-thirsty and bloodthirsy. Their reaction to the spill is notable not only for its eagerness but also for the social ties that it creates among the lower class--who rarely, if ever, drink wine. Under its influence, they sing, dance, and drink further to one another's health. In this scene the reason for the revolution is clear, as Dickens artfully describes the conditions of the poor. Before the wine is spilled, and after the wine is gone, the people return to their states of hunger, to their brutal manual work for no pay, to their gloomy and lonely states of existence. The spilling of the wine is the one thing that gives these people spirit. Yet it also takes away a portion of their humanity. When they finish drinking the wine, they become animals, "acquiring a tigerish smear about the mouth." The very thing that brings them together also makes them bestial and dangerous. All the men of this chapter are not actually named Jacques. Instead, the name serves as a code word that identifies all the followers of the coming revolution. Here the revolutionaries actually have an elaborate code that reveals itself in subtle ways. For instance, later Madame Defarge's coughs and hair ornaments mean that someone dangerous is in the shop. Because the underground movements can work in secret codes and ways, they become more dangerous. Monsieur Defarge's character is evident in his face. For Dickens, the distance between the eyes is a crucial indicator of whether a man is a criminal or not. Monsieur Defarge's eyes are set a good distance apart, and it is later revealed that Madame Defarge encourages his criminal activities. Madame Defarge is a much more interesting and mysterious character than her husband. Her every gesture is watched by her husband and the other patrons of the bar, she is the one who gives him cues, and it is her initiative that guides the course of events. Mr. Lorry's agitation at the breaches of convention in Dover increase multifold, since there is no social pattern for the extraordinary introduction that takes place in Paris. Monsieur Defarge takes care to follow social patterns, but he does so in a way that reveals his more sinister intentions. When he recognizes Miss Manette as his former master's daughter, Defarge bends on one knee, putting her hand to his lips. It is "a gentle action not at all gently done." In an ordered world, the gentility of an action reflects the gentility of its intention; here, Dickens shows that this balance is undermined. Mr. Lorry tries to reassure Miss Manette, repeating the words "courage" and "business"--which to him are related and reassuring concepts. His constant repetition of the word "business" is farcical, given the very un-businesslike role in which he once again finds himself. Lightness overcoming darkness is a consistent pattern in this chapter, and it represents his daughter's role in his life from this point forward. In the previous chapter, the garret was described as extremely dark, but the entrance of the visitors now causes a "broad ray of light" to fall into the garret. Details of her father's person include his lead-colored nails, which contrast with Miss Manette's "fair" and free visage. That she will remain impervious to his darkness, and that she will affect him with her own light rather than the reverse, is depicted in the passage: "His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him." The very fact that Manette is alive is a great miracle, but his resurrection is not complete until he is exposed to the lightness of his daughter. The touching scene between Doctor Manette and his daughter is typical of the sentimental novel. The genre of the sentimental novel was popular in Britain in the eighteenth century. It usually depicted virtue in affliction, which seldom fails to elicit emotional responses from readers. Some of the most famous sentimental novels prior to the explosion of literary Romanticism include Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey and Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. A family reunited after years of suffering would be a typical theme of these novels, as would a beautiful but afflicted heroine. Lucie's hair in particular will return as a common theme. As one will see through the novel, Lucie will be the one factor that links all the disparate lives together; this linkage is represented by the golden strands of her hair. Here the hair physically links her to her father and to the past. Upon seeing the strands of her hair, Dr. Manette believes that Lucie is actually her long dead mother, who also had long, golden hair. Although Dickens has set part of Book One in France, the great majority of the Book has taken place in England. This is part of an overarching mirror image. Book Two will be the linking Book, with actions taking place in both England and France. In Book Three, all the action will take place in France. The relative peacefulness of England and all it represents in this Book can be compared to the wildness of France in the Third Book.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/6.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_1_part_2.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 6

book 1, chapter 6

{"name": "book 1, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-5-6", "summary": "The Shoemaker Dr. Manette is absorbed in making shoes, and at first he hardly responds to the arrival of his visitors. When asked his name, Dr. Manette replies: \"One Hundred and Five, North Tower. He claims to have learned shoemaking \"here,\" illustrating that he believes he is still imprisoned. Although he only partially recognizes Mr. Lorry, Dr. Manette is stricken by the sight of his daughter. He identifies her golden curls as the same hair that he wears in a rag around his neck as a forlorn souvenir of his infant daughter. She convinces him that she is indeed her daughter by emotionally commanding him to weep for the past wrongs that they have both undergone. Preparations are made at his daughter's request to remove Dr. Manette immediately from Paris. As he is carried from the garret to the coach, he expresses confusion that he is not leaving the prison that he thought he was in, not finding a drawbridge where he has expected. The first book ends with Mr. Lorry wondering what powers could be restored to a resurrected man, versus what was lost to him in his burial", "analysis": "The spilled red wine is an obvious cipher for spilled blood, and Dickens uses the crowd's enthusiasm for its spillage as an indication of how they will greet the coming revolution. They are wine-thirsty and bloodthirsy. Their reaction to the spill is notable not only for its eagerness but also for the social ties that it creates among the lower class--who rarely, if ever, drink wine. Under its influence, they sing, dance, and drink further to one another's health. In this scene the reason for the revolution is clear, as Dickens artfully describes the conditions of the poor. Before the wine is spilled, and after the wine is gone, the people return to their states of hunger, to their brutal manual work for no pay, to their gloomy and lonely states of existence. The spilling of the wine is the one thing that gives these people spirit. Yet it also takes away a portion of their humanity. When they finish drinking the wine, they become animals, \"acquiring a tigerish smear about the mouth.\" The very thing that brings them together also makes them bestial and dangerous. All the men of this chapter are not actually named Jacques. Instead, the name serves as a code word that identifies all the followers of the coming revolution. Here the revolutionaries actually have an elaborate code that reveals itself in subtle ways. For instance, later Madame Defarge's coughs and hair ornaments mean that someone dangerous is in the shop. Because the underground movements can work in secret codes and ways, they become more dangerous. Monsieur Defarge's character is evident in his face. For Dickens, the distance between the eyes is a crucial indicator of whether a man is a criminal or not. Monsieur Defarge's eyes are set a good distance apart, and it is later revealed that Madame Defarge encourages his criminal activities. Madame Defarge is a much more interesting and mysterious character than her husband. Her every gesture is watched by her husband and the other patrons of the bar, she is the one who gives him cues, and it is her initiative that guides the course of events. Mr. Lorry's agitation at the breaches of convention in Dover increase multifold, since there is no social pattern for the extraordinary introduction that takes place in Paris. Monsieur Defarge takes care to follow social patterns, but he does so in a way that reveals his more sinister intentions. When he recognizes Miss Manette as his former master's daughter, Defarge bends on one knee, putting her hand to his lips. It is \"a gentle action not at all gently done.\" In an ordered world, the gentility of an action reflects the gentility of its intention; here, Dickens shows that this balance is undermined. Mr. Lorry tries to reassure Miss Manette, repeating the words \"courage\" and \"business\"--which to him are related and reassuring concepts. His constant repetition of the word \"business\" is farcical, given the very un-businesslike role in which he once again finds himself. Lightness overcoming darkness is a consistent pattern in this chapter, and it represents his daughter's role in his life from this point forward. In the previous chapter, the garret was described as extremely dark, but the entrance of the visitors now causes a \"broad ray of light\" to fall into the garret. Details of her father's person include his lead-colored nails, which contrast with Miss Manette's \"fair\" and free visage. That she will remain impervious to his darkness, and that she will affect him with her own light rather than the reverse, is depicted in the passage: \"His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.\" The very fact that Manette is alive is a great miracle, but his resurrection is not complete until he is exposed to the lightness of his daughter. The touching scene between Doctor Manette and his daughter is typical of the sentimental novel. The genre of the sentimental novel was popular in Britain in the eighteenth century. It usually depicted virtue in affliction, which seldom fails to elicit emotional responses from readers. Some of the most famous sentimental novels prior to the explosion of literary Romanticism include Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey and Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. A family reunited after years of suffering would be a typical theme of these novels, as would a beautiful but afflicted heroine. Lucie's hair in particular will return as a common theme. As one will see through the novel, Lucie will be the one factor that links all the disparate lives together; this linkage is represented by the golden strands of her hair. Here the hair physically links her to her father and to the past. Upon seeing the strands of her hair, Dr. Manette believes that Lucie is actually her long dead mother, who also had long, golden hair. Although Dickens has set part of Book One in France, the great majority of the Book has taken place in England. This is part of an overarching mirror image. Book Two will be the linking Book, with actions taking place in both England and France. In Book Three, all the action will take place in France. The relative peacefulness of England and all it represents in this Book can be compared to the wildness of France in the Third Book."}

VI. The Shoemaker "Good day!" said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that bent low over the shoemaking. It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance: "Good day!" "You are still hard at work, I see?" After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the voice replied, "Yes--I am working." This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, before the face had dropped again. The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die. Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception, beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty. "I want," said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker, "to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more?" The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening, at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor on the other side of him; then, upward at the speaker. "What did you say?" "You can bear a little more light?" "I must bear it, if you let it in." (Laying the palest shadow of a stress upon the second word.) The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and showed the workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few common tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and thinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they had been really otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and looked unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say which was which. He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him, without first looking down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound; he never spoke, without first wandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak. "Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?" asked Defarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward. "What did you say?" "Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?" "I can't say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don't know." But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it again. Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When he had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and the action had occupied but an instant. "You have a visitor, you see," said Monsieur Defarge. "What did you say?" "Here is a visitor." The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a hand from his work. "Come!" said Defarge. "Here is monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe when he sees one. Show him that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur." Mr. Lorry took it in his hand. "Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name." There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoemaker replied: "I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?" "I said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur's information?" "It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. It is in the present mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand." He glanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of pride. "And the maker's name?" said Defarge. Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand in the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so on in regular changes, without a moment's intermission. The task of recalling him from the vagrancy into which he always sank when he had spoken, was like recalling some very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in the hope of some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man. "Did you ask me for my name?" "Assuredly I did." "One Hundred and Five, North Tower." "Is that all?" "One Hundred and Five, North Tower." With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he bent to work again, until the silence was again broken. "You are not a shoemaker by trade?" said Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly at him. His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have transferred the question to him: but as no help came from that quarter, they turned back on the questioner when they had sought the ground. "I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoemaker by trade. I-I learnt it here. I taught myself. I asked leave to--" He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes on his hands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from which they had wandered; when they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in the manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting to a subject of last night. "I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficulty after a long while, and I have made shoes ever since." As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken from him, Mr. Lorry said, still looking steadfastly in his face: "Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing of me?" The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fixedly at the questioner. "Monsieur Manette"; Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defarge's arm; "do you remember nothing of this man? Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old banker, no old business, no old servant, no old time, rising in your mind, Monsieur Manette?" As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by turns, at Mr. Lorry and at Defarge, some long obliterated marks of an actively intent intelligence in the middle of the forehead, gradually forced themselves through the black mist that had fallen on him. They were overclouded again, they were fainter, they were gone; but they had been there. And so exactly was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her who had crept along the wall to a point where she could see him, and where she now stood looking at him, with hands which at first had been only raised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him off and shut out the sight of him, but which were now extending towards him, trembling with eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back to life and hope--so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed like a moving light, from him to her. Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He looked at the two, less and less attentively, and his eyes in gloomy abstraction sought the ground and looked about him in the old way. Finally, with a deep long sigh, he took the shoe up, and resumed his work. "Have you recognised him, monsieur?" asked Defarge in a whisper. "Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it quite hopeless, but I have unquestionably seen, for a single moment, the face that I once knew so well. Hush! Let us draw further back. Hush!" She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stooped over his labour. Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work. It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in his hand, for his shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward, but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife, though they had. He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say: "What is this?" With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined head there. "You are not the gaoler's daughter?" She sighed "No." "Who are you?" Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her. Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemaking. But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger. He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. "It is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!" As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her. "She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out--she had a fear of my going, though I had none--and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. 'You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.' Those were the words I said. I remember them very well." He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly. "How was this?--_Was it you_?" Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only said, in a low voice, "I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come near us, do not speak, do not move!" "Hark!" he exclaimed. "Whose voice was that?" His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his white hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but his shoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little packet and tried to secure it in his breast; but he still looked at her, and gloomily shook his head. "No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See what the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She was--and He was--before the slow years of the North Tower--ages ago. What is your name, my gentle angel?" Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast. "O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother was, and who my father, and how I never knew their hard, hard history. But I cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell you here. All that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, my dear!" His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him. "If you hear in my voice--I don't know that it is so, but I hope it is--if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch, in touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service, I bring back the remembrance of a Home long desolate, while your poor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!" She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like a child. "If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it! And if, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my father who is living, and of my mother who is dead, you learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and implore his pardon for having never for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep for it! Weep for her, then, and for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred tears upon my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! Thank God for us, thank God!" He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a sight so touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering which had gone before it, that the two beholders covered their faces. When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his heaving breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm that must follow all storms--emblem to humanity, of the rest and silence into which the storm called Life must hush at last--they came forward to raise the father and daughter from the ground. He had gradually dropped to the floor, and lay there in a lethargy, worn out. She had nestled down with him, that his head might lie upon her arm; and her hair drooping over him curtained him from the light. "If, without disturbing him," she said, raising her hand to Mr. Lorry as he stooped over them, after repeated blowings of his nose, "all could be arranged for our leaving Paris at once, so that, from the very door, he could be taken away--" "But, consider. Is he fit for the journey?" asked Mr. Lorry. "More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, so dreadful to him." "It is true," said Defarge, who was kneeling to look on and hear. "More than that; Monsieur Manette is, for all reasons, best out of France. Say, shall I hire a carriage and post-horses?" "That's business," said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortest notice his methodical manners; "and if business is to be done, I had better do it." "Then be so kind," urged Miss Manette, "as to leave us here. You see how composed he has become, and you cannot be afraid to leave him with me now. Why should you be? If you will lock the door to secure us from interruption, I do not doubt that you will find him, when you come back, as quiet as you leave him. In any case, I will take care of him until you return, and then we will remove him straight." Both Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to this course, and in favour of one of them remaining. But, as there were not only carriage and horses to be seen to, but travelling papers; and as time pressed, for the day was drawing to an end, it came at last to their hastily dividing the business that was necessary to be done, and hurrying away to do it. Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down on the hard ground close at the father's side, and watched him. The darkness deepened and deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed through the chinks in the wall. Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the journey, and had brought with them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and meat, wine, and hot coffee. Monsieur Defarge put this provender, and the lamp he carried, on the shoemaker's bench (there was nothing else in the garret but a pallet bed), and he and Mr. Lorry roused the captive, and assisted him to his feet. No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind, in the scared blank wonder of his face. Whether he knew what had happened, whether he recollected what they had said to him, whether he knew that he was free, were questions which no sagacity could have solved. They tried speaking to him; but, he was so confused, and so very slow to answer, that they took fright at his bewilderment, and agreed for the time to tamper with him no more. He had a wild, lost manner of occasionally clasping his head in his hands, that had not been seen in him before; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere sound of his daughter's voice, and invariably turned to it when she spoke. In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under coercion, he ate and drank what they gave him to eat and drink, and put on the cloak and other wrappings, that they gave him to wear. He readily responded to his daughter's drawing her arm through his, and took--and kept--her hand in both his own. They began to descend; Monsieur Defarge going first with the lamp, Mr. Lorry closing the little procession. They had not traversed many steps of the long main staircase when he stopped, and stared at the roof and round at the walls. "You remember the place, my father? You remember coming up here?" "What did you say?" But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer as if she had repeated it. "Remember? No, I don't remember. It was so very long ago." That he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought from his prison to that house, was apparent to them. They heard him mutter, "One Hundred and Five, North Tower;" and when he looked about him, it evidently was for the strong fortress-walls which had long encompassed him. On their reaching the courtyard he instinctively altered his tread, as being in expectation of a drawbridge; and when there was no drawbridge, and he saw the carriage waiting in the open street, he dropped his daughter's hand and clasped his head again. No crowd was about the door; no people were discernible at any of the many windows; not even a chance passerby was in the street. An unnatural silence and desertion reigned there. Only one soul was to be seen, and that was Madame Defarge--who leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing. The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed him, when Mr. Lorry's feet were arrested on the step by his asking, miserably, for his shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes. Madame Defarge immediately called to her husband that she would get them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the courtyard. She quickly brought them down and handed them in;--and immediately afterwards leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing. Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word "To the Barrier!" The postilion cracked his whip, and they clattered away under the feeble over-swinging lamps. Under the over-swinging lamps--swinging ever brighter in the better streets, and ever dimmer in the worse--and by lighted shops, gay crowds, illuminated coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the city gates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. "Your papers, travellers!" "See here then, Monsieur the Officer," said Defarge, getting down, and taking him gravely apart, "these are the papers of monsieur inside, with the white head. They were consigned to me, with him, at the--" He dropped his voice, there was a flutter among the military lanterns, and one of them being handed into the coach by an arm in uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked, not an every day or an every night look, at monsieur with the white head. "It is well. Forward!" from the uniform. "Adieu!" from Defarge. And so, under a short grove of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out under the great grove of stars. Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered or done: the shadows of the night were broad and black. All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry--sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable of restoration--the old inquiry: "I hope you care to be recalled to life?" And the old answer: "I can't say." The end of the first book. Book the Second--the Golden Thread

book 1, Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-i-chapters-5-6

The Shoemaker Dr. Manette is absorbed in making shoes, and at first he hardly responds to the arrival of his visitors. When asked his name, Dr. Manette replies: "One Hundred and Five, North Tower. He claims to have learned shoemaking "here," illustrating that he believes he is still imprisoned. Although he only partially recognizes Mr. Lorry, Dr. Manette is stricken by the sight of his daughter. He identifies her golden curls as the same hair that he wears in a rag around his neck as a forlorn souvenir of his infant daughter. She convinces him that she is indeed her daughter by emotionally commanding him to weep for the past wrongs that they have both undergone. Preparations are made at his daughter's request to remove Dr. Manette immediately from Paris. As he is carried from the garret to the coach, he expresses confusion that he is not leaving the prison that he thought he was in, not finding a drawbridge where he has expected. The first book ends with Mr. Lorry wondering what powers could be restored to a resurrected man, versus what was lost to him in his burial

The spilled red wine is an obvious cipher for spilled blood, and Dickens uses the crowd's enthusiasm for its spillage as an indication of how they will greet the coming revolution. They are wine-thirsty and bloodthirsy. Their reaction to the spill is notable not only for its eagerness but also for the social ties that it creates among the lower class--who rarely, if ever, drink wine. Under its influence, they sing, dance, and drink further to one another's health. In this scene the reason for the revolution is clear, as Dickens artfully describes the conditions of the poor. Before the wine is spilled, and after the wine is gone, the people return to their states of hunger, to their brutal manual work for no pay, to their gloomy and lonely states of existence. The spilling of the wine is the one thing that gives these people spirit. Yet it also takes away a portion of their humanity. When they finish drinking the wine, they become animals, "acquiring a tigerish smear about the mouth." The very thing that brings them together also makes them bestial and dangerous. All the men of this chapter are not actually named Jacques. Instead, the name serves as a code word that identifies all the followers of the coming revolution. Here the revolutionaries actually have an elaborate code that reveals itself in subtle ways. For instance, later Madame Defarge's coughs and hair ornaments mean that someone dangerous is in the shop. Because the underground movements can work in secret codes and ways, they become more dangerous. Monsieur Defarge's character is evident in his face. For Dickens, the distance between the eyes is a crucial indicator of whether a man is a criminal or not. Monsieur Defarge's eyes are set a good distance apart, and it is later revealed that Madame Defarge encourages his criminal activities. Madame Defarge is a much more interesting and mysterious character than her husband. Her every gesture is watched by her husband and the other patrons of the bar, she is the one who gives him cues, and it is her initiative that guides the course of events. Mr. Lorry's agitation at the breaches of convention in Dover increase multifold, since there is no social pattern for the extraordinary introduction that takes place in Paris. Monsieur Defarge takes care to follow social patterns, but he does so in a way that reveals his more sinister intentions. When he recognizes Miss Manette as his former master's daughter, Defarge bends on one knee, putting her hand to his lips. It is "a gentle action not at all gently done." In an ordered world, the gentility of an action reflects the gentility of its intention; here, Dickens shows that this balance is undermined. Mr. Lorry tries to reassure Miss Manette, repeating the words "courage" and "business"--which to him are related and reassuring concepts. His constant repetition of the word "business" is farcical, given the very un-businesslike role in which he once again finds himself. Lightness overcoming darkness is a consistent pattern in this chapter, and it represents his daughter's role in his life from this point forward. In the previous chapter, the garret was described as extremely dark, but the entrance of the visitors now causes a "broad ray of light" to fall into the garret. Details of her father's person include his lead-colored nails, which contrast with Miss Manette's "fair" and free visage. That she will remain impervious to his darkness, and that she will affect him with her own light rather than the reverse, is depicted in the passage: "His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him." The very fact that Manette is alive is a great miracle, but his resurrection is not complete until he is exposed to the lightness of his daughter. The touching scene between Doctor Manette and his daughter is typical of the sentimental novel. The genre of the sentimental novel was popular in Britain in the eighteenth century. It usually depicted virtue in affliction, which seldom fails to elicit emotional responses from readers. Some of the most famous sentimental novels prior to the explosion of literary Romanticism include Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey and Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. A family reunited after years of suffering would be a typical theme of these novels, as would a beautiful but afflicted heroine. Lucie's hair in particular will return as a common theme. As one will see through the novel, Lucie will be the one factor that links all the disparate lives together; this linkage is represented by the golden strands of her hair. Here the hair physically links her to her father and to the past. Upon seeing the strands of her hair, Dr. Manette believes that Lucie is actually her long dead mother, who also had long, golden hair. Although Dickens has set part of Book One in France, the great majority of the Book has taken place in England. This is part of an overarching mirror image. Book Two will be the linking Book, with actions taking place in both England and France. In Book Three, all the action will take place in France. The relative peacefulness of England and all it represents in this Book can be compared to the wildness of France in the Third Book.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/7.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_2_part_1.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 1

book 2, chapter 1

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3", "summary": "Five Years Later The second book opens with a description of the venerable Tellson's Bank. Its darkness and discomfort are much beloved by those who work there. Indeed, their conviction that it should remain inconvenient and deteriorating is so strong that they would have disinherited a son who disagreed with them. Jerry Cruncher, who delivered the message on horseback to Mr. Lorry, serves as an odd job man for Tellson's. He lives in Whitefriars in a tiny apartment kept immaculate by his wife. He abuses this wife roundly for kneeling to pray, insinuating that her prayers interfere with the success of his business. He enlists the aid of his admiring son to prevent Mrs. Cruncher from praying against him. When she tries to pray, her son reveals her transgression to his father. The young Cruncher follows his father to work, and he wonders where the rust on the straw his father is chewing comes from. His job at Tellson's does not involve rust, yet Jerry Cruncher is always rusty", "analysis": "As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: \"You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?\" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been \"religiously circumwented into the worst of luck.\" Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an \"honest tradesman,\" the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of \"inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description\" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might \"tear his sheets to ribbons.\" The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into \"acceptable\" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves \"in a dark place\" since their youth. It has a \"condemmed hold\" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, \"Whatever is is right,\" a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of \"whatever is is right\" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as \"at the root of it, Ogreish.\" Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, \"as the ocean is one day to give up its dead.\" Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--\"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.\" A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as \"one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like.\" This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again."}

I. Five Years Later Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but Tellson's, thank Heaven--! Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable. Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing "the House," you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of their parchments into the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of family papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had a great dining-table in it and never had a dinner, and where, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by your little children, were but newly released from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee. But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of being privately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what little light the ground floor had, in a rather significant manner. Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson's, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment. Outside Tellson's--never by any means in it, unless called in--was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image. People understood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church of Hounsditch, he had received the added appellation of Jerry. The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private lodging in Hanging-sword-alley, Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.) Mr. Cruncher's apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood, and were but two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glass in it might be counted as one. But they were very decently kept. Early as it was, on the windy March morning, the room in which he lay abed was already scrubbed throughout; and between the cups and saucers arranged for breakfast, and the lumbering deal table, a very clean white cloth was spread. Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a Harlequin at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, by degrees, began to roll and surge in bed, until he rose above the surface, with his spiky hair looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At which juncture, he exclaimed, in a voice of dire exasperation: "Bust me, if she ain't at it agin!" A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from her knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show that she was the person referred to. "What!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot. "You're at it agin, are you?" After hailing the morn with this second salutation, he threw a boot at the woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher's domestic economy, that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with clean boots, he often got up next morning to find the same boots covered with clay. "What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe after missing his mark--"what are you up to, Aggerawayter?" "I was only saying my prayers." "Saying your prayers! You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" "I was not praying against you; I was praying for you." "You weren't. And if you were, I won't be took the liberty with. Here! your mother's a nice woman, young Jerry, going a praying agin your father's prosperity. You've got a dutiful mother, you have, my son. You've got a religious mother, you have, my boy: going and flopping herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter may be snatched out of the mouth of her only child." Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and, turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of his personal board. "And what do you suppose, you conceited female," said Mr. Cruncher, with unconscious inconsistency, "that the worth of _your_ prayers may be? Name the price that you put _your_ prayers at!" "They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are worth no more than that." "Worth no more than that," repeated Mr. Cruncher. "They ain't worth much, then. Whether or no, I won't be prayed agin, I tell you. I can't afford it. I'm not a going to be made unlucky by _your_ sneaking. If you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favour of your husband and child, and not in opposition to 'em. If I had had any but a unnat'ral wife, and this poor boy had had any but a unnat'ral mother, I might have made some money last week instead of being counter-prayed and countermined and religiously circumwented into the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust me!" said Mr. Cruncher, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, "if I ain't, what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call. For, I tell you," here he addressed his wife once more, "I won't be gone agin, in this manner. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't for the pain in 'em, which was me and which somebody else, yet I'm none the better for it in pocket; and it's my suspicion that you've been at it from morning to night to prevent me from being the better for it in pocket, and I won't put up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now!" Growling, in addition, such phrases as "Ah! yes! You're religious, too. You wouldn't put yourself in opposition to the interests of your husband and child, would you? Not you!" and throwing off other sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparation for business. In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes, and whose young eyes stood close by one another, as his father's did, kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed that poor woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet, where he made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of "You are going to flop, mother. --Halloa, father!" and, after raising this fictitious alarm, darting in again with an undutiful grin. Mr. Cruncher's temper was not at all improved when he came to his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher's saying grace with particular animosity. "Now, Aggerawayter! What are you up to? At it again?" His wife explained that she had merely "asked a blessing." "Don't do it!" said Mr. Crunches looking about, as if he rather expected to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife's petitions. "I ain't a going to be blest out of house and home. I won't have my wittles blest off my table. Keep still!" Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night at a party which had taken anything but a convivial turn, Jerry Cruncher worried his breakfast rather than ate it, growling over it like any four-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o'clock he smoothed his ruffled aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-like an exterior as he could overlay his natural self with, issued forth to the occupation of the day. It could scarcely be called a trade, in spite of his favourite description of himself as "a honest tradesman." His stock consisted of a wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chair cut down, which stool, young Jerry, walking at his father's side, carried every morning to beneath the banking-house window that was nearest Temple Bar: where, with the addition of the first handful of straw that could be gleaned from any passing vehicle to keep the cold and wet from the odd-job-man's feet, it formed the encampment for the day. On this post of his, Mr. Cruncher was as well known to Fleet-street and the Temple, as the Bar itself,--and was almost as in-looking. Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to touch his three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed in to Tellson's, Jerry took up his station on this windy March morning, with young Jerry standing by him, when not engaged in making forays through the Bar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute description on passing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. Father and son, extremely like each other, looking silently on at the morning traffic in Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to one another as the two eyes of each were, bore a considerable resemblance to a pair of monkeys. The resemblance was not lessened by the accidental circumstance, that the mature Jerry bit and spat out straw, while the twinkling eyes of the youthful Jerry were as restlessly watchful of him as of everything else in Fleet-street. The head of one of the regular indoor messengers attached to Tellson's establishment was put through the door, and the word was given: "Porter wanted!" "Hooray, father! Here's an early job to begin with!" Having thus given his parent God speed, young Jerry seated himself on the stool, entered on his reversionary interest in the straw his father had been chewing, and cogitated. "Al-ways rusty! His fingers is al-ways rusty!" muttered young Jerry. "Where does my father get all that iron rust from? He don't get no iron rust here!"

book 2, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3

Five Years Later The second book opens with a description of the venerable Tellson's Bank. Its darkness and discomfort are much beloved by those who work there. Indeed, their conviction that it should remain inconvenient and deteriorating is so strong that they would have disinherited a son who disagreed with them. Jerry Cruncher, who delivered the message on horseback to Mr. Lorry, serves as an odd job man for Tellson's. He lives in Whitefriars in a tiny apartment kept immaculate by his wife. He abuses this wife roundly for kneeling to pray, insinuating that her prayers interfere with the success of his business. He enlists the aid of his admiring son to prevent Mrs. Cruncher from praying against him. When she tries to pray, her son reveals her transgression to his father. The young Cruncher follows his father to work, and he wonders where the rust on the straw his father is chewing comes from. His job at Tellson's does not involve rust, yet Jerry Cruncher is always rusty

As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: "You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been "religiously circumwented into the worst of luck." Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an "honest tradesman," the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of "inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might "tear his sheets to ribbons." The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into "acceptable" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves "in a dark place" since their youth. It has a "condemmed hold" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, "Whatever is is right," a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of "whatever is is right" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as "at the root of it, Ogreish." Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, "as the ocean is one day to give up its dead." Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as "one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like." This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/8.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_2_part_2.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 2

book 2, chapter 2

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3", "summary": "A Sight An old clerk at Tellson's gives Jerry Cruncher a message to deliver to Mr. Lorry at Old Bailey, where Charles Darnay is being tried. Jerry makes his way into the trial and is reassured by an onlooker that this is indeed the treason case. The man gruesomely describes the quartering that is certain to follow as punishment. When the young gentleman prisoner, Charles Darnay, is brought in, the whole courtroom stares at him. He had pleaded not guilty the previous day. Darnay's gaze rests immediately on Dr. Manette and his daughter, who are to be witnesses for the prosecution", "analysis": "As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: \"You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?\" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been \"religiously circumwented into the worst of luck.\" Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an \"honest tradesman,\" the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of \"inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description\" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might \"tear his sheets to ribbons.\" The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into \"acceptable\" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves \"in a dark place\" since their youth. It has a \"condemmed hold\" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, \"Whatever is is right,\" a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of \"whatever is is right\" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as \"at the root of it, Ogreish.\" Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, \"as the ocean is one day to give up its dead.\" Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--\"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.\" A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as \"one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like.\" This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again."}

II. A Sight "You know the Old Bailey well, no doubt?" said one of the oldest of clerks to Jerry the messenger. "Ye-es, sir," returned Jerry, in something of a dogged manner. "I _do_ know the Bailey." "Just so. And you know Mr. Lorry." "I know Mr. Lorry, sir, much better than I know the Bailey. Much better," said Jerry, not unlike a reluctant witness at the establishment in question, "than I, as a honest tradesman, wish to know the Bailey." "Very well. Find the door where the witnesses go in, and show the door-keeper this note for Mr. Lorry. He will then let you in." "Into the court, sir?" "Into the court." Mr. Cruncher's eyes seemed to get a little closer to one another, and to interchange the inquiry, "What do you think of this?" "Am I to wait in the court, sir?" he asked, as the result of that conference. "I am going to tell you. The door-keeper will pass the note to Mr. Lorry, and do you make any gesture that will attract Mr. Lorry's attention, and show him where you stand. Then what you have to do, is, to remain there until he wants you." "Is that all, sir?" "That's all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand. This is to tell him you are there." As the ancient clerk deliberately folded and superscribed the note, Mr. Cruncher, after surveying him in silence until he came to the blotting-paper stage, remarked: "I suppose they'll be trying Forgeries this morning?" "Treason!" "That's quartering," said Jerry. "Barbarous!" "It is the law," remarked the ancient clerk, turning his surprised spectacles upon him. "It is the law." "It's hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It's hard enough to kill him, but it's wery hard to spile him, sir." "Not at all," retained the ancient clerk. "Speak well of the law. Take care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the law to take care of itself. I give you that advice." "It's the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice," said Jerry. "I leave you to judge what a damp way of earning a living mine is." "Well, well," said the old clerk; "we all have our various ways of gaining a livelihood. Some of us have damp ways, and some of us have dry ways. Here is the letter. Go along." Jerry took the letter, and, remarking to himself with less internal deference than he made an outward show of, "You are a lean old one, too," made his bow, informed his son, in passing, of his destination, and went his way. They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street outside Newgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since attached to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practised, and where dire diseases were bred, that came into court with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. It had more than once happened, that the Judge in the black cap pronounced his own doom as certainly as the prisoner's, and even died before him. For the rest, the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard, from which pale travellers set out continually, in carts and coaches, on a violent passage into the other world: traversing some two miles and a half of public street and road, and shaming few good citizens, if any. So powerful is use, and so desirable to be good use in the beginning. It was famous, too, for the pillory, a wise old institution, that inflicted a punishment of which no one could foresee the extent; also, for the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action; also, for extensive transactions in blood-money, another fragment of ancestral wisdom, systematically leading to the most frightful mercenary crimes that could be committed under Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that "Whatever is is right;" an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong. Making his way through the tainted crowd, dispersed up and down this hideous scene of action, with the skill of a man accustomed to make his way quietly, the messenger found out the door he sought, and handed in his letter through a trap in it. For, people then paid to see the play at the Old Bailey, just as they paid to see the play in Bedlam--only the former entertainment was much the dearer. Therefore, all the Old Bailey doors were well guarded--except, indeed, the social doors by which the criminals got there, and those were always left wide open. After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned on its hinges a very little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry Cruncher to squeeze himself into court. "What's on?" he asked, in a whisper, of the man he found himself next to. "Nothing yet." "What's coming on?" "The Treason case." "The quartering one, eh?" "Ah!" returned the man, with a relish; "he'll be drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters. That's the sentence." "If he's found Guilty, you mean to say?" Jerry added, by way of proviso. "Oh! they'll find him guilty," said the other. "Don't you be afraid of that." Mr. Cruncher's attention was here diverted to the door-keeper, whom he saw making his way to Mr. Lorry, with the note in his hand. Mr. Lorry sat at a table, among the gentlemen in wigs: not far from a wigged gentleman, the prisoner's counsel, who had a great bundle of papers before him: and nearly opposite another wigged gentleman with his hands in his pockets, whose whole attention, when Mr. Cruncher looked at him then or afterwards, seemed to be concentrated on the ceiling of the court. After some gruff coughing and rubbing of his chin and signing with his hand, Jerry attracted the notice of Mr. Lorry, who had stood up to look for him, and who quietly nodded and sat down again. "What's _he_ got to do with the case?" asked the man he had spoken with. "Blest if I know," said Jerry. "What have _you_ got to do with it, then, if a person may inquire?" "Blest if I know that either," said Jerry. The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir and settling down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Presently, the dock became the central point of interest. Two gaolers, who had been standing there, went out, and the prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar. Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at the ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place, rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces strained round pillars and corners, to get a sight of him; spectators in back rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the floor of the court, laid their hands on the shoulders of the people before them, to help themselves, at anybody's cost, to a view of him--stood a-tiptoe, got upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch of him. Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the spiked wall of Newgate, Jerry stood: aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of a whet he had taken as he came along, and discharging it to mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and already broke upon the great windows behind him in an impure mist and rain. The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young man of about five-and-twenty, well-grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek and a dark eye. His condition was that of a young gentleman. He was plainly dressed in black, or very dark grey, and his hair, which was long and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at the back of his neck; more to be out of his way than for ornament. As an emotion of the mind will express itself through any covering of the body, so the paleness which his situation engendered came through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to be stronger than the sun. He was otherwise quite self-possessed, bowed to the Judge, and stood quiet. The sort of interest with which this man was stared and breathed at, was not a sort that elevated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a less horrible sentence--had there been a chance of any one of its savage details being spared--by just so much would he have lost in his fascination. The form that was to be doomed to be so shamefully mangled, was the sight; the immortal creature that was to be so butchered and torn asunder, yielded the sensation. Whatever gloss the various spectators put upon the interest, according to their several arts and powers of self-deceit, the interest was, at the root of it, Ogreish. Silence in the court! Charles Darnay had yesterday pleaded Not Guilty to an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and jangle) for that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his having, on divers occasions, and by divers means and ways, assisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth; that was to say, by coming and going, between the dominions of our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and North America. This much, Jerry, with his head becoming more and more spiky as the law terms bristled it, made out with huge satisfaction, and so arrived circuitously at the understanding that the aforesaid, and over and over again aforesaid, Charles Darnay, stood there before him upon his trial; that the jury were swearing in; and that Mr. Attorney-General was making ready to speak. The accused, who was (and who knew he was) being mentally hanged, beheaded, and quartered, by everybody there, neither flinched from the situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it. He was quiet and attentive; watched the opening proceedings with a grave interest; and stood with his hands resting on the slab of wood before him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a leaf of the herbs with which it was strewn. The court was all bestrewn with herbs and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against gaol air and gaol fever. Over the prisoner's head there was a mirror, to throw the light down upon him. Crowds of the wicked and the wretched had been reflected in it, and had passed from its surface and this earth's together. Haunted in a most ghastly manner that abominable place would have been, if the glass could ever have rendered back its reflections, as the ocean is one day to give up its dead. Some passing thought of the infamy and disgrace for which it had been reserved, may have struck the prisoner's mind. Be that as it may, a change in his position making him conscious of a bar of light across his face, he looked up; and when he saw the glass his face flushed, and his right hand pushed the herbs away. It happened, that the action turned his face to that side of the court which was on his left. About on a level with his eyes, there sat, in that corner of the Judge's bench, two persons upon whom his look immediately rested; so immediately, and so much to the changing of his aspect, that all the eyes that were turned upon him, turned to them. The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady of little more than twenty, and a gentleman who was evidently her father; a man of a very remarkable appearance in respect of the absolute whiteness of his hair, and a certain indescribable intensity of face: not of an active kind, but pondering and self-communing. When this expression was upon him, he looked as if he were old; but when it was stirred and broken up--as it was now, in a moment, on his speaking to his daughter--he became a handsome man, not past the prime of life. His daughter had one of her hands drawn through his arm, as she sat by him, and the other pressed upon it. She had drawn close to him, in her dread of the scene, and in her pity for the prisoner. Her forehead had been strikingly expressive of an engrossing terror and compassion that saw nothing but the peril of the accused. This had been so very noticeable, so very powerfully and naturally shown, that starers who had had no pity for him were touched by her; and the whisper went about, "Who are they?" Jerry, the messenger, who had made his own observations, in his own manner, and who had been sucking the rust off his fingers in his absorption, stretched his neck to hear who they were. The crowd about him had pressed and passed the inquiry on to the nearest attendant, and from him it had been more slowly pressed and passed back; at last it got to Jerry: "Witnesses." "For which side?" "Against." "Against what side?" "The prisoner's." The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction, recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold.

book 2, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3

A Sight An old clerk at Tellson's gives Jerry Cruncher a message to deliver to Mr. Lorry at Old Bailey, where Charles Darnay is being tried. Jerry makes his way into the trial and is reassured by an onlooker that this is indeed the treason case. The man gruesomely describes the quartering that is certain to follow as punishment. When the young gentleman prisoner, Charles Darnay, is brought in, the whole courtroom stares at him. He had pleaded not guilty the previous day. Darnay's gaze rests immediately on Dr. Manette and his daughter, who are to be witnesses for the prosecution

As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: "You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been "religiously circumwented into the worst of luck." Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an "honest tradesman," the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of "inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might "tear his sheets to ribbons." The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into "acceptable" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves "in a dark place" since their youth. It has a "condemmed hold" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, "Whatever is is right," a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of "whatever is is right" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as "at the root of it, Ogreish." Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, "as the ocean is one day to give up its dead." Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as "one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like." This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/9.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_2_part_3.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 3

book 2, chapter 3

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3", "summary": "A Disappointment Charles Darnay is charged with shuttling back and forth between France and England in order to spy. John Barsad, who was his friend, is the chief witness against him. Darnay was allegedly involved in traitorous activities as far back as five years ago, during the outbreak of the American Revolution. Mr. Lorry is called to give evidence against Charles Darnay, and he identifies Darnay as the man who came on board in the middle of the night at Calais on the way from France to England. Miss Manette is called and, though she identifies him, she strongly regrets that her evidence could bring him any harm. Lucie testifies that the prisoner confided in her that he was traveling under an assumed name on a delicate business. Dr. Manette testifies that he also recognizes the man. The case is thrown into uproar and made fruitless, however, when a Mr. Carton reveals himself. Carton looks so much like Darnay that a positive identification of the defendant is made impossible. Darnay's defense counsel, Mr. Stryver, shows that Barsad was himself a traitor. The jury deliberates for a long time. Lucie faints and is taken out of the courthouse. Mr. Lorry tells Jerry to remain to take the verdict to Tellson's. Jerry receives a piece of paper on which it is written that Darnay is acquitted", "analysis": "As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: \"You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?\" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been \"religiously circumwented into the worst of luck.\" Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an \"honest tradesman,\" the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of \"inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description\" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might \"tear his sheets to ribbons.\" The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into \"acceptable\" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves \"in a dark place\" since their youth. It has a \"condemmed hold\" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, \"Whatever is is right,\" a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of \"whatever is is right\" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as \"at the root of it, Ogreish.\" Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, \"as the ocean is one day to give up its dead.\" Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--\"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.\" A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as \"one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like.\" This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again."}

III. A Disappointment Mr. Attorney-General had to inform the jury, that the prisoner before them, though young in years, was old in the treasonable practices which claimed the forfeit of his life. That this correspondence with the public enemy was not a correspondence of to-day, or of yesterday, or even of last year, or of the year before. That, it was certain the prisoner had, for longer than that, been in the habit of passing and repassing between France and England, on secret business of which he could give no honest account. That, if it were in the nature of traitorous ways to thrive (which happily it never was), the real wickedness and guilt of his business might have remained undiscovered. That Providence, however, had put it into the heart of a person who was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to ferret out the nature of the prisoner's schemes, and, struck with horror, to disclose them to his Majesty's Chief Secretary of State and most honourable Privy Council. That, this patriot would be produced before them. That, his position and attitude were, on the whole, sublime. That, he had been the prisoner's friend, but, at once in an auspicious and an evil hour detecting his infamy, had resolved to immolate the traitor he could no longer cherish in his bosom, on the sacred altar of his country. That, if statues were decreed in Britain, as in ancient Greece and Rome, to public benefactors, this shining citizen would assuredly have had one. That, as they were not so decreed, he probably would not have one. That, Virtue, as had been observed by the poets (in many passages which he well knew the jury would have, word for word, at the tips of their tongues; whereat the jury's countenances displayed a guilty consciousness that they knew nothing about the passages), was in a manner contagious; more especially the bright virtue known as patriotism, or love of country. That, the lofty example of this immaculate and unimpeachable witness for the Crown, to refer to whom however unworthily was an honour, had communicated itself to the prisoner's servant, and had engendered in him a holy determination to examine his master's table-drawers and pockets, and secrete his papers. That, he (Mr. Attorney-General) was prepared to hear some disparagement attempted of this admirable servant; but that, in a general way, he preferred him to his (Mr. Attorney-General's) brothers and sisters, and honoured him more than his (Mr. Attorney-General's) father and mother. That, he called with confidence on the jury to come and do likewise. That, the evidence of these two witnesses, coupled with the documents of their discovering that would be produced, would show the prisoner to have been furnished with lists of his Majesty's forces, and of their disposition and preparation, both by sea and land, and would leave no doubt that he had habitually conveyed such information to a hostile power. That, these lists could not be proved to be in the prisoner's handwriting; but that it was all the same; that, indeed, it was rather the better for the prosecution, as showing the prisoner to be artful in his precautions. That, the proof would go back five years, and would show the prisoner already engaged in these pernicious missions, within a few weeks before the date of the very first action fought between the British troops and the Americans. That, for these reasons, the jury, being a loyal jury (as he knew they were), and being a responsible jury (as _they_ knew they were), must positively find the prisoner Guilty, and make an end of him, whether they liked it or not. That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner's head was taken off. That head Mr. Attorney-General concluded by demanding of them, in the name of everything he could think of with a round turn in it, and on the faith of his solemn asseveration that he already considered the prisoner as good as dead and gone. When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the court as if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in anticipation of what he was soon to become. When toned down again, the unimpeachable patriot appeared in the witness-box. Mr. Solicitor-General then, following his leader's lead, examined the patriot: John Barsad, gentleman, by name. The story of his pure soul was exactly what Mr. Attorney-General had described it to be--perhaps, if it had a fault, a little too exactly. Having released his noble bosom of its burden, he would have modestly withdrawn himself, but that the wigged gentleman with the papers before him, sitting not far from Mr. Lorry, begged to ask him a few questions. The wigged gentleman sitting opposite, still looking at the ceiling of the court. Had he ever been a spy himself? No, he scorned the base insinuation. What did he live upon? His property. Where was his property? He didn't precisely remember where it was. What was it? No business of anybody's. Had he inherited it? Yes, he had. From whom? Distant relation. Very distant? Rather. Ever been in prison? Certainly not. Never in a debtors' prison? Didn't see what that had to do with it. Never in a debtors' prison?--Come, once again. Never? Yes. How many times? Two or three times. Not five or six? Perhaps. Of what profession? Gentleman. Ever been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked downstairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick on the top of a staircase, and fell downstairs of his own accord. Kicked on that occasion for cheating at dice? Something to that effect was said by the intoxicated liar who committed the assault, but it was not true. Swear it was not true? Positively. Ever live by cheating at play? Never. Ever live by play? Not more than other gentlemen do. Ever borrow money of the prisoner? Yes. Ever pay him? No. Was not this intimacy with the prisoner, in reality a very slight one, forced upon the prisoner in coaches, inns, and packets? No. Sure he saw the prisoner with these lists? Certain. Knew no more about the lists? No. Had not procured them himself, for instance? No. Expect to get anything by this evidence? No. Not in regular government pay and employment, to lay traps? Oh dear no. Or to do anything? Oh dear no. Swear that? Over and over again. No motives but motives of sheer patriotism? None whatever. The virtuous servant, Roger Cly, swore his way through the case at a great rate. He had taken service with the prisoner, in good faith and simplicity, four years ago. He had asked the prisoner, aboard the Calais packet, if he wanted a handy fellow, and the prisoner had engaged him. He had not asked the prisoner to take the handy fellow as an act of charity--never thought of such a thing. He began to have suspicions of the prisoner, and to keep an eye upon him, soon afterwards. In arranging his clothes, while travelling, he had seen similar lists to these in the prisoner's pockets, over and over again. He had taken these lists from the drawer of the prisoner's desk. He had not put them there first. He had seen the prisoner show these identical lists to French gentlemen at Calais, and similar lists to French gentlemen, both at Calais and Boulogne. He loved his country, and couldn't bear it, and had given information. He had never been suspected of stealing a silver tea-pot; he had been maligned respecting a mustard-pot, but it turned out to be only a plated one. He had known the last witness seven or eight years; that was merely a coincidence. He didn't call it a particularly curious coincidence; most coincidences were curious. Neither did he call it a curious coincidence that true patriotism was _his_ only motive too. He was a true Briton, and hoped there were many like him. The blue-flies buzzed again, and Mr. Attorney-General called Mr. Jarvis Lorry. "Mr. Jarvis Lorry, are you a clerk in Tellson's bank?" "I am." "On a certain Friday night in November one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, did business occasion you to travel between London and Dover by the mail?" "It did." "Were there any other passengers in the mail?" "Two." "Did they alight on the road in the course of the night?" "They did." "Mr. Lorry, look upon the prisoner. Was he one of those two passengers?" "I cannot undertake to say that he was." "Does he resemble either of these two passengers?" "Both were so wrapped up, and the night was so dark, and we were all so reserved, that I cannot undertake to say even that." "Mr. Lorry, look again upon the prisoner. Supposing him wrapped up as those two passengers were, is there anything in his bulk and stature to render it unlikely that he was one of them?" "No." "You will not swear, Mr. Lorry, that he was not one of them?" "No." "So at least you say he may have been one of them?" "Yes. Except that I remember them both to have been--like myself--timorous of highwaymen, and the prisoner has not a timorous air." "Did you ever see a counterfeit of timidity, Mr. Lorry?" "I certainly have seen that." "Mr. Lorry, look once more upon the prisoner. Have you seen him, to your certain knowledge, before?" "I have." "When?" "I was returning from France a few days afterwards, and, at Calais, the prisoner came on board the packet-ship in which I returned, and made the voyage with me." "At what hour did he come on board?" "At a little after midnight." "In the dead of the night. Was he the only passenger who came on board at that untimely hour?" "He happened to be the only one." "Never mind about 'happening,' Mr. Lorry. He was the only passenger who came on board in the dead of the night?" "He was." "Were you travelling alone, Mr. Lorry, or with any companion?" "With two companions. A gentleman and lady. They are here." "They are here. Had you any conversation with the prisoner?" "Hardly any. The weather was stormy, and the passage long and rough, and I lay on a sofa, almost from shore to shore." "Miss Manette!" The young lady, to whom all eyes had been turned before, and were now turned again, stood up where she had sat. Her father rose with her, and kept her hand drawn through his arm. "Miss Manette, look upon the prisoner." To be confronted with such pity, and such earnest youth and beauty, was far more trying to the accused than to be confronted with all the crowd. Standing, as it were, apart with her on the edge of his grave, not all the staring curiosity that looked on, could, for the moment, nerve him to remain quite still. His hurried right hand parcelled out the herbs before him into imaginary beds of flowers in a garden; and his efforts to control and steady his breathing shook the lips from which the colour rushed to his heart. The buzz of the great flies was loud again. "Miss Manette, have you seen the prisoner before?" "Yes, sir." "Where?" "On board of the packet-ship just now referred to, sir, and on the same occasion." "You are the young lady just now referred to?" "O! most unhappily, I am!" The plaintive tone of her compassion merged into the less musical voice of the Judge, as he said something fiercely: "Answer the questions put to you, and make no remark upon them." "Miss Manette, had you any conversation with the prisoner on that passage across the Channel?" "Yes, sir." "Recall it." In the midst of a profound stillness, she faintly began: "When the gentleman came on board--" "Do you mean the prisoner?" inquired the Judge, knitting his brows. "Yes, my Lord." "Then say the prisoner." "When the prisoner came on board, he noticed that my father," turning her eyes lovingly to him as he stood beside her, "was much fatigued and in a very weak state of health. My father was so reduced that I was afraid to take him out of the air, and I had made a bed for him on the deck near the cabin steps, and I sat on the deck at his side to take care of him. There were no other passengers that night, but we four. The prisoner was so good as to beg permission to advise me how I could shelter my father from the wind and weather, better than I had done. I had not known how to do it well, not understanding how the wind would set when we were out of the harbour. He did it for me. He expressed great gentleness and kindness for my father's state, and I am sure he felt it. That was the manner of our beginning to speak together." "Let me interrupt you for a moment. Had he come on board alone?" "No." "How many were with him?" "Two French gentlemen." "Had they conferred together?" "They had conferred together until the last moment, when it was necessary for the French gentlemen to be landed in their boat." "Had any papers been handed about among them, similar to these lists?" "Some papers had been handed about among them, but I don't know what papers." "Like these in shape and size?" "Possibly, but indeed I don't know, although they stood whispering very near to me: because they stood at the top of the cabin steps to have the light of the lamp that was hanging there; it was a dull lamp, and they spoke very low, and I did not hear what they said, and saw only that they looked at papers." "Now, to the prisoner's conversation, Miss Manette." "The prisoner was as open in his confidence with me--which arose out of my helpless situation--as he was kind, and good, and useful to my father. I hope," bursting into tears, "I may not repay him by doing him harm to-day." Buzzing from the blue-flies. "Miss Manette, if the prisoner does not perfectly understand that you give the evidence which it is your duty to give--which you must give--and which you cannot escape from giving--with great unwillingness, he is the only person present in that condition. Please to go on." "He told me that he was travelling on business of a delicate and difficult nature, which might get people into trouble, and that he was therefore travelling under an assumed name. He said that this business had, within a few days, taken him to France, and might, at intervals, take him backwards and forwards between France and England for a long time to come." "Did he say anything about America, Miss Manette? Be particular." "He tried to explain to me how that quarrel had arisen, and he said that, so far as he could judge, it was a wrong and foolish one on England's part. He added, in a jesting way, that perhaps George Washington might gain almost as great a name in history as George the Third. But there was no harm in his way of saying this: it was said laughingly, and to beguile the time." Any strongly marked expression of face on the part of a chief actor in a scene of great interest to whom many eyes are directed, will be unconsciously imitated by the spectators. Her forehead was painfully anxious and intent as she gave this evidence, and, in the pauses when she stopped for the Judge to write it down, watched its effect upon the counsel for and against. Among the lookers-on there was the same expression in all quarters of the court; insomuch, that a great majority of the foreheads there, might have been mirrors reflecting the witness, when the Judge looked up from his notes to glare at that tremendous heresy about George Washington. Mr. Attorney-General now signified to my Lord, that he deemed it necessary, as a matter of precaution and form, to call the young lady's father, Doctor Manette. Who was called accordingly. "Doctor Manette, look upon the prisoner. Have you ever seen him before?" "Once. When he called at my lodgings in London. Some three years, or three years and a half ago." "Can you identify him as your fellow-passenger on board the packet, or speak to his conversation with your daughter?" "Sir, I can do neither." "Is there any particular and special reason for your being unable to do either?" He answered, in a low voice, "There is." "Has it been your misfortune to undergo a long imprisonment, without trial, or even accusation, in your native country, Doctor Manette?" He answered, in a tone that went to every heart, "A long imprisonment." "Were you newly released on the occasion in question?" "They tell me so." "Have you no remembrance of the occasion?" "None. My mind is a blank, from some time--I cannot even say what time--when I employed myself, in my captivity, in making shoes, to the time when I found myself living in London with my dear daughter here. She had become familiar to me, when a gracious God restored my faculties; but, I am quite unable even to say how she had become familiar. I have no remembrance of the process." Mr. Attorney-General sat down, and the father and daughter sat down together. A singular circumstance then arose in the case. The object in hand being to show that the prisoner went down, with some fellow-plotter untracked, in the Dover mail on that Friday night in November five years ago, and got out of the mail in the night, as a blind, at a place where he did not remain, but from which he travelled back some dozen miles or more, to a garrison and dockyard, and there collected information; a witness was called to identify him as having been at the precise time required, in the coffee-room of an hotel in that garrison-and-dockyard town, waiting for another person. The prisoner's counsel was cross-examining this witness with no result, except that he had never seen the prisoner on any other occasion, when the wigged gentleman who had all this time been looking at the ceiling of the court, wrote a word or two on a little piece of paper, screwed it up, and tossed it to him. Opening this piece of paper in the next pause, the counsel looked with great attention and curiosity at the prisoner. "You say again you are quite sure that it was the prisoner?" The witness was quite sure. "Did you ever see anybody very like the prisoner?" Not so like (the witness said) as that he could be mistaken. "Look well upon that gentleman, my learned friend there," pointing to him who had tossed the paper over, "and then look well upon the prisoner. How say you? Are they very like each other?" Allowing for my learned friend's appearance being careless and slovenly if not debauched, they were sufficiently like each other to surprise, not only the witness, but everybody present, when they were thus brought into comparison. My Lord being prayed to bid my learned friend lay aside his wig, and giving no very gracious consent, the likeness became much more remarkable. My Lord inquired of Mr. Stryver (the prisoner's counsel), whether they were next to try Mr. Carton (name of my learned friend) for treason? But, Mr. Stryver replied to my Lord, no; but he would ask the witness to tell him whether what happened once, might happen twice; whether he would have been so confident if he had seen this illustration of his rashness sooner, whether he would be so confident, having seen it; and more. The upshot of which, was, to smash this witness like a crockery vessel, and shiver his part of the case to useless lumber. Mr. Cruncher had by this time taken quite a lunch of rust off his fingers in his following of the evidence. He had now to attend while Mr. Stryver fitted the prisoner's case on the jury, like a compact suit of clothes; showing them how the patriot, Barsad, was a hired spy and traitor, an unblushing trafficker in blood, and one of the greatest scoundrels upon earth since accursed Judas--which he certainly did look rather like. How the virtuous servant, Cly, was his friend and partner, and was worthy to be; how the watchful eyes of those forgers and false swearers had rested on the prisoner as a victim, because some family affairs in France, he being of French extraction, did require his making those passages across the Channel--though what those affairs were, a consideration for others who were near and dear to him, forbade him, even for his life, to disclose. How the evidence that had been warped and wrested from the young lady, whose anguish in giving it they had witnessed, came to nothing, involving the mere little innocent gallantries and politenesses likely to pass between any young gentleman and young lady so thrown together;--with the exception of that reference to George Washington, which was altogether too extravagant and impossible to be regarded in any other light than as a monstrous joke. How it would be a weakness in the government to break down in this attempt to practise for popularity on the lowest national antipathies and fears, and therefore Mr. Attorney-General had made the most of it; how, nevertheless, it rested upon nothing, save that vile and infamous character of evidence too often disfiguring such cases, and of which the State Trials of this country were full. But, there my Lord interposed (with as grave a face as if it had not been true), saying that he could not sit upon that Bench and suffer those allusions. Mr. Stryver then called his few witnesses, and Mr. Cruncher had next to attend while Mr. Attorney-General turned the whole suit of clothes Mr. Stryver had fitted on the jury, inside out; showing how Barsad and Cly were even a hundred times better than he had thought them, and the prisoner a hundred times worse. Lastly, came my Lord himself, turning the suit of clothes, now inside out, now outside in, but on the whole decidedly trimming and shaping them into grave-clothes for the prisoner. And now, the jury turned to consider, and the great flies swarmed again. Mr. Carton, who had so long sat looking at the ceiling of the court, changed neither his place nor his attitude, even in this excitement. While his teamed friend, Mr. Stryver, massing his papers before him, whispered with those who sat near, and from time to time glanced anxiously at the jury; while all the spectators moved more or less, and grouped themselves anew; while even my Lord himself arose from his seat, and slowly paced up and down his platform, not unattended by a suspicion in the minds of the audience that his state was feverish; this one man sat leaning back, with his torn gown half off him, his untidy wig put on just as it had happened to light on his head after its removal, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the ceiling as they had been all day. Something especially reckless in his demeanour, not only gave him a disreputable look, but so diminished the strong resemblance he undoubtedly bore to the prisoner (which his momentary earnestness, when they were compared together, had strengthened), that many of the lookers-on, taking note of him now, said to one another they would hardly have thought the two were so alike. Mr. Cruncher made the observation to his next neighbour, and added, "I'd hold half a guinea that _he_ don't get no law-work to do. Don't look like the sort of one to get any, do he?" Yet, this Mr. Carton took in more of the details of the scene than he appeared to take in; for now, when Miss Manette's head dropped upon her father's breast, he was the first to see it, and to say audibly: "Officer! look to that young lady. Help the gentleman to take her out. Don't you see she will fall!" There was much commiseration for her as she was removed, and much sympathy with her father. It had evidently been a great distress to him, to have the days of his imprisonment recalled. He had shown strong internal agitation when he was questioned, and that pondering or brooding look which made him old, had been upon him, like a heavy cloud, ever since. As he passed out, the jury, who had turned back and paused a moment, spoke, through their foreman. They were not agreed, and wished to retire. My Lord (perhaps with George Washington on his mind) showed some surprise that they were not agreed, but signified his pleasure that they should retire under watch and ward, and retired himself. The trial had lasted all day, and the lamps in the court were now being lighted. It began to be rumoured that the jury would be out a long while. The spectators dropped off to get refreshment, and the prisoner withdrew to the back of the dock, and sat down. Mr. Lorry, who had gone out when the young lady and her father went out, now reappeared, and beckoned to Jerry: who, in the slackened interest, could easily get near him. "Jerry, if you wish to take something to eat, you can. But, keep in the way. You will be sure to hear when the jury come in. Don't be a moment behind them, for I want you to take the verdict back to the bank. You are the quickest messenger I know, and will get to Temple Bar long before I can." Jerry had just enough forehead to knuckle, and he knuckled it in acknowledgment of this communication and a shilling. Mr. Carton came up at the moment, and touched Mr. Lorry on the arm. "How is the young lady?" "She is greatly distressed; but her father is comforting her, and she feels the better for being out of court." "I'll tell the prisoner so. It won't do for a respectable bank gentleman like you, to be seen speaking to him publicly, you know." Mr. Lorry reddened as if he were conscious of having debated the point in his mind, and Mr. Carton made his way to the outside of the bar. The way out of court lay in that direction, and Jerry followed him, all eyes, ears, and spikes. "Mr. Darnay!" The prisoner came forward directly. "You will naturally be anxious to hear of the witness, Miss Manette. She will do very well. You have seen the worst of her agitation." "I am deeply sorry to have been the cause of it. Could you tell her so for me, with my fervent acknowledgments?" "Yes, I could. I will, if you ask it." Mr. Carton's manner was so careless as to be almost insolent. He stood, half turned from the prisoner, lounging with his elbow against the bar. "I do ask it. Accept my cordial thanks." "What," said Carton, still only half turned towards him, "do you expect, Mr. Darnay?" "The worst." "It's the wisest thing to expect, and the likeliest. But I think their withdrawing is in your favour." Loitering on the way out of court not being allowed, Jerry heard no more: but left them--so like each other in feature, so unlike each other in manner--standing side by side, both reflected in the glass above them. An hour and a half limped heavily away in the thief-and-rascal crowded passages below, even though assisted off with mutton pies and ale. The hoarse messenger, uncomfortably seated on a form after taking that refection, had dropped into a doze, when a loud murmur and a rapid tide of people setting up the stairs that led to the court, carried him along with them. "Jerry! Jerry!" Mr. Lorry was already calling at the door when he got there. "Here, sir! It's a fight to get back again. Here I am, sir!" Mr. Lorry handed him a paper through the throng. "Quick! Have you got it?" "Yes, sir." Hastily written on the paper was the word "ACQUITTED." "If you had sent the message, 'Recalled to Life,' again," muttered Jerry, as he turned, "I should have known what you meant, this time." He had no opportunity of saying, or so much as thinking, anything else, until he was clear of the Old Bailey; for, the crowd came pouring out with a vehemence that nearly took him off his legs, and a loud buzz swept into the street as if the baffled blue-flies were dispersing in search of other carrion.

book 2, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3

A Disappointment Charles Darnay is charged with shuttling back and forth between France and England in order to spy. John Barsad, who was his friend, is the chief witness against him. Darnay was allegedly involved in traitorous activities as far back as five years ago, during the outbreak of the American Revolution. Mr. Lorry is called to give evidence against Charles Darnay, and he identifies Darnay as the man who came on board in the middle of the night at Calais on the way from France to England. Miss Manette is called and, though she identifies him, she strongly regrets that her evidence could bring him any harm. Lucie testifies that the prisoner confided in her that he was traveling under an assumed name on a delicate business. Dr. Manette testifies that he also recognizes the man. The case is thrown into uproar and made fruitless, however, when a Mr. Carton reveals himself. Carton looks so much like Darnay that a positive identification of the defendant is made impossible. Darnay's defense counsel, Mr. Stryver, shows that Barsad was himself a traitor. The jury deliberates for a long time. Lucie faints and is taken out of the courthouse. Mr. Lorry tells Jerry to remain to take the verdict to Tellson's. Jerry receives a piece of paper on which it is written that Darnay is acquitted

As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: "You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been "religiously circumwented into the worst of luck." Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an "honest tradesman," the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of "inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might "tear his sheets to ribbons." The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into "acceptable" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves "in a dark place" since their youth. It has a "condemmed hold" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, "Whatever is is right," a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of "whatever is is right" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as "at the root of it, Ogreish." Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, "as the ocean is one day to give up its dead." Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as "one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like." This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_2_part_4.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 4

book 2, chapter 4

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3", "summary": "Congratulatory Dr. Manette, Lucie, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the defense, and Mr. Stryver all congratulate Darnay on his escape from death. Dr. Manette's face is clouded over by the negative emotions caused by being cross-examined about being imprisoned. The Manettes depart in a hackney-coach, and a slightly drunk Mr. Carton asks to be allowed to speak to Mr. Darnay. They dine in a tavern, and Mr. Carton proposes a toast to Miss Manette. After Darnay leaves, Mr. Carton looks at himself in a mirror and reflects that he does not like Darnay because he too much resembles what Carton himself could have been, had Carton not been so dissolute. He hates Darnay for inspiring Miss Manette to look at him with such compassion", "analysis": "As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: \"You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?\" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been \"religiously circumwented into the worst of luck.\" Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an \"honest tradesman,\" the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of \"inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description\" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might \"tear his sheets to ribbons.\" The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into \"acceptable\" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves \"in a dark place\" since their youth. It has a \"condemmed hold\" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, \"Whatever is is right,\" a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of \"whatever is is right\" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as \"at the root of it, Ogreish.\" Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, \"as the ocean is one day to give up its dead.\" Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--\"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.\" A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as \"one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like.\" This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again."}

IV. Congratulatory From the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the last sediment of the human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off, when Doctor Manette, Lucie Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood gathered round Mr. Charles Darnay--just released--congratulating him on his escape from death. It would have been difficult by a far brighter light, to recognise in Doctor Manette, intellectual of face and upright of bearing, the shoemaker of the garret in Paris. Yet, no one could have looked at him twice, without looking again: even though the opportunity of observation had not extended to the mournful cadence of his low grave voice, and to the abstraction that overclouded him fitfully, without any apparent reason. While one external cause, and that a reference to his long lingering agony, would always--as on the trial--evoke this condition from the depths of his soul, it was also in its nature to arise of itself, and to draw a gloom over him, as incomprehensible to those unacquainted with his story as if they had seen the shadow of the actual Bastille thrown upon him by a summer sun, when the substance was three hundred miles away. Only his daughter had the power of charming this black brooding from his mind. She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond his misery: and the sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial influence with him almost always. Not absolutely always, for she could recall some occasions on which her power had failed; but they were few and slight, and she believed them over. Mr. Darnay had kissed her hand fervently and gratefully, and had turned to Mr. Stryver, whom he warmly thanked. Mr. Stryver, a man of little more than thirty, but looking twenty years older than he was, stout, loud, red, bluff, and free from any drawback of delicacy, had a pushing way of shouldering himself (morally and physically) into companies and conversations, that argued well for his shouldering his way up in life. He still had his wig and gown on, and he said, squaring himself at his late client to that degree that he squeezed the innocent Mr. Lorry clean out of the group: "I am glad to have brought you off with honour, Mr. Darnay. It was an infamous prosecution, grossly infamous; but not the less likely to succeed on that account." "You have laid me under an obligation to you for life--in two senses," said his late client, taking his hand. "I have done my best for you, Mr. Darnay; and my best is as good as another man's, I believe." It clearly being incumbent on some one to say, "Much better," Mr. Lorry said it; perhaps not quite disinterestedly, but with the interested object of squeezing himself back again. "You think so?" said Mr. Stryver. "Well! you have been present all day, and you ought to know. You are a man of business, too." "And as such," quoth Mr. Lorry, whom the counsel learned in the law had now shouldered back into the group, just as he had previously shouldered him out of it--"as such I will appeal to Doctor Manette, to break up this conference and order us all to our homes. Miss Lucie looks ill, Mr. Darnay has had a terrible day, we are worn out." "Speak for yourself, Mr. Lorry," said Stryver; "I have a night's work to do yet. Speak for yourself." "I speak for myself," answered Mr. Lorry, "and for Mr. Darnay, and for Miss Lucie, and--Miss Lucie, do you not think I may speak for us all?" He asked her the question pointedly, and with a glance at her father. His face had become frozen, as it were, in a very curious look at Darnay: an intent look, deepening into a frown of dislike and distrust, not even unmixed with fear. With this strange expression on him his thoughts had wandered away. "My father," said Lucie, softly laying her hand on his. He slowly shook the shadow off, and turned to her. "Shall we go home, my father?" With a long breath, he answered "Yes." The friends of the acquitted prisoner had dispersed, under the impression--which he himself had originated--that he would not be released that night. The lights were nearly all extinguished in the passages, the iron gates were being closed with a jar and a rattle, and the dismal place was deserted until to-morrow morning's interest of gallows, pillory, whipping-post, and branding-iron, should repeople it. Walking between her father and Mr. Darnay, Lucie Manette passed into the open air. A hackney-coach was called, and the father and daughter departed in it. Mr. Stryver had left them in the passages, to shoulder his way back to the robing-room. Another person, who had not joined the group, or interchanged a word with any one of them, but who had been leaning against the wall where its shadow was darkest, had silently strolled out after the rest, and had looked on until the coach drove away. He now stepped up to where Mr. Lorry and Mr. Darnay stood upon the pavement. "So, Mr. Lorry! Men of business may speak to Mr. Darnay now?" Nobody had made any acknowledgment of Mr. Carton's part in the day's proceedings; nobody had known of it. He was unrobed, and was none the better for it in appearance. "If you knew what a conflict goes on in the business mind, when the business mind is divided between good-natured impulse and business appearances, you would be amused, Mr. Darnay." Mr. Lorry reddened, and said, warmly, "You have mentioned that before, sir. We men of business, who serve a House, are not our own masters. We have to think of the House more than ourselves." "_I_ know, _I_ know," rejoined Mr. Carton, carelessly. "Don't be nettled, Mr. Lorry. You are as good as another, I have no doubt: better, I dare say." "And indeed, sir," pursued Mr. Lorry, not minding him, "I really don't know what you have to do with the matter. If you'll excuse me, as very much your elder, for saying so, I really don't know that it is your business." "Business! Bless you, _I_ have no business," said Mr. Carton. "It is a pity you have not, sir." "I think so, too." "If you had," pursued Mr. Lorry, "perhaps you would attend to it." "Lord love you, no!--I shouldn't," said Mr. Carton. "Well, sir!" cried Mr. Lorry, thoroughly heated by his indifference, "business is a very good thing, and a very respectable thing. And, sir, if business imposes its restraints and its silences and impediments, Mr. Darnay as a young gentleman of generosity knows how to make allowance for that circumstance. Mr. Darnay, good night, God bless you, sir! I hope you have been this day preserved for a prosperous and happy life.--Chair there!" Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with the barrister, Mr. Lorry bustled into the chair, and was carried off to Tellson's. Carton, who smelt of port wine, and did not appear to be quite sober, laughed then, and turned to Darnay: "This is a strange chance that throws you and me together. This must be a strange night to you, standing alone here with your counterpart on these street stones?" "I hardly seem yet," returned Charles Darnay, "to belong to this world again." "I don't wonder at it; it's not so long since you were pretty far advanced on your way to another. You speak faintly." "I begin to think I _am_ faint." "Then why the devil don't you dine? I dined, myself, while those numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to--this, or some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at." Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate-hill to Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here, they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine: while Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon him. "Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme again, Mr. Darnay?" "I am frightfully confused regarding time and place; but I am so far mended as to feel that." "It must be an immense satisfaction!" He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again: which was a large one. "As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to it. It has no good in it for me--except wine like this--nor I for it. So we are not much alike in that particular. Indeed, I begin to think we are not much alike in any particular, you and I." Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his being there with this Double of coarse deportment, to be like a dream, Charles Darnay was at a loss how to answer; finally, answered not at all. "Now your dinner is done," Carton presently said, "why don't you call a health, Mr. Darnay; why don't you give your toast?" "What health? What toast?" "Why, it's on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, it must be, I'll swear it's there." "Miss Manette, then!" "Miss Manette, then!" Looking his companion full in the face while he drank the toast, Carton flung his glass over his shoulder against the wall, where it shivered to pieces; then, rang the bell, and ordered in another. "That's a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark, Mr. Darnay!" he said, filling his new goblet. A slight frown and a laconic "Yes," were the answer. "That's a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for by! How does it feel? Is it worth being tried for one's life, to be the object of such sympathy and compassion, Mr. Darnay?" Again Darnay answered not a word. "She was mightily pleased to have your message, when I gave it her. Not that she showed she was pleased, but I suppose she was." The allusion served as a timely reminder to Darnay that this disagreeable companion had, of his own free will, assisted him in the strait of the day. He turned the dialogue to that point, and thanked him for it. "I neither want any thanks, nor merit any," was the careless rejoinder. "It was nothing to do, in the first place; and I don't know why I did it, in the second. Mr. Darnay, let me ask you a question." "Willingly, and a small return for your good offices." "Do you think I particularly like you?" "Really, Mr. Carton," returned the other, oddly disconcerted, "I have not asked myself the question." "But ask yourself the question now." "You have acted as if you do; but I don't think you do." "_I_ don't think I do," said Carton. "I begin to have a very good opinion of your understanding." "Nevertheless," pursued Darnay, rising to ring the bell, "there is nothing in that, I hope, to prevent my calling the reckoning, and our parting without ill-blood on either side." Carton rejoining, "Nothing in life!" Darnay rang. "Do you call the whole reckoning?" said Carton. On his answering in the affirmative, "Then bring me another pint of this same wine, drawer, and come and wake me at ten." The bill being paid, Charles Darnay rose and wished him good night. Without returning the wish, Carton rose too, with something of a threat of defiance in his manner, and said, "A last word, Mr. Darnay: you think I am drunk?" "I think you have been drinking, Mr. Carton." "Think? You know I have been drinking." "Since I must say so, I know it." "Then you shall likewise know why. I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me." "Much to be regretted. You might have used your talents better." "May be so, Mr. Darnay; may be not. Don't let your sober face elate you, however; you don't know what it may come to. Good night!" When he was left alone, this strange being took up a candle, went to a glass that hung against the wall, and surveyed himself minutely in it. "Do you particularly like the man?" he muttered, at his own image; "why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow." He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it all in a few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his hair straggling over the table, and a long winding-sheet in the candle dripping down upon him.

book 2, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3

Congratulatory Dr. Manette, Lucie, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the defense, and Mr. Stryver all congratulate Darnay on his escape from death. Dr. Manette's face is clouded over by the negative emotions caused by being cross-examined about being imprisoned. The Manettes depart in a hackney-coach, and a slightly drunk Mr. Carton asks to be allowed to speak to Mr. Darnay. They dine in a tavern, and Mr. Carton proposes a toast to Miss Manette. After Darnay leaves, Mr. Carton looks at himself in a mirror and reflects that he does not like Darnay because he too much resembles what Carton himself could have been, had Carton not been so dissolute. He hates Darnay for inspiring Miss Manette to look at him with such compassion

As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: "You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been "religiously circumwented into the worst of luck." Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an "honest tradesman," the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of "inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might "tear his sheets to ribbons." The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into "acceptable" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves "in a dark place" since their youth. It has a "condemmed hold" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, "Whatever is is right," a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of "whatever is is right" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as "at the root of it, Ogreish." Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, "as the ocean is one day to give up its dead." Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as "one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like." This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_2_part_5.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 5

book 2, chapter 5

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3", "summary": "The Jackal Mr. Stryver is prone to alcoholism, and he is a drinking companion of Mr. Carton's--they had been fellow students in Paris. Mr. Stryver, despite all of his capacity to push himself ahead, became a much more successful lawyer when Mr. Carton began working on and helping summarize his documents for him. Thus Carton became Stryver's jackal. When Stryver talks about how pretty Miss Manette is, Carton denies it, claiming she is nothing but a blond \"doll. Carton leaves Stryver's house and returns to his own, crying himself to sleep. He is haunted by the honorable glories that once were available to him but are now out of his reach", "analysis": "As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: \"You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?\" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been \"religiously circumwented into the worst of luck.\" Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an \"honest tradesman,\" the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of \"inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description\" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might \"tear his sheets to ribbons.\" The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into \"acceptable\" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves \"in a dark place\" since their youth. It has a \"condemmed hold\" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, \"Whatever is is right,\" a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of \"whatever is is right\" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as \"at the root of it, Ogreish.\" Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, \"as the ocean is one day to give up its dead.\" Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--\"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.\" A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as \"one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like.\" This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again."}

V. The Jackal Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration. The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neither was Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in the drier parts of the legal race. A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr. Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the ladder on which he mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now to summon their favourite, specially, to their longing arms; and shouldering itself towards the visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King's Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Stryver might be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs, like a great sunflower pushing its way at the sun from among a rank garden-full of flaring companions. It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. Stryver was a glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he had not that faculty of extracting the essence from a heap of statements, which is among the most striking and necessary of the advocate's accomplishments. But, a remarkable improvement came upon him as to this. The more business he got, the greater his power seemed to grow of getting at its pith and marrow; and however late at night he sat carousing with Sydney Carton, he always had his points at his fingers' ends in the morning. Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver's great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have floated a king's ship. Stryver never had a case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court; they went the same Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usual orgies late into the night, and Carton was rumoured to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings, like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about, among such as were interested in the matter, that although Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble capacity. "Ten o'clock, sir," said the man at the tavern, whom he had charged to wake him--"ten o'clock, sir." "_What's_ the matter?" "Ten o'clock, sir." "What do you mean? Ten o'clock at night?" "Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you." "Oh! I remember. Very well, very well." After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which the man dexterously combated by stirring the fire continuously for five minutes, he got up, tossed his hat on, and walked out. He turned into the Temple, and, having revived himself by twice pacing the pavements of King's Bench-walk and Paper-buildings, turned into the Stryver chambers. The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these conferences, had gone home, and the Stryver principal opened the door. He had his slippers on, and a loose bed-gown, and his throat was bare for his greater ease. He had that rather wild, strained, seared marking about the eyes, which may be observed in all free livers of his class, from the portrait of Jeffries downward, and which can be traced, under various disguises of Art, through the portraits of every Drinking Age. "You are a little late, Memory," said Stryver. "About the usual time; it may be a quarter of an hour later." They went into a dingy room lined with books and littered with papers, where there was a blazing fire. A kettle steamed upon the hob, and in the midst of the wreck of papers a table shone, with plenty of wine upon it, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons. "You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney." "Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the day's client; or seeing him dine--it's all one!" "That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to bear upon the identification. How did you come by it? When did it strike you?" "I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I thought I should have been much the same sort of fellow, if I had had any luck." Mr. Stryver laughed till he shook his precocious paunch. "You and your luck, Sydney! Get to work, get to work." Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went into an adjoining room, and came back with a large jug of cold water, a basin, and a towel or two. Steeping the towels in the water, and partially wringing them out, he folded them on his head in a manner hideous to behold, sat down at the table, and said, "Now I am ready!" "Not much boiling down to be done to-night, Memory," said Mr. Stryver, gaily, as he looked among his papers. "How much?" "Only two sets of them." "Give me the worst first." "There they are, Sydney. Fire away!" The lion then composed himself on his back on a sofa on one side of the drinking-table, while the jackal sat at his own paper-bestrewn table proper, on the other side of it, with the bottles and glasses ready to his hand. Both resorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each in a different way; the lion for the most part reclining with his hands in his waistband, looking at the fire, or occasionally flirting with some lighter document; the jackal, with knitted brows and intent face, so deep in his task, that his eyes did not even follow the hand he stretched out for his glass--which often groped about, for a minute or more, before it found the glass for his lips. Two or three times, the matter in hand became so knotty, that the jackal found it imperative on him to get up, and steep his towels anew. From these pilgrimages to the jug and basin, he returned with such eccentricities of damp headgear as no words can describe; which were made the more ludicrous by his anxious gravity. At length the jackal had got together a compact repast for the lion, and proceeded to offer it to him. The lion took it with care and caution, made his selections from it, and his remarks upon it, and the jackal assisted both. When the repast was fully discussed, the lion put his hands in his waistband again, and lay down to meditate. The jackal then invigorated himself with a bumper for his throttle, and a fresh application to his head, and applied himself to the collection of a second meal; this was administered to the lion in the same manner, and was not disposed of until the clocks struck three in the morning. "And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of punch," said Mr. Stryver. The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had been steaming again, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and complied. "You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown witnesses to-day. Every question told." "I always am sound; am I not?" "I don't gainsay it. What has roughened your temper? Put some punch to it and smooth it again." With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied. "The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School," said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, "the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!" "Ah!" returned the other, sighing: "yes! The same Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did my own." "And why not?" "God knows. It was my way, I suppose." He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out before him, looking at the fire. "Carton," said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, "your way is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose. Look at me." "Oh, botheration!" returned Sydney, with a lighter and more good-humoured laugh, "don't _you_ be moral!" "How have I done what I have done?" said Stryver; "how do I do what I do?" "Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it's not worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind." "I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?" "I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you were," said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed. "Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury," pursued Carton, "you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow-students in the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that we didn't get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was always nowhere." "And whose fault was that?" "Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always driving and riving and shouldering and passing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It's a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one's own past, with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before I go." "Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness," said Stryver, holding up his glass. "Are you turned in a pleasant direction?" Apparently not, for he became gloomy again. "Pretty witness," he muttered, looking down into his glass. "I have had enough of witnesses to-day and to-night; who's your pretty witness?" "The picturesque doctor's daughter, Miss Manette." "_She_ pretty?" "Is she not?" "No." "Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole Court!" "Rot the admiration of the whole Court! Who made the Old Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!" "Do you know, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face: "do you know, I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathised with the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired doll?" "Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons within a yard or two of a man's nose, he can see it without a perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I'll have no more drink; I'll get to bed." When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance had begun to overwhelm the city. Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

book 2, Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3

The Jackal Mr. Stryver is prone to alcoholism, and he is a drinking companion of Mr. Carton's--they had been fellow students in Paris. Mr. Stryver, despite all of his capacity to push himself ahead, became a much more successful lawyer when Mr. Carton began working on and helping summarize his documents for him. Thus Carton became Stryver's jackal. When Stryver talks about how pretty Miss Manette is, Carton denies it, claiming she is nothing but a blond "doll. Carton leaves Stryver's house and returns to his own, crying himself to sleep. He is haunted by the honorable glories that once were available to him but are now out of his reach

As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: "You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been "religiously circumwented into the worst of luck." Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an "honest tradesman," the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of "inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might "tear his sheets to ribbons." The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into "acceptable" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves "in a dark place" since their youth. It has a "condemmed hold" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, "Whatever is is right," a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of "whatever is is right" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as "at the root of it, Ogreish." Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, "as the ocean is one day to give up its dead." Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as "one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like." This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_2_part_6.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 6

book 2, chapter 6

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3", "summary": "Hundreds of People Four months after the trial, Mr. Lorry dines with the Manettes. The Manettes live in Soho, a charming part of London not yet fully urbanized. Dr. Manette has revived his medical practice out of the house and lives comfortably. He converses with Miss Pross, who is upset because, as she terms it, hundreds of people come looking for Miss Manette although Miss Pross thinks they do not deserve her. Mr. Lorry recognizes Miss Pross's devotion and values her more highly than wealthier women who have balances at Tellson's. He questions Miss Pross about whether Dr. Manette knows the identity of the person who caused him to be jailed for so long; she thinks he does. When Lucie and her father arrive, Miss Pross fusses over the girl, arranging her bonnet and smoothing her hair. Miss Pross had scoured the neighborhood for French expatriates to teach her cooking tricks, and she is now considered a sorceress in the kitchen. After dinner, Mr. Darnay comes to call. Dr. Manette is in good humor until he gets flustered when Darnay tells a story about the Tower of London, in which many prisoners' initials were carved. The only ones that couldn't be matched by a former prisoner were D. I. G. which the guards figured was an imperative to dig. Mr. Carton joins the party as it moves inside out of a rainstorm. Lucy tells of her fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house are the footsteps of people to come in and out of her life. Mr. Carton observes that this vision represents a great number of people who really will be in her life", "analysis": "As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: \"You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?\" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been \"religiously circumwented into the worst of luck.\" Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an \"honest tradesman,\" the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of \"inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description\" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might \"tear his sheets to ribbons.\" The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into \"acceptable\" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves \"in a dark place\" since their youth. It has a \"condemmed hold\" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, \"Whatever is is right,\" a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of \"whatever is is right\" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as \"at the root of it, Ogreish.\" Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, \"as the ocean is one day to give up its dead.\" Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--\"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.\" A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as \"one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like.\" This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again."}

VI. Hundreds of People The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had rolled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to the public interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor. After several relapses into business-absorption, Mr. Lorry had become the Doctor's friend, and the quiet street-corner was the sunny part of his life. On this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked towards Soho, early in the afternoon, for three reasons of habit. Firstly, because, on fine Sundays, he often walked out, before dinner, with the Doctor and Lucie; secondly, because, on unfavourable Sundays, he was accustomed to be with them as the family friend, talking, reading, looking out of window, and generally getting through the day; thirdly, because he happened to have his own little shrewd doubts to solve, and knew how the ways of the Doctor's household pointed to that time as a likely time for solving them. A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor lived, was not to be found in London. There was no way through it, and the front windows of the Doctor's lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street that had a congenial air of retirement on it. There were few buildings then, north of the Oxford-road, and forest-trees flourished, and wild flowers grew, and the hawthorn blossomed, in the now vanished fields. As a consequence, country airs circulated in Soho with vigorous freedom, instead of languishing into the parish like stray paupers without a settlement; and there was many a good south wall, not far off, on which the peaches ripened in their season. The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in the earlier part of the day; but, when the streets grew hot, the corner was in shadow, though not in shadow so remote but that you could see beyond it into a glare of brightness. It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonderful place for echoes, and a very harbour from the raging streets. There ought to have been a tranquil bark in such an anchorage, and there was. The Doctor occupied two floors of a large stiff house, where several callings purported to be pursued by day, but whereof little was audible any day, and which was shunned by all of them at night. In a building at the back, attainable by a courtyard where a plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to be beaten by some mysterious giant who had a golden arm starting out of the wall of the front hall--as if he had beaten himself precious, and menaced a similar conversion of all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a lonely lodger rumoured to live up-stairs, or of a dim coach-trimming maker asserted to have a counting-house below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a stranger peered about there, or a distant clink was heard across the courtyard, or a thump from the golden giant. These, however, were only the exceptions required to prove the rule that the sparrows in the plane-tree behind the house, and the echoes in the corner before it, had their own way from Sunday morning unto Saturday night. Doctor Manette received such patients here as his old reputation, and its revival in the floating whispers of his story, brought him. His scientific knowledge, and his vigilance and skill in conducting ingenious experiments, brought him otherwise into moderate request, and he earned as much as he wanted. These things were within Mr. Jarvis Lorry's knowledge, thoughts, and notice, when he rang the door-bell of the tranquil house in the corner, on the fine Sunday afternoon. "Doctor Manette at home?" Expected home. "Miss Lucie at home?" Expected home. "Miss Pross at home?" Possibly at home, but of a certainty impossible for handmaid to anticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to admission or denial of the fact. "As I am at home myself," said Mr. Lorry, "I'll go upstairs." Although the Doctor's daughter had known nothing of the country of her birth, she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and most agreeable characteristics. Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and fancy, that its effect was delightful. The disposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as Mr. Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seemed to ask him, with something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this time, whether he approved? There were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by which they communicated being put open that the air might pass freely through them all, Mr. Lorry, smilingly observant of that fanciful resemblance which he detected all around him, walked from one to another. The first was the best room, and in it were Lucie's birds, and flowers, and books, and desk, and work-table, and box of water-colours; the second was the Doctor's consulting-room, used also as the dining-room; the third, changingly speckled by the rustle of the plane-tree in the yard, was the Doctor's bedroom, and there, in a corner, stood the disused shoemaker's bench and tray of tools, much as it had stood on the fifth floor of the dismal house by the wine-shop, in the suburb of Saint Antoine in Paris. "I wonder," said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking about, "that he keeps that reminder of his sufferings about him!" "And why wonder at that?" was the abrupt inquiry that made him start. It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong of hand, whose acquaintance he had first made at the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and had since improved. "I should have thought--" Mr. Lorry began. "Pooh! You'd have thought!" said Miss Pross; and Mr. Lorry left off. "How do you do?" inquired that lady then--sharply, and yet as if to express that she bore him no malice. "I am pretty well, I thank you," answered Mr. Lorry, with meekness; "how are you?" "Nothing to boast of," said Miss Pross. "Indeed?" "Ah! indeed!" said Miss Pross. "I am very much put out about my Ladybird." "Indeed?" "For gracious sake say something else besides 'indeed,' or you'll fidget me to death," said Miss Pross: whose character (dissociated from stature) was shortness. "Really, then?" said Mr. Lorry, as an amendment. "Really, is bad enough," returned Miss Pross, "but better. Yes, I am very much put out." "May I ask the cause?" "I don't want dozens of people who are not at all worthy of Ladybird, to come here looking after her," said Miss Pross. "_Do_ dozens come for that purpose?" "Hundreds," said Miss Pross. It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it. "Dear me!" said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he could think of. "I have lived with the darling--or the darling has lived with me, and paid me for it; which she certainly should never have done, you may take your affidavit, if I could have afforded to keep either myself or her for nothing--since she was ten years old. And it's really very hard," said Miss Pross. Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr. Lorry shook his head; using that important part of himself as a sort of fairy cloak that would fit anything. "All sorts of people who are not in the least degree worthy of the pet, are always turning up," said Miss Pross. "When you began it--" "_I_ began it, Miss Pross?" "Didn't you? Who brought her father to life?" "Oh! If _that_ was beginning it--" said Mr. Lorry. "It wasn't ending it, I suppose? I say, when you began it, it was hard enough; not that I have any fault to find with Doctor Manette, except that he is not worthy of such a daughter, which is no imputation on him, for it was not to be expected that anybody should be, under any circumstances. But it really is doubly and trebly hard to have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after him (I could have forgiven him), to take Ladybird's affections away from me." Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew her by this time to be, beneath the service of her eccentricity, one of those unselfish creatures--found only among women--who will, for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives. He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart; so rendered and so free from any mercenary taint, he had such an exalted respect for it, that in the retributive arrangements made by his own mind--we all make such arrangements, more or less--he stationed Miss Pross much nearer to the lower Angels than many ladies immeasurably better got up both by Nature and Art, who had balances at Tellson's. "There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of Ladybird," said Miss Pross; "and that was my brother Solomon, if he hadn't made a mistake in life." Here again: Mr. Lorry's inquiries into Miss Pross's personal history had established the fact that her brother Solomon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of everything she possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with no touch of compunction. Miss Pross's fidelity of belief in Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake) was quite a serious matter with Mr. Lorry, and had its weight in his good opinion of her. "As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people of business," he said, when they had got back to the drawing-room and had sat down there in friendly relations, "let me ask you--does the Doctor, in talking with Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet?" "Never." "And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him?" "Ah!" returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. "But I don't say he don't refer to it within himself." "Do you believe that he thinks of it much?" "I do," said Miss Pross. "Do you imagine--" Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss Pross took him up short with: "Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all." "I stand corrected; do you suppose--you go so far as to suppose, sometimes?" "Now and then," said Miss Pross. "Do you suppose," Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, "that Doctor Manette has any theory of his own, preserved through all those years, relative to the cause of his being so oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his oppressor?" "I don't suppose anything about it but what Ladybird tells me." "And that is--?" "That she thinks he has." "Now don't be angry at my asking all these questions; because I am a mere dull man of business, and you are a woman of business." "Dull?" Miss Pross inquired, with placidity. Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry replied, "No, no, no. Surely not. To return to business:--Is it not remarkable that Doctor Manette, unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are all well assured he is, should never touch upon that question? I will not say with me, though he had business relations with me many years ago, and we are now intimate; I will say with the fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is so devotedly attached to him? Believe me, Miss Pross, I don't approach the topic with you, out of curiosity, but out of zealous interest." "Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad's the best, you'll tell me," said Miss Pross, softened by the tone of the apology, "he is afraid of the whole subject." "Afraid?" "It's plain enough, I should think, why he may be. It's a dreadful remembrance. Besides that, his loss of himself grew out of it. Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again. That alone wouldn't make the subject pleasant, I should think." It was a profounder remark than Mr. Lorry had looked for. "True," said he, "and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, a doubt lurks in my mind, Miss Pross, whether it is good for Doctor Manette to have that suppression always shut up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasiness it sometimes causes me that has led me to our present confidence." "Can't be helped," said Miss Pross, shaking her head. "Touch that string, and he instantly changes for the worse. Better leave it alone. In short, must leave it alone, like or no like. Sometimes, he gets up in the dead of the night, and will be heard, by us overhead there, walking up and down, walking up and down, in his room. Ladybird has learnt to know then that his mind is walking up and down, walking up and down, in his old prison. She hurries to him, and they go on together, walking up and down, walking up and down, until he is composed. But he never says a word of the true reason of his restlessness, to her, and she finds it best not to hint at it to him. In silence they go walking up and down together, walking up and down together, till her love and company have brought him to himself." Notwithstanding Miss Pross's denial of her own imagination, there was a perception of the pain of being monotonously haunted by one sad idea, in her repetition of the phrase, walking up and down, which testified to her possessing such a thing. The corner has been mentioned as a wonderful corner for echoes; it had begun to echo so resoundingly to the tread of coming feet, that it seemed as though the very mention of that weary pacing to and fro had set it going. "Here they are!" said Miss Pross, rising to break up the conference; "and now we shall have hundreds of people pretty soon!" It was such a curious corner in its acoustical properties, such a peculiar Ear of a place, that as Mr. Lorry stood at the open window, looking for the father and daughter whose steps he heard, he fancied they would never approach. Not only would the echoes die away, as though the steps had gone; but, echoes of other steps that never came would be heard in their stead, and would die away for good when they seemed close at hand. However, father and daughter did at last appear, and Miss Pross was ready at the street door to receive them. Miss Pross was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, and grim, taking off her darling's bonnet when she came up-stairs, and touching it up with the ends of her handkerchief, and blowing the dust off it, and folding her mantle ready for laying by, and smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of women. Her darling was a pleasant sight too, embracing her and thanking her, and protesting against her taking so much trouble for her--which last she only dared to do playfully, or Miss Pross, sorely hurt, would have retired to her own chamber and cried. The Doctor was a pleasant sight too, looking on at them, and telling Miss Pross how she spoilt Lucie, in accents and with eyes that had as much spoiling in them as Miss Pross had, and would have had more if it were possible. Mr. Lorry was a pleasant sight too, beaming at all this in his little wig, and thanking his bachelor stars for having lighted him in his declining years to a Home. But, no Hundreds of people came to see the sights, and Mr. Lorry looked in vain for the fulfilment of Miss Pross's prediction. Dinner-time, and still no Hundreds of people. In the arrangements of the little household, Miss Pross took charge of the lower regions, and always acquitted herself marvellously. Her dinners, of a very modest quality, were so well cooked and so well served, and so neat in their contrivances, half English and half French, that nothing could be better. Miss Pross's friendship being of the thoroughly practical kind, she had ravaged Soho and the adjacent provinces, in search of impoverished French, who, tempted by shillings and half-crowns, would impart culinary mysteries to her. From these decayed sons and daughters of Gaul, she had acquired such wonderful arts, that the woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics regarded her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella's Godmother: who would send out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vegetable or two from the garden, and change them into anything she pleased. On Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor's table, but on other days persisted in taking her meals at unknown periods, either in the lower regions, or in her own room on the second floor--a blue chamber, to which no one but her Ladybird ever gained admittance. On this occasion, Miss Pross, responding to Ladybird's pleasant face and pleasant efforts to please her, unbent exceedingly; so the dinner was very pleasant, too. It was an oppressive day, and, after dinner, Lucie proposed that the wine should be carried out under the plane-tree, and they should sit there in the air. As everything turned upon her, and revolved about her, they went out under the plane-tree, and she carried the wine down for the special benefit of Mr. Lorry. She had installed herself, some time before, as Mr. Lorry's cup-bearer; and while they sat under the plane-tree, talking, she kept his glass replenished. Mysterious backs and ends of houses peeped at them as they talked, and the plane-tree whispered to them in its own way above their heads. Still, the Hundreds of people did not present themselves. Mr. Darnay presented himself while they were sitting under the plane-tree, but he was only One. Doctor Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie. But, Miss Pross suddenly became afflicted with a twitching in the head and body, and retired into the house. She was not unfrequently the victim of this disorder, and she called it, in familiar conversation, "a fit of the jerks." The Doctor was in his best condition, and looked specially young. The resemblance between him and Lucie was very strong at such times, and as they sat side by side, she leaning on his shoulder, and he resting his arm on the back of her chair, it was very agreeable to trace the likeness. He had been talking all day, on many subjects, and with unusual vivacity. "Pray, Doctor Manette," said Mr. Darnay, as they sat under the plane-tree--and he said it in the natural pursuit of the topic in hand, which happened to be the old buildings of London--"have you seen much of the Tower?" "Lucie and I have been there; but only casually. We have seen enough of it, to know that it teems with interest; little more." "_I_ have been there, as you remember," said Darnay, with a smile, though reddening a little angrily, "in another character, and not in a character that gives facilities for seeing much of it. They told me a curious thing when I was there." "What was that?" Lucie asked. "In making some alterations, the workmen came upon an old dungeon, which had been, for many years, built up and forgotten. Every stone of its inner wall was covered by inscriptions which had been carved by prisoners--dates, names, complaints, and prayers. Upon a corner stone in an angle of the wall, one prisoner, who seemed to have gone to execution, had cut as his last work, three letters. They were done with some very poor instrument, and hurriedly, with an unsteady hand. At first, they were read as D. I. C.; but, on being more carefully examined, the last letter was found to be G. There was no record or legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many fruitless guesses were made what the name could have been. At length, it was suggested that the letters were not initials, but the complete word, DIG. The floor was examined very carefully under the inscription, and, in the earth beneath a stone, or tile, or some fragment of paving, were found the ashes of a paper, mingled with the ashes of a small leathern case or bag. What the unknown prisoner had written will never be read, but he had written something, and hidden it away to keep it from the gaoler." "My father," exclaimed Lucie, "you are ill!" He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head. His manner and his look quite terrified them all. "No, my dear, not ill. There are large drops of rain falling, and they made me start. We had better go in." He recovered himself almost instantly. Rain was really falling in large drops, and he showed the back of his hand with rain-drops on it. But, he said not a single word in reference to the discovery that had been told of, and, as they went into the house, the business eye of Mr. Lorry either detected, or fancied it detected, on his face, as it turned towards Charles Darnay, the same singular look that had been upon it when it turned towards him in the passages of the Court House. He recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr. Lorry had doubts of his business eye. The arm of the golden giant in the hall was not more steady than he was, when he stopped under it to remark to them that he was not yet proof against slight surprises (if he ever would be), and that the rain had startled him. Tea-time, and Miss Pross making tea, with another fit of the jerks upon her, and yet no Hundreds of people. Mr. Carton had lounged in, but he made only Two. The night was so very sultry, that although they sat with doors and windows open, they were overpowered by heat. When the tea-table was done with, they all moved to one of the windows, and looked out into the heavy twilight. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her; Carton leaned against a window. The curtains were long and white, and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled into the corner, caught them up to the ceiling, and waved them like spectral wings. "The rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy, and few," said Doctor Manette. "It comes slowly." "It comes surely," said Carton. They spoke low, as people watching and waiting mostly do; as people in a dark room, watching and waiting for Lightning, always do. There was a great hurry in the streets of people speeding away to get shelter before the storm broke; the wonderful corner for echoes resounded with the echoes of footsteps coming and going, yet not a footstep was there. "A multitude of people, and yet a solitude!" said Darnay, when they had listened for a while. "Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?" asked Lucie. "Sometimes, I have sat here of an evening, until I have fancied--but even the shade of a foolish fancy makes me shudder to-night, when all is so black and solemn--" "Let us shudder too. We may know what it is." "It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only impressive as we originate them, I think; they are not to be communicated. I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-bye into our lives." "There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so," Sydney Carton struck in, in his moody way. The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them became more and more rapid. The corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of feet; some, as it seemed, under the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room; some coming, some going, some breaking off, some stopping altogether; all in the distant streets, and not one within sight. "Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us?" "I don't know, Mr. Darnay; I told you it was a foolish fancy, but you asked for it. When I have yielded myself to it, I have been alone, and then I have imagined them the footsteps of the people who are to come into my life, and my father's." "I take them into mine!" said Carton. "_I_ ask no questions and make no stipulations. There is a great crowd bearing down upon us, Miss Manette, and I see them--by the Lightning." He added the last words, after there had been a vivid flash which had shown him lounging in the window. "And I hear them!" he added again, after a peal of thunder. "Here they come, fast, fierce, and furious!" It was the rush and roar of rain that he typified, and it stopped him, for no voice could be heard in it. A memorable storm of thunder and lightning broke with that sweep of water, and there was not a moment's interval in crash, and fire, and rain, until after the moon rose at midnight. The great bell of Saint Paul's was striking one in the cleared air, when Mr. Lorry, escorted by Jerry, high-booted and bearing a lantern, set forth on his return-passage to Clerkenwell. There were solitary patches of road on the way between Soho and Clerkenwell, and Mr. Lorry, mindful of foot-pads, always retained Jerry for this service: though it was usually performed a good two hours earlier. "What a night it has been! Almost a night, Jerry," said Mr. Lorry, "to bring the dead out of their graves." "I never see the night myself, master--nor yet I don't expect to--what would do that," answered Jerry. "Good night, Mr. Carton," said the man of business. "Good night, Mr. Darnay. Shall we ever see such a night again, together!" Perhaps. Perhaps, see the great crowd of people with its rush and roar, bearing down upon them, too.

book 2, Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3

Hundreds of People Four months after the trial, Mr. Lorry dines with the Manettes. The Manettes live in Soho, a charming part of London not yet fully urbanized. Dr. Manette has revived his medical practice out of the house and lives comfortably. He converses with Miss Pross, who is upset because, as she terms it, hundreds of people come looking for Miss Manette although Miss Pross thinks they do not deserve her. Mr. Lorry recognizes Miss Pross's devotion and values her more highly than wealthier women who have balances at Tellson's. He questions Miss Pross about whether Dr. Manette knows the identity of the person who caused him to be jailed for so long; she thinks he does. When Lucie and her father arrive, Miss Pross fusses over the girl, arranging her bonnet and smoothing her hair. Miss Pross had scoured the neighborhood for French expatriates to teach her cooking tricks, and she is now considered a sorceress in the kitchen. After dinner, Mr. Darnay comes to call. Dr. Manette is in good humor until he gets flustered when Darnay tells a story about the Tower of London, in which many prisoners' initials were carved. The only ones that couldn't be matched by a former prisoner were D. I. G. which the guards figured was an imperative to dig. Mr. Carton joins the party as it moves inside out of a rainstorm. Lucy tells of her fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house are the footsteps of people to come in and out of her life. Mr. Carton observes that this vision represents a great number of people who really will be in her life

As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: "You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been "religiously circumwented into the worst of luck." Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an "honest tradesman," the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of "inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might "tear his sheets to ribbons." The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into "acceptable" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves "in a dark place" since their youth. It has a "condemmed hold" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, "Whatever is is right," a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of "whatever is is right" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as "at the root of it, Ogreish." Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, "as the ocean is one day to give up its dead." Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as "one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like." This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_2_part_7.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 7

book 2, chapter 7

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3", "summary": "Monseigneur in Town Monseigneur is a powerful lord of France who holds receptions every two weeks in his hotel in Paris. It takes four men to muster the ceremony necessary to serve him his morning chocolate. His idea of general public business is to let things go their own way, and his idea of specific public business is for things to go whatever way is most profitable for him. Monseigneur found that these principles, in addition to the reduction of his finances, made it advantageous for him to ally himself with a Farmer-General by marrying his sister to one. Everyone in his court is unreal because none knows how to do a lick of work that is useful to anyone else. The Marquis de Evremonde, also known as Monseigneur, condemns him as he leaves, and then rides away in his own carriage. Monseigneur's carriage, driving recklessly fast, runs down and kills a child. The Marquis gives Gaspard, the child's father, a gold coin, and gives Defarge another gold coin for making the philosophical observation that the child is better off dead. As the Marquis is driving away, Defarge throws the coin back at the carriage. Upper-class people continue to drive through Saint Antoine as the poor and hungry look on", "analysis": "As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: \"You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?\" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been \"religiously circumwented into the worst of luck.\" Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an \"honest tradesman,\" the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of \"inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description\" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might \"tear his sheets to ribbons.\" The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into \"acceptable\" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves \"in a dark place\" since their youth. It has a \"condemmed hold\" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, \"Whatever is is right,\" a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of \"whatever is is right\" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as \"at the root of it, Ogreish.\" Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, \"as the ocean is one day to give up its dead.\" Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--\"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.\" A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as \"one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like.\" This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again."}

VII. Monseigneur in Town Monseigneur, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning's chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the Cook. Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two. Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France. A happy circumstance for France, as the like always is for all countries similarly favoured!--always was for England (by way of example), in the regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it. Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let everything go on in its own way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way--tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: "The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur." Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept into his affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, because Monseigneur could not make anything at all of them, and must consequently let them out to somebody who could; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur, after generations of great luxury and expense, was growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a convent, while there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General, poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate cane with a golden apple on the top of it, was now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated before by mankind--always excepting superior mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked down upon him with the loftiest contempt. A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his stables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-General--howsoever his matrimonial relations conduced to social morality--was at least the greatest reality among the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day. For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned with every device of decoration that the taste and skill of the time could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound business; considered with any reference to the scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and not so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame, almost equidistant from the two extremes, could see them both), they would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable business--if that could have been anybody's business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public employments from which anything was to be got; these were to be told off by the score and the score. People not immediately connected with Monseigneur or the State, yet equally unconnected with anything that was real, or with lives passed in travelling by any straight road to any true earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors who made great fortunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had discovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which the State was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time--and has been since--to be known by its fruits of indifference to every natural subject of human interest, were in the most exemplary state of exhaustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur. Such homes had these various notabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur--forming a goodly half of the polite company--would have found it hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world--which does not go far towards the realisation of the name of mother--there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty. The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot--thereby setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur's guidance. Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a jargon about "the Centre of Truth:" holding that Man had got out of the Centre of Truth--which did not need much demonstration--but had not got out of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits went on--and it did a world of good which never became manifest. But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved; these golden fetters rang like precious little bells; and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his devouring hunger far away. Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was required to officiate "frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white silk stockings." At the gallows and the wheel--the axe was a rarity--Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at Monseigneur's reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out! Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven--which may have been one among other reasons why the worshippers of Monseigneur never troubled it. Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on one happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference of Truth. There, Monseigneur turned, and came back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, and was seen no more. The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little storm, and the precious little bells went ringing downstairs. There was soon but one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among the mirrors on his way out. "I devote you," said this person, stopping at the last door on his way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, "to the Devil!" With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked downstairs. He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent paleness; every feature in it clearly defined; one set expression on it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or dints, the only little change that the face ever showed, resided. They persisted in changing colour sometimes, and they would be occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsation; then, they gave a look of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined with attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect of the face made, it was a handsome face, and a remarkable one. Its owner went downstairs into the courtyard, got into his carriage, and drove away. Not many people had talked with him at the reception; he had stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared, under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the common people dispersed before his horses, and often barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they could. With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged. But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses' bridles. "What has gone wrong?" said Monsieur, calmly looking out. A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal. "Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!" said a ragged and submissive man, "it is a child." "Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?" "Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis--it is a pity--yes." The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt. "Killed!" shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. "Dead!" The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes. He took out his purse. "It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Give him that." He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, "Dead!" He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men. "I know all, I know all," said the last comer. "Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?" "You are a philosopher, you there," said the Marquis, smiling. "How do they call you?" "They call me Defarge." "Of what trade?" "Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine." "Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine," said the Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, "and spend it as you will. The horses there; are they right?" Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and ringing on its floor. "Hold!" said Monsieur the Marquis. "Hold the horses! Who threw that?" He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood, a moment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting. "You dogs!" said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an unchanged front, except as to the spots on his nose: "I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels." So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the men, not one. But the woman who stood knitting looked up steadily, and looked the Marquis in the face. It was not for his dignity to notice it; his contemptuous eyes passed over her, and over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat again, and gave the word "Go on!" He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quick succession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came whirling by. The rats had crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained looking on for hours; soldiers and police often passing between them and the spectacle, and making a barrier behind which they slunk, and through which they peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle and bidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball--when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.

book 2, Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3

Monseigneur in Town Monseigneur is a powerful lord of France who holds receptions every two weeks in his hotel in Paris. It takes four men to muster the ceremony necessary to serve him his morning chocolate. His idea of general public business is to let things go their own way, and his idea of specific public business is for things to go whatever way is most profitable for him. Monseigneur found that these principles, in addition to the reduction of his finances, made it advantageous for him to ally himself with a Farmer-General by marrying his sister to one. Everyone in his court is unreal because none knows how to do a lick of work that is useful to anyone else. The Marquis de Evremonde, also known as Monseigneur, condemns him as he leaves, and then rides away in his own carriage. Monseigneur's carriage, driving recklessly fast, runs down and kills a child. The Marquis gives Gaspard, the child's father, a gold coin, and gives Defarge another gold coin for making the philosophical observation that the child is better off dead. As the Marquis is driving away, Defarge throws the coin back at the carriage. Upper-class people continue to drive through Saint Antoine as the poor and hungry look on

As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: "You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been "religiously circumwented into the worst of luck." Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an "honest tradesman," the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of "inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might "tear his sheets to ribbons." The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into "acceptable" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves "in a dark place" since their youth. It has a "condemmed hold" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, "Whatever is is right," a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of "whatever is is right" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as "at the root of it, Ogreish." Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, "as the ocean is one day to give up its dead." Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as "one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like." This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_2_part_8.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 8

book 2, chapter 8

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3", "summary": "Monseigneur in the Country The Marquis continues driving in his carriage through another poor village, this one made destitute by over-taxation. He stops and demands to speak with one of the villagers, asking him why he stared so intently as the Marquis drove up the hill. The man replies that there was a man under the carriage hanging from the shoe. He describes the man as white as a miller and tall as a ghost. The villager claims that when the carriage stopped, the man underneath dived headfirst over the hillside. The Marquis loses patience with the story and asks Monsieur Gabelle, the Postmaster, to put the villagers out of his sight. The Marquis sets off again but is waylaid by a woman with a petition. Her husband has died and she wishes for a piece of wood or stone to mark his grave; too many have died and become heaps of unmarked earth. He pushes away from her without replying and continues the journey to his chAC/teau. When he arrives he asks if Monsieur Charles has yet arrived from England", "analysis": "As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: \"You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?\" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been \"religiously circumwented into the worst of luck.\" Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an \"honest tradesman,\" the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of \"inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description\" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might \"tear his sheets to ribbons.\" The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into \"acceptable\" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves \"in a dark place\" since their youth. It has a \"condemmed hold\" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, \"Whatever is is right,\" a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of \"whatever is is right\" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as \"at the root of it, Ogreish.\" Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, \"as the ocean is one day to give up its dead.\" Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--\"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.\" A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as \"one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like.\" This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again."}

VIII. Monseigneur in the Country A beautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly--a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away. Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not from within; it was occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control--the setting sun. The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in crimson. "It will die out," said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, "directly." In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed quickly; the sun and the Marquis going down together, there was no glow left when the drag was taken off. But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who was coming near home. The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive signs of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed. Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect--Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag. Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postilions' whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him. He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the truth through the best part of a hundred years. Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before Monseigneur of the Court--only the difference was, that these faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate--when a grizzled mender of the roads joined the group. "Bring me hither that fellow!" said the Marquis to the courier. The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain. "I passed you on the road?" "Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on the road." "Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?" "Monseigneur, it is true." "What did you look at, so fixedly?" "Monseigneur, I looked at the man." He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage. "What man, pig? And why look there?" "Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe--the drag." "Who?" demanded the traveller. "Monseigneur, the man." "May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?" "Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him." "Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?" "With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over--like this!" He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow. "What was he like?" "Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre!" The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience. "Truly, you did well," said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that such vermin were not to ruffle him, "to see a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle!" Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an official manner. "Bah! Go aside!" said Monsieur Gabelle. "Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle." "Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders." "Did he run away, fellow?--where is that Accursed?" The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap. Some half-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him out, and presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis. "Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the drag?" "Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges into the river." "See to it, Gabelle. Go on!" The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky to save their skins and bones; they had very little else to save, or they might not have been so fortunate. The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses; the courier was audible, trotting on ahead into the dull distance. At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-ground, with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a poor figure in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic carver, but he had studied the figure from the life--his own life, maybe--for it was dreadfully spare and thin. To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly, and presented herself at the carriage-door. "It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition." With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable face, Monseigneur looked out. "How, then! What is it? Always petitions!" "Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the forester." "What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you people. He cannot pay something?" "He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead." "Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?" "Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor grass." "Well?" "Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass?" "Again, well?" She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door--tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to feel the appealing touch. "Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My husband died of want; so many die of want; so many more will die of want." "Again, well? Can I feed them?" "Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don't ask it. My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband's name, may be placed over him to show where he lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur! Monseigneur!" The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league or two of distance that remained between him and his chateau. The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away; to whom the mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as they could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled in little casements; which lights, as the casements darkened, and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having been extinguished. The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many over-hanging trees, was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time; and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door of his chateau was opened to him. "Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from England?" "Monseigneur, not yet."

book 2, Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3

Monseigneur in the Country The Marquis continues driving in his carriage through another poor village, this one made destitute by over-taxation. He stops and demands to speak with one of the villagers, asking him why he stared so intently as the Marquis drove up the hill. The man replies that there was a man under the carriage hanging from the shoe. He describes the man as white as a miller and tall as a ghost. The villager claims that when the carriage stopped, the man underneath dived headfirst over the hillside. The Marquis loses patience with the story and asks Monsieur Gabelle, the Postmaster, to put the villagers out of his sight. The Marquis sets off again but is waylaid by a woman with a petition. Her husband has died and she wishes for a piece of wood or stone to mark his grave; too many have died and become heaps of unmarked earth. He pushes away from her without replying and continues the journey to his chAC/teau. When he arrives he asks if Monsieur Charles has yet arrived from England

As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: "You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been "religiously circumwented into the worst of luck." Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an "honest tradesman," the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of "inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might "tear his sheets to ribbons." The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into "acceptable" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves "in a dark place" since their youth. It has a "condemmed hold" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, "Whatever is is right," a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of "whatever is is right" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as "at the root of it, Ogreish." Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, "as the ocean is one day to give up its dead." Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as "one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like." This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_2_part_9.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 9

book 2, chapter 9

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3", "summary": "The Gorgon's Head The chAC/teau is all stone, as if a Gorgon's head had looked at it. Monseigneur sits down to dinner after complaining that his nephew has not yet arrived. When Charles Darnay does arrive, Monseigneur observes that he has taken a long time coming from London. Darnay accuses Monseigneur of an effort to have him imprisoned in France with a letter de cachet. Monseigneur does not deny this, but he complains about the inaccessibility of such measures and the privileges that the aristocracy has lost. He considers repression to be the only effective and lasting policy; Darnay replies that their family has done wrong and will pay the consequences. Darnay renounces his property and France. Monseigneur mocks him for having not been more successful in England, then mentions the doctor and his daughter but ominously refuses to say more. Owls howl through the night, and when the sun rises its slanting angle makes the chAC/teau fountain seem full of blood. The villagers wake up first to start their toil, and the occupants of the chAC/teau awake later, but when they do arise, they engage in frenzied activity. Monseigneur was murdered during the night. There is a knife through his heart, containing a piece of paper on which it is written: \"Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques", "analysis": "As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: \"You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?\" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been \"religiously circumwented into the worst of luck.\" Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an \"honest tradesman,\" the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of \"inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description\" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might \"tear his sheets to ribbons.\" The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into \"acceptable\" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves \"in a dark place\" since their youth. It has a \"condemmed hold\" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, \"Whatever is is right,\" a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of \"whatever is is right\" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as \"at the root of it, Ogreish.\" Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, \"as the ocean is one day to give up its dead.\" Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--\"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.\" A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as \"one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like.\" This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again."}

IX. The Gorgon's Head It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it, when it was finished, two centuries ago. Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the Marquis, flambeau preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing the darkness to elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof of the great pile of stable building away among the trees. All else was so quiet, that the flambeau carried up the steps, and the other flambeau held at the great door, burnt as if they were in a close room of state, instead of being in the open night-air. Other sound than the owl's voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again. The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the Marquis crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears, swords, and knives of the chase; grimmer with certain heavy riding-rods and riding-whips, of which many a peasant, gone to his benefactor Death, had felt the weight when his lord was angry. Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made fast for the night, Monsieur the Marquis, with his flambeau-bearer going on before, went up the staircase to a door in a corridor. This thrown open, admitted him to his own private apartment of three rooms: his bed-chamber and two others. High vaulted rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths for the burning of wood in winter time, and all luxuries befitting the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country. The fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never to break--the fourteenth Louis--was conspicuous in their rich furniture; but, it was diversified by many objects that were illustrations of old pages in the history of France. A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms; a round room, in one of the chateau's four extinguisher-topped towers. A small lofty room, with its window wide open, and the wooden jalousie-blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed in slight horizontal lines of black, alternating with their broad lines of stone colour. "My nephew," said the Marquis, glancing at the supper preparation; "they said he was not arrived." Nor was he; but, he had been expected with Monseigneur. "Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night; nevertheless, leave the table as it is. I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour." In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat down alone to his sumptuous and choice supper. His chair was opposite to the window, and he had taken his soup, and was raising his glass of Bordeaux to his lips, when he put it down. "What is that?" he calmly asked, looking with attention at the horizontal lines of black and stone colour. "Monseigneur? That?" "Outside the blinds. Open the blinds." It was done. "Well?" "Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are all that are here." The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide, had looked out into the vacant darkness, and stood with that blank behind him, looking round for instructions. "Good," said the imperturbable master. "Close them again." That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his supper. He was half way through it, when he again stopped with his glass in his hand, hearing the sound of wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to the front of the chateau. "Ask who is arrived." It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had diminished the distance rapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up with Monseigneur on the road. He had heard of Monseigneur, at the posting-houses, as being before him. He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited him then and there, and that he was prayed to come to it. In a little while he came. He had been known in England as Charles Darnay. Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did not shake hands. "You left Paris yesterday, sir?" he said to Monseigneur, as he took his seat at table. "Yesterday. And you?" "I come direct." "From London?" "Yes." "You have been a long time coming," said the Marquis, with a smile. "On the contrary; I come direct." "Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long time intending the journey." "I have been detained by"--the nephew stopped a moment in his answer--"various business." "Without doubt," said the polished uncle. So long as a servant was present, no other words passed between them. When coffee had been served and they were alone together, the nephew, looking at the uncle and meeting the eyes of the face that was like a fine mask, opened a conversation. "I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the object that took me away. It carried me into great and unexpected peril; but it is a sacred object, and if it had carried me to death I hope it would have sustained me." "Not to death," said the uncle; "it is not necessary to say, to death." "I doubt, sir," returned the nephew, "whether, if it had carried me to the utmost brink of death, you would have cared to stop me there." The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of the fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to that; the uncle made a graceful gesture of protest, which was so clearly a slight form of good breeding that it was not reassuring. "Indeed, sir," pursued the nephew, "for anything I know, you may have expressly worked to give a more suspicious appearance to the suspicious circumstances that surrounded me." "No, no, no," said the uncle, pleasantly. "But, however that may be," resumed the nephew, glancing at him with deep distrust, "I know that your diplomacy would stop me by any means, and would know no scruple as to means." "My friend, I told you so," said the uncle, with a fine pulsation in the two marks. "Do me the favour to recall that I told you so, long ago." "I recall it." "Thank you," said the Marquis--very sweetly indeed. His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a musical instrument. "In effect, sir," pursued the nephew, "I believe it to be at once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me out of a prison in France here." "I do not quite understand," returned the uncle, sipping his coffee. "Dare I ask you to explain?" "I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the Court, and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a letter de cachet would have sent me to some fortress indefinitely." "It is possible," said the uncle, with great calmness. "For the honour of the family, I could even resolve to incommode you to that extent. Pray excuse me!" "I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one," observed the nephew. "I would not say happily, my friend," returned the uncle, with refined politeness; "I would not be sure of that. A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude, might influence your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it for yourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you say, at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these gentle aids to the power and honour of families, these slight favours that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interest and importunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted (comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom), one fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter--_his_ daughter? We have lost many privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the assertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far as to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, very bad!" The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his head; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country still containing himself, that great means of regeneration. "We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the modern time also," said the nephew, gloomily, "that I believe our name to be more detested than any name in France." "Let us hope so," said the uncle. "Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low." "There is not," pursued the nephew, in his former tone, "a face I can look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me with any deference on it but the dark deference of fear and slavery." "A compliment," said the Marquis, "to the grandeur of the family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its grandeur. Hah!" And he took another gentle little pinch of snuff, and lightly crossed his legs. But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer's assumption of indifference. "Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shuts out the sky." That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a picture of the chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty like it as they too were to be a very few years hence, could have been shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his own from the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked rains. As for the roof he vaunted, he might have found _that_ shutting out the sky in a new way--to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets. "Meanwhile," said the Marquis, "I will preserve the honour and repose of the family, if you will not. But you must be fatigued. Shall we terminate our conference for the night?" "A moment more." "An hour, if you please." "Sir," said the nephew, "we have done wrong, and are reaping the fruits of wrong." "_We_ have done wrong?" repeated the Marquis, with an inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to himself. "Our family; our honourable family, whose honour is of so much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my father's time, we did a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came between us and our pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I speak of my father's time, when it is equally yours? Can I separate my father's twin-brother, joint inheritor, and next successor, from himself?" "Death has done that!" said the Marquis. "And has left me," answered the nephew, "bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it; seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother's lips, and obey the last look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me to have mercy and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain." "Seeking them from me, my nephew," said the Marquis, touching him on the breast with his forefinger--they were now standing by the hearth--"you will for ever seek them in vain, be assured." Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through the body, and said, "My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I have lived." When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put his box in his pocket. "Better to be a rational creature," he added then, after ringing a small bell on the table, "and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see." "This property and France are lost to me," said the nephew, sadly; "I renounce them." "Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it yet?" "I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow--" "Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable." "--or twenty years hence--" "You do me too much honour," said the Marquis; "still, I prefer that supposition." "--I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and ruin!" "Hah!" said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room. "To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering." "Hah!" said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner. "If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another generation, suffer less; but it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land." "And you?" said the uncle. "Forgive my curiosity; do you, under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live?" "I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day--work." "In England, for example?" "Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this country. The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no other." The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bed-chamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication. The Marquis looked that way, and listened for the retreating step of his valet. "England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently you have prospered there," he observed then, turning his calm face to his nephew with a smile. "I have already said, that for my prospering there, I am sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my Refuge." "They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of many. You know a compatriot who has found a Refuge there? A Doctor?" "Yes." "With a daughter?" "Yes." "Yes," said the Marquis. "You are fatigued. Good night!" As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery to those words, which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the same time, the thin straight lines of the setting of the eyes, and the thin straight lips, and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that looked handsomely diabolic. "Yes," repeated the Marquis. "A Doctor with a daughter. Yes. So commences the new philosophy! You are fatigued. Good night!" It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone face outside the chateau as to interrogate that face of his. The nephew looked at him, in vain, in passing on to the door. "Good night!" said the uncle. "I look to the pleasure of seeing you again in the morning. Good repose! Light Monsieur my nephew to his chamber there!--And burn Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you will," he added to himself, before he rang his little bell again, and summoned his valet to his own bedroom. The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked to and fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for sleep, that hot still night. Rustling about the room, his softly-slippered feet making no noise on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger:--looked like some enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story, whose periodical change into tiger form was either just going off, or just coming on. He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, looking again at the scraps of the day's journey that came unbidden into his mind; the slow toil up the hill at sunset, the setting sun, the descent, the mill, the prison on the crag, the little village in the hollow, the peasants at the fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap pointing out the chain under the carriage. That fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and the tall man with his arms up, crying, "Dead!" "I am cool now," said Monsieur the Marquis, "and may go to bed." So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let his thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its silence with a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep. The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black night for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours, the horses in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them. For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the chateau, lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape, dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass were undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the Cross might have come down, for anything that could be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed and freed. The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and unheard--both melting away, like the minutes that were falling from the spring of Time--through three dark hours. Then, the grey water of both began to be ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were opened. Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with open mouth and dropped under-jaw, looked awe-stricken. Now, the sun was full up, and movement began in the village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth shivering--chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the fountain; some, to the fields; men and women here, to dig and delve; men and women there, to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out, to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross, a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers, the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its foot. The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but awoke gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of the chase had been reddened as of old; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine; now, doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient to be loosed. All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; nor the booting and tramping here and there and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away? What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got to the fountain. All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing about in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but showing no other emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily brought in and tethered to anything that would hold them, were looking stupidly on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly repaying their trouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of the people of the chateau, and some of those of the posting-house, and all the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were crowded on the other side of the little street in a purposeless way, that was highly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty particular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with his blue cap. What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora? It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau. 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. It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled: "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques."

book 2, Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-1-3

The Gorgon's Head The chAC/teau is all stone, as if a Gorgon's head had looked at it. Monseigneur sits down to dinner after complaining that his nephew has not yet arrived. When Charles Darnay does arrive, Monseigneur observes that he has taken a long time coming from London. Darnay accuses Monseigneur of an effort to have him imprisoned in France with a letter de cachet. Monseigneur does not deny this, but he complains about the inaccessibility of such measures and the privileges that the aristocracy has lost. He considers repression to be the only effective and lasting policy; Darnay replies that their family has done wrong and will pay the consequences. Darnay renounces his property and France. Monseigneur mocks him for having not been more successful in England, then mentions the doctor and his daughter but ominously refuses to say more. Owls howl through the night, and when the sun rises its slanting angle makes the chAC/teau fountain seem full of blood. The villagers wake up first to start their toil, and the occupants of the chAC/teau awake later, but when they do arise, they engage in frenzied activity. Monseigneur was murdered during the night. There is a knife through his heart, containing a piece of paper on which it is written: "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques

As in Shakespearean tragedies, the great elements of tragedy are provided by the upper classes, while the lower classes provide comic relief, often by the distinct color and topics of their language. In Chapter 1, the Cruncher family provides comic relief from the heavy sentimentality of the reuniting of the Manettes. Jerry Cruncher uses laughably vivid language to censure his wife's sense of religion: "You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" There is humor in the fact that Jerry objects to the very characteristics that actually make his wife nice. For a man who claims not to believe in religion, Jerry has a very real fear of the success of prayer, believing that he has been "religiously circumwented into the worst of luck." Physical appearance and names continue to be accurate indicators of the conditions of the humans they belong to. Despite Jerry's favorite appellation of himself as an "honest tradesman," the details illustrate that the opposite is more likely the case. The last name of Cruncher is illustrative of the morbid nature of his job, which is echoed by the younger Cruncher's hobby of "inflicting bodily and mental injuries of an acute description" on boys younger and weaker than himself on Fleet Street. The boy is a physical double; he is destined to develop into his father. He wears a slightly less dangerous version of the spikes that adorn his father's head. These spikes, which an earlier chapter described as making him an undesirable player of leapfrog, are portrayed as more hazardous in this chapter; they might "tear his sheets to ribbons." The father and son are also united in their resemblance to animals, looking like a pair of monkeys as they absently survey Fleet Street. Also in Chapter 1, Dickens drops more clues to foreshadow the unsavory nature of Jerry Cruncher's real business. One as yet inexplicable detail is the rustiness that surrounds Jerry. Others include the fact that while he returns home from Tellson's with clean boots, he wakes up in the morning to a set of muddy boots. Like France, England has its prisons that admit young men and release old men. In England, the prisons are transformed into "acceptable" social structures. Tellson's Bank serves as one of these prisons. It has very elderly clerks who have committed themselves to service, or kept themselves "in a dark place" since their youth. It has a "condemmed hold" for those who need to visit the House. Everything in Tellson's points towards death and decay: the letters and deeds are decaying from being kept for so long. The Bank is also down the street from the Temple Bar Courts, which send several people to gruesome deaths everyday. Old Bailey is described in Chapter 2 as a perfect example of the precept, "Whatever is is right," a direct quotation from Alexander Pope, an eighteenth- century satirist. The phrase is the last line of the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, which Pope wrote to laud man's abilities and the great possibilities of his relationship with God. The first Epistle is mainly concerned with theodicy, that is, explaining why a perfect God would allow suffering in a world of his own creation. The French philosopher Voltaire challenged the optimism of "whatever is is right" in his satire Candide. In his own way, consistent with his self-image as a social crusader, Dickens also finds this optimism unlikely. It seems unforgivable that Old Bailey is allowed to continue in its abuses, despite the fact that it has handed down incorrect and probably unjust sentences. Trials, like the famous madhouse named Bedlam, not only were designed to deal with criminals and the insane, but they also served as entertainment for the general public. Families would go on outings to Old Bailey to jeer at criminals. Dickens strongly critiques this excessive interest in human suffering, illustrating that the only reason for the interest in Mr. Darnay's person is the possibility of his severe sentence. Dickens condemns this monstrous interest in viewing a body that is later to be mangled as "at the root of it, Ogreish." Dickens also presents another version of the Paris mobs - in this case, it becomes the English crowd at the courts. Dickens thus presents a foreshadowing of future events: the mob, hungry for blood, eagerly watches a man who is under the threat of death. The accused man's name is Charles Darnay. Observant readers will notice that the CD of Darnay's initials are also the initials for Charles Dickens. Some scholars suggest that Darnay is an idealized version of Dickens. Darnay is clearly an idealized man, with his handsome looks and calm demeanor. However, he is placed under a mirror on the stand, and he looks into it. Dickens uses the mirror to suggest that Darnay will be presented with a mirror image of himself - an image we will see in chapter 3. Darnay's acquittal in Chapter 3 is the second example of resurrection in the novel. His conviction is almost certain before the appearance of Mr. Carton, and this is what has brought out the crowd. Dickens compares the onlookers to blueflies, noting their buzz after any piece of evidence in Darnay's disfavor is disclosed. The title of the chapter refers to the crowd's disappointment when there is no blood for them to see, and the final image of the chapter is of the masses buzzing Old Bailey in search of other carrion to feed on. Dickens included frequent biblical references, and these would have been very familiar to the audience of his day. In Chapter 2, he depicts the mirror that hangs over the bar as having recorded innumerable criminal faces. He reflects on how haunted Old Bailey would be if the mirror would give up its previous reflections, "as the ocean is one day to give up its dead." Dickens alludes here to Revelations 20:13--"And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." A more obvious biblical reference is the portrayal of Barsad by the defense lawyer as "one of the greatest scoundrels upon the earth since accursed Judas-which he certainly did look rather like." This is, of course, a reference to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in return for money. The assertion that he looks like Judas is absurd, because there is no record of how Judas looked, but it is representative of the wild accusations and poetic license used in courts of the day. Barsad's characterization as Judas highlights the thematic connection of Darnay's acquittal with Jesus's resurrection. Dickens presents Sydney Carton as a lowly clerk. However, he is actually a powerful man. His power is a covert power that stems from his powers of observation. After all, he is the first one to see Darnay's resemblance to him, and he calls for help for the fainting Lucie, who is ignored by the crowd. Carton's observations will become a force later in the book, especially when his resemblance to Darnay holds importance again.

gradesaver

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finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_4_part_1.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 10

book 2, chapter 10

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-10-14", "summary": "Two Promises A year later, Charles Darnay is back in England, happily working as a tutor of French. He has been in love with Lucie since he met her, and he finally asks her father for permission to make his feelings known to her. Despite Dr. Manette's hesitations, Darnay convinces him that his intentions are honorable and sincere. He does not wish to come between Lucie and her father; he wishes, if possible, to bind them closer. There is always a touch of reserve in Dr. Manette's reception of Darnay, and this struggle is evident in his expression of dread, and although he gives his blessing to Darnay, something is not quite right. Darnay tells the doctor that he is using an assumed name and tries to tell him why he is in England and what his real name is, but the doctor stops him. He says that if Charles does marry Lucie, he should tell him these secrets on the marriage morning. When Lucie returns to the house that night, she hears him working on his shoemaking again for the first time since Paris and is very distressed. She knocks on his door and he stops", "analysis": "Psychic troubles cause the Doctor to resume his shoemaking. Trouble is foreshadowed when Darnay leaves the house; the Doctor senses that Darnay will have very troubling news. Evidently something has been a throwback to his time in prison, since the return to shoemaking shows that the Doctor is seriously disturbed by something Darnay has said. The Doctor's occasional regressions will continue to be a great cause of concern for his friends and his daughter. At first it appears that Lucie has an easy choice of the three suitors that Dr. Manette mentions. She can choose between the handsome Darnay, the boorish Stryver, or the drunken, rude Carton. Yet Dickens makes the story interesting through his introduction of tension between Darnay and Dr. Manette. Dickens makes it clear that something has occurred between Darnay and Dr. Manette in the past, possibly something that has to do with Manette's imprisonment. The humor in Chapter 11 comes from Stryver's prideful presumption that Lucie will willingly and eagerly accept him as a husband. Gender roles in the nineteenth century were such that Lucie could not and would not express direct interest in a man whom she loved or desired, but she could reject the suit of a man who was not agreeable to her. Stryver's dwelling on the subject of marrying for love rather than money illustrates the fact that many marriages were made for economic convenience rather than love. Although Stryver congratulates himself on sidestepping his economic interests, he recommends an economically prudent marriage to Carton. Ironically, he will fall back on this type of union himself, marrying a rich widow with three sons when he finds that his attraction to Lucie is not mutual. The title of Chapter 12 is, like others, ironic. Mr. Stryver is far from delicate; he commits a number of indelicate actions. His very deportment lacks tact, as he throws his overly large body around the street and then around the interior of Tellson's--with no regard for the safety of others. His entire conversation with Mr. Lorry is indiscreet, and he puts Mr. Lorry in the very awkward position of turning Stryver down on Lucie's behalf. Still, it is fortunate that Mr. Lorry is able to intervene to present a worse situation later. Although marriage tended to be dominated by economics at the time, it is indelicate of Stryver to mention Lucie's reasons for accepting him as materialistic. Mr. Lorry is forced to remind Stryver that he needs Lucie's acceptance to go ahead, stressing that \"the young lady goes before all.\" But Stryver looks at the matter backwards the whole way through. When he is planning his intended wedding, he is merely debating when to \"make her happiness known to her\" and when to \"give her his hand.\" This is a humorous reversal of the usual assumption that a woman gives her hand in marriage, not the other way around. Stryver's second and more seriously indelicate action is his allusion to Lucie's virtue. His pride is hurt by the fact that she is not inclined to accept him, and he protects his hurt feelings by suggesting that Lucie has acted improperly or even foolishly, as though she has demonstrated that after all she is ineligible for his attentions. This is a very serious charge; in the nineteenth century, a woman's virtue was priceless while a stain on her reputation was irreversible. It is good that Stryver does not voice this idea to anyone other than Mr. Lorry, who is too bewildered to be outraged, because it could have done serious damage to Lucie. The humor in the title of Chapter 13 is that a fellow of no delicacy can be better than the fellow of false delicacy. Carton has no delicacy because he honestly tells his feelings to Lucie while knowing they are not returned. However, something productive comes of this interchange, in that Lucie is made aware of his true character and Carton is uplifted by her compassion. This represents the most ideal way to approach Lucie. Although he wavers in the novel between intense feeling and caustic flippancy, in this chapter Carton ironically reveals himself to be the fellow with the most delicacy. Gender roles function in this chapter in precisely the formula of a sentimental novel. The sentimental novel, which excites the readers' compassionate feelings, often includes the successful efforts of good women to reform men who are morally corrupt. In this genre, women are seen as moral beacons whose influence is necessary to produce a more ethical society. The opening section of Chapter 14 makes a connection between Jerry Cruncher and Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Italian author of the Divine Comedy. \"Time was when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place and mused at the sight of men\" refers to the fact that Dante supposedly sat upon a stool to contemplate. There is a poetic connection, too, in that both were concerned with what happens after death, although Dante was concerned about the soul's experience in the afterlife while Cruncher is concerned with how he can profit from a dead body. Jerry also shows his fondness for euphemisms, a fact that is reflected in the title of the chapter. His digging bodies from the ground makes him \"an honest tradesman,\" and the profession is known as \"resurrection-man;\" his wife is berated for \"flopping,\" Jerry's word for praying. In this way Jerry tries to invert normal values. He gives impolite terms to respectable events and polite terms for questionable work in a comic reach for respectability."}

X. Two Promises More months, to the number of twelve, had come and gone, and Mr. Charles Darnay was established in England as a higher teacher of the French language who was conversant with French literature. In this age, he would have been a Professor; in that age, he was a Tutor. He read with young men who could find any leisure and interest for the study of a living tongue spoken all over the world, and he cultivated a taste for its stores of knowledge and fancy. He could write of them, besides, in sound English, and render them into sound English. Such masters were not at that time easily found; Princes that had been, and Kings that were to be, were not yet of the Teacher class, and no ruined nobility had dropped out of Tellson's ledgers, to turn cooks and carpenters. As a tutor, whose attainments made the student's way unusually pleasant and profitable, and as an elegant translator who brought something to his work besides mere dictionary knowledge, young Mr. Darnay soon became known and encouraged. He was well acquainted, more-over, with the circumstances of his country, and those were of ever-growing interest. So, with great perseverance and untiring industry, he prospered. In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses; if he had had any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered. He had expected labour, and he found it, and did it and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted. A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, where he read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European languages, instead of conveying Greek and Latin through the Custom-house. The rest of his time he passed in London. Now, from the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one way--Charles Darnay's way--the way of the love of a woman. He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his danger. He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear as the sound of her compassionate voice; he had never seen a face so tenderly beautiful, as hers when it was confronted with his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug for him. But, he had not yet spoken to her on the subject; the assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond the heaving water and the long, long, dusty roads--the solid stone chateau which had itself become the mere mist of a dream--had been done a year, and he had never yet, by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her the state of his heart. That he had his reasons for this, he knew full well. It was again a summer day when, lately arrived in London from his college occupation, he turned into the quiet corner in Soho, bent on seeking an opportunity of opening his mind to Doctor Manette. It was the close of the summer day, and he knew Lucie to be out with Miss Pross. He found the Doctor reading in his arm-chair at a window. The energy which had at once supported him under his old sufferings and aggravated their sharpness, had been gradually restored to him. He was now a very energetic man indeed, with great firmness of purpose, strength of resolution, and vigour of action. In his recovered energy he was sometimes a little fitful and sudden, as he had at first been in the exercise of his other recovered faculties; but, this had never been frequently observable, and had grown more and more rare. He studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of fatigue with ease, and was equably cheerful. To him, now entered Charles Darnay, at sight of whom he laid aside his book and held out his hand. "Charles Darnay! I rejoice to see you. We have been counting on your return these three or four days past. Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton were both here yesterday, and both made you out to be more than due." "I am obliged to them for their interest in the matter," he answered, a little coldly as to them, though very warmly as to the Doctor. "Miss Manette--" "Is well," said the Doctor, as he stopped short, "and your return will delight us all. She has gone out on some household matters, but will soon be home." "Doctor Manette, I knew she was from home. I took the opportunity of her being from home, to beg to speak to you." There was a blank silence. "Yes?" said the Doctor, with evident constraint. "Bring your chair here, and speak on." He complied as to the chair, but appeared to find the speaking on less easy. "I have had the happiness, Doctor Manette, of being so intimate here," so he at length began, "for some year and a half, that I hope the topic on which I am about to touch may not--" He was stayed by the Doctor's putting out his hand to stop him. When he had kept it so a little while, he said, drawing it back: "Is Lucie the topic?" "She is." "It is hard for me to speak of her at any time. It is very hard for me to hear her spoken of in that tone of yours, Charles Darnay." "It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage, and deep love, Doctor Manette!" he said deferentially. There was another blank silence before her father rejoined: "I believe it. I do you justice; I believe it." His constraint was so manifest, and it was so manifest, too, that it originated in an unwillingness to approach the subject, that Charles Darnay hesitated. "Shall I go on, sir?" Another blank. "Yes, go on." "You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden. Dear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her. You have loved yourself; let your old love speak for me!" The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes bent on the ground. At the last words, he stretched out his hand again, hurriedly, and cried: "Not that, sir! Let that be! I adjure you, do not recall that!" His cry was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang in Charles Darnay's ears long after he had ceased. He motioned with the hand he had extended, and it seemed to be an appeal to Darnay to pause. The latter so received it, and remained silent. "I ask your pardon," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, after some moments. "I do not doubt your loving Lucie; you may be satisfied of it." He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at him, or raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his hand, and his white hair overshadowed his face: "Have you spoken to Lucie?" "No." "Nor written?" "Never." "It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that your self-denial is to be referred to your consideration for her father. Her father thanks you." He offered his hand; but his eyes did not go with it. "I know," said Darnay, respectfully, "how can I fail to know, Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together from day to day, that between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and child. I know, Doctor Manette--how can I fail to know--that, mingled with the affection and duty of a daughter who has become a woman, there is, in her heart, towards you, all the love and reliance of infancy itself. I know that, as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is now devoted to you with all the constancy and fervour of her present years and character, united to the trustfulness and attachment of the early days in which you were lost to her. I know perfectly well that if you had been restored to her from the world beyond this life, you could hardly be invested, in her sight, with a more sacred character than that in which you are always with her. I know that when she is clinging to you, the hands of baby, girl, and woman, all in one, are round your neck. I know that in loving you she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted, loves you through your dreadful trial and in your blessed restoration. I have known this, night and day, since I have known you in your home." Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His breathing was a little quickened; but he repressed all other signs of agitation. "Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always seeing her and you with this hallowed light about you, I have forborne, and forborne, as long as it was in the nature of man to do it. I have felt, and do even now feel, that to bring my love--even mine--between you, is to touch your history with something not quite so good as itself. But I love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her!" "I believe it," answered her father, mournfully. "I have thought so before now. I believe it." "But, do not believe," said Darnay, upon whose ear the mournful voice struck with a reproachful sound, "that if my fortune were so cast as that, being one day so happy as to make her my wife, I must at any time put any separation between her and you, I could or would breathe a word of what I now say. Besides that I should know it to be hopeless, I should know it to be a baseness. If I had any such possibility, even at a remote distance of years, harboured in my thoughts, and hidden in my heart--if it ever had been there--if it ever could be there--I could not now touch this honoured hand." He laid his own upon it as he spoke. "No, dear Doctor Manette. Like you, a voluntary exile from France; like you, driven from it by its distractions, oppressions, and miseries; like you, striving to live away from it by my own exertions, and trusting in a happier future; I look only to sharing your fortunes, sharing your life and home, and being faithful to you to the death. Not to divide with Lucie her privilege as your child, companion, and friend; but to come in aid of it, and bind her closer to you, if such a thing can be." His touch still lingered on her father's hand. Answering the touch for a moment, but not coldly, her father rested his hands upon the arms of his chair, and looked up for the first time since the beginning of the conference. A struggle was evidently in his face; a struggle with that occasional look which had a tendency in it to dark doubt and dread. "You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles Darnay, that I thank you with all my heart, and will open all my heart--or nearly so. Have you any reason to believe that Lucie loves you?" "None. As yet, none." "Is it the immediate object of this confidence, that you may at once ascertain that, with my knowledge?" "Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness to do it for weeks; I might (mistaken or not mistaken) have that hopefulness to-morrow." "Do you seek any guidance from me?" "I ask none, sir. But I have thought it possible that you might have it in your power, if you should deem it right, to give me some." "Do you seek any promise from me?" "I do seek that." "What is it?" "I well understand that, without you, I could have no hope. I well understand that, even if Miss Manette held me at this moment in her innocent heart--do not think I have the presumption to assume so much--I could retain no place in it against her love for her father." "If that be so, do you see what, on the other hand, is involved in it?" "I understand equally well, that a word from her father in any suitor's favour, would outweigh herself and all the world. For which reason, Doctor Manette," said Darnay, modestly but firmly, "I would not ask that word, to save my life." "I am sure of it. Charles Darnay, mysteries arise out of close love, as well as out of wide division; in the former case, they are subtle and delicate, and difficult to penetrate. My daughter Lucie is, in this one respect, such a mystery to me; I can make no guess at the state of her heart." "May I ask, sir, if you think she is--" As he hesitated, her father supplied the rest. "Is sought by any other suitor?" "It is what I meant to say." Her father considered a little before he answered: "You have seen Mr. Carton here, yourself. Mr. Stryver is here too, occasionally. If it be at all, it can only be by one of these." "Or both," said Darnay. "I had not thought of both; I should not think either, likely. You want a promise from me. Tell me what it is." "It is, that if Miss Manette should bring to you at any time, on her own part, such a confidence as I have ventured to lay before you, you will bear testimony to what I have said, and to your belief in it. I hope you may be able to think so well of me, as to urge no influence against me. I say nothing more of my stake in this; this is what I ask. The condition on which I ask it, and which you have an undoubted right to require, I will observe immediately." "I give the promise," said the Doctor, "without any condition. I believe your object to be, purely and truthfully, as you have stated it. I believe your intention is to perpetuate, and not to weaken, the ties between me and my other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell me that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to you. If there were--Charles Darnay, if there were--" The young man had taken his hand gratefully; their hands were joined as the Doctor spoke: "--any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions, anything whatsoever, new or old, against the man she really loved--the direct responsibility thereof not lying on his head--they should all be obliterated for her sake. She is everything to me; more to me than suffering, more to me than wrong, more to me--Well! This is idle talk." So strange was the way in which he faded into silence, and so strange his fixed look when he had ceased to speak, that Darnay felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that slowly released and dropped it. "You said something to me," said Doctor Manette, breaking into a smile. "What was it you said to me?" He was at a loss how to answer, until he remembered having spoken of a condition. Relieved as his mind reverted to that, he answered: "Your confidence in me ought to be returned with full confidence on my part. My present name, though but slightly changed from my mother's, is not, as you will remember, my own. I wish to tell you what that is, and why I am in England." "Stop!" said the Doctor of Beauvais. "I wish it, that I may the better deserve your confidence, and have no secret from you." "Stop!" For an instant, the Doctor even had his two hands at his ears; for another instant, even had his two hands laid on Darnay's lips. "Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should prosper, if Lucie should love you, you shall tell me on your marriage morning. Do you promise?" "Willingly. "Give me your hand. She will be home directly, and it is better she should not see us together to-night. Go! God bless you!" It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was an hour later and darker when Lucie came home; she hurried into the room alone--for Miss Pross had gone straight up-stairs--and was surprised to find his reading-chair empty. "My father!" she called to him. "Father dear!" Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low hammering sound in his bedroom. Passing lightly across the intermediate room, she looked in at his door and came running back frightened, crying to herself, with her blood all chilled, "What shall I do! What shall I do!" Her uncertainty lasted but a moment; she hurried back, and tapped at his door, and softly called to him. The noise ceased at the sound of her voice, and he presently came out to her, and they walked up and down together for a long time. She came down from her bed, to look at him in his sleep that night. He slept heavily, and his tray of shoemaking tools, and his old unfinished work, were all as usual.

book 2, Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-10-14

Two Promises A year later, Charles Darnay is back in England, happily working as a tutor of French. He has been in love with Lucie since he met her, and he finally asks her father for permission to make his feelings known to her. Despite Dr. Manette's hesitations, Darnay convinces him that his intentions are honorable and sincere. He does not wish to come between Lucie and her father; he wishes, if possible, to bind them closer. There is always a touch of reserve in Dr. Manette's reception of Darnay, and this struggle is evident in his expression of dread, and although he gives his blessing to Darnay, something is not quite right. Darnay tells the doctor that he is using an assumed name and tries to tell him why he is in England and what his real name is, but the doctor stops him. He says that if Charles does marry Lucie, he should tell him these secrets on the marriage morning. When Lucie returns to the house that night, she hears him working on his shoemaking again for the first time since Paris and is very distressed. She knocks on his door and he stops

Psychic troubles cause the Doctor to resume his shoemaking. Trouble is foreshadowed when Darnay leaves the house; the Doctor senses that Darnay will have very troubling news. Evidently something has been a throwback to his time in prison, since the return to shoemaking shows that the Doctor is seriously disturbed by something Darnay has said. The Doctor's occasional regressions will continue to be a great cause of concern for his friends and his daughter. At first it appears that Lucie has an easy choice of the three suitors that Dr. Manette mentions. She can choose between the handsome Darnay, the boorish Stryver, or the drunken, rude Carton. Yet Dickens makes the story interesting through his introduction of tension between Darnay and Dr. Manette. Dickens makes it clear that something has occurred between Darnay and Dr. Manette in the past, possibly something that has to do with Manette's imprisonment. The humor in Chapter 11 comes from Stryver's prideful presumption that Lucie will willingly and eagerly accept him as a husband. Gender roles in the nineteenth century were such that Lucie could not and would not express direct interest in a man whom she loved or desired, but she could reject the suit of a man who was not agreeable to her. Stryver's dwelling on the subject of marrying for love rather than money illustrates the fact that many marriages were made for economic convenience rather than love. Although Stryver congratulates himself on sidestepping his economic interests, he recommends an economically prudent marriage to Carton. Ironically, he will fall back on this type of union himself, marrying a rich widow with three sons when he finds that his attraction to Lucie is not mutual. The title of Chapter 12 is, like others, ironic. Mr. Stryver is far from delicate; he commits a number of indelicate actions. His very deportment lacks tact, as he throws his overly large body around the street and then around the interior of Tellson's--with no regard for the safety of others. His entire conversation with Mr. Lorry is indiscreet, and he puts Mr. Lorry in the very awkward position of turning Stryver down on Lucie's behalf. Still, it is fortunate that Mr. Lorry is able to intervene to present a worse situation later. Although marriage tended to be dominated by economics at the time, it is indelicate of Stryver to mention Lucie's reasons for accepting him as materialistic. Mr. Lorry is forced to remind Stryver that he needs Lucie's acceptance to go ahead, stressing that "the young lady goes before all." But Stryver looks at the matter backwards the whole way through. When he is planning his intended wedding, he is merely debating when to "make her happiness known to her" and when to "give her his hand." This is a humorous reversal of the usual assumption that a woman gives her hand in marriage, not the other way around. Stryver's second and more seriously indelicate action is his allusion to Lucie's virtue. His pride is hurt by the fact that she is not inclined to accept him, and he protects his hurt feelings by suggesting that Lucie has acted improperly or even foolishly, as though she has demonstrated that after all she is ineligible for his attentions. This is a very serious charge; in the nineteenth century, a woman's virtue was priceless while a stain on her reputation was irreversible. It is good that Stryver does not voice this idea to anyone other than Mr. Lorry, who is too bewildered to be outraged, because it could have done serious damage to Lucie. The humor in the title of Chapter 13 is that a fellow of no delicacy can be better than the fellow of false delicacy. Carton has no delicacy because he honestly tells his feelings to Lucie while knowing they are not returned. However, something productive comes of this interchange, in that Lucie is made aware of his true character and Carton is uplifted by her compassion. This represents the most ideal way to approach Lucie. Although he wavers in the novel between intense feeling and caustic flippancy, in this chapter Carton ironically reveals himself to be the fellow with the most delicacy. Gender roles function in this chapter in precisely the formula of a sentimental novel. The sentimental novel, which excites the readers' compassionate feelings, often includes the successful efforts of good women to reform men who are morally corrupt. In this genre, women are seen as moral beacons whose influence is necessary to produce a more ethical society. The opening section of Chapter 14 makes a connection between Jerry Cruncher and Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Italian author of the Divine Comedy. "Time was when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place and mused at the sight of men" refers to the fact that Dante supposedly sat upon a stool to contemplate. There is a poetic connection, too, in that both were concerned with what happens after death, although Dante was concerned about the soul's experience in the afterlife while Cruncher is concerned with how he can profit from a dead body. Jerry also shows his fondness for euphemisms, a fact that is reflected in the title of the chapter. His digging bodies from the ground makes him "an honest tradesman," and the profession is known as "resurrection-man;" his wife is berated for "flopping," Jerry's word for praying. In this way Jerry tries to invert normal values. He gives impolite terms to respectable events and polite terms for questionable work in a comic reach for respectability.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_4_part_2.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 11

book 2, chapter 11

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-10-14", "summary": "A Companion Picture Mr. Stryver and Mr. Carton are drinking together while the latter prepares the former's legal papers. Mr. Stryver, after claiming that his own gallantry is superior to his friend's, announces that he intends to marry Lucie Manette. This causes Carton to drink his punch more rapidly although he claims to have no objections. Stryver feels that he is doing Lucie a good turn and marvels at his own economic disinterestedness in his choice. Stryver recommends that Carton find a woman with some money or property and marry her", "analysis": "Psychic troubles cause the Doctor to resume his shoemaking. Trouble is foreshadowed when Darnay leaves the house; the Doctor senses that Darnay will have very troubling news. Evidently something has been a throwback to his time in prison, since the return to shoemaking shows that the Doctor is seriously disturbed by something Darnay has said. The Doctor's occasional regressions will continue to be a great cause of concern for his friends and his daughter. At first it appears that Lucie has an easy choice of the three suitors that Dr. Manette mentions. She can choose between the handsome Darnay, the boorish Stryver, or the drunken, rude Carton. Yet Dickens makes the story interesting through his introduction of tension between Darnay and Dr. Manette. Dickens makes it clear that something has occurred between Darnay and Dr. Manette in the past, possibly something that has to do with Manette's imprisonment. The humor in Chapter 11 comes from Stryver's prideful presumption that Lucie will willingly and eagerly accept him as a husband. Gender roles in the nineteenth century were such that Lucie could not and would not express direct interest in a man whom she loved or desired, but she could reject the suit of a man who was not agreeable to her. Stryver's dwelling on the subject of marrying for love rather than money illustrates the fact that many marriages were made for economic convenience rather than love. Although Stryver congratulates himself on sidestepping his economic interests, he recommends an economically prudent marriage to Carton. Ironically, he will fall back on this type of union himself, marrying a rich widow with three sons when he finds that his attraction to Lucie is not mutual. The title of Chapter 12 is, like others, ironic. Mr. Stryver is far from delicate; he commits a number of indelicate actions. His very deportment lacks tact, as he throws his overly large body around the street and then around the interior of Tellson's--with no regard for the safety of others. His entire conversation with Mr. Lorry is indiscreet, and he puts Mr. Lorry in the very awkward position of turning Stryver down on Lucie's behalf. Still, it is fortunate that Mr. Lorry is able to intervene to present a worse situation later. Although marriage tended to be dominated by economics at the time, it is indelicate of Stryver to mention Lucie's reasons for accepting him as materialistic. Mr. Lorry is forced to remind Stryver that he needs Lucie's acceptance to go ahead, stressing that \"the young lady goes before all.\" But Stryver looks at the matter backwards the whole way through. When he is planning his intended wedding, he is merely debating when to \"make her happiness known to her\" and when to \"give her his hand.\" This is a humorous reversal of the usual assumption that a woman gives her hand in marriage, not the other way around. Stryver's second and more seriously indelicate action is his allusion to Lucie's virtue. His pride is hurt by the fact that she is not inclined to accept him, and he protects his hurt feelings by suggesting that Lucie has acted improperly or even foolishly, as though she has demonstrated that after all she is ineligible for his attentions. This is a very serious charge; in the nineteenth century, a woman's virtue was priceless while a stain on her reputation was irreversible. It is good that Stryver does not voice this idea to anyone other than Mr. Lorry, who is too bewildered to be outraged, because it could have done serious damage to Lucie. The humor in the title of Chapter 13 is that a fellow of no delicacy can be better than the fellow of false delicacy. Carton has no delicacy because he honestly tells his feelings to Lucie while knowing they are not returned. However, something productive comes of this interchange, in that Lucie is made aware of his true character and Carton is uplifted by her compassion. This represents the most ideal way to approach Lucie. Although he wavers in the novel between intense feeling and caustic flippancy, in this chapter Carton ironically reveals himself to be the fellow with the most delicacy. Gender roles function in this chapter in precisely the formula of a sentimental novel. The sentimental novel, which excites the readers' compassionate feelings, often includes the successful efforts of good women to reform men who are morally corrupt. In this genre, women are seen as moral beacons whose influence is necessary to produce a more ethical society. The opening section of Chapter 14 makes a connection between Jerry Cruncher and Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Italian author of the Divine Comedy. \"Time was when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place and mused at the sight of men\" refers to the fact that Dante supposedly sat upon a stool to contemplate. There is a poetic connection, too, in that both were concerned with what happens after death, although Dante was concerned about the soul's experience in the afterlife while Cruncher is concerned with how he can profit from a dead body. Jerry also shows his fondness for euphemisms, a fact that is reflected in the title of the chapter. His digging bodies from the ground makes him \"an honest tradesman,\" and the profession is known as \"resurrection-man;\" his wife is berated for \"flopping,\" Jerry's word for praying. In this way Jerry tries to invert normal values. He gives impolite terms to respectable events and polite terms for questionable work in a comic reach for respectability."}

XI. A Companion Picture "Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same night, or morning, to his jackal; "mix another bowl of punch; I have something to say to you." Sydney had been working double tides that night, and the night before, and the night before that, and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver's papers before the setting in of the long vacation. The clearance was effected at last; the Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up; everything was got rid of until November should come with its fogs atmospheric, and fogs legal, and bring grist to the mill again. Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much application. It had taken a deal of extra wet-towelling to pull him through the night; a correspondingly extra quantity of wine had preceded the towelling; and he was in a very damaged condition, as he now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped it at intervals for the last six hours. "Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?" said Stryver the portly, with his hands in his waistband, glancing round from the sofa where he lay on his back. "I am." "Now, look here! I am going to tell you something that will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry." "_Do_ you?" "Yes. And not for money. What do you say now?" "I don't feel disposed to say much. Who is she?" "Guess." "Do I know her?" "Guess." "I am not going to guess, at five o'clock in the morning, with my brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner." "Well then, I'll tell you," said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting posture. "Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you, because you are such an insensible dog." "And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, "are such a sensitive and poetical spirit--" "Come!" rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, "though I don't prefer any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know better), still I am a tenderer sort of fellow than _you_." "You are a luckier, if you mean that." "I don't mean that. I mean I am a man of more--more--" "Say gallantry, while you are about it," suggested Carton. "Well! I'll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man," said Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as he made the punch, "who cares more to be agreeable, who takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better how to be agreeable, in a woman's society, than you do." "Go on," said Sydney Carton. "No; but before I go on," said Stryver, shaking his head in his bullying way, "I'll have this out with you. You've been at Doctor Manette's house as much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your moroseness there! Your manners have been of that silent and sullen and hangdog kind, that, upon my life and soul, I have been ashamed of you, Sydney!" "It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar, to be ashamed of anything," returned Sydney; "you ought to be much obliged to me." "You shall not get off in that way," rejoined Stryver, shouldering the rejoinder at him; "no, Sydney, it's my duty to tell you--and I tell you to your face to do you good--that you are a devilish ill-conditioned fellow in that sort of society. You are a disagreeable fellow." Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and laughed. "Look at me!" said Stryver, squaring himself; "I have less need to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in circumstances. Why do I do it?" "I never saw you do it yet," muttered Carton. "I do it because it's politic; I do it on principle. And look at me! I get on." "You don't get on with your account of your matrimonial intentions," answered Carton, with a careless air; "I wish you would keep to that. As to me--will you never understand that I am incorrigible?" He asked the question with some appearance of scorn. "You have no business to be incorrigible," was his friend's answer, delivered in no very soothing tone. "I have no business to be, at all, that I know of," said Sydney Carton. "Who is the lady?" "Now, don't let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, "because I know you don't mean half you say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance. I make this little preface, because you once mentioned the young lady to me in slighting terms." "I did?" "Certainly; and in these chambers." Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend. "You made mention of the young lady as a golden-haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette. If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a little resentful of your employing such a designation; but you are not. You want that sense altogether; therefore I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures: or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music." Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by bumpers, looking at his friend. "Now you know all about it, Syd," said Mr. Stryver. "I don't care about fortune: she is a charming creature, and I have made up my mind to please myself: on the whole, I think I can afford to please myself. She will have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly rising man, and a man of some distinction: it is a piece of good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune. Are you astonished?" Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I be astonished?" "You approve?" Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I not approve?" "Well!" said his friend Stryver, "you take it more easily than I fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my behalf than I thought you would be; though, to be sure, you know well enough by this time that your ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong will. Yes, Sydney, I have had enough of this style of life, with no other as a change from it; I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man to have a home when he feels inclined to go to it (when he doesn't, he can stay away), and I feel that Miss Manette will tell well in any station, and will always do me credit. So I have made up my mind. And now, Sydney, old boy, I want to say a word to _you_ about _your_ prospects. You are in a bad way, you know; you really are in a bad way. You don't know the value of money, you live hard, you'll knock up one of these days, and be ill and poor; you really ought to think about a nurse." The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made him look twice as big as he was, and four times as offensive. "Now, let me recommend you," pursued Stryver, "to look it in the face. I have looked it in the face, in my different way; look it in the face, you, in your different way. Marry. Provide somebody to take care of you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of women's society, nor understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find out somebody. Find out some respectable woman with a little property--somebody in the landlady way, or lodging-letting way--and marry her, against a rainy day. That's the kind of thing for _you_. Now think of it, Sydney." "I'll think of it," said Sydney.

book 2, Chapter 11

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A Companion Picture Mr. Stryver and Mr. Carton are drinking together while the latter prepares the former's legal papers. Mr. Stryver, after claiming that his own gallantry is superior to his friend's, announces that he intends to marry Lucie Manette. This causes Carton to drink his punch more rapidly although he claims to have no objections. Stryver feels that he is doing Lucie a good turn and marvels at his own economic disinterestedness in his choice. Stryver recommends that Carton find a woman with some money or property and marry her

Psychic troubles cause the Doctor to resume his shoemaking. Trouble is foreshadowed when Darnay leaves the house; the Doctor senses that Darnay will have very troubling news. Evidently something has been a throwback to his time in prison, since the return to shoemaking shows that the Doctor is seriously disturbed by something Darnay has said. The Doctor's occasional regressions will continue to be a great cause of concern for his friends and his daughter. At first it appears that Lucie has an easy choice of the three suitors that Dr. Manette mentions. She can choose between the handsome Darnay, the boorish Stryver, or the drunken, rude Carton. Yet Dickens makes the story interesting through his introduction of tension between Darnay and Dr. Manette. Dickens makes it clear that something has occurred between Darnay and Dr. Manette in the past, possibly something that has to do with Manette's imprisonment. The humor in Chapter 11 comes from Stryver's prideful presumption that Lucie will willingly and eagerly accept him as a husband. Gender roles in the nineteenth century were such that Lucie could not and would not express direct interest in a man whom she loved or desired, but she could reject the suit of a man who was not agreeable to her. Stryver's dwelling on the subject of marrying for love rather than money illustrates the fact that many marriages were made for economic convenience rather than love. Although Stryver congratulates himself on sidestepping his economic interests, he recommends an economically prudent marriage to Carton. Ironically, he will fall back on this type of union himself, marrying a rich widow with three sons when he finds that his attraction to Lucie is not mutual. The title of Chapter 12 is, like others, ironic. Mr. Stryver is far from delicate; he commits a number of indelicate actions. His very deportment lacks tact, as he throws his overly large body around the street and then around the interior of Tellson's--with no regard for the safety of others. His entire conversation with Mr. Lorry is indiscreet, and he puts Mr. Lorry in the very awkward position of turning Stryver down on Lucie's behalf. Still, it is fortunate that Mr. Lorry is able to intervene to present a worse situation later. Although marriage tended to be dominated by economics at the time, it is indelicate of Stryver to mention Lucie's reasons for accepting him as materialistic. Mr. Lorry is forced to remind Stryver that he needs Lucie's acceptance to go ahead, stressing that "the young lady goes before all." But Stryver looks at the matter backwards the whole way through. When he is planning his intended wedding, he is merely debating when to "make her happiness known to her" and when to "give her his hand." This is a humorous reversal of the usual assumption that a woman gives her hand in marriage, not the other way around. Stryver's second and more seriously indelicate action is his allusion to Lucie's virtue. His pride is hurt by the fact that she is not inclined to accept him, and he protects his hurt feelings by suggesting that Lucie has acted improperly or even foolishly, as though she has demonstrated that after all she is ineligible for his attentions. This is a very serious charge; in the nineteenth century, a woman's virtue was priceless while a stain on her reputation was irreversible. It is good that Stryver does not voice this idea to anyone other than Mr. Lorry, who is too bewildered to be outraged, because it could have done serious damage to Lucie. The humor in the title of Chapter 13 is that a fellow of no delicacy can be better than the fellow of false delicacy. Carton has no delicacy because he honestly tells his feelings to Lucie while knowing they are not returned. However, something productive comes of this interchange, in that Lucie is made aware of his true character and Carton is uplifted by her compassion. This represents the most ideal way to approach Lucie. Although he wavers in the novel between intense feeling and caustic flippancy, in this chapter Carton ironically reveals himself to be the fellow with the most delicacy. Gender roles function in this chapter in precisely the formula of a sentimental novel. The sentimental novel, which excites the readers' compassionate feelings, often includes the successful efforts of good women to reform men who are morally corrupt. In this genre, women are seen as moral beacons whose influence is necessary to produce a more ethical society. The opening section of Chapter 14 makes a connection between Jerry Cruncher and Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Italian author of the Divine Comedy. "Time was when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place and mused at the sight of men" refers to the fact that Dante supposedly sat upon a stool to contemplate. There is a poetic connection, too, in that both were concerned with what happens after death, although Dante was concerned about the soul's experience in the afterlife while Cruncher is concerned with how he can profit from a dead body. Jerry also shows his fondness for euphemisms, a fact that is reflected in the title of the chapter. His digging bodies from the ground makes him "an honest tradesman," and the profession is known as "resurrection-man;" his wife is berated for "flopping," Jerry's word for praying. In this way Jerry tries to invert normal values. He gives impolite terms to respectable events and polite terms for questionable work in a comic reach for respectability.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_4_part_3.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 12

book 2, chapter 12

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-10-14", "summary": "The Fellow of Delicacy On his way to Lucie's house in Soho to declare his intentions, Mr. Stryver passes Tellson's and decides to step inside to ask Mr. Lorry's opinion of the matter. Mr. Lorry expresses some politic confusion, and Stryver asks what could possibly be wrong with his proposal. After all, he is eligible, prosperous, and advancing. He considers that if Lucie recognized these qualities and turned him down, she would be a fool. Despite the fact that he is at Tellson's and must act properly, Mr. Lorry grows angry at this disparagement of Lucie. Mr. Lorry suggests that because it might be painful for Stryver, the doctor, and Lucie if the former were to make an unwelcome suit, perhaps Lorry himself should go to Soho and feel out the subject. Mr. Stryver agrees. When Mr. Lorry arrives at Stryver's house later that evening with a confirmation that a proposal would be unwelcome, he gets a strange response from the would-be suitor. Stryver pretends to have forgotten the subject. When he is reminded, he professes to be sorry for both the doctor and Mr. Lorry, insinuating that Lucie has gotten herself into trouble and is no longer fit to be engaged. Lorry is so surprised that he merely leaves", "analysis": "Psychic troubles cause the Doctor to resume his shoemaking. Trouble is foreshadowed when Darnay leaves the house; the Doctor senses that Darnay will have very troubling news. Evidently something has been a throwback to his time in prison, since the return to shoemaking shows that the Doctor is seriously disturbed by something Darnay has said. The Doctor's occasional regressions will continue to be a great cause of concern for his friends and his daughter. At first it appears that Lucie has an easy choice of the three suitors that Dr. Manette mentions. She can choose between the handsome Darnay, the boorish Stryver, or the drunken, rude Carton. Yet Dickens makes the story interesting through his introduction of tension between Darnay and Dr. Manette. Dickens makes it clear that something has occurred between Darnay and Dr. Manette in the past, possibly something that has to do with Manette's imprisonment. The humor in Chapter 11 comes from Stryver's prideful presumption that Lucie will willingly and eagerly accept him as a husband. Gender roles in the nineteenth century were such that Lucie could not and would not express direct interest in a man whom she loved or desired, but she could reject the suit of a man who was not agreeable to her. Stryver's dwelling on the subject of marrying for love rather than money illustrates the fact that many marriages were made for economic convenience rather than love. Although Stryver congratulates himself on sidestepping his economic interests, he recommends an economically prudent marriage to Carton. Ironically, he will fall back on this type of union himself, marrying a rich widow with three sons when he finds that his attraction to Lucie is not mutual. The title of Chapter 12 is, like others, ironic. Mr. Stryver is far from delicate; he commits a number of indelicate actions. His very deportment lacks tact, as he throws his overly large body around the street and then around the interior of Tellson's--with no regard for the safety of others. His entire conversation with Mr. Lorry is indiscreet, and he puts Mr. Lorry in the very awkward position of turning Stryver down on Lucie's behalf. Still, it is fortunate that Mr. Lorry is able to intervene to present a worse situation later. Although marriage tended to be dominated by economics at the time, it is indelicate of Stryver to mention Lucie's reasons for accepting him as materialistic. Mr. Lorry is forced to remind Stryver that he needs Lucie's acceptance to go ahead, stressing that \"the young lady goes before all.\" But Stryver looks at the matter backwards the whole way through. When he is planning his intended wedding, he is merely debating when to \"make her happiness known to her\" and when to \"give her his hand.\" This is a humorous reversal of the usual assumption that a woman gives her hand in marriage, not the other way around. Stryver's second and more seriously indelicate action is his allusion to Lucie's virtue. His pride is hurt by the fact that she is not inclined to accept him, and he protects his hurt feelings by suggesting that Lucie has acted improperly or even foolishly, as though she has demonstrated that after all she is ineligible for his attentions. This is a very serious charge; in the nineteenth century, a woman's virtue was priceless while a stain on her reputation was irreversible. It is good that Stryver does not voice this idea to anyone other than Mr. Lorry, who is too bewildered to be outraged, because it could have done serious damage to Lucie. The humor in the title of Chapter 13 is that a fellow of no delicacy can be better than the fellow of false delicacy. Carton has no delicacy because he honestly tells his feelings to Lucie while knowing they are not returned. However, something productive comes of this interchange, in that Lucie is made aware of his true character and Carton is uplifted by her compassion. This represents the most ideal way to approach Lucie. Although he wavers in the novel between intense feeling and caustic flippancy, in this chapter Carton ironically reveals himself to be the fellow with the most delicacy. Gender roles function in this chapter in precisely the formula of a sentimental novel. The sentimental novel, which excites the readers' compassionate feelings, often includes the successful efforts of good women to reform men who are morally corrupt. In this genre, women are seen as moral beacons whose influence is necessary to produce a more ethical society. The opening section of Chapter 14 makes a connection between Jerry Cruncher and Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Italian author of the Divine Comedy. \"Time was when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place and mused at the sight of men\" refers to the fact that Dante supposedly sat upon a stool to contemplate. There is a poetic connection, too, in that both were concerned with what happens after death, although Dante was concerned about the soul's experience in the afterlife while Cruncher is concerned with how he can profit from a dead body. Jerry also shows his fondness for euphemisms, a fact that is reflected in the title of the chapter. His digging bodies from the ground makes him \"an honest tradesman,\" and the profession is known as \"resurrection-man;\" his wife is berated for \"flopping,\" Jerry's word for praying. In this way Jerry tries to invert normal values. He gives impolite terms to respectable events and polite terms for questionable work in a comic reach for respectability."}

XII. The Fellow of Delicacy Mr. Stryver having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the Doctor's daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her before he left town for the Long Vacation. After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week or two before Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christmas vacation between it and Hilary. As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued with the jury on substantial worldly grounds--the only grounds ever worth taking into account--it was a plain case, and had not a weak spot in it. He called himself for the plaintiff, there was no getting over his evidence, the counsel for the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury did not even turn to consider. After trying it, Stryver, C. J., was satisfied that no plainer case could be. Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the Long Vacation with a formal proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall Gardens; that failing, to Ranelagh; that unaccountably failing too, it behoved him to present himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind. Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Stryver shouldered his way from the Temple, while the bloom of the Long Vacation's infancy was still upon it. Anybody who had seen him projecting himself into Soho while he was yet on Saint Dunstan's side of Temple Bar, bursting in his full-blown way along the pavement, to the jostlement of all weaker people, might have seen how safe and strong he was. His way taking him past Tellson's, and he both banking at Tellson's and knowing Mr. Lorry as the intimate friend of the Manettes, it entered Mr. Stryver's mind to enter the bank, and reveal to Mr. Lorry the brightness of the Soho horizon. So, he pushed open the door with the weak rattle in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, got past the two ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into the musty back closet where Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to his window as if that were ruled for figures too, and everything under the clouds were a sum. "Halloa!" said Mr. Stryver. "How do you do? I hope you are well!" It was Stryver's grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big for any place, or space. He was so much too big for Tellson's, that old clerks in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance, as though he squeezed them against the wall. The House itself, magnificently reading the paper quite in the far-off perspective, lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head had been butted into its responsible waistcoat. The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone of the voice he would recommend under the circumstances, "How do you do, Mr. Stryver? How do you do, sir?" and shook hands. There was a peculiarity in his manner of shaking hands, always to be seen in any clerk at Tellson's who shook hands with a customer when the House pervaded the air. He shook in a self-abnegating way, as one who shook for Tellson and Co. "Can I do anything for you, Mr. Stryver?" asked Mr. Lorry, in his business character. "Why, no, thank you; this is a private visit to yourself, Mr. Lorry; I have come for a private word." "Oh indeed!" said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear, while his eye strayed to the House afar off. "I am going," said Mr. Stryver, leaning his arms confidentially on the desk: whereupon, although it was a large double one, there appeared to be not half desk enough for him: "I am going to make an offer of myself in marriage to your agreeable little friend, Miss Manette, Mr. Lorry." "Oh dear me!" cried Mr. Lorry, rubbing his chin, and looking at his visitor dubiously. "Oh dear me, sir?" repeated Stryver, drawing back. "Oh dear you, sir? What may your meaning be, Mr. Lorry?" "My meaning," answered the man of business, "is, of course, friendly and appreciative, and that it does you the greatest credit, and--in short, my meaning is everything you could desire. But--really, you know, Mr. Stryver--" Mr. Lorry paused, and shook his head at him in the oddest manner, as if he were compelled against his will to add, internally, "you know there really is so much too much of you!" "Well!" said Stryver, slapping the desk with his contentious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, "if I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I'll be hanged!" Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen. "D--n it all, sir!" said Stryver, staring at him, "am I not eligible?" "Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you're eligible!" said Mr. Lorry. "If you say eligible, you are eligible." "Am I not prosperous?" asked Stryver. "Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous," said Mr. Lorry. "And advancing?" "If you come to advancing you know," said Mr. Lorry, delighted to be able to make another admission, "nobody can doubt that." "Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry?" demanded Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen. "Well! I--Were you going there now?" asked Mr. Lorry. "Straight!" said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the desk. "Then I think I wouldn't, if I was you." "Why?" said Stryver. "Now, I'll put you in a corner," forensically shaking a forefinger at him. "You are a man of business and bound to have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn't you go?" "Because," said Mr. Lorry, "I wouldn't go on such an object without having some cause to believe that I should succeed." "D--n _me_!" cried Stryver, "but this beats everything." Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the angry Stryver. "Here's a man of business--a man of years--a man of experience--_in_ a Bank," said Stryver; "and having summed up three leading reasons for complete success, he says there's no reason at all! Says it with his head on!" Mr. Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity as if it would have been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it with his head off. "When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young lady; and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success probable, I speak of causes and reasons that will tell as such with the young lady. The young lady, my good sir," said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapping the Stryver arm, "the young lady. The young lady goes before all." "Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry," said Stryver, squaring his elbows, "that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at present in question is a mincing Fool?" "Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver," said Mr. Lorry, reddening, "that I will hear no disrespectful word of that young lady from any lips; and that if I knew any man--which I hope I do not--whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Tellson's should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind." The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr. Stryver's blood-vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to be angry; Mr. Lorry's veins, methodical as their courses could usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn. "That is what I mean to tell you, sir," said Mr. Lorry. "Pray let there be no mistake about it." Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while, and then stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which probably gave him the toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying: "This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You deliberately advise me not to go up to Soho and offer myself--_my_self, Stryver of the King's Bench bar?" "Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver?" "Yes, I do." "Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly." "And all I can say of it is," laughed Stryver with a vexed laugh, "that this--ha, ha!--beats everything past, present, and to come." "Now understand me," pursued Mr. Lorry. "As a man of business, I am not justified in saying anything about this matter, for, as a man of business, I know nothing of it. But, as an old fellow, who has carried Miss Manette in his arms, who is the trusted friend of Miss Manette and of her father too, and who has a great affection for them both, I have spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking, recollect. Now, you think I may not be right?" "Not I!" said Stryver, whistling. "I can't undertake to find third parties in common sense; I can only find it for myself. I suppose sense in certain quarters; you suppose mincing bread-and-butter nonsense. It's new to me, but you are right, I dare say." "What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterise for myself--And understand me, sir," said Mr. Lorry, quickly flushing again, "I will not--not even at Tellson's--have it characterised for me by any gentleman breathing." "There! I beg your pardon!" said Stryver. "Granted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Stryver, I was about to say:--it might be painful to you to find yourself mistaken, it might be painful to Doctor Manette to have the task of being explicit with you, it might be very painful to Miss Manette to have the task of being explicit with you. You know the terms upon which I have the honour and happiness to stand with the family. If you please, committing you in no way, representing you in no way, I will undertake to correct my advice by the exercise of a little new observation and judgment expressly brought to bear upon it. If you should then be dissatisfied with it, you can but test its soundness for yourself; if, on the other hand, you should be satisfied with it, and it should be what it now is, it may spare all sides what is best spared. What do you say?" "How long would you keep me in town?" "Oh! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go to Soho in the evening, and come to your chambers afterwards." "Then I say yes," said Stryver: "I won't go up there now, I am not so hot upon it as that comes to; I say yes, and I shall expect you to look in to-night. Good morning." Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank, causing such a concussion of air on his passage through, that to stand up against it bowing behind the two counters, required the utmost remaining strength of the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and feeble persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing, and were popularly believed, when they had bowed a customer out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office until they bowed another customer in. The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker would not have gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid ground than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had to swallow, he got it down. "And now," said Mr. Stryver, shaking his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was down, "my way out of this, is, to put you all in the wrong." It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in which he found great relief. "You shall not put me in the wrong, young lady," said Mr. Stryver; "I'll do that for you." Accordingly, when Mr. Lorry called that night as late as ten o'clock, Mr. Stryver, among a quantity of books and papers littered out for the purpose, seemed to have nothing less on his mind than the subject of the morning. He even showed surprise when he saw Mr. Lorry, and was altogether in an absent and preoccupied state. "Well!" said that good-natured emissary, after a full half-hour of bootless attempts to bring him round to the question. "I have been to Soho." "To Soho?" repeated Mr. Stryver, coldly. "Oh, to be sure! What am I thinking of!" "And I have no doubt," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was right in the conversation we had. My opinion is confirmed, and I reiterate my advice." "I assure you," returned Mr. Stryver, in the friendliest way, "that I am sorry for it on your account, and sorry for it on the poor father's account. I know this must always be a sore subject with the family; let us say no more about it." "I don't understand you," said Mr. Lorry. "I dare say not," rejoined Stryver, nodding his head in a smoothing and final way; "no matter, no matter." "But it does matter," Mr. Lorry urged. "No it doesn't; I assure you it doesn't. Having supposed that there was sense where there is no sense, and a laudable ambition where there is not a laudable ambition, I am well out of my mistake, and no harm is done. Young women have committed similar follies often before, and have repented them in poverty and obscurity often before. In an unselfish aspect, I am sorry that the thing is dropped, because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view; in a selfish aspect, I am glad that the thing has dropped, because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view--it is hardly necessary to say I could have gained nothing by it. There is no harm at all done. I have not proposed to the young lady, and, between ourselves, I am by no means certain, on reflection, that I ever should have committed myself to that extent. Mr. Lorry, you cannot control the mincing vanities and giddinesses of empty-headed girls; you must not expect to do it, or you will always be disappointed. Now, pray say no more about it. I tell you, I regret it on account of others, but I am satisfied on my own account. And I am really very much obliged to you for allowing me to sound you, and for giving me your advice; you know the young lady better than I do; you were right, it never would have done." Mr. Lorry was so taken aback, that he looked quite stupidly at Mr. Stryver shouldering him towards the door, with an appearance of showering generosity, forbearance, and goodwill, on his erring head. "Make the best of it, my dear sir," said Stryver; "say no more about it; thank you again for allowing me to sound you; good night!" Mr. Lorry was out in the night, before he knew where he was. Mr. Stryver was lying back on his sofa, winking at his ceiling.

book 2, Chapter 12

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-10-14

The Fellow of Delicacy On his way to Lucie's house in Soho to declare his intentions, Mr. Stryver passes Tellson's and decides to step inside to ask Mr. Lorry's opinion of the matter. Mr. Lorry expresses some politic confusion, and Stryver asks what could possibly be wrong with his proposal. After all, he is eligible, prosperous, and advancing. He considers that if Lucie recognized these qualities and turned him down, she would be a fool. Despite the fact that he is at Tellson's and must act properly, Mr. Lorry grows angry at this disparagement of Lucie. Mr. Lorry suggests that because it might be painful for Stryver, the doctor, and Lucie if the former were to make an unwelcome suit, perhaps Lorry himself should go to Soho and feel out the subject. Mr. Stryver agrees. When Mr. Lorry arrives at Stryver's house later that evening with a confirmation that a proposal would be unwelcome, he gets a strange response from the would-be suitor. Stryver pretends to have forgotten the subject. When he is reminded, he professes to be sorry for both the doctor and Mr. Lorry, insinuating that Lucie has gotten herself into trouble and is no longer fit to be engaged. Lorry is so surprised that he merely leaves

Psychic troubles cause the Doctor to resume his shoemaking. Trouble is foreshadowed when Darnay leaves the house; the Doctor senses that Darnay will have very troubling news. Evidently something has been a throwback to his time in prison, since the return to shoemaking shows that the Doctor is seriously disturbed by something Darnay has said. The Doctor's occasional regressions will continue to be a great cause of concern for his friends and his daughter. At first it appears that Lucie has an easy choice of the three suitors that Dr. Manette mentions. She can choose between the handsome Darnay, the boorish Stryver, or the drunken, rude Carton. Yet Dickens makes the story interesting through his introduction of tension between Darnay and Dr. Manette. Dickens makes it clear that something has occurred between Darnay and Dr. Manette in the past, possibly something that has to do with Manette's imprisonment. The humor in Chapter 11 comes from Stryver's prideful presumption that Lucie will willingly and eagerly accept him as a husband. Gender roles in the nineteenth century were such that Lucie could not and would not express direct interest in a man whom she loved or desired, but she could reject the suit of a man who was not agreeable to her. Stryver's dwelling on the subject of marrying for love rather than money illustrates the fact that many marriages were made for economic convenience rather than love. Although Stryver congratulates himself on sidestepping his economic interests, he recommends an economically prudent marriage to Carton. Ironically, he will fall back on this type of union himself, marrying a rich widow with three sons when he finds that his attraction to Lucie is not mutual. The title of Chapter 12 is, like others, ironic. Mr. Stryver is far from delicate; he commits a number of indelicate actions. His very deportment lacks tact, as he throws his overly large body around the street and then around the interior of Tellson's--with no regard for the safety of others. His entire conversation with Mr. Lorry is indiscreet, and he puts Mr. Lorry in the very awkward position of turning Stryver down on Lucie's behalf. Still, it is fortunate that Mr. Lorry is able to intervene to present a worse situation later. Although marriage tended to be dominated by economics at the time, it is indelicate of Stryver to mention Lucie's reasons for accepting him as materialistic. Mr. Lorry is forced to remind Stryver that he needs Lucie's acceptance to go ahead, stressing that "the young lady goes before all." But Stryver looks at the matter backwards the whole way through. When he is planning his intended wedding, he is merely debating when to "make her happiness known to her" and when to "give her his hand." This is a humorous reversal of the usual assumption that a woman gives her hand in marriage, not the other way around. Stryver's second and more seriously indelicate action is his allusion to Lucie's virtue. His pride is hurt by the fact that she is not inclined to accept him, and he protects his hurt feelings by suggesting that Lucie has acted improperly or even foolishly, as though she has demonstrated that after all she is ineligible for his attentions. This is a very serious charge; in the nineteenth century, a woman's virtue was priceless while a stain on her reputation was irreversible. It is good that Stryver does not voice this idea to anyone other than Mr. Lorry, who is too bewildered to be outraged, because it could have done serious damage to Lucie. The humor in the title of Chapter 13 is that a fellow of no delicacy can be better than the fellow of false delicacy. Carton has no delicacy because he honestly tells his feelings to Lucie while knowing they are not returned. However, something productive comes of this interchange, in that Lucie is made aware of his true character and Carton is uplifted by her compassion. This represents the most ideal way to approach Lucie. Although he wavers in the novel between intense feeling and caustic flippancy, in this chapter Carton ironically reveals himself to be the fellow with the most delicacy. Gender roles function in this chapter in precisely the formula of a sentimental novel. The sentimental novel, which excites the readers' compassionate feelings, often includes the successful efforts of good women to reform men who are morally corrupt. In this genre, women are seen as moral beacons whose influence is necessary to produce a more ethical society. The opening section of Chapter 14 makes a connection between Jerry Cruncher and Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Italian author of the Divine Comedy. "Time was when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place and mused at the sight of men" refers to the fact that Dante supposedly sat upon a stool to contemplate. There is a poetic connection, too, in that both were concerned with what happens after death, although Dante was concerned about the soul's experience in the afterlife while Cruncher is concerned with how he can profit from a dead body. Jerry also shows his fondness for euphemisms, a fact that is reflected in the title of the chapter. His digging bodies from the ground makes him "an honest tradesman," and the profession is known as "resurrection-man;" his wife is berated for "flopping," Jerry's word for praying. In this way Jerry tries to invert normal values. He gives impolite terms to respectable events and polite terms for questionable work in a comic reach for respectability.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/19.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_4_part_4.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 13

book 2, chapter 13

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-10-14", "summary": "The Fellow of No Delicacy Mr. Carton had never spoken well or made himself agreeable at the Manette household, but he used to haunt their street at night, dreaming of Lucie. One day he visits her and she asks him what the matter is. He claims that he is beyond help in his profligate ways, but he says his familiarity with the Manettes' family scene has given him the desire to be a good man again. Lucie tries to convince him that this is a possibility, but Carton declares that it is only a dream, however happy. He merely wants to open his heart to her and have her remember that he did so. Before he leaves he promises that he would do anything for her or for anyone close to her", "analysis": "Psychic troubles cause the Doctor to resume his shoemaking. Trouble is foreshadowed when Darnay leaves the house; the Doctor senses that Darnay will have very troubling news. Evidently something has been a throwback to his time in prison, since the return to shoemaking shows that the Doctor is seriously disturbed by something Darnay has said. The Doctor's occasional regressions will continue to be a great cause of concern for his friends and his daughter. At first it appears that Lucie has an easy choice of the three suitors that Dr. Manette mentions. She can choose between the handsome Darnay, the boorish Stryver, or the drunken, rude Carton. Yet Dickens makes the story interesting through his introduction of tension between Darnay and Dr. Manette. Dickens makes it clear that something has occurred between Darnay and Dr. Manette in the past, possibly something that has to do with Manette's imprisonment. The humor in Chapter 11 comes from Stryver's prideful presumption that Lucie will willingly and eagerly accept him as a husband. Gender roles in the nineteenth century were such that Lucie could not and would not express direct interest in a man whom she loved or desired, but she could reject the suit of a man who was not agreeable to her. Stryver's dwelling on the subject of marrying for love rather than money illustrates the fact that many marriages were made for economic convenience rather than love. Although Stryver congratulates himself on sidestepping his economic interests, he recommends an economically prudent marriage to Carton. Ironically, he will fall back on this type of union himself, marrying a rich widow with three sons when he finds that his attraction to Lucie is not mutual. The title of Chapter 12 is, like others, ironic. Mr. Stryver is far from delicate; he commits a number of indelicate actions. His very deportment lacks tact, as he throws his overly large body around the street and then around the interior of Tellson's--with no regard for the safety of others. His entire conversation with Mr. Lorry is indiscreet, and he puts Mr. Lorry in the very awkward position of turning Stryver down on Lucie's behalf. Still, it is fortunate that Mr. Lorry is able to intervene to present a worse situation later. Although marriage tended to be dominated by economics at the time, it is indelicate of Stryver to mention Lucie's reasons for accepting him as materialistic. Mr. Lorry is forced to remind Stryver that he needs Lucie's acceptance to go ahead, stressing that \"the young lady goes before all.\" But Stryver looks at the matter backwards the whole way through. When he is planning his intended wedding, he is merely debating when to \"make her happiness known to her\" and when to \"give her his hand.\" This is a humorous reversal of the usual assumption that a woman gives her hand in marriage, not the other way around. Stryver's second and more seriously indelicate action is his allusion to Lucie's virtue. His pride is hurt by the fact that she is not inclined to accept him, and he protects his hurt feelings by suggesting that Lucie has acted improperly or even foolishly, as though she has demonstrated that after all she is ineligible for his attentions. This is a very serious charge; in the nineteenth century, a woman's virtue was priceless while a stain on her reputation was irreversible. It is good that Stryver does not voice this idea to anyone other than Mr. Lorry, who is too bewildered to be outraged, because it could have done serious damage to Lucie. The humor in the title of Chapter 13 is that a fellow of no delicacy can be better than the fellow of false delicacy. Carton has no delicacy because he honestly tells his feelings to Lucie while knowing they are not returned. However, something productive comes of this interchange, in that Lucie is made aware of his true character and Carton is uplifted by her compassion. This represents the most ideal way to approach Lucie. Although he wavers in the novel between intense feeling and caustic flippancy, in this chapter Carton ironically reveals himself to be the fellow with the most delicacy. Gender roles function in this chapter in precisely the formula of a sentimental novel. The sentimental novel, which excites the readers' compassionate feelings, often includes the successful efforts of good women to reform men who are morally corrupt. In this genre, women are seen as moral beacons whose influence is necessary to produce a more ethical society. The opening section of Chapter 14 makes a connection between Jerry Cruncher and Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Italian author of the Divine Comedy. \"Time was when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place and mused at the sight of men\" refers to the fact that Dante supposedly sat upon a stool to contemplate. There is a poetic connection, too, in that both were concerned with what happens after death, although Dante was concerned about the soul's experience in the afterlife while Cruncher is concerned with how he can profit from a dead body. Jerry also shows his fondness for euphemisms, a fact that is reflected in the title of the chapter. His digging bodies from the ground makes him \"an honest tradesman,\" and the profession is known as \"resurrection-man;\" his wife is berated for \"flopping,\" Jerry's word for praying. In this way Jerry tries to invert normal values. He gives impolite terms to respectable events and polite terms for questionable work in a comic reach for respectability."}

XIII. The Fellow of No Delicacy If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the house of Doctor Manette. He had been there often, during a whole year, and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him. And yet he did care something for the streets that environed that house, and for the senseless stones that made their pavements. Many a night he vaguely and unhappily wandered there, when wine had brought no transitory gladness to him; many a dreary daybreak revealed his solitary figure lingering there, and still lingering there when the first beams of the sun brought into strong relief, removed beauties of architecture in spires of churches and lofty buildings, as perhaps the quiet time brought some sense of better things, else forgotten and unattainable, into his mind. Of late, the neglected bed in the Temple Court had known him more scantily than ever; and often when he had thrown himself upon it no longer than a few minutes, he had got up again, and haunted that neighbourhood. On a day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after notifying to his jackal that "he had thought better of that marrying matter") had carried his delicacy into Devonshire, and when the sight and scent of flowers in the City streets had some waifs of goodness in them for the worst, of health for the sickliest, and of youth for the oldest, Sydney's feet still trod those stones. From being irresolute and purposeless, his feet became animated by an intention, and, in the working out of that intention, they took him to the Doctor's door. He was shown up-stairs, and found Lucie at her work, alone. She had never been quite at her ease with him, and received him with some little embarrassment as he seated himself near her table. But, looking up at his face in the interchange of the first few common-places, she observed a change in it. "I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton!" "No. But the life I lead, Miss Manette, is not conducive to health. What is to be expected of, or by, such profligates?" "Is it not--forgive me; I have begun the question on my lips--a pity to live no better life?" "God knows it is a shame!" "Then why not change it?" Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and saddened to see that there were tears in his eyes. There were tears in his voice too, as he answered: "It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse." He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes with his hand. The table trembled in the silence that followed. She had never seen him softened, and was much distressed. He knew her to be so, without looking at her, and said: "Pray forgive me, Miss Manette. I break down before the knowledge of what I want to say to you. Will you hear me?" "If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it would make you happier, it would make me very glad!" "God bless you for your sweet compassion!" He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke steadily. "Don't be afraid to hear me. Don't shrink from anything I say. I am like one who died young. All my life might have been." "No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of it might still be; I am sure that you might be much, much worthier of yourself." "Say of you, Miss Manette, and although I know better--although in the mystery of my own wretched heart I know better--I shall never forget it!" She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with a fixed despair of himself which made the interview unlike any other that could have been holden. "If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have returned the love of the man you see before yourself--flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse as you know him to be--he would have been conscious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with him. I know very well that you can have no tenderness for me; I ask for none; I am even thankful that it cannot be." "Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton? Can I not recall you--forgive me again!--to a better course? Can I in no way repay your confidence? I know this is a confidence," she modestly said, after a little hesitation, and in earnest tears, "I know you would say this to no one else. Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr. Carton?" He shook his head. "To none. No, Miss Manette, to none. If you will hear me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me is done. I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it." "Will nothing of it remain? O Mr. Carton, think again! Try again!" "No, Miss Manette; all through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire--a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away." "Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made you more unhappy than you were before you knew me--" "Don't say that, Miss Manette, for you would have reclaimed me, if anything could. You will not be the cause of my becoming worse." "Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at all events, attributable to some influence of mine--this is what I mean, if I can make it plain--can I use no influence to serve you? Have I no power for good, with you, at all?" "The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Manette, I have come here to realise. Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life, the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world; and that there was something left in me at this time which you could deplore and pity." "Which I entreated you to believe, again and again, most fervently, with all my heart, was capable of better things, Mr. Carton!" "Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Manette. I have proved myself, and I know better. I distress you; I draw fast to an end. Will you let me believe, when I recall this day, that the last confidence of my life was reposed in your pure and innocent breast, and that it lies there alone, and will be shared by no one?" "If that will be a consolation to you, yes." "Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to you?" "Mr. Carton," she answered, after an agitated pause, "the secret is yours, not mine; and I promise to respect it." "Thank you. And again, God bless you." He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the door. "Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever resuming this conversation by so much as a passing word. I will never refer to it again. If I were dead, that could not be surer than it is henceforth. In the hour of my death, I shall hold sacred the one good remembrance--and shall thank and bless you for it--that my last avowal of myself was made to you, and that my name, and faults, and miseries were gently carried in your heart. May it otherwise be light and happy!" He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and it was so sad to think how much he had thrown away, and how much he every day kept down and perverted, that Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him as he stood looking back at her. "Be comforted!" he said, "I am not worth such feeling, Miss Manette. An hour or two hence, and the low companions and low habits that I scorn but yield to, will render me less worth such tears as those, than any wretch who creeps along the streets. Be comforted! But, within myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now, though outwardly I shall be what you have heretofore seen me. The last supplication but one I make to you, is, that you will believe this of me." "I will, Mr. Carton." "My last supplication of all, is this; and with it, I will relieve you of a visitor with whom I well know you have nothing in unison, and between whom and you there is an impassable space. It is useless to say it, I know, but it rises out of my soul. For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing. The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you--ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn--the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!" He said, "Farewell!" said a last "God bless you!" and left her.

book 2, Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-10-14

The Fellow of No Delicacy Mr. Carton had never spoken well or made himself agreeable at the Manette household, but he used to haunt their street at night, dreaming of Lucie. One day he visits her and she asks him what the matter is. He claims that he is beyond help in his profligate ways, but he says his familiarity with the Manettes' family scene has given him the desire to be a good man again. Lucie tries to convince him that this is a possibility, but Carton declares that it is only a dream, however happy. He merely wants to open his heart to her and have her remember that he did so. Before he leaves he promises that he would do anything for her or for anyone close to her

Psychic troubles cause the Doctor to resume his shoemaking. Trouble is foreshadowed when Darnay leaves the house; the Doctor senses that Darnay will have very troubling news. Evidently something has been a throwback to his time in prison, since the return to shoemaking shows that the Doctor is seriously disturbed by something Darnay has said. The Doctor's occasional regressions will continue to be a great cause of concern for his friends and his daughter. At first it appears that Lucie has an easy choice of the three suitors that Dr. Manette mentions. She can choose between the handsome Darnay, the boorish Stryver, or the drunken, rude Carton. Yet Dickens makes the story interesting through his introduction of tension between Darnay and Dr. Manette. Dickens makes it clear that something has occurred between Darnay and Dr. Manette in the past, possibly something that has to do with Manette's imprisonment. The humor in Chapter 11 comes from Stryver's prideful presumption that Lucie will willingly and eagerly accept him as a husband. Gender roles in the nineteenth century were such that Lucie could not and would not express direct interest in a man whom she loved or desired, but she could reject the suit of a man who was not agreeable to her. Stryver's dwelling on the subject of marrying for love rather than money illustrates the fact that many marriages were made for economic convenience rather than love. Although Stryver congratulates himself on sidestepping his economic interests, he recommends an economically prudent marriage to Carton. Ironically, he will fall back on this type of union himself, marrying a rich widow with three sons when he finds that his attraction to Lucie is not mutual. The title of Chapter 12 is, like others, ironic. Mr. Stryver is far from delicate; he commits a number of indelicate actions. His very deportment lacks tact, as he throws his overly large body around the street and then around the interior of Tellson's--with no regard for the safety of others. His entire conversation with Mr. Lorry is indiscreet, and he puts Mr. Lorry in the very awkward position of turning Stryver down on Lucie's behalf. Still, it is fortunate that Mr. Lorry is able to intervene to present a worse situation later. Although marriage tended to be dominated by economics at the time, it is indelicate of Stryver to mention Lucie's reasons for accepting him as materialistic. Mr. Lorry is forced to remind Stryver that he needs Lucie's acceptance to go ahead, stressing that "the young lady goes before all." But Stryver looks at the matter backwards the whole way through. When he is planning his intended wedding, he is merely debating when to "make her happiness known to her" and when to "give her his hand." This is a humorous reversal of the usual assumption that a woman gives her hand in marriage, not the other way around. Stryver's second and more seriously indelicate action is his allusion to Lucie's virtue. His pride is hurt by the fact that she is not inclined to accept him, and he protects his hurt feelings by suggesting that Lucie has acted improperly or even foolishly, as though she has demonstrated that after all she is ineligible for his attentions. This is a very serious charge; in the nineteenth century, a woman's virtue was priceless while a stain on her reputation was irreversible. It is good that Stryver does not voice this idea to anyone other than Mr. Lorry, who is too bewildered to be outraged, because it could have done serious damage to Lucie. The humor in the title of Chapter 13 is that a fellow of no delicacy can be better than the fellow of false delicacy. Carton has no delicacy because he honestly tells his feelings to Lucie while knowing they are not returned. However, something productive comes of this interchange, in that Lucie is made aware of his true character and Carton is uplifted by her compassion. This represents the most ideal way to approach Lucie. Although he wavers in the novel between intense feeling and caustic flippancy, in this chapter Carton ironically reveals himself to be the fellow with the most delicacy. Gender roles function in this chapter in precisely the formula of a sentimental novel. The sentimental novel, which excites the readers' compassionate feelings, often includes the successful efforts of good women to reform men who are morally corrupt. In this genre, women are seen as moral beacons whose influence is necessary to produce a more ethical society. The opening section of Chapter 14 makes a connection between Jerry Cruncher and Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Italian author of the Divine Comedy. "Time was when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place and mused at the sight of men" refers to the fact that Dante supposedly sat upon a stool to contemplate. There is a poetic connection, too, in that both were concerned with what happens after death, although Dante was concerned about the soul's experience in the afterlife while Cruncher is concerned with how he can profit from a dead body. Jerry also shows his fondness for euphemisms, a fact that is reflected in the title of the chapter. His digging bodies from the ground makes him "an honest tradesman," and the profession is known as "resurrection-man;" his wife is berated for "flopping," Jerry's word for praying. In this way Jerry tries to invert normal values. He gives impolite terms to respectable events and polite terms for questionable work in a comic reach for respectability.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_4_part_5.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 14

book 2, chapter 14

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 14", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-10-14", "summary": "The Honest Tradesman Jerry Cruncher sits on his stool on Fleet Street outside Tellson's and sees Robert Cly's funeral procession approaching. A crowd belligerently follows the funeral procession because Cly was allegedly a spy, and Jerry climbs along with the mob on top of his coffin as they take over the procession. Jerry prudently leaves the mob before the police arrive. Jerry goes home and lectures Mrs. Cruncher for praying again. He says he is going out fishing in the middle of the night, and his son follows him out to see what he is doing. He sees his father creep down to a river and open a coffin. Young Jerry runs home with the nightmarish image that the coffin is chasing him. The next morning, young Jerry asks his father what a Resurrection-Man is, and he says that he would like to be one when he grows up. This pleases his father", "analysis": "Psychic troubles cause the Doctor to resume his shoemaking. Trouble is foreshadowed when Darnay leaves the house; the Doctor senses that Darnay will have very troubling news. Evidently something has been a throwback to his time in prison, since the return to shoemaking shows that the Doctor is seriously disturbed by something Darnay has said. The Doctor's occasional regressions will continue to be a great cause of concern for his friends and his daughter. At first it appears that Lucie has an easy choice of the three suitors that Dr. Manette mentions. She can choose between the handsome Darnay, the boorish Stryver, or the drunken, rude Carton. Yet Dickens makes the story interesting through his introduction of tension between Darnay and Dr. Manette. Dickens makes it clear that something has occurred between Darnay and Dr. Manette in the past, possibly something that has to do with Manette's imprisonment. The humor in Chapter 11 comes from Stryver's prideful presumption that Lucie will willingly and eagerly accept him as a husband. Gender roles in the nineteenth century were such that Lucie could not and would not express direct interest in a man whom she loved or desired, but she could reject the suit of a man who was not agreeable to her. Stryver's dwelling on the subject of marrying for love rather than money illustrates the fact that many marriages were made for economic convenience rather than love. Although Stryver congratulates himself on sidestepping his economic interests, he recommends an economically prudent marriage to Carton. Ironically, he will fall back on this type of union himself, marrying a rich widow with three sons when he finds that his attraction to Lucie is not mutual. The title of Chapter 12 is, like others, ironic. Mr. Stryver is far from delicate; he commits a number of indelicate actions. His very deportment lacks tact, as he throws his overly large body around the street and then around the interior of Tellson's--with no regard for the safety of others. His entire conversation with Mr. Lorry is indiscreet, and he puts Mr. Lorry in the very awkward position of turning Stryver down on Lucie's behalf. Still, it is fortunate that Mr. Lorry is able to intervene to present a worse situation later. Although marriage tended to be dominated by economics at the time, it is indelicate of Stryver to mention Lucie's reasons for accepting him as materialistic. Mr. Lorry is forced to remind Stryver that he needs Lucie's acceptance to go ahead, stressing that \"the young lady goes before all.\" But Stryver looks at the matter backwards the whole way through. When he is planning his intended wedding, he is merely debating when to \"make her happiness known to her\" and when to \"give her his hand.\" This is a humorous reversal of the usual assumption that a woman gives her hand in marriage, not the other way around. Stryver's second and more seriously indelicate action is his allusion to Lucie's virtue. His pride is hurt by the fact that she is not inclined to accept him, and he protects his hurt feelings by suggesting that Lucie has acted improperly or even foolishly, as though she has demonstrated that after all she is ineligible for his attentions. This is a very serious charge; in the nineteenth century, a woman's virtue was priceless while a stain on her reputation was irreversible. It is good that Stryver does not voice this idea to anyone other than Mr. Lorry, who is too bewildered to be outraged, because it could have done serious damage to Lucie. The humor in the title of Chapter 13 is that a fellow of no delicacy can be better than the fellow of false delicacy. Carton has no delicacy because he honestly tells his feelings to Lucie while knowing they are not returned. However, something productive comes of this interchange, in that Lucie is made aware of his true character and Carton is uplifted by her compassion. This represents the most ideal way to approach Lucie. Although he wavers in the novel between intense feeling and caustic flippancy, in this chapter Carton ironically reveals himself to be the fellow with the most delicacy. Gender roles function in this chapter in precisely the formula of a sentimental novel. The sentimental novel, which excites the readers' compassionate feelings, often includes the successful efforts of good women to reform men who are morally corrupt. In this genre, women are seen as moral beacons whose influence is necessary to produce a more ethical society. The opening section of Chapter 14 makes a connection between Jerry Cruncher and Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Italian author of the Divine Comedy. \"Time was when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place and mused at the sight of men\" refers to the fact that Dante supposedly sat upon a stool to contemplate. There is a poetic connection, too, in that both were concerned with what happens after death, although Dante was concerned about the soul's experience in the afterlife while Cruncher is concerned with how he can profit from a dead body. Jerry also shows his fondness for euphemisms, a fact that is reflected in the title of the chapter. His digging bodies from the ground makes him \"an honest tradesman,\" and the profession is known as \"resurrection-man;\" his wife is berated for \"flopping,\" Jerry's word for praying. In this way Jerry tries to invert normal values. He gives impolite terms to respectable events and polite terms for questionable work in a comic reach for respectability."}

XIV. The Honest Tradesman To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his stool in Fleet-street with his grisly urchin beside him, a vast number and variety of objects in movement were every day presented. Who could sit upon anything in Fleet-street during the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes down! With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watching the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on duty watching one stream--saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever running dry. Nor would it have been an expectation of a hopeful kind, since a small part of his income was derived from the pilotage of timid women (mostly of a full habit and past the middle term of life) from Tellson's side of the tides to the opposite shore. Brief as such companionship was in every separate instance, Mr. Cruncher never failed to become so interested in the lady as to express a strong desire to have the honour of drinking her very good health. And it was from the gifts bestowed upon him towards the execution of this benevolent purpose, that he recruited his finances, as just now observed. Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and mused in the sight of men. Mr. Cruncher, sitting on a stool in a public place, but not being a poet, mused as little as possible, and looked about him. It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were few, and belated women few, and when his affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Cruncher must have been "flopping" in some pointed manner, when an unusual concourse pouring down Fleet-street westward, attracted his attention. Looking that way, Mr. Cruncher made out that some kind of funeral was coming along, and that there was popular objection to this funeral, which engendered uproar. "Young Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his offspring, "it's a buryin'." "Hooroar, father!" cried Young Jerry. The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with mysterious significance. The elder gentleman took the cry so ill, that he watched his opportunity, and smote the young gentleman on the ear. "What d'ye mean? What are you hooroaring at? What do you want to conwey to your own father, you young Rip? This boy is a getting too many for _me_!" said Mr. Cruncher, surveying him. "Him and his hooroars! Don't let me hear no more of you, or you shall feel some more of me. D'ye hear?" "I warn't doing no harm," Young Jerry protested, rubbing his cheek. "Drop it then," said Mr. Cruncher; "I won't have none of _your_ no harms. Get a top of that there seat, and look at the crowd." His son obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were bawling and hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy mourning coach, in which mourning coach there was only one mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that were considered essential to the dignity of the position. The position appeared by no means to please him, however, with an increasing rabble surrounding the coach, deriding him, making grimaces at him, and incessantly groaning and calling out: "Yah! Spies! Tst! Yaha! Spies!" with many compliments too numerous and forcible to repeat. Funerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr. Cruncher; he always pricked up his senses, and became excited, when a funeral passed Tellson's. Naturally, therefore, a funeral with this uncommon attendance excited him greatly, and he asked of the first man who ran against him: "What is it, brother? What's it about?" "_I_ don't know," said the man. "Spies! Yaha! Tst! Spies!" He asked another man. "Who is it?" "_I_ don't know," returned the man, clapping his hands to his mouth nevertheless, and vociferating in a surprising heat and with the greatest ardour, "Spies! Yaha! Tst, tst! Spi--ies!" At length, a person better informed on the merits of the case, tumbled against him, and from this person he learned that the funeral was the funeral of one Roger Cly. "Was he a spy?" asked Mr. Cruncher. "Old Bailey spy," returned his informant. "Yaha! Tst! Yah! Old Bailey Spi--i--ies!" "Why, to be sure!" exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial at which he had assisted. "I've seen him. Dead, is he?" "Dead as mutton," returned the other, "and can't be too dead. Have 'em out, there! Spies! Pull 'em out, there! Spies!" The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any idea, that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and loudly repeating the suggestion to have 'em out, and to pull 'em out, mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they came to a stop. On the crowd's opening the coach doors, the one mourner scuffled out by himself and was in their hands for a moment; but he was so alert, and made such good use of his time, that in another moment he was scouring away up a bye-street, after shedding his cloak, hat, long hatband, white pocket-handkerchief, and other symbolical tears. These, the people tore to pieces and scattered far and wide with great enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their shops; for a crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded. They had already got the length of opening the hearse to take the coffin out, when some brighter genius proposed instead, its being escorted to its destination amidst general rejoicing. Practical suggestions being much needed, this suggestion, too, was received with acclamation, and the coach was immediately filled with eight inside and a dozen out, while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as could by any exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among the first of these volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself, who modestly concealed his spiky head from the observation of Tellson's, in the further corner of the mourning coach. The officiating undertakers made some protest against these changes in the ceremonies; but, the river being alarmingly near, and several voices remarking on the efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory members of the profession to reason, the protest was faint and brief. The remodelled procession started, with a chimney-sweep driving the hearse--advised by the regular driver, who was perched beside him, under close inspection, for the purpose--and with a pieman, also attended by his cabinet minister, driving the mourning coach. A bear-leader, a popular street character of the time, was impressed as an additional ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the Strand; and his bear, who was black and very mangy, gave quite an Undertaking air to that part of the procession in which he walked. Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and infinite caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession went its way, recruiting at every step, and all the shops shutting up before it. Its destination was the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in the fields. It got there in course of time; insisted on pouring into the burial-ground; finally, accomplished the interment of the deceased Roger Cly in its own way, and highly to its own satisfaction. The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under the necessity of providing some other entertainment for itself, another brighter genius (or perhaps the same) conceived the humour of impeaching casual passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had never been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in the realisation of this fancy, and they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The transition to the sport of window-breaking, and thence to the plundering of public-houses, was easy and natural. At last, after several hours, when sundry summer-houses had been pulled down, and some area-railings had been torn up, to arm the more belligerent spirits, a rumour got about that the Guards were coming. Before this rumour, the crowd gradually melted away, and perhaps the Guards came, and perhaps they never came, and this was the usual progress of a mob. Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but had remained behind in the churchyard, to confer and condole with the undertakers. The place had a soothing influence on him. He procured a pipe from a neighbouring public-house, and smoked it, looking in at the railings and maturely considering the spot. "Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophising himself in his usual way, "you see that there Cly that day, and you see with your own eyes that he was a young 'un and a straight made 'un." Having smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little longer, he turned himself about, that he might appear, before the hour of closing, on his station at Tellson's. Whether his meditations on mortality had touched his liver, or whether his general health had been previously at all amiss, or whether he desired to show a little attention to an eminent man, is not so much to the purpose, as that he made a short call upon his medical adviser--a distinguished surgeon--on his way back. Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest, and reported No job in his absence. The bank closed, the ancient clerks came out, the usual watch was set, and Mr. Cruncher and his son went home to tea. "Now, I tell you where it is!" said Mr. Cruncher to his wife, on entering. "If, as a honest tradesman, my wenturs goes wrong to-night, I shall make sure that you've been praying again me, and I shall work you for it just the same as if I seen you do it." The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head. "Why, you're at it afore my face!" said Mr. Cruncher, with signs of angry apprehension. "I am saying nothing." "Well, then; don't meditate nothing. You might as well flop as meditate. You may as well go again me one way as another. Drop it altogether." "Yes, Jerry." "Yes, Jerry," repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to tea. "Ah! It _is_ yes, Jerry. That's about it. You may say yes, Jerry." Mr. Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky corroborations, but made use of them, as people not unfrequently do, to express general ironical dissatisfaction. "You and your yes, Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, taking a bite out of his bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it down with a large invisible oyster out of his saucer. "Ah! I think so. I believe you." "You are going out to-night?" asked his decent wife, when he took another bite. "Yes, I am." "May I go with you, father?" asked his son, briskly. "No, you mayn't. I'm a going--as your mother knows--a fishing. That's where I'm going to. Going a fishing." "Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty; don't it, father?" "Never you mind." "Shall you bring any fish home, father?" "If I don't, you'll have short commons, to-morrow," returned that gentleman, shaking his head; "that's questions enough for you; I ain't a going out, till you've been long abed." He devoted himself during the remainder of the evening to keeping a most vigilant watch on Mrs. Cruncher, and sullenly holding her in conversation that she might be prevented from meditating any petitions to his disadvantage. With this view, he urged his son to hold her in conversation also, and led the unfortunate woman a hard life by dwelling on any causes of complaint he could bring against her, rather than he would leave her for a moment to her own reflections. The devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story. "And mind you!" said Mr. Cruncher. "No games to-morrow! If I, as a honest tradesman, succeed in providing a jinte of meat or two, none of your not touching of it, and sticking to bread. If I, as a honest tradesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of your declaring on water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome will be a ugly customer to you, if you don't. _I_'m your Rome, you know." Then he began grumbling again: "With your flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I don't know how scarce you mayn't make the wittles and drink here, by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he _is_ your'n, ain't he? He's as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother, and not know that a mother's first duty is to blow her boy out?" This touched Young Jerry on a tender place; who adjured his mother to perform her first duty, and, whatever else she did or neglected, above all things to lay especial stress on the discharge of that maternal function so affectingly and delicately indicated by his other parent. Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, until Young Jerry was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid under similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher beguiled the earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes, and did not start upon his excursion until nearly one o'clock. Towards that small and ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles about him in skilful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher, extinguished the light, and went out. Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing when he went to bed, was not long after his father. Under cover of the darkness he followed out of the room, followed down the stairs, followed down the court, followed out into the streets. He was in no uneasiness concerning his getting into the house again, for it was full of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night. Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and mystery of his father's honest calling, Young Jerry, keeping as close to house fronts, walls, and doorways, as his eyes were close to one another, held his honoured parent in view. The honoured parent steering Northward, had not gone far, when he was joined by another disciple of Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together. Within half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond the winking lamps, and the more than winking watchmen, and were out upon a lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up here--and that so silently, that if Young Jerry had been superstitious, he might have supposed the second follower of the gentle craft to have, all of a sudden, split himself into two. The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the three stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the bank was a low brick wall, surmounted by an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and wall the three turned out of the road, and up a blind lane, of which the wall--there, risen to some eight or ten feet high--formed one side. Crouching down in a corner, peeping up the lane, the next object that Young Jerry saw, was the form of his honoured parent, pretty well defined against a watery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and then the third. They all dropped softly on the ground within the gate, and lay there a little--listening perhaps. Then, they moved away on their hands and knees. It was now Young Jerry's turn to approach the gate: which he did, holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there, and looking in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through some rank grass! and all the gravestones in the churchyard--it was a large churchyard that they were in--looking on like ghosts in white, while the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. They did not creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And then they began to fish. They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard, until the awful striking of the church clock so terrified Young Jerry, that he made off, with his hair as stiff as his father's. But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters, not only stopped him in his running away, but lured him back again. They were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for the second time; but, now they seemed to have got a bite. There was a screwing and complaining sound down below, and their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow degrees the weight broke away the earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry very well knew what it would be; but, when he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he made off again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more. He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side--perhaps taking his arm--it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy's kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being half dead. And even then it would not leave him, but followed him upstairs with a bump on every stair, scrambled into bed with him, and bumped down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell asleep. From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise, by the presence of his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong with him; at least, so Young Jerry inferred, from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the back of her head against the head-board of the bed. "I told you I would," said Mr. Cruncher, "and I did." "Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!" his wife implored. "You oppose yourself to the profit of the business," said Jerry, "and me and my partners suffer. You was to honour and obey; why the devil don't you?" "I try to be a good wife, Jerry," the poor woman protested, with tears. "Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband's business? Is it honouring your husband to dishonour his business? Is it obeying your husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business?" "You hadn't taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry." "It's enough for you," retorted Mr. Cruncher, "to be the wife of a honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calculations when he took to his trade or when he didn't. A honouring and obeying wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious woman? If you're a religious woman, give me a irreligious one! You have no more nat'ral sense of duty than the bed of this here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it must be knocked into you." The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and terminated in the honest tradesman's kicking off his clay-soiled boots, and lying down at his length on the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on his back, with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay down too, and fell asleep again. There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case he should observe any symptoms of her saying Grace. He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pursue his ostensible calling. Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at his father's side along sunny and crowded Fleet-street, was a very different Young Jerry from him of the previous night, running home through darkness and solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day, and his qualms were gone with the night--in which particulars it is not improbable that he had compeers in Fleet-street and the City of London, that fine morning. "Father," said Young Jerry, as they walked along: taking care to keep at arm's length and to have the stool well between them: "what's a Resurrection-Man?" Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he answered, "How should I know?" "I thought you knowed everything, father," said the artless boy. "Hem! Well," returned Mr. Cruncher, going on again, and lifting off his hat to give his spikes free play, "he's a tradesman." "What's his goods, father?" asked the brisk Young Jerry. "His goods," said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in his mind, "is a branch of Scientific goods." "Persons' bodies, ain't it, father?" asked the lively boy. "I believe it is something of that sort," said Mr. Cruncher. "Oh, father, I should so like to be a Resurrection-Man when I'm quite growed up!" Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a dubious and moral way. "It depends upon how you dewelop your talents. Be careful to dewelop your talents, and never to say no more than you can help to nobody, and there's no telling at the present time what you may not come to be fit for." As Young Jerry, thus encouraged, went on a few yards in advance, to plant the stool in the shadow of the Bar, Mr. Cruncher added to himself: "Jerry, you honest tradesman, there's hopes wot that boy will yet be a blessing to you, and a recompense to you for his mother!"

book 2, Chapter 14

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-10-14

The Honest Tradesman Jerry Cruncher sits on his stool on Fleet Street outside Tellson's and sees Robert Cly's funeral procession approaching. A crowd belligerently follows the funeral procession because Cly was allegedly a spy, and Jerry climbs along with the mob on top of his coffin as they take over the procession. Jerry prudently leaves the mob before the police arrive. Jerry goes home and lectures Mrs. Cruncher for praying again. He says he is going out fishing in the middle of the night, and his son follows him out to see what he is doing. He sees his father creep down to a river and open a coffin. Young Jerry runs home with the nightmarish image that the coffin is chasing him. The next morning, young Jerry asks his father what a Resurrection-Man is, and he says that he would like to be one when he grows up. This pleases his father

Psychic troubles cause the Doctor to resume his shoemaking. Trouble is foreshadowed when Darnay leaves the house; the Doctor senses that Darnay will have very troubling news. Evidently something has been a throwback to his time in prison, since the return to shoemaking shows that the Doctor is seriously disturbed by something Darnay has said. The Doctor's occasional regressions will continue to be a great cause of concern for his friends and his daughter. At first it appears that Lucie has an easy choice of the three suitors that Dr. Manette mentions. She can choose between the handsome Darnay, the boorish Stryver, or the drunken, rude Carton. Yet Dickens makes the story interesting through his introduction of tension between Darnay and Dr. Manette. Dickens makes it clear that something has occurred between Darnay and Dr. Manette in the past, possibly something that has to do with Manette's imprisonment. The humor in Chapter 11 comes from Stryver's prideful presumption that Lucie will willingly and eagerly accept him as a husband. Gender roles in the nineteenth century were such that Lucie could not and would not express direct interest in a man whom she loved or desired, but she could reject the suit of a man who was not agreeable to her. Stryver's dwelling on the subject of marrying for love rather than money illustrates the fact that many marriages were made for economic convenience rather than love. Although Stryver congratulates himself on sidestepping his economic interests, he recommends an economically prudent marriage to Carton. Ironically, he will fall back on this type of union himself, marrying a rich widow with three sons when he finds that his attraction to Lucie is not mutual. The title of Chapter 12 is, like others, ironic. Mr. Stryver is far from delicate; he commits a number of indelicate actions. His very deportment lacks tact, as he throws his overly large body around the street and then around the interior of Tellson's--with no regard for the safety of others. His entire conversation with Mr. Lorry is indiscreet, and he puts Mr. Lorry in the very awkward position of turning Stryver down on Lucie's behalf. Still, it is fortunate that Mr. Lorry is able to intervene to present a worse situation later. Although marriage tended to be dominated by economics at the time, it is indelicate of Stryver to mention Lucie's reasons for accepting him as materialistic. Mr. Lorry is forced to remind Stryver that he needs Lucie's acceptance to go ahead, stressing that "the young lady goes before all." But Stryver looks at the matter backwards the whole way through. When he is planning his intended wedding, he is merely debating when to "make her happiness known to her" and when to "give her his hand." This is a humorous reversal of the usual assumption that a woman gives her hand in marriage, not the other way around. Stryver's second and more seriously indelicate action is his allusion to Lucie's virtue. His pride is hurt by the fact that she is not inclined to accept him, and he protects his hurt feelings by suggesting that Lucie has acted improperly or even foolishly, as though she has demonstrated that after all she is ineligible for his attentions. This is a very serious charge; in the nineteenth century, a woman's virtue was priceless while a stain on her reputation was irreversible. It is good that Stryver does not voice this idea to anyone other than Mr. Lorry, who is too bewildered to be outraged, because it could have done serious damage to Lucie. The humor in the title of Chapter 13 is that a fellow of no delicacy can be better than the fellow of false delicacy. Carton has no delicacy because he honestly tells his feelings to Lucie while knowing they are not returned. However, something productive comes of this interchange, in that Lucie is made aware of his true character and Carton is uplifted by her compassion. This represents the most ideal way to approach Lucie. Although he wavers in the novel between intense feeling and caustic flippancy, in this chapter Carton ironically reveals himself to be the fellow with the most delicacy. Gender roles function in this chapter in precisely the formula of a sentimental novel. The sentimental novel, which excites the readers' compassionate feelings, often includes the successful efforts of good women to reform men who are morally corrupt. In this genre, women are seen as moral beacons whose influence is necessary to produce a more ethical society. The opening section of Chapter 14 makes a connection between Jerry Cruncher and Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Italian author of the Divine Comedy. "Time was when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place and mused at the sight of men" refers to the fact that Dante supposedly sat upon a stool to contemplate. There is a poetic connection, too, in that both were concerned with what happens after death, although Dante was concerned about the soul's experience in the afterlife while Cruncher is concerned with how he can profit from a dead body. Jerry also shows his fondness for euphemisms, a fact that is reflected in the title of the chapter. His digging bodies from the ground makes him "an honest tradesman," and the profession is known as "resurrection-man;" his wife is berated for "flopping," Jerry's word for praying. In this way Jerry tries to invert normal values. He gives impolite terms to respectable events and polite terms for questionable work in a comic reach for respectability.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_5_part_1.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 15

book 2, chapter 15

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-15-19", "summary": "Knitting There is an unusual amount of early drinking in the Defarges' wine-shop, despite the fact that Monsieur Defarge is not in. Monsieur Defarge enters with a person who repairs roads and who is apparently named Jacques, whom he leads to the apartment that Doctor Manette used to occupy. Defarge introduces him to the other three men named Jacques. The road-mender recounts the story of how he saw a man hanging by the chain under Monseigneur's carriage. He says that although he had never seen this man before, he recognized him again because of his unusual height. When he was returning home from working on a hillside, he saw the man bound and led by six soldiers. He also claims that the captured man recognized him. The man is lame, and the soldiers drove him along with the butts of their guns through a village full of gawking people and to a prison gate. The road-mender saw him behind bars in the prison on his way to work the next morning. The man has been imprisoned for having allegedly killed Monseigneur, and soldiers have built a gallows for his execution. The road-mender is asked to leave, and Defarge confers with the other Jacques characters. They decide to register the man as doomed to destruction. One Jacques expresses uncertainty about the safety and secrecy of their register, but Defarge claims that his wife knits it using symbols that no one but herself understands. The two Defarges take the road-mender to see Versailles, where he waves and shouts enthusiastically at royalty and aristocrats. When a man asks Madame Defarge what she is knitting, she answers that she is knitting shrouds. At the end of the spectacle, the Defarges express contempt for the upper classes", "analysis": "A Tale of Two Cities is divided into three books of unequal length. Their structure is defined by geographical movements between the two cities. The first book is an escape from Paris, and the major arc of the second book is to set up the return to Paris. The third deals with a more difficult, second escape from Paris. An important factor in the emotional nature of Darnay's return to Paris at the end of the second book involves the connections that he has made in London. The name of the second book, \"The Golden Thread,\" refers to Lucie's hold over them all, a pull which Darnay has to resist for the first time in his decision to return to Paris without her. Lucie's pull is outweighed by the loadstone of Darnay's responsibilities in France. Allusion and symbolism are rife in the novel. There is a highly theatrical element to the way the Defarges give and receive symbols. When Defarge says that the weather is bad, all of the men know to get up and leave the wine-shop. This illustrates not only his power over the small community, but also the premeditated strategy in their plans. Madame Defarge keeps a register of those who have done wrong and those who are marked to be killed in her knitting, using patterns which are indecipherable to anyone else. The importance of symbols to the Defarges' interactions reflects a general preoccupation of the revolutionaries. To mark their difference from the previous regime, the revolutionaries began marking the years after the revolution as Year One, Year Two, Year Three of the Republic. Dickens reiterates several of his themes in this chapter, namely those of water, time, and the ferocious nature of the mob. Gaspard is killed over a fountain, as his son was; this will inspire the revolutionaries to create their own sea and reach out for fountains of blood. The execution of Gaspard has its own place and analogue in historical time - it reflects the execution of Damiens, who tried to overthrow his own king a few years ago. The Defarges take the road-mender to Versailles to show him exactly whom he should hate. The very crowd that wildly celebrates the king and queen will rip them apart in the future. One of the characters who experiences the most growth is the mender of roads. We see him now in the first days of his revolutionary fervor. Right now he is still not fully involved in the revolutionary plot - he still wears the blue cap of pre-Revolutionary France, and he blindly follows the Jacques in their plots. Later we will see him change from this quiet, innocent man to one of the bloodthirsty leaders of the Revolution. In Chapter 15, Dickens foreshadows the beginnings of revolution with an image of the accused man being dragged along the road. The language that the road-mender uses to describe the sight of the man is almost supernatural, describing the people as having long, giant-like shadows. The soldiers that make up the man's escort taunt him for being lame, and his face is bloodied. The man begins to take on a Christ-like character when he is dragged through the village with a crowd watching. His reluctance and victimhood strongly resemble Jesus bearing the cross on the way to crucifixion. The man symbolizes the sacrifice of the lower classes at the hands of French aristocrats. Madame Defarge is the dominant character of Chapter 16, and she holds the same role in Paris that Lucie does in London - she is the center of everything, the thread that holds everyone together. As Lucie unites everyone with her threads of hair, Madame Defarge unites everyone with her woven threads. Yet the women serve as opposing forces. As Lucie binds everyone through her love, Madame Defarge binds everyone through her hatred of the nobility. Lucie is the nurturer and protecting woman, while Madame Defarge knits only to serve as a cover for the Revolution. Dickens uses various literary allusions in elaborating Madame Defarge's story. The ties between Madame Defarge and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare's Macbeth are very strong in this chapter, with the \"frightfully grand woman\" urging Defarge himself not to lose sight of his murderous goals. She demonstrates her violence by aggressively tying up her money in a piece of cloth as she describes how her husband should crush his enemies. This pattern echoes the scene in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth urges her husband to kill King Duncan, taunting him with his own uncertainty . Madame Defarge's knitting also invokes classical mythology. The patterns that she knits hold significance in terms of the future of the people around her. Dickens directly and repetitively compares her to the Fates. The Fates are three goddesses of Greek mythology who control human lives, and they too were often pictured knitting. They included Clotho, who spun the web of life, Lachesis, who measured the length of it, and Atropos who snipped it short. Because Madame Defarge is powerful in the revolutionary movement, she holds powers similar to those of the Fates. In a novel full of conflict and turbulence, Chapter 17 provides a rare bit of restfulness. Even so, Dickens keeps his audience engaged through foreshadowing about something ominous about to happen to the family that has finally found happiness. The dominant image in the chapter is of the moon, with the Doctor and his daughter having their conversation outdoors in the moonlight. The narrator reflects that moonlight, like the passage of human life, is invariably sad. This brings the reader away from the increased sentimentalism of the chapter and back to the sad reality that there are still unresolved problems in the novel to threaten the Manettes. The undefined threat in this chapter is so strong that it affects Lucie. When she goes to check on her father, she is \"not free from unshaped fears.\" The fears remain nameless and shapeless, but they take form very quickly in the following chapters. The main plot element of Chapter 17, however, is that Lucie's father does not object to her marriage. This point clarifies the supposition that Darnay alone is not the threat that hangs over their family. Lucie's importance as \"the golden thread\" is further demonstrated by her absence, moreso than in the previous sentimental scenes with her father. The change in Doctor Manette is made more painful by the earlier description of his rescue as a resurrection. His reversion to his jailtime behavior is therefore likened to a second death. The link to his prison days is so strong that he works on the very same woman's shoes that he had left unfinished. In accordance with the religious imagery surrounding Doctor Manette's resurrection from the dead, he is described in biblical terms in Chapter 18. \"Into his face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn\" is a reference to Psalm 126, in which God is asked to \"Turn again our captivity ... as the streams in the South,\" and Psalm 137, which reads: \"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.\" These Psalms are both considered to be written by a singer in exile, which highlights Doctor Manette's imprisonment as not merely an incarceration but an exile from his family. In Chapter 19, the violence of the destruction of the shoemaking equipment, although it has a farcical character, foreshadows the later violence in the novel. That the Doctor's associates do the deed late in the night makes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry feel like accomplices in a horrible crime, even though they are trying to help the Doctor. Their guilt pales beside the horrible brutality of a number of real crimes in this novel, but Dickens makes the comparison nevertheless, calling the bench \"the body.\" That this \"crime\" is upsetting for Miss Pross sheds light on how unprepared she will be to commit a real crime at the close of the novel. Dickens readies his reader for this role for Miss Pross, describing her at the shoemaking bench \"as if she were assisting a murder-for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure.\" Miss Pross is developed here again as a very moral character. She will prove, however, that she loves her Ladybird enough to engage in actions on the moral fringe in order to protect her."}

XV. Knitting There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. As early as six o'clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping through its barred windows had descried other faces within, bending over measures of wine. Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best of times, but it would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that he sold at this time. A sour wine, moreover, or a souring, for its influence on the mood of those who drank it was to make them gloomy. No vivacious Bacchanalian flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Monsieur Defarge: but, a smouldering fire that burnt in the dark, lay hidden in the dregs of it. This had been the third morning in succession, on which there had been early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. It had begun on Monday, and here was Wednesday come. There had been more of early brooding than drinking; for, many men had listened and whispered and slunk about there from the time of the opening of the door, who could not have laid a piece of money on the counter to save their souls. These were to the full as interested in the place, however, as if they could have commanded whole barrels of wine; and they glided from seat to seat, and from corner to corner, swallowing talk in lieu of drink, with greedy looks. Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the master of the wine-shop was not visible. He was not missed; for, nobody who crossed the threshold looked for him, nobody asked for him, nobody wondered to see only Madame Defarge in her seat, presiding over the distribution of wine, with a bowl of battered small coins before her, as much defaced and beaten out of their original impress as the small coinage of humanity from whose ragged pockets they had come. A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind, were perhaps observed by the spies who looked in at the wine-shop, as they looked in at every place, high and low, from the king's palace to the criminal's gaol. Games at cards languished, players at dominoes musingly built towers with them, drinkers drew figures on the tables with spilt drops of wine, Madame Defarge herself picked out the pattern on her sleeve with her toothpick, and saw and heard something inaudible and invisible a long way off. Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until midday. It was high noontide, when two dusty men passed through his streets and under his swinging lamps: of whom, one was Monsieur Defarge: the other a mender of roads in a blue cap. All adust and athirst, the two entered the wine-shop. Their arrival had lighted a kind of fire in the breast of Saint Antoine, fast spreading as they came along, which stirred and flickered in flames of faces at most doors and windows. Yet, no one had followed them, and no man spoke when they entered the wine-shop, though the eyes of every man there were turned upon them. "Good day, gentlemen!" said Monsieur Defarge. It may have been a signal for loosening the general tongue. It elicited an answering chorus of "Good day!" "It is bad weather, gentlemen," said Defarge, shaking his head. Upon which, every man looked at his neighbour, and then all cast down their eyes and sat silent. Except one man, who got up and went out. "My wife," said Defarge aloud, addressing Madame Defarge: "I have travelled certain leagues with this good mender of roads, called Jacques. I met him--by accident--a day and half's journey out of Paris. He is a good child, this mender of roads, called Jacques. Give him to drink, my wife!" A second man got up and went out. Madame Defarge set wine before the mender of roads called Jacques, who doffed his blue cap to the company, and drank. In the breast of his blouse he carried some coarse dark bread; he ate of this between whiles, and sat munching and drinking near Madame Defarge's counter. A third man got up and went out. Defarge refreshed himself with a draught of wine--but, he took less than was given to the stranger, as being himself a man to whom it was no rarity--and stood waiting until the countryman had made his breakfast. He looked at no one present, and no one now looked at him; not even Madame Defarge, who had taken up her knitting, and was at work. "Have you finished your repast, friend?" he asked, in due season. "Yes, thank you." "Come, then! You shall see the apartment that I told you you could occupy. It will suit you to a marvel." Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street into a courtyard, out of the courtyard up a steep staircase, out of the staircase into a garret--formerly the garret where a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes. No white-haired man was there now; but, the three men were there who had gone out of the wine-shop singly. And between them and the white-haired man afar off, was the one small link, that they had once looked in at him through the chinks in the wall. Defarge closed the door carefully, and spoke in a subdued voice: "Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three! This is the witness encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques Four. He will tell you all. Speak, Jacques Five!" The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his swarthy forehead with it, and said, "Where shall I commence, monsieur?" "Commence," was Monsieur Defarge's not unreasonable reply, "at the commencement." "I saw him then, messieurs," began the mender of roads, "a year ago this running summer, underneath the carriage of the Marquis, hanging by the chain. Behold the manner of it. I leaving my work on the road, the sun going to bed, the carriage of the Marquis slowly ascending the hill, he hanging by the chain--like this." Again the mender of roads went through the whole performance; in which he ought to have been perfect by that time, seeing that it had been the infallible resource and indispensable entertainment of his village during a whole year. Jacques One struck in, and asked if he had ever seen the man before? "Never," answered the mender of roads, recovering his perpendicular. Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recognised him then? "By his tall figure," said the mender of roads, softly, and with his finger at his nose. "When Monsieur the Marquis demands that evening, 'Say, what is he like?' I make response, 'Tall as a spectre.'" "You should have said, short as a dwarf," returned Jacques Two. "But what did I know? The deed was not then accomplished, neither did he confide in me. Observe! Under those circumstances even, I do not offer my testimony. Monsieur the Marquis indicates me with his finger, standing near our little fountain, and says, 'To me! Bring that rascal!' My faith, messieurs, I offer nothing." "He is right there, Jacques," murmured Defarge, to him who had interrupted. "Go on!" "Good!" said the mender of roads, with an air of mystery. "The tall man is lost, and he is sought--how many months? Nine, ten, eleven?" "No matter, the number," said Defarge. "He is well hidden, but at last he is unluckily found. Go on!" "I am again at work upon the hill-side, and the sun is again about to go to bed. I am collecting my tools to descend to my cottage down in the village below, where it is already dark, when I raise my eyes, and see coming over the hill six soldiers. In the midst of them is a tall man with his arms bound--tied to his sides--like this!" With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a man with his elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords that were knotted behind him. "I stand aside, messieurs, by my heap of stones, to see the soldiers and their prisoner pass (for it is a solitary road, that, where any spectacle is well worth looking at), and at first, as they approach, I see no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall man bound, and that they are almost black to my sight--except on the side of the sun going to bed, where they have a red edge, messieurs. Also, I see that their long shadows are on the hollow ridge on the opposite side of the road, and are on the hill above it, and are like the shadows of giants. Also, I see that they are covered with dust, and that the dust moves with them as they come, tramp, tramp! But when they advance quite near to me, I recognise the tall man, and he recognises me. Ah, but he would be well content to precipitate himself over the hill-side once again, as on the evening when he and I first encountered, close to the same spot!" He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw it vividly; perhaps he had not seen much in his life. "I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall man; he does not show the soldiers that he recognises me; we do it, and we know it, with our eyes. 'Come on!' says the chief of that company, pointing to the village, 'bring him fast to his tomb!' and they bring him faster. I follow. His arms are swelled because of being bound so tight, his wooden shoes are large and clumsy, and he is lame. Because he is lame, and consequently slow, they drive him with their guns--like this!" He imitated the action of a man's being impelled forward by the butt-ends of muskets. "As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls. They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and covered with dust, but he cannot touch it; thereupon they laugh again. They bring him into the village; all the village runs to look; they take him past the mill, and up to the prison; all the village sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the night, and swallow him--like this!" He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it with a sounding snap of his teeth. Observant of his unwillingness to mar the effect by opening it again, Defarge said, "Go on, Jacques." "All the village," pursued the mender of roads, on tiptoe and in a low voice, "withdraws; all the village whispers by the fountain; all the village sleeps; all the village dreams of that unhappy one, within the locks and bars of the prison on the crag, and never to come out of it, except to perish. In the morning, with my tools upon my shoulder, eating my morsel of black bread as I go, I make a circuit by the prison, on my way to my work. There I see him, high up, behind the bars of a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty as last night, looking through. He has no hand free, to wave to me; I dare not call to him; he regards me like a dead man." Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another. The looks of all of them were dark, repressed, and revengeful, as they listened to the countryman's story; the manner of all of them, while it was secret, was authoritative too. They had the air of a rough tribunal; Jacques One and Two sitting on the old pallet-bed, each with his chin resting on his hand, and his eyes intent on the road-mender; Jacques Three, equally intent, on one knee behind them, with his agitated hand always gliding over the network of fine nerves about his mouth and nose; Defarge standing between them and the narrator, whom he had stationed in the light of the window, by turns looking from him to them, and from them to him. "Go on, Jacques," said Defarge. "He remains up there in his iron cage some days. The village looks at him by stealth, for it is afraid. But it always looks up, from a distance, at the prison on the crag; and in the evening, when the work of the day is achieved and it assembles to gossip at the fountain, all faces are turned towards the prison. Formerly, they were turned towards the posting-house; now, they are turned towards the prison. They whisper at the fountain, that although condemned to death he will not be executed; they say that petitions have been presented in Paris, showing that he was enraged and made mad by the death of his child; they say that a petition has been presented to the King himself. What do I know? It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps no." "Listen then, Jacques," Number One of that name sternly interposed. "Know that a petition was presented to the King and Queen. All here, yourself excepted, saw the King take it, in his carriage in the street, sitting beside the Queen. It is Defarge whom you see here, who, at the hazard of his life, darted out before the horses, with the petition in his hand." "And once again listen, Jacques!" said the kneeling Number Three: his fingers ever wandering over and over those fine nerves, with a strikingly greedy air, as if he hungered for something--that was neither food nor drink; "the guard, horse and foot, surrounded the petitioner, and struck him blows. You hear?" "I hear, messieurs." "Go on then," said Defarge. "Again; on the other hand, they whisper at the fountain," resumed the countryman, "that he is brought down into our country to be executed on the spot, and that he will very certainly be executed. They even whisper that because he has slain Monseigneur, and because Monseigneur was the father of his tenants--serfs--what you will--he will be executed as a parricide. One old man says at the fountain, that his right hand, armed with the knife, will be burnt off before his face; that, into wounds which will be made in his arms, his breast, and his legs, there will be poured boiling oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax, and sulphur; finally, that he will be torn limb from limb by four strong horses. That old man says, all this was actually done to a prisoner who made an attempt on the life of the late King, Louis Fifteen. But how do I know if he lies? I am not a scholar." "Listen once again then, Jacques!" said the man with the restless hand and the craving air. "The name of that prisoner was Damiens, and it was all done in open day, in the open streets of this city of Paris; and nothing was more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done, than the crowd of ladies of quality and fashion, who were full of eager attention to the last--to the last, Jacques, prolonged until nightfall, when he had lost two legs and an arm, and still breathed! And it was done--why, how old are you?" "Thirty-five," said the mender of roads, who looked sixty. "It was done when you were more than ten years old; you might have seen it." "Enough!" said Defarge, with grim impatience. "Long live the Devil! Go on." "Well! Some whisper this, some whisper that; they speak of nothing else; even the fountain appears to fall to that tune. At length, on Sunday night when all the village is asleep, come soldiers, winding down from the prison, and their guns ring on the stones of the little street. Workmen dig, workmen hammer, soldiers laugh and sing; in the morning, by the fountain, there is raised a gallows forty feet high, poisoning the water." The mender of roads looked _through_ rather than _at_ the low ceiling, and pointed as if he saw the gallows somewhere in the sky. "All work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody leads the cows out, the cows are there with the rest. At midday, the roll of drums. Soldiers have marched into the prison in the night, and he is in the midst of many soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth there is a gag--tied so, with a tight string, making him look almost as if he laughed." He suggested it, by creasing his face with his two thumbs, from the corners of his mouth to his ears. "On the top of the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the air. He is hanged there forty feet high--and is left hanging, poisoning the water." They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his face, on which the perspiration had started afresh while he recalled the spectacle. "It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and the children draw water! Who can gossip of an evening, under that shadow! Under it, have I said? When I left the village, Monday evening as the sun was going to bed, and looked back from the hill, the shadow struck across the church, across the mill, across the prison--seemed to strike across the earth, messieurs, to where the sky rests upon it!" The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the other three, and his finger quivered with the craving that was on him. "That's all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been warned to do), and I walked on, that night and half next day, until I met (as I was warned I should) this comrade. With him, I came on, now riding and now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through last night. And here you see me!" After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, "Good! You have acted and recounted faithfully. Will you wait for us a little, outside the door?" "Very willingly," said the mender of roads. Whom Defarge escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there, returned. The three had risen, and their heads were together when he came back to the garret. "How say you, Jacques?" demanded Number One. "To be registered?" "To be registered, as doomed to destruction," returned Defarge. "Magnificent!" croaked the man with the craving. "The chateau, and all the race?" inquired the first. "The chateau and all the race," returned Defarge. "Extermination." The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, "Magnificent!" and began gnawing another finger. "Are you sure," asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, "that no embarrassment can arise from our manner of keeping the register? Without doubt it is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher it; but shall we always be able to decipher it--or, I ought to say, will she?" "Jacques," returned Defarge, drawing himself up, "if madame my wife undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it--not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register of Madame Defarge." There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and then the man who hungered, asked: "Is this rustic to be sent back soon? I hope so. He is very simple; is he not a little dangerous?" "He knows nothing," said Defarge; "at least nothing more than would easily elevate himself to a gallows of the same height. I charge myself with him; let him remain with me; I will take care of him, and set him on his road. He wishes to see the fine world--the King, the Queen, and Court; let him see them on Sunday." "What?" exclaimed the hungry man, staring. "Is it a good sign, that he wishes to see Royalty and Nobility?" "Jacques," said Defarge; "judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day." Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads, being found already dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself down on the pallet-bed and take some rest. He needed no persuasion, and was soon asleep. Worse quarters than Defarge's wine-shop, could easily have been found in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for a mysterious dread of madame by which he was constantly haunted, his life was very new and agreeable. But, madame sat all day at her counter, so expressly unconscious of him, and so particularly determined not to perceive that his being there had any connection with anything below the surface, that he shook in his wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For, he contended with himself that it was impossible to foresee what that lady might pretend next; and he felt assured that if she should take it into her brightly ornamented head to pretend that she had seen him do a murder and afterwards flay the victim, she would infallibly go through with it until the play was played out. Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads was not enchanted (though he said he was) to find that madame was to accompany monsieur and himself to Versailles. It was additionally disconcerting to have madame knitting all the way there, in a public conveyance; it was additionally disconcerting yet, to have madame in the crowd in the afternoon, still with her knitting in her hands as the crowd waited to see the carriage of the King and Queen. "You work hard, madame," said a man near her. "Yes," answered Madame Defarge; "I have a good deal to do." "What do you make, madame?" "Many things." "For instance--" "For instance," returned Madame Defarge, composedly, "shrouds." The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, and the mender of roads fanned himself with his blue cap: feeling it mightily close and oppressive. If he needed a King and Queen to restore him, he was fortunate in having his remedy at hand; for, soon the large-faced King and the fair-faced Queen came in their golden coach, attended by the shining Bull's Eye of their Court, a glittering multitude of laughing ladies and fine lords; and in jewels and silks and powder and splendour and elegantly spurning figures and handsomely disdainful faces of both sexes, the mender of roads bathed himself, so much to his temporary intoxication, that he cried Long live the King, Long live the Queen, Long live everybody and everything! as if he had never heard of ubiquitous Jacques in his time. Then, there were gardens, courtyards, terraces, fountains, green banks, more King and Queen, more Bull's Eye, more lords and ladies, more Long live they all! until he absolutely wept with sentiment. During the whole of this scene, which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of shouting and weeping and sentimental company, and throughout Defarge held him by the collar, as if to restrain him from flying at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces. "Bravo!" said Defarge, clapping him on the back when it was over, like a patron; "you are a good boy!" The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations; but no. "You are the fellow we want," said Defarge, in his ear; "you make these fools believe that it will last for ever. Then, they are the more insolent, and it is the nearer ended." "Hey!" cried the mender of roads, reflectively; "that's true." "These fools know nothing. While they despise your breath, and would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in a hundred like you rather than in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know what your breath tells them. Let it deceive them, then, a little longer; it cannot deceive them too much." Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and nodded in confirmation. "As to you," said she, "you would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?" "Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment." "If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?" "Truly yes, madame." "Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers; would you not?" "It is true, madame." "You have seen both dolls and birds to-day," said Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent; "now, go home!"

book 2, Chapter 15

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Knitting There is an unusual amount of early drinking in the Defarges' wine-shop, despite the fact that Monsieur Defarge is not in. Monsieur Defarge enters with a person who repairs roads and who is apparently named Jacques, whom he leads to the apartment that Doctor Manette used to occupy. Defarge introduces him to the other three men named Jacques. The road-mender recounts the story of how he saw a man hanging by the chain under Monseigneur's carriage. He says that although he had never seen this man before, he recognized him again because of his unusual height. When he was returning home from working on a hillside, he saw the man bound and led by six soldiers. He also claims that the captured man recognized him. The man is lame, and the soldiers drove him along with the butts of their guns through a village full of gawking people and to a prison gate. The road-mender saw him behind bars in the prison on his way to work the next morning. The man has been imprisoned for having allegedly killed Monseigneur, and soldiers have built a gallows for his execution. The road-mender is asked to leave, and Defarge confers with the other Jacques characters. They decide to register the man as doomed to destruction. One Jacques expresses uncertainty about the safety and secrecy of their register, but Defarge claims that his wife knits it using symbols that no one but herself understands. The two Defarges take the road-mender to see Versailles, where he waves and shouts enthusiastically at royalty and aristocrats. When a man asks Madame Defarge what she is knitting, she answers that she is knitting shrouds. At the end of the spectacle, the Defarges express contempt for the upper classes

A Tale of Two Cities is divided into three books of unequal length. Their structure is defined by geographical movements between the two cities. The first book is an escape from Paris, and the major arc of the second book is to set up the return to Paris. The third deals with a more difficult, second escape from Paris. An important factor in the emotional nature of Darnay's return to Paris at the end of the second book involves the connections that he has made in London. The name of the second book, "The Golden Thread," refers to Lucie's hold over them all, a pull which Darnay has to resist for the first time in his decision to return to Paris without her. Lucie's pull is outweighed by the loadstone of Darnay's responsibilities in France. Allusion and symbolism are rife in the novel. There is a highly theatrical element to the way the Defarges give and receive symbols. When Defarge says that the weather is bad, all of the men know to get up and leave the wine-shop. This illustrates not only his power over the small community, but also the premeditated strategy in their plans. Madame Defarge keeps a register of those who have done wrong and those who are marked to be killed in her knitting, using patterns which are indecipherable to anyone else. The importance of symbols to the Defarges' interactions reflects a general preoccupation of the revolutionaries. To mark their difference from the previous regime, the revolutionaries began marking the years after the revolution as Year One, Year Two, Year Three of the Republic. Dickens reiterates several of his themes in this chapter, namely those of water, time, and the ferocious nature of the mob. Gaspard is killed over a fountain, as his son was; this will inspire the revolutionaries to create their own sea and reach out for fountains of blood. The execution of Gaspard has its own place and analogue in historical time - it reflects the execution of Damiens, who tried to overthrow his own king a few years ago. The Defarges take the road-mender to Versailles to show him exactly whom he should hate. The very crowd that wildly celebrates the king and queen will rip them apart in the future. One of the characters who experiences the most growth is the mender of roads. We see him now in the first days of his revolutionary fervor. Right now he is still not fully involved in the revolutionary plot - he still wears the blue cap of pre-Revolutionary France, and he blindly follows the Jacques in their plots. Later we will see him change from this quiet, innocent man to one of the bloodthirsty leaders of the Revolution. In Chapter 15, Dickens foreshadows the beginnings of revolution with an image of the accused man being dragged along the road. The language that the road-mender uses to describe the sight of the man is almost supernatural, describing the people as having long, giant-like shadows. The soldiers that make up the man's escort taunt him for being lame, and his face is bloodied. The man begins to take on a Christ-like character when he is dragged through the village with a crowd watching. His reluctance and victimhood strongly resemble Jesus bearing the cross on the way to crucifixion. The man symbolizes the sacrifice of the lower classes at the hands of French aristocrats. Madame Defarge is the dominant character of Chapter 16, and she holds the same role in Paris that Lucie does in London - she is the center of everything, the thread that holds everyone together. As Lucie unites everyone with her threads of hair, Madame Defarge unites everyone with her woven threads. Yet the women serve as opposing forces. As Lucie binds everyone through her love, Madame Defarge binds everyone through her hatred of the nobility. Lucie is the nurturer and protecting woman, while Madame Defarge knits only to serve as a cover for the Revolution. Dickens uses various literary allusions in elaborating Madame Defarge's story. The ties between Madame Defarge and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare's Macbeth are very strong in this chapter, with the "frightfully grand woman" urging Defarge himself not to lose sight of his murderous goals. She demonstrates her violence by aggressively tying up her money in a piece of cloth as she describes how her husband should crush his enemies. This pattern echoes the scene in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth urges her husband to kill King Duncan, taunting him with his own uncertainty . Madame Defarge's knitting also invokes classical mythology. The patterns that she knits hold significance in terms of the future of the people around her. Dickens directly and repetitively compares her to the Fates. The Fates are three goddesses of Greek mythology who control human lives, and they too were often pictured knitting. They included Clotho, who spun the web of life, Lachesis, who measured the length of it, and Atropos who snipped it short. Because Madame Defarge is powerful in the revolutionary movement, she holds powers similar to those of the Fates. In a novel full of conflict and turbulence, Chapter 17 provides a rare bit of restfulness. Even so, Dickens keeps his audience engaged through foreshadowing about something ominous about to happen to the family that has finally found happiness. The dominant image in the chapter is of the moon, with the Doctor and his daughter having their conversation outdoors in the moonlight. The narrator reflects that moonlight, like the passage of human life, is invariably sad. This brings the reader away from the increased sentimentalism of the chapter and back to the sad reality that there are still unresolved problems in the novel to threaten the Manettes. The undefined threat in this chapter is so strong that it affects Lucie. When she goes to check on her father, she is "not free from unshaped fears." The fears remain nameless and shapeless, but they take form very quickly in the following chapters. The main plot element of Chapter 17, however, is that Lucie's father does not object to her marriage. This point clarifies the supposition that Darnay alone is not the threat that hangs over their family. Lucie's importance as "the golden thread" is further demonstrated by her absence, moreso than in the previous sentimental scenes with her father. The change in Doctor Manette is made more painful by the earlier description of his rescue as a resurrection. His reversion to his jailtime behavior is therefore likened to a second death. The link to his prison days is so strong that he works on the very same woman's shoes that he had left unfinished. In accordance with the religious imagery surrounding Doctor Manette's resurrection from the dead, he is described in biblical terms in Chapter 18. "Into his face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn" is a reference to Psalm 126, in which God is asked to "Turn again our captivity ... as the streams in the South," and Psalm 137, which reads: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." These Psalms are both considered to be written by a singer in exile, which highlights Doctor Manette's imprisonment as not merely an incarceration but an exile from his family. In Chapter 19, the violence of the destruction of the shoemaking equipment, although it has a farcical character, foreshadows the later violence in the novel. That the Doctor's associates do the deed late in the night makes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry feel like accomplices in a horrible crime, even though they are trying to help the Doctor. Their guilt pales beside the horrible brutality of a number of real crimes in this novel, but Dickens makes the comparison nevertheless, calling the bench "the body." That this "crime" is upsetting for Miss Pross sheds light on how unprepared she will be to commit a real crime at the close of the novel. Dickens readies his reader for this role for Miss Pross, describing her at the shoemaking bench "as if she were assisting a murder-for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure." Miss Pross is developed here again as a very moral character. She will prove, however, that she loves her Ladybird enough to engage in actions on the moral fringe in order to protect her.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_5_part_2.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 16

book 2, chapter 16

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-15-19", "summary": "Still Knitting A policeman tells Monsieur Defarge that there may be an English spy stationed in Saint Antoine named John Barsad, supplying a physical description of him. They return to the shop and Madame Defarge counts their money. Monsieur Defarge shows some signs of fatigue, and Madame Defarge encourages him, saying that they might not see the revolution in their lifetimes but that they need to help prepare it. The next day, Madame Defarge recognizes Barsad when he enters the shop. A rose lies beside her on her table, and when he enters she puts it in her hair and everyone else leaves the shop. Barsad chats with her about the cognac he orders, and he tries to trick her into complaining about poverty or about Gaspard's execution. From this reference it becomes clear that Gaspard is the prisoner who was mentioned in the previous chapter. Monsieur Defarge enters the shop and also denies that the village sympathizes with Gaspard. The spy realizes that he is not meeting with much success, so he tries to get a rise out of the Defarges by telling them that he knows about Doctor Manette. He informs them that Lucie has married Darnay and then reveals that Darnay is the nephew of Monseigneur and as such is the new Marquis. They feign indifference, so he leaves", "analysis": "A Tale of Two Cities is divided into three books of unequal length. Their structure is defined by geographical movements between the two cities. The first book is an escape from Paris, and the major arc of the second book is to set up the return to Paris. The third deals with a more difficult, second escape from Paris. An important factor in the emotional nature of Darnay's return to Paris at the end of the second book involves the connections that he has made in London. The name of the second book, \"The Golden Thread,\" refers to Lucie's hold over them all, a pull which Darnay has to resist for the first time in his decision to return to Paris without her. Lucie's pull is outweighed by the loadstone of Darnay's responsibilities in France. Allusion and symbolism are rife in the novel. There is a highly theatrical element to the way the Defarges give and receive symbols. When Defarge says that the weather is bad, all of the men know to get up and leave the wine-shop. This illustrates not only his power over the small community, but also the premeditated strategy in their plans. Madame Defarge keeps a register of those who have done wrong and those who are marked to be killed in her knitting, using patterns which are indecipherable to anyone else. The importance of symbols to the Defarges' interactions reflects a general preoccupation of the revolutionaries. To mark their difference from the previous regime, the revolutionaries began marking the years after the revolution as Year One, Year Two, Year Three of the Republic. Dickens reiterates several of his themes in this chapter, namely those of water, time, and the ferocious nature of the mob. Gaspard is killed over a fountain, as his son was; this will inspire the revolutionaries to create their own sea and reach out for fountains of blood. The execution of Gaspard has its own place and analogue in historical time - it reflects the execution of Damiens, who tried to overthrow his own king a few years ago. The Defarges take the road-mender to Versailles to show him exactly whom he should hate. The very crowd that wildly celebrates the king and queen will rip them apart in the future. One of the characters who experiences the most growth is the mender of roads. We see him now in the first days of his revolutionary fervor. Right now he is still not fully involved in the revolutionary plot - he still wears the blue cap of pre-Revolutionary France, and he blindly follows the Jacques in their plots. Later we will see him change from this quiet, innocent man to one of the bloodthirsty leaders of the Revolution. In Chapter 15, Dickens foreshadows the beginnings of revolution with an image of the accused man being dragged along the road. The language that the road-mender uses to describe the sight of the man is almost supernatural, describing the people as having long, giant-like shadows. The soldiers that make up the man's escort taunt him for being lame, and his face is bloodied. The man begins to take on a Christ-like character when he is dragged through the village with a crowd watching. His reluctance and victimhood strongly resemble Jesus bearing the cross on the way to crucifixion. The man symbolizes the sacrifice of the lower classes at the hands of French aristocrats. Madame Defarge is the dominant character of Chapter 16, and she holds the same role in Paris that Lucie does in London - she is the center of everything, the thread that holds everyone together. As Lucie unites everyone with her threads of hair, Madame Defarge unites everyone with her woven threads. Yet the women serve as opposing forces. As Lucie binds everyone through her love, Madame Defarge binds everyone through her hatred of the nobility. Lucie is the nurturer and protecting woman, while Madame Defarge knits only to serve as a cover for the Revolution. Dickens uses various literary allusions in elaborating Madame Defarge's story. The ties between Madame Defarge and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare's Macbeth are very strong in this chapter, with the \"frightfully grand woman\" urging Defarge himself not to lose sight of his murderous goals. She demonstrates her violence by aggressively tying up her money in a piece of cloth as she describes how her husband should crush his enemies. This pattern echoes the scene in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth urges her husband to kill King Duncan, taunting him with his own uncertainty . Madame Defarge's knitting also invokes classical mythology. The patterns that she knits hold significance in terms of the future of the people around her. Dickens directly and repetitively compares her to the Fates. The Fates are three goddesses of Greek mythology who control human lives, and they too were often pictured knitting. They included Clotho, who spun the web of life, Lachesis, who measured the length of it, and Atropos who snipped it short. Because Madame Defarge is powerful in the revolutionary movement, she holds powers similar to those of the Fates. In a novel full of conflict and turbulence, Chapter 17 provides a rare bit of restfulness. Even so, Dickens keeps his audience engaged through foreshadowing about something ominous about to happen to the family that has finally found happiness. The dominant image in the chapter is of the moon, with the Doctor and his daughter having their conversation outdoors in the moonlight. The narrator reflects that moonlight, like the passage of human life, is invariably sad. This brings the reader away from the increased sentimentalism of the chapter and back to the sad reality that there are still unresolved problems in the novel to threaten the Manettes. The undefined threat in this chapter is so strong that it affects Lucie. When she goes to check on her father, she is \"not free from unshaped fears.\" The fears remain nameless and shapeless, but they take form very quickly in the following chapters. The main plot element of Chapter 17, however, is that Lucie's father does not object to her marriage. This point clarifies the supposition that Darnay alone is not the threat that hangs over their family. Lucie's importance as \"the golden thread\" is further demonstrated by her absence, moreso than in the previous sentimental scenes with her father. The change in Doctor Manette is made more painful by the earlier description of his rescue as a resurrection. His reversion to his jailtime behavior is therefore likened to a second death. The link to his prison days is so strong that he works on the very same woman's shoes that he had left unfinished. In accordance with the religious imagery surrounding Doctor Manette's resurrection from the dead, he is described in biblical terms in Chapter 18. \"Into his face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn\" is a reference to Psalm 126, in which God is asked to \"Turn again our captivity ... as the streams in the South,\" and Psalm 137, which reads: \"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.\" These Psalms are both considered to be written by a singer in exile, which highlights Doctor Manette's imprisonment as not merely an incarceration but an exile from his family. In Chapter 19, the violence of the destruction of the shoemaking equipment, although it has a farcical character, foreshadows the later violence in the novel. That the Doctor's associates do the deed late in the night makes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry feel like accomplices in a horrible crime, even though they are trying to help the Doctor. Their guilt pales beside the horrible brutality of a number of real crimes in this novel, but Dickens makes the comparison nevertheless, calling the bench \"the body.\" That this \"crime\" is upsetting for Miss Pross sheds light on how unprepared she will be to commit a real crime at the close of the novel. Dickens readies his reader for this role for Miss Pross, describing her at the shoemaking bench \"as if she were assisting a murder-for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure.\" Miss Pross is developed here again as a very moral character. She will prove, however, that she loves her Ladybird enough to engage in actions on the moral fringe in order to protect her."}

XVI. Still Knitting Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in the village--had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had--that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there. Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well--thousands of acres of land--a whole province of France--all France itself--lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it. The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under the starlight, in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris whereunto their journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at the barrier guardhouse, and the usual lanterns came glancing forth for the usual examination and inquiry. Monsieur Defarge alighted; knowing one or two of the soldiery there, and one of the police. The latter he was intimate with, and affectionately embraced. When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in his dusky wings, and they, having finally alighted near the Saint's boundaries, were picking their way on foot through the black mud and offal of his streets, Madame Defarge spoke to her husband: "Say then, my friend; what did Jacques of the police tell thee?" "Very little to-night, but all he knows. There is another spy commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all that he can say, but he knows of one." "Eh well!" said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool business air. "It is necessary to register him. How do they call that man?" "He is English." "So much the better. His name?" "Barsad," said Defarge, making it French by pronunciation. But, he had been so careful to get it accurately, that he then spelt it with perfect correctness. "Barsad," repeated madame. "Good. Christian name?" "John." "John Barsad," repeated madame, after murmuring it once to herself. "Good. His appearance; is it known?" "Age, about forty years; height, about five feet nine; black hair; complexion dark; generally, rather handsome visage; eyes dark, face thin, long, and sallow; nose aquiline, but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek; expression, therefore, sinister." "Eh my faith. It is a portrait!" said madame, laughing. "He shall be registered to-morrow." They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was midnight), and where Madame Defarge immediately took her post at her desk, counted the small moneys that had been taken during her absence, examined the stock, went through the entries in the book, made other entries of her own, checked the serving man in every possible way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the contents of the bowl of money for the second time, and began knotting them up in her handkerchief, in a chain of separate knots, for safe keeping through the night. All this while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down, complacently admiring, but never interfering; in which condition, indeed, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life. The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. Monsieur Defarge's olfactory sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put down his smoked-out pipe. "You are fatigued," said madame, raising her glance as she knotted the money. "There are only the usual odours." "I am a little tired," her husband acknowledged. "You are a little depressed, too," said madame, whose quick eyes had never been so intent on the accounts, but they had had a ray or two for him. "Oh, the men, the men!" "But my dear!" began Defarge. "But my dear!" repeated madame, nodding firmly; "but my dear! You are faint of heart to-night, my dear!" "Well, then," said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his breast, "it _is_ a long time." "It is a long time," repeated his wife; "and when is it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule." "It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning," said Defarge. "How long," demanded madame, composedly, "does it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me." Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were something in that too. "It does not take a long time," said madame, "for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?" "A long time, I suppose," said Defarge. "But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it." She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe. "I tell thee," said madame, extending her right hand, for emphasis, "that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock you." "My brave wife," returned Defarge, standing before her with his head a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his catechist, "I do not question all this. But it has lasted a long time, and it is possible--you know well, my wife, it is possible--that it may not come, during our lives." "Eh well! How then?" demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there were another enemy strangled. "Well!" said Defarge, with a half complaining and half apologetic shrug. "We shall not see the triumph." "We shall have helped it," returned madame, with her extended hand in strong action. "Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would--" Then madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed. "Hold!" cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice; "I too, my dear, will stop at nothing." "Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained--not shown--yet always ready." Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed. Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the wine-shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of her usual preoccupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other flies out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are!--perhaps they thought as much at Court that sunny summer day. A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge which she felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and began to pin her rose in her head-dress, before she looked at the figure. It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose, the customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out of the wine-shop. "Good day, madame," said the new-comer. "Good day, monsieur." She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her knitting: "Hah! Good day, age about forty, height about five feet nine, black hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion dark, eyes dark, thin, long and sallow face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister expression! Good day, one and all!" "Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a mouthful of cool fresh water, madame." Madame complied with a polite air. "Marvellous cognac this, madame!" It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, and Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better. She said, however, that the cognac was flattered, and took up her knitting. The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the opportunity of observing the place in general. "You knit with great skill, madame." "I am accustomed to it." "A pretty pattern too!" "_You_ think so?" said madame, looking at him with a smile. "Decidedly. May one ask what it is for?" "Pastime," said madame, still looking at him with a smile while her fingers moved nimbly. "Not for use?" "That depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I do--Well," said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern kind of coquetry, "I'll use it!" It was remarkable; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress of Madame Defarge. Two men had entered separately, and had been about to order drink, when, catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence of looking about as if for some friend who was not there, and went away. Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor entered, was there one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his eyes open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged away in a poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite natural and unimpeachable. "_John_," thought madame, checking off her work as her fingers knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger. "Stay long enough, and I shall knit 'BARSAD' before you go." "You have a husband, madame?" "I have." "Children?" "No children." "Business seems bad?" "Business is very bad; the people are so poor." "Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people! So oppressed, too--as you say." "As _you_ say," madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly knitting an extra something into his name that boded him no good. "Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally think so. Of course." "_I_ think?" returned madame, in a high voice. "I and my husband have enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without thinking. All we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject _we_ think of, and it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about, without embarrassing our heads concerning others. _I_ think for others? No, no." The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or make, did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister face; but, stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow on Madame Defarge's little counter, and occasionally sipping his cognac. "A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard's execution. Ah! the poor Gaspard!" With a sigh of great compassion. "My faith!" returned madame, coolly and lightly, "if people use knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew beforehand what the price of his luxury was; he has paid the price." "I believe," said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that invited confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face: "I believe there is much compassion and anger in this neighbourhood, touching the poor fellow? Between ourselves." "Is there?" asked madame, vacantly. "Is there not?" "--Here is my husband!" said Madame Defarge. As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy saluted him by touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging smile, "Good day, Jacques!" Defarge stopped short, and stared at him. "Good day, Jacques!" the spy repeated; with not quite so much confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the stare. "You deceive yourself, monsieur," returned the keeper of the wine-shop. "You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am Ernest Defarge." "It is all the same," said the spy, airily, but discomfited too: "good day!" "Good day!" answered Defarge, drily. "I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting when you entered, that they tell me there is--and no wonder!--much sympathy and anger in Saint Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard." "No one has told me so," said Defarge, shaking his head. "I know nothing of it." Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood with his hand on the back of his wife's chair, looking over that barrier at the person to whom they were both opposed, and whom either of them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction. The spy, well used to his business, did not change his unconscious attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of fresh water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame Defarge poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and hummed a little song over it. "You seem to know this quarter well; that is to say, better than I do?" observed Defarge. "Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly interested in its miserable inhabitants." "Hah!" muttered Defarge. "The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, recalls to me," pursued the spy, "that I have the honour of cherishing some interesting associations with your name." "Indeed!" said Defarge, with much indifference. "Yes, indeed. When Doctor Manette was released, you, his old domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered to you. You see I am informed of the circumstances?" "Such is the fact, certainly," said Defarge. He had had it conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife's elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always with brevity. "It was to you," said the spy, "that his daughter came; and it was from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a neat brown monsieur; how is he called?--in a little wig--Lorry--of the bank of Tellson and Company--over to England." "Such is the fact," repeated Defarge. "Very interesting remembrances!" said the spy. "I have known Doctor Manette and his daughter, in England." "Yes?" said Defarge. "You don't hear much about them now?" said the spy. "No," said Defarge. "In effect," madame struck in, looking up from her work and her little song, "we never hear about them. We received the news of their safe arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two; but, since then, they have gradually taken their road in life--we, ours--and we have held no correspondence." "Perfectly so, madame," replied the spy. "She is going to be married." "Going?" echoed madame. "She was pretty enough to have been married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me." "Oh! You know I am English." "I perceive your tongue is," returned madame; "and what the tongue is, I suppose the man is." He did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made the best of it, and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his cognac to the end, he added: "Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an Englishman; to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It was cruel, cruel!), it is a curious thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many feet; in other words, the present Marquis. But he lives unknown in England, he is no Marquis there; he is Mr. Charles Darnay. D'Aulnais is the name of his mother's family." Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the little counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his mind. Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to be worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame Defarge again. For some minutes after he had emerged into the outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained exactly as he had left them, lest he should come back. "Can it be true," said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her chair: "what he has said of Ma'amselle Manette?" "As he has said it," returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a little, "it is probably false. But it may be true." "If it is--" Defarge began, and stopped. "If it is?" repeated his wife. "--And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph--I hope, for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of France." "Her husband's destiny," said Madame Defarge, with her usual composure, "will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the end that is to end him. That is all I know." "But it is very strange--now, at least, is it not very strange"--said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it, "that, after all our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and herself, her husband's name should be proscribed under your hand at this moment, by the side of that infernal dog's who has just left us?" "Stranger things than that will happen when it does come," answered madame. "I have them both here, of a certainty; and they are both here for their merits; that is enough." She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words, and presently took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about her head. Either Saint Antoine had an instinctive sense that the objectionable decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on the watch for its disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took courage to lounge in, very shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its habitual aspect. In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned himself inside out, and sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and came to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a breath of air, Madame Defarge with her work in her hand was accustomed to pass from place to place and from group to group: a Missionary--there were many like her--such as the world will do well never to breed again. All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things; but, the mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus: if the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched. But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the thoughts. And as Madame Defarge moved on from group to group, all three went quicker and fiercer among every little knot of women that she had spoken with, and left behind. Her husband smoked at his door, looking after her with admiration. "A great woman," said he, "a strong woman, a grand woman, a frightfully grand woman!" Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Courtyard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into thundering cannon; when the military drums should be beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So much was closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads.

book 2, Chapter 16

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-15-19

Still Knitting A policeman tells Monsieur Defarge that there may be an English spy stationed in Saint Antoine named John Barsad, supplying a physical description of him. They return to the shop and Madame Defarge counts their money. Monsieur Defarge shows some signs of fatigue, and Madame Defarge encourages him, saying that they might not see the revolution in their lifetimes but that they need to help prepare it. The next day, Madame Defarge recognizes Barsad when he enters the shop. A rose lies beside her on her table, and when he enters she puts it in her hair and everyone else leaves the shop. Barsad chats with her about the cognac he orders, and he tries to trick her into complaining about poverty or about Gaspard's execution. From this reference it becomes clear that Gaspard is the prisoner who was mentioned in the previous chapter. Monsieur Defarge enters the shop and also denies that the village sympathizes with Gaspard. The spy realizes that he is not meeting with much success, so he tries to get a rise out of the Defarges by telling them that he knows about Doctor Manette. He informs them that Lucie has married Darnay and then reveals that Darnay is the nephew of Monseigneur and as such is the new Marquis. They feign indifference, so he leaves

A Tale of Two Cities is divided into three books of unequal length. Their structure is defined by geographical movements between the two cities. The first book is an escape from Paris, and the major arc of the second book is to set up the return to Paris. The third deals with a more difficult, second escape from Paris. An important factor in the emotional nature of Darnay's return to Paris at the end of the second book involves the connections that he has made in London. The name of the second book, "The Golden Thread," refers to Lucie's hold over them all, a pull which Darnay has to resist for the first time in his decision to return to Paris without her. Lucie's pull is outweighed by the loadstone of Darnay's responsibilities in France. Allusion and symbolism are rife in the novel. There is a highly theatrical element to the way the Defarges give and receive symbols. When Defarge says that the weather is bad, all of the men know to get up and leave the wine-shop. This illustrates not only his power over the small community, but also the premeditated strategy in their plans. Madame Defarge keeps a register of those who have done wrong and those who are marked to be killed in her knitting, using patterns which are indecipherable to anyone else. The importance of symbols to the Defarges' interactions reflects a general preoccupation of the revolutionaries. To mark their difference from the previous regime, the revolutionaries began marking the years after the revolution as Year One, Year Two, Year Three of the Republic. Dickens reiterates several of his themes in this chapter, namely those of water, time, and the ferocious nature of the mob. Gaspard is killed over a fountain, as his son was; this will inspire the revolutionaries to create their own sea and reach out for fountains of blood. The execution of Gaspard has its own place and analogue in historical time - it reflects the execution of Damiens, who tried to overthrow his own king a few years ago. The Defarges take the road-mender to Versailles to show him exactly whom he should hate. The very crowd that wildly celebrates the king and queen will rip them apart in the future. One of the characters who experiences the most growth is the mender of roads. We see him now in the first days of his revolutionary fervor. Right now he is still not fully involved in the revolutionary plot - he still wears the blue cap of pre-Revolutionary France, and he blindly follows the Jacques in their plots. Later we will see him change from this quiet, innocent man to one of the bloodthirsty leaders of the Revolution. In Chapter 15, Dickens foreshadows the beginnings of revolution with an image of the accused man being dragged along the road. The language that the road-mender uses to describe the sight of the man is almost supernatural, describing the people as having long, giant-like shadows. The soldiers that make up the man's escort taunt him for being lame, and his face is bloodied. The man begins to take on a Christ-like character when he is dragged through the village with a crowd watching. His reluctance and victimhood strongly resemble Jesus bearing the cross on the way to crucifixion. The man symbolizes the sacrifice of the lower classes at the hands of French aristocrats. Madame Defarge is the dominant character of Chapter 16, and she holds the same role in Paris that Lucie does in London - she is the center of everything, the thread that holds everyone together. As Lucie unites everyone with her threads of hair, Madame Defarge unites everyone with her woven threads. Yet the women serve as opposing forces. As Lucie binds everyone through her love, Madame Defarge binds everyone through her hatred of the nobility. Lucie is the nurturer and protecting woman, while Madame Defarge knits only to serve as a cover for the Revolution. Dickens uses various literary allusions in elaborating Madame Defarge's story. The ties between Madame Defarge and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare's Macbeth are very strong in this chapter, with the "frightfully grand woman" urging Defarge himself not to lose sight of his murderous goals. She demonstrates her violence by aggressively tying up her money in a piece of cloth as she describes how her husband should crush his enemies. This pattern echoes the scene in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth urges her husband to kill King Duncan, taunting him with his own uncertainty . Madame Defarge's knitting also invokes classical mythology. The patterns that she knits hold significance in terms of the future of the people around her. Dickens directly and repetitively compares her to the Fates. The Fates are three goddesses of Greek mythology who control human lives, and they too were often pictured knitting. They included Clotho, who spun the web of life, Lachesis, who measured the length of it, and Atropos who snipped it short. Because Madame Defarge is powerful in the revolutionary movement, she holds powers similar to those of the Fates. In a novel full of conflict and turbulence, Chapter 17 provides a rare bit of restfulness. Even so, Dickens keeps his audience engaged through foreshadowing about something ominous about to happen to the family that has finally found happiness. The dominant image in the chapter is of the moon, with the Doctor and his daughter having their conversation outdoors in the moonlight. The narrator reflects that moonlight, like the passage of human life, is invariably sad. This brings the reader away from the increased sentimentalism of the chapter and back to the sad reality that there are still unresolved problems in the novel to threaten the Manettes. The undefined threat in this chapter is so strong that it affects Lucie. When she goes to check on her father, she is "not free from unshaped fears." The fears remain nameless and shapeless, but they take form very quickly in the following chapters. The main plot element of Chapter 17, however, is that Lucie's father does not object to her marriage. This point clarifies the supposition that Darnay alone is not the threat that hangs over their family. Lucie's importance as "the golden thread" is further demonstrated by her absence, moreso than in the previous sentimental scenes with her father. The change in Doctor Manette is made more painful by the earlier description of his rescue as a resurrection. His reversion to his jailtime behavior is therefore likened to a second death. The link to his prison days is so strong that he works on the very same woman's shoes that he had left unfinished. In accordance with the religious imagery surrounding Doctor Manette's resurrection from the dead, he is described in biblical terms in Chapter 18. "Into his face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn" is a reference to Psalm 126, in which God is asked to "Turn again our captivity ... as the streams in the South," and Psalm 137, which reads: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." These Psalms are both considered to be written by a singer in exile, which highlights Doctor Manette's imprisonment as not merely an incarceration but an exile from his family. In Chapter 19, the violence of the destruction of the shoemaking equipment, although it has a farcical character, foreshadows the later violence in the novel. That the Doctor's associates do the deed late in the night makes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry feel like accomplices in a horrible crime, even though they are trying to help the Doctor. Their guilt pales beside the horrible brutality of a number of real crimes in this novel, but Dickens makes the comparison nevertheless, calling the bench "the body." That this "crime" is upsetting for Miss Pross sheds light on how unprepared she will be to commit a real crime at the close of the novel. Dickens readies his reader for this role for Miss Pross, describing her at the shoemaking bench "as if she were assisting a murder-for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure." Miss Pross is developed here again as a very moral character. She will prove, however, that she loves her Ladybird enough to engage in actions on the moral fringe in order to protect her.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/23.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_5_part_3.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 17

book 2, chapter 17

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 17", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-15-19", "summary": "One Night Lucie's father assures her that her relationship with Charles Darnay will not cause divisions between them. He assures her that by enriching her own life she will enrich his. He mentions his imprisonment for the first time, and he tells about how he used to imagine her remembering her father. She cries and says that she thought of him throughout her whole childhood. The marriage is a small affair, with only Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross as guests, and it does not change Lucie's place of residence. Lucie remains worried about her father, and when she checks on him in the middle of the night she sees that he is sleeping peacefully", "analysis": "A Tale of Two Cities is divided into three books of unequal length. Their structure is defined by geographical movements between the two cities. The first book is an escape from Paris, and the major arc of the second book is to set up the return to Paris. The third deals with a more difficult, second escape from Paris. An important factor in the emotional nature of Darnay's return to Paris at the end of the second book involves the connections that he has made in London. The name of the second book, \"The Golden Thread,\" refers to Lucie's hold over them all, a pull which Darnay has to resist for the first time in his decision to return to Paris without her. Lucie's pull is outweighed by the loadstone of Darnay's responsibilities in France. Allusion and symbolism are rife in the novel. There is a highly theatrical element to the way the Defarges give and receive symbols. When Defarge says that the weather is bad, all of the men know to get up and leave the wine-shop. This illustrates not only his power over the small community, but also the premeditated strategy in their plans. Madame Defarge keeps a register of those who have done wrong and those who are marked to be killed in her knitting, using patterns which are indecipherable to anyone else. The importance of symbols to the Defarges' interactions reflects a general preoccupation of the revolutionaries. To mark their difference from the previous regime, the revolutionaries began marking the years after the revolution as Year One, Year Two, Year Three of the Republic. Dickens reiterates several of his themes in this chapter, namely those of water, time, and the ferocious nature of the mob. Gaspard is killed over a fountain, as his son was; this will inspire the revolutionaries to create their own sea and reach out for fountains of blood. The execution of Gaspard has its own place and analogue in historical time - it reflects the execution of Damiens, who tried to overthrow his own king a few years ago. The Defarges take the road-mender to Versailles to show him exactly whom he should hate. The very crowd that wildly celebrates the king and queen will rip them apart in the future. One of the characters who experiences the most growth is the mender of roads. We see him now in the first days of his revolutionary fervor. Right now he is still not fully involved in the revolutionary plot - he still wears the blue cap of pre-Revolutionary France, and he blindly follows the Jacques in their plots. Later we will see him change from this quiet, innocent man to one of the bloodthirsty leaders of the Revolution. In Chapter 15, Dickens foreshadows the beginnings of revolution with an image of the accused man being dragged along the road. The language that the road-mender uses to describe the sight of the man is almost supernatural, describing the people as having long, giant-like shadows. The soldiers that make up the man's escort taunt him for being lame, and his face is bloodied. The man begins to take on a Christ-like character when he is dragged through the village with a crowd watching. His reluctance and victimhood strongly resemble Jesus bearing the cross on the way to crucifixion. The man symbolizes the sacrifice of the lower classes at the hands of French aristocrats. Madame Defarge is the dominant character of Chapter 16, and she holds the same role in Paris that Lucie does in London - she is the center of everything, the thread that holds everyone together. As Lucie unites everyone with her threads of hair, Madame Defarge unites everyone with her woven threads. Yet the women serve as opposing forces. As Lucie binds everyone through her love, Madame Defarge binds everyone through her hatred of the nobility. Lucie is the nurturer and protecting woman, while Madame Defarge knits only to serve as a cover for the Revolution. Dickens uses various literary allusions in elaborating Madame Defarge's story. The ties between Madame Defarge and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare's Macbeth are very strong in this chapter, with the \"frightfully grand woman\" urging Defarge himself not to lose sight of his murderous goals. She demonstrates her violence by aggressively tying up her money in a piece of cloth as she describes how her husband should crush his enemies. This pattern echoes the scene in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth urges her husband to kill King Duncan, taunting him with his own uncertainty . Madame Defarge's knitting also invokes classical mythology. The patterns that she knits hold significance in terms of the future of the people around her. Dickens directly and repetitively compares her to the Fates. The Fates are three goddesses of Greek mythology who control human lives, and they too were often pictured knitting. They included Clotho, who spun the web of life, Lachesis, who measured the length of it, and Atropos who snipped it short. Because Madame Defarge is powerful in the revolutionary movement, she holds powers similar to those of the Fates. In a novel full of conflict and turbulence, Chapter 17 provides a rare bit of restfulness. Even so, Dickens keeps his audience engaged through foreshadowing about something ominous about to happen to the family that has finally found happiness. The dominant image in the chapter is of the moon, with the Doctor and his daughter having their conversation outdoors in the moonlight. The narrator reflects that moonlight, like the passage of human life, is invariably sad. This brings the reader away from the increased sentimentalism of the chapter and back to the sad reality that there are still unresolved problems in the novel to threaten the Manettes. The undefined threat in this chapter is so strong that it affects Lucie. When she goes to check on her father, she is \"not free from unshaped fears.\" The fears remain nameless and shapeless, but they take form very quickly in the following chapters. The main plot element of Chapter 17, however, is that Lucie's father does not object to her marriage. This point clarifies the supposition that Darnay alone is not the threat that hangs over their family. Lucie's importance as \"the golden thread\" is further demonstrated by her absence, moreso than in the previous sentimental scenes with her father. The change in Doctor Manette is made more painful by the earlier description of his rescue as a resurrection. His reversion to his jailtime behavior is therefore likened to a second death. The link to his prison days is so strong that he works on the very same woman's shoes that he had left unfinished. In accordance with the religious imagery surrounding Doctor Manette's resurrection from the dead, he is described in biblical terms in Chapter 18. \"Into his face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn\" is a reference to Psalm 126, in which God is asked to \"Turn again our captivity ... as the streams in the South,\" and Psalm 137, which reads: \"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.\" These Psalms are both considered to be written by a singer in exile, which highlights Doctor Manette's imprisonment as not merely an incarceration but an exile from his family. In Chapter 19, the violence of the destruction of the shoemaking equipment, although it has a farcical character, foreshadows the later violence in the novel. That the Doctor's associates do the deed late in the night makes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry feel like accomplices in a horrible crime, even though they are trying to help the Doctor. Their guilt pales beside the horrible brutality of a number of real crimes in this novel, but Dickens makes the comparison nevertheless, calling the bench \"the body.\" That this \"crime\" is upsetting for Miss Pross sheds light on how unprepared she will be to commit a real crime at the close of the novel. Dickens readies his reader for this role for Miss Pross, describing her at the shoemaking bench \"as if she were assisting a murder-for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure.\" Miss Pross is developed here again as a very moral character. She will prove, however, that she loves her Ladybird enough to engage in actions on the moral fringe in order to protect her."}

XVII. One Night Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves. Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father, and they sat alone under the plane-tree. "You are happy, my dear father?" "Quite, my child." They had said little, though they had been there a long time. When it was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged herself in her usual work, nor had she read to him. She had employed herself in both ways, at his side under the tree, many and many a time; but, this time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so. "And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeply happy in the love that Heaven has so blessed--my love for Charles, and Charles's love for me. But, if my life were not to be still consecrated to you, or if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy and self-reproachful now than I can tell you. Even as it is--" Even as it was, she could not command her voice. In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face upon his breast. In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its coming and its going. "Dearest dear! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite, quite sure, no new affections of mine, and no new duties of mine, will ever interpose between us? _I_ know it well, but do you know it? In your own heart, do you feel quite certain?" Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could scarcely have assumed, "Quite sure, my darling! More than that," he added, as he tenderly kissed her: "my future is far brighter, Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it could have been--nay, than it ever was--without it." "If I could hope _that_, my father!--" "Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain it is, my dear, that it should be so. You, devoted and young, cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be wasted--" She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and repeated the word. "--wasted, my child--should not be wasted, struck aside from the natural order of things--for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?" "If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite happy with you." He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy without Charles, having seen him; and replied: "My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had not been Charles, it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other, I should have been the cause, and then the dark part of my life would have cast its shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on you." It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him refer to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new sensation while his words were in her ears; and she remembered it long afterwards. "See!" said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon. "I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dull and lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines with which I could intersect them." He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looked at the moon, "It was twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in." The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her in the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over. "I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had killed it. Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his father. (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance was unbearable.) Whether it was a son who would never know his father's story; who might even live to weigh the possibility of his father's having disappeared of his own will and act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman." She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand. "I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful of me--rather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a blank." "My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child." "You, Lucie? It is out of the Consolation and restoration you have brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us and the moon on this last night.--What did I say just now?" "She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you." "So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence have touched me in a different way--have affected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its foundations could--I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I never held her in my arms; it stood between the little grated window and the door. But, you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of?" "The figure was not; the--the--image; the fancy?" "No. That was another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense of sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too--as you have--but was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think? I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions." His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition. "In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her married life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father. My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active, cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded it all." "I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love that was I." "And she showed me her children," said the Doctor of Beauvais, "and they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me. When they passed a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me; I imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things. But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and blessed her." "I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless me as fervently to-morrow?" "Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the happiness that I have known with you, and that we have before us." He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked Heaven for having bestowed her on him. By-and-bye, they went into the house. There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry; there was even to be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage was to make no change in their place of residence; they had been able to extend it, by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more. Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only three at table, and Miss Pross made the third. He regretted that Charles was not there; was more than half disposed to object to the loving little plot that kept him away; and drank to him affectionately. So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night, and they separated. But, in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucie came downstairs again, and stole into his room; not free from unshaped fears, beforehand. All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; and he lay asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and his hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle in the shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips to his; then, leaned over him, and looked at him. Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night. She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer that she might ever be as true to him as her love aspired to be, and as his sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of the leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as her lips had moved in praying for him.

book 2, Chapter 17

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-15-19

One Night Lucie's father assures her that her relationship with Charles Darnay will not cause divisions between them. He assures her that by enriching her own life she will enrich his. He mentions his imprisonment for the first time, and he tells about how he used to imagine her remembering her father. She cries and says that she thought of him throughout her whole childhood. The marriage is a small affair, with only Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross as guests, and it does not change Lucie's place of residence. Lucie remains worried about her father, and when she checks on him in the middle of the night she sees that he is sleeping peacefully

A Tale of Two Cities is divided into three books of unequal length. Their structure is defined by geographical movements between the two cities. The first book is an escape from Paris, and the major arc of the second book is to set up the return to Paris. The third deals with a more difficult, second escape from Paris. An important factor in the emotional nature of Darnay's return to Paris at the end of the second book involves the connections that he has made in London. The name of the second book, "The Golden Thread," refers to Lucie's hold over them all, a pull which Darnay has to resist for the first time in his decision to return to Paris without her. Lucie's pull is outweighed by the loadstone of Darnay's responsibilities in France. Allusion and symbolism are rife in the novel. There is a highly theatrical element to the way the Defarges give and receive symbols. When Defarge says that the weather is bad, all of the men know to get up and leave the wine-shop. This illustrates not only his power over the small community, but also the premeditated strategy in their plans. Madame Defarge keeps a register of those who have done wrong and those who are marked to be killed in her knitting, using patterns which are indecipherable to anyone else. The importance of symbols to the Defarges' interactions reflects a general preoccupation of the revolutionaries. To mark their difference from the previous regime, the revolutionaries began marking the years after the revolution as Year One, Year Two, Year Three of the Republic. Dickens reiterates several of his themes in this chapter, namely those of water, time, and the ferocious nature of the mob. Gaspard is killed over a fountain, as his son was; this will inspire the revolutionaries to create their own sea and reach out for fountains of blood. The execution of Gaspard has its own place and analogue in historical time - it reflects the execution of Damiens, who tried to overthrow his own king a few years ago. The Defarges take the road-mender to Versailles to show him exactly whom he should hate. The very crowd that wildly celebrates the king and queen will rip them apart in the future. One of the characters who experiences the most growth is the mender of roads. We see him now in the first days of his revolutionary fervor. Right now he is still not fully involved in the revolutionary plot - he still wears the blue cap of pre-Revolutionary France, and he blindly follows the Jacques in their plots. Later we will see him change from this quiet, innocent man to one of the bloodthirsty leaders of the Revolution. In Chapter 15, Dickens foreshadows the beginnings of revolution with an image of the accused man being dragged along the road. The language that the road-mender uses to describe the sight of the man is almost supernatural, describing the people as having long, giant-like shadows. The soldiers that make up the man's escort taunt him for being lame, and his face is bloodied. The man begins to take on a Christ-like character when he is dragged through the village with a crowd watching. His reluctance and victimhood strongly resemble Jesus bearing the cross on the way to crucifixion. The man symbolizes the sacrifice of the lower classes at the hands of French aristocrats. Madame Defarge is the dominant character of Chapter 16, and she holds the same role in Paris that Lucie does in London - she is the center of everything, the thread that holds everyone together. As Lucie unites everyone with her threads of hair, Madame Defarge unites everyone with her woven threads. Yet the women serve as opposing forces. As Lucie binds everyone through her love, Madame Defarge binds everyone through her hatred of the nobility. Lucie is the nurturer and protecting woman, while Madame Defarge knits only to serve as a cover for the Revolution. Dickens uses various literary allusions in elaborating Madame Defarge's story. The ties between Madame Defarge and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare's Macbeth are very strong in this chapter, with the "frightfully grand woman" urging Defarge himself not to lose sight of his murderous goals. She demonstrates her violence by aggressively tying up her money in a piece of cloth as she describes how her husband should crush his enemies. This pattern echoes the scene in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth urges her husband to kill King Duncan, taunting him with his own uncertainty . Madame Defarge's knitting also invokes classical mythology. The patterns that she knits hold significance in terms of the future of the people around her. Dickens directly and repetitively compares her to the Fates. The Fates are three goddesses of Greek mythology who control human lives, and they too were often pictured knitting. They included Clotho, who spun the web of life, Lachesis, who measured the length of it, and Atropos who snipped it short. Because Madame Defarge is powerful in the revolutionary movement, she holds powers similar to those of the Fates. In a novel full of conflict and turbulence, Chapter 17 provides a rare bit of restfulness. Even so, Dickens keeps his audience engaged through foreshadowing about something ominous about to happen to the family that has finally found happiness. The dominant image in the chapter is of the moon, with the Doctor and his daughter having their conversation outdoors in the moonlight. The narrator reflects that moonlight, like the passage of human life, is invariably sad. This brings the reader away from the increased sentimentalism of the chapter and back to the sad reality that there are still unresolved problems in the novel to threaten the Manettes. The undefined threat in this chapter is so strong that it affects Lucie. When she goes to check on her father, she is "not free from unshaped fears." The fears remain nameless and shapeless, but they take form very quickly in the following chapters. The main plot element of Chapter 17, however, is that Lucie's father does not object to her marriage. This point clarifies the supposition that Darnay alone is not the threat that hangs over their family. Lucie's importance as "the golden thread" is further demonstrated by her absence, moreso than in the previous sentimental scenes with her father. The change in Doctor Manette is made more painful by the earlier description of his rescue as a resurrection. His reversion to his jailtime behavior is therefore likened to a second death. The link to his prison days is so strong that he works on the very same woman's shoes that he had left unfinished. In accordance with the religious imagery surrounding Doctor Manette's resurrection from the dead, he is described in biblical terms in Chapter 18. "Into his face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn" is a reference to Psalm 126, in which God is asked to "Turn again our captivity ... as the streams in the South," and Psalm 137, which reads: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." These Psalms are both considered to be written by a singer in exile, which highlights Doctor Manette's imprisonment as not merely an incarceration but an exile from his family. In Chapter 19, the violence of the destruction of the shoemaking equipment, although it has a farcical character, foreshadows the later violence in the novel. That the Doctor's associates do the deed late in the night makes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry feel like accomplices in a horrible crime, even though they are trying to help the Doctor. Their guilt pales beside the horrible brutality of a number of real crimes in this novel, but Dickens makes the comparison nevertheless, calling the bench "the body." That this "crime" is upsetting for Miss Pross sheds light on how unprepared she will be to commit a real crime at the close of the novel. Dickens readies his reader for this role for Miss Pross, describing her at the shoemaking bench "as if she were assisting a murder-for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure." Miss Pross is developed here again as a very moral character. She will prove, however, that she loves her Ladybird enough to engage in actions on the moral fringe in order to protect her.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_5_part_4.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 18

book 2, chapter 18

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-15-19", "summary": "Nine Days Everyone is happy on the wedding day, with the exception of Miss Pross, who still thinks that her brother, Solomon, should have been the groom. Mr. Lorry flirts with Miss Pross, reflecting that perhaps he made a mistake by being a bachelor. Charles Darnay reveals his identity to Doctor Manette, who looks quite white afterward, but the marriage goes ahead. The couple marries and goes on a honeymoon to Wales for nine days, leaving Doctor Manette without his daughter for the first time since he was rescued from Paris. As soon as Lucie leaves, a change comes over her father, and he reverts to his shoemaking and does not recognize Miss Pross. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross decide to not notify his daughter of the change in her father, and they watch him at night by turns", "analysis": "A Tale of Two Cities is divided into three books of unequal length. Their structure is defined by geographical movements between the two cities. The first book is an escape from Paris, and the major arc of the second book is to set up the return to Paris. The third deals with a more difficult, second escape from Paris. An important factor in the emotional nature of Darnay's return to Paris at the end of the second book involves the connections that he has made in London. The name of the second book, \"The Golden Thread,\" refers to Lucie's hold over them all, a pull which Darnay has to resist for the first time in his decision to return to Paris without her. Lucie's pull is outweighed by the loadstone of Darnay's responsibilities in France. Allusion and symbolism are rife in the novel. There is a highly theatrical element to the way the Defarges give and receive symbols. When Defarge says that the weather is bad, all of the men know to get up and leave the wine-shop. This illustrates not only his power over the small community, but also the premeditated strategy in their plans. Madame Defarge keeps a register of those who have done wrong and those who are marked to be killed in her knitting, using patterns which are indecipherable to anyone else. The importance of symbols to the Defarges' interactions reflects a general preoccupation of the revolutionaries. To mark their difference from the previous regime, the revolutionaries began marking the years after the revolution as Year One, Year Two, Year Three of the Republic. Dickens reiterates several of his themes in this chapter, namely those of water, time, and the ferocious nature of the mob. Gaspard is killed over a fountain, as his son was; this will inspire the revolutionaries to create their own sea and reach out for fountains of blood. The execution of Gaspard has its own place and analogue in historical time - it reflects the execution of Damiens, who tried to overthrow his own king a few years ago. The Defarges take the road-mender to Versailles to show him exactly whom he should hate. The very crowd that wildly celebrates the king and queen will rip them apart in the future. One of the characters who experiences the most growth is the mender of roads. We see him now in the first days of his revolutionary fervor. Right now he is still not fully involved in the revolutionary plot - he still wears the blue cap of pre-Revolutionary France, and he blindly follows the Jacques in their plots. Later we will see him change from this quiet, innocent man to one of the bloodthirsty leaders of the Revolution. In Chapter 15, Dickens foreshadows the beginnings of revolution with an image of the accused man being dragged along the road. The language that the road-mender uses to describe the sight of the man is almost supernatural, describing the people as having long, giant-like shadows. The soldiers that make up the man's escort taunt him for being lame, and his face is bloodied. The man begins to take on a Christ-like character when he is dragged through the village with a crowd watching. His reluctance and victimhood strongly resemble Jesus bearing the cross on the way to crucifixion. The man symbolizes the sacrifice of the lower classes at the hands of French aristocrats. Madame Defarge is the dominant character of Chapter 16, and she holds the same role in Paris that Lucie does in London - she is the center of everything, the thread that holds everyone together. As Lucie unites everyone with her threads of hair, Madame Defarge unites everyone with her woven threads. Yet the women serve as opposing forces. As Lucie binds everyone through her love, Madame Defarge binds everyone through her hatred of the nobility. Lucie is the nurturer and protecting woman, while Madame Defarge knits only to serve as a cover for the Revolution. Dickens uses various literary allusions in elaborating Madame Defarge's story. The ties between Madame Defarge and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare's Macbeth are very strong in this chapter, with the \"frightfully grand woman\" urging Defarge himself not to lose sight of his murderous goals. She demonstrates her violence by aggressively tying up her money in a piece of cloth as she describes how her husband should crush his enemies. This pattern echoes the scene in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth urges her husband to kill King Duncan, taunting him with his own uncertainty . Madame Defarge's knitting also invokes classical mythology. The patterns that she knits hold significance in terms of the future of the people around her. Dickens directly and repetitively compares her to the Fates. The Fates are three goddesses of Greek mythology who control human lives, and they too were often pictured knitting. They included Clotho, who spun the web of life, Lachesis, who measured the length of it, and Atropos who snipped it short. Because Madame Defarge is powerful in the revolutionary movement, she holds powers similar to those of the Fates. In a novel full of conflict and turbulence, Chapter 17 provides a rare bit of restfulness. Even so, Dickens keeps his audience engaged through foreshadowing about something ominous about to happen to the family that has finally found happiness. The dominant image in the chapter is of the moon, with the Doctor and his daughter having their conversation outdoors in the moonlight. The narrator reflects that moonlight, like the passage of human life, is invariably sad. This brings the reader away from the increased sentimentalism of the chapter and back to the sad reality that there are still unresolved problems in the novel to threaten the Manettes. The undefined threat in this chapter is so strong that it affects Lucie. When she goes to check on her father, she is \"not free from unshaped fears.\" The fears remain nameless and shapeless, but they take form very quickly in the following chapters. The main plot element of Chapter 17, however, is that Lucie's father does not object to her marriage. This point clarifies the supposition that Darnay alone is not the threat that hangs over their family. Lucie's importance as \"the golden thread\" is further demonstrated by her absence, moreso than in the previous sentimental scenes with her father. The change in Doctor Manette is made more painful by the earlier description of his rescue as a resurrection. His reversion to his jailtime behavior is therefore likened to a second death. The link to his prison days is so strong that he works on the very same woman's shoes that he had left unfinished. In accordance with the religious imagery surrounding Doctor Manette's resurrection from the dead, he is described in biblical terms in Chapter 18. \"Into his face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn\" is a reference to Psalm 126, in which God is asked to \"Turn again our captivity ... as the streams in the South,\" and Psalm 137, which reads: \"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.\" These Psalms are both considered to be written by a singer in exile, which highlights Doctor Manette's imprisonment as not merely an incarceration but an exile from his family. In Chapter 19, the violence of the destruction of the shoemaking equipment, although it has a farcical character, foreshadows the later violence in the novel. That the Doctor's associates do the deed late in the night makes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry feel like accomplices in a horrible crime, even though they are trying to help the Doctor. Their guilt pales beside the horrible brutality of a number of real crimes in this novel, but Dickens makes the comparison nevertheless, calling the bench \"the body.\" That this \"crime\" is upsetting for Miss Pross sheds light on how unprepared she will be to commit a real crime at the close of the novel. Dickens readies his reader for this role for Miss Pross, describing her at the shoemaking bench \"as if she were assisting a murder-for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure.\" Miss Pross is developed here again as a very moral character. She will prove, however, that she loves her Ladybird enough to engage in actions on the moral fringe in order to protect her."}

XVIII. Nine Days The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the closed door of the Doctor's room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross--to whom the event, through a gradual process of reconcilement to the inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom. "And so," said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently admire the bride, and who had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet, pretty dress; "and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought you across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me! How little I thought what I was doing! How lightly I valued the obligation I was conferring on my friend Mr. Charles!" "You didn't mean it," remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Pross, "and therefore how could you know it? Nonsense!" "Really? Well; but don't cry," said the gentle Mr. Lorry. "I am not crying," said Miss Pross; "_you_ are." "I, my Pross?" (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant with her, on occasion.) "You were, just now; I saw you do it, and I don't wonder at it. Such a present of plate as you have made 'em, is enough to bring tears into anybody's eyes. There's not a fork or a spoon in the collection," said Miss Pross, "that I didn't cry over, last night after the box came, till I couldn't see it." "I am highly gratified," said Mr. Lorry, "though, upon my honour, I had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance invisible to any one. Dear me! This is an occasion that makes a man speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To think that there might have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time these fifty years almost!" "Not at all!" From Miss Pross. "You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?" asked the gentleman of that name. "Pooh!" rejoined Miss Pross; "you were a bachelor in your cradle." "Well!" observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig, "that seems probable, too." "And you were cut out for a bachelor," pursued Miss Pross, "before you were put in your cradle." "Then, I think," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was very unhandsomely dealt with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my pattern. Enough! Now, my dear Lucie," drawing his arm soothingly round her waist, "I hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to lose the final opportunity of saying something to you that you wish to hear. You leave your good father, my dear, in hands as earnest and as loving as your own; he shall be taken every conceivable care of; during the next fortnight, while you are in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson's shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking) before him. And when, at the fortnight's end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband, on your other fortnight's trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now, I hear Somebody's step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear girl with an old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Somebody comes to claim his own." For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at the well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then laid the bright golden hair against his little brown wig, with a genuine tenderness and delicacy which, if such things be old-fashioned, were as old as Adam. The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came out with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale--which had not been the case when they went in together--that no vestige of colour was to be seen in his face. But, in the composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to the shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of avoidance and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold wind. He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her down-stairs to the chariot which Mr. Lorry had hired in honour of the day. The rest followed in another carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring church, where no strange eyes looked on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette were happily married. Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling, glanced on the bride's hand, which were newly released from the dark obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry's pockets. They returned home to breakfast, and all went well, and in due course the golden hair that had mingled with the poor shoemaker's white locks in the Paris garret, were mingled with them again in the morning sunlight, on the threshold of the door at parting. It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But her father cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her enfolding arms, "Take her, Charles! She is yours!" And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window, and she was gone. The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross, were left quite alone. It was when they turned into the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great change to have come over the Doctor; as if the golden arm uplifted there, had struck him a poisoned blow. He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might have been expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone. But, it was the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry; and through his absent manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his own room when they got up-stairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded of Defarge the wine-shop keeper, and the starlight ride. "I think," he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious consideration, "I think we had best not speak to him just now, or at all disturb him. I must look in at Tellson's; so I will go there at once and come back presently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country, and dine there, and all will be well." It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson's, than to look out of Tellson's. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he ascended the old staircase alone, having asked no question of the servant; going thus into the Doctor's rooms, he was stopped by a low sound of knocking. "Good God!" he said, with a start. "What's that?" Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. "O me, O me! All is lost!" cried she, wringing her hands. "What is to be told to Ladybird? He doesn't know me, and is making shoes!" Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the Doctor's room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent down, and he was very busy. "Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette!" The Doctor looked at him for a moment--half inquiringly, half as if he were angry at being spoken to--and bent over his work again. He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was open at the throat, as it used to be when he did that work; and even the old haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked hard--impatiently--as if in some sense of having been interrupted. Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was lying by him, and asked what it was. "A young lady's walking shoe," he muttered, without looking up. "It ought to have been finished long ago. Let it be." "But, Doctor Manette. Look at me!" He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, without pausing in his work. "You know me, my dear friend? Think again. This is not your proper occupation. Think, dear friend!" Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked up, for an instant at a time, when he was requested to do so; but, no persuasion would extract a word from him. He worked, and worked, and worked, in silence, and words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echoless wall, or on the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Lorry could discover, was, that he sometimes furtively looked up without being asked. In that, there seemed a faint expression of curiosity or perplexity--as though he were trying to reconcile some doubts in his mind. Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr. Lorry, as important above all others; the first, that this must be kept secret from Lucie; the second, that it must be kept secret from all who knew him. In conjunction with Miss Pross, he took immediate steps towards the latter precaution, by giving out that the Doctor was not well, and required a few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind deception to be practised on his daughter, Miss Pross was to write, describing his having been called away professionally, and referring to an imaginary letter of two or three hurried lines in his own hand, represented to have been addressed to her by the same post. These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. Lorry took in the hope of his coming to himself. If that should happen soon, he kept another course in reserve; which was, to have a certain opinion that he thought the best, on the Doctor's case. In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third course being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry resolved to watch him attentively, with as little appearance as possible of doing so. He therefore made arrangements to absent himself from Tellson's for the first time in his life, and took his post by the window in the same room. He was not long in discovering that it was worse than useless to speak to him, since, on being pressed, he became worried. He abandoned that attempt on the first day, and resolved merely to keep himself always before him, as a silent protest against the delusion into which he had fallen, or was falling. He remained, therefore, in his seat near the window, reading and writing, and expressing in as many pleasant and natural ways as he could think of, that it was a free place. Doctor Manette took what was given him to eat and drink, and worked on, that first day, until it was too dark to see--worked on, half an hour after Mr. Lorry could not have seen, for his life, to read or write. When he put his tools aside as useless, until morning, Mr. Lorry rose and said to him: "Will you go out?" He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the old manner, looked up in the old manner, and repeated in the old low voice: "Out?" "Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?" He made no effort to say why not, and said not a word more. But, Mr. Lorry thought he saw, as he leaned forward on his bench in the dusk, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, that he was in some misty way asking himself, "Why not?" The sagacity of the man of business perceived an advantage here, and determined to hold it. Miss Pross and he divided the night into two watches, and observed him at intervals from the adjoining room. He paced up and down for a long time before he lay down; but, when he did finally lay himself down, he fell asleep. In the morning, he was up betimes, and went straight to his bench and to work. On this second day, Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully by his name, and spoke to him on topics that had been of late familiar to them. He returned no reply, but it was evident that he heard what was said, and that he thought about it, however confusedly. This encouraged Mr. Lorry to have Miss Pross in with her work, several times during the day; at those times, they quietly spoke of Lucie, and of her father then present, precisely in the usual manner, and as if there were nothing amiss. This was done without any demonstrative accompaniment, not long enough, or often enough to harass him; and it lightened Mr. Lorry's friendly heart to believe that he looked up oftener, and that he appeared to be stirred by some perception of inconsistencies surrounding him. When it fell dark again, Mr. Lorry asked him as before: "Dear Doctor, will you go out?" As before, he repeated, "Out?" "Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?" This time, Mr. Lorry feigned to go out when he could extract no answer from him, and, after remaining absent for an hour, returned. In the meanwhile, the Doctor had removed to the seat in the window, and had sat there looking down at the plane-tree; but, on Mr. Lorry's return, he slipped away to his bench. The time went very slowly on, and Mr. Lorry's hope darkened, and his heart grew heavier again, and grew yet heavier and heavier every day. The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days, six days, seven days, eight days, nine days. With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart always growing heavier and heavier, Mr. Lorry passed through this anxious time. The secret was well kept, and Lucie was unconscious and happy; but he could not fail to observe that the shoemaker, whose hand had been a little out at first, was growing dreadfully skilful, and that he had never been so intent on his work, and that his hands had never been so nimble and expert, as in the dusk of the ninth evening.

book 2, Chapter 18

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Nine Days Everyone is happy on the wedding day, with the exception of Miss Pross, who still thinks that her brother, Solomon, should have been the groom. Mr. Lorry flirts with Miss Pross, reflecting that perhaps he made a mistake by being a bachelor. Charles Darnay reveals his identity to Doctor Manette, who looks quite white afterward, but the marriage goes ahead. The couple marries and goes on a honeymoon to Wales for nine days, leaving Doctor Manette without his daughter for the first time since he was rescued from Paris. As soon as Lucie leaves, a change comes over her father, and he reverts to his shoemaking and does not recognize Miss Pross. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross decide to not notify his daughter of the change in her father, and they watch him at night by turns

A Tale of Two Cities is divided into three books of unequal length. Their structure is defined by geographical movements between the two cities. The first book is an escape from Paris, and the major arc of the second book is to set up the return to Paris. The third deals with a more difficult, second escape from Paris. An important factor in the emotional nature of Darnay's return to Paris at the end of the second book involves the connections that he has made in London. The name of the second book, "The Golden Thread," refers to Lucie's hold over them all, a pull which Darnay has to resist for the first time in his decision to return to Paris without her. Lucie's pull is outweighed by the loadstone of Darnay's responsibilities in France. Allusion and symbolism are rife in the novel. There is a highly theatrical element to the way the Defarges give and receive symbols. When Defarge says that the weather is bad, all of the men know to get up and leave the wine-shop. This illustrates not only his power over the small community, but also the premeditated strategy in their plans. Madame Defarge keeps a register of those who have done wrong and those who are marked to be killed in her knitting, using patterns which are indecipherable to anyone else. The importance of symbols to the Defarges' interactions reflects a general preoccupation of the revolutionaries. To mark their difference from the previous regime, the revolutionaries began marking the years after the revolution as Year One, Year Two, Year Three of the Republic. Dickens reiterates several of his themes in this chapter, namely those of water, time, and the ferocious nature of the mob. Gaspard is killed over a fountain, as his son was; this will inspire the revolutionaries to create their own sea and reach out for fountains of blood. The execution of Gaspard has its own place and analogue in historical time - it reflects the execution of Damiens, who tried to overthrow his own king a few years ago. The Defarges take the road-mender to Versailles to show him exactly whom he should hate. The very crowd that wildly celebrates the king and queen will rip them apart in the future. One of the characters who experiences the most growth is the mender of roads. We see him now in the first days of his revolutionary fervor. Right now he is still not fully involved in the revolutionary plot - he still wears the blue cap of pre-Revolutionary France, and he blindly follows the Jacques in their plots. Later we will see him change from this quiet, innocent man to one of the bloodthirsty leaders of the Revolution. In Chapter 15, Dickens foreshadows the beginnings of revolution with an image of the accused man being dragged along the road. The language that the road-mender uses to describe the sight of the man is almost supernatural, describing the people as having long, giant-like shadows. The soldiers that make up the man's escort taunt him for being lame, and his face is bloodied. The man begins to take on a Christ-like character when he is dragged through the village with a crowd watching. His reluctance and victimhood strongly resemble Jesus bearing the cross on the way to crucifixion. The man symbolizes the sacrifice of the lower classes at the hands of French aristocrats. Madame Defarge is the dominant character of Chapter 16, and she holds the same role in Paris that Lucie does in London - she is the center of everything, the thread that holds everyone together. As Lucie unites everyone with her threads of hair, Madame Defarge unites everyone with her woven threads. Yet the women serve as opposing forces. As Lucie binds everyone through her love, Madame Defarge binds everyone through her hatred of the nobility. Lucie is the nurturer and protecting woman, while Madame Defarge knits only to serve as a cover for the Revolution. Dickens uses various literary allusions in elaborating Madame Defarge's story. The ties between Madame Defarge and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare's Macbeth are very strong in this chapter, with the "frightfully grand woman" urging Defarge himself not to lose sight of his murderous goals. She demonstrates her violence by aggressively tying up her money in a piece of cloth as she describes how her husband should crush his enemies. This pattern echoes the scene in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth urges her husband to kill King Duncan, taunting him with his own uncertainty . Madame Defarge's knitting also invokes classical mythology. The patterns that she knits hold significance in terms of the future of the people around her. Dickens directly and repetitively compares her to the Fates. The Fates are three goddesses of Greek mythology who control human lives, and they too were often pictured knitting. They included Clotho, who spun the web of life, Lachesis, who measured the length of it, and Atropos who snipped it short. Because Madame Defarge is powerful in the revolutionary movement, she holds powers similar to those of the Fates. In a novel full of conflict and turbulence, Chapter 17 provides a rare bit of restfulness. Even so, Dickens keeps his audience engaged through foreshadowing about something ominous about to happen to the family that has finally found happiness. The dominant image in the chapter is of the moon, with the Doctor and his daughter having their conversation outdoors in the moonlight. The narrator reflects that moonlight, like the passage of human life, is invariably sad. This brings the reader away from the increased sentimentalism of the chapter and back to the sad reality that there are still unresolved problems in the novel to threaten the Manettes. The undefined threat in this chapter is so strong that it affects Lucie. When she goes to check on her father, she is "not free from unshaped fears." The fears remain nameless and shapeless, but they take form very quickly in the following chapters. The main plot element of Chapter 17, however, is that Lucie's father does not object to her marriage. This point clarifies the supposition that Darnay alone is not the threat that hangs over their family. Lucie's importance as "the golden thread" is further demonstrated by her absence, moreso than in the previous sentimental scenes with her father. The change in Doctor Manette is made more painful by the earlier description of his rescue as a resurrection. His reversion to his jailtime behavior is therefore likened to a second death. The link to his prison days is so strong that he works on the very same woman's shoes that he had left unfinished. In accordance with the religious imagery surrounding Doctor Manette's resurrection from the dead, he is described in biblical terms in Chapter 18. "Into his face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn" is a reference to Psalm 126, in which God is asked to "Turn again our captivity ... as the streams in the South," and Psalm 137, which reads: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." These Psalms are both considered to be written by a singer in exile, which highlights Doctor Manette's imprisonment as not merely an incarceration but an exile from his family. In Chapter 19, the violence of the destruction of the shoemaking equipment, although it has a farcical character, foreshadows the later violence in the novel. That the Doctor's associates do the deed late in the night makes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry feel like accomplices in a horrible crime, even though they are trying to help the Doctor. Their guilt pales beside the horrible brutality of a number of real crimes in this novel, but Dickens makes the comparison nevertheless, calling the bench "the body." That this "crime" is upsetting for Miss Pross sheds light on how unprepared she will be to commit a real crime at the close of the novel. Dickens readies his reader for this role for Miss Pross, describing her at the shoemaking bench "as if she were assisting a murder-for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure." Miss Pross is developed here again as a very moral character. She will prove, however, that she loves her Ladybird enough to engage in actions on the moral fringe in order to protect her.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_5_part_5.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 19

book 2, chapter 19

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 19", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-15-19", "summary": "An Opinion On the tenth morning, Mr. Lorry finds Doctor Manette behaving normally again. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross decide to proceed as if nothing had happened, but Mr. Lorry presents the Doctor's own case to him as if it were someone else. The Doctor realizes that he has been shoemaking by looking at his own blackened hands, and he acknowledges that his shoemaking equipment should be taken away from him--but without his knowledge. He also explains to Mr. Lorry that \"the patient\" is not able to remember what happened during his relapses, and that continuing his professional activities will not affect his condition. When Doctor Manette leaves the house to visit Lucie and her husband, Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross hack the shoemaking equipment to pieces in the middle of the night. They then burn the pieces in the kitchen fire", "analysis": "A Tale of Two Cities is divided into three books of unequal length. Their structure is defined by geographical movements between the two cities. The first book is an escape from Paris, and the major arc of the second book is to set up the return to Paris. The third deals with a more difficult, second escape from Paris. An important factor in the emotional nature of Darnay's return to Paris at the end of the second book involves the connections that he has made in London. The name of the second book, \"The Golden Thread,\" refers to Lucie's hold over them all, a pull which Darnay has to resist for the first time in his decision to return to Paris without her. Lucie's pull is outweighed by the loadstone of Darnay's responsibilities in France. Allusion and symbolism are rife in the novel. There is a highly theatrical element to the way the Defarges give and receive symbols. When Defarge says that the weather is bad, all of the men know to get up and leave the wine-shop. This illustrates not only his power over the small community, but also the premeditated strategy in their plans. Madame Defarge keeps a register of those who have done wrong and those who are marked to be killed in her knitting, using patterns which are indecipherable to anyone else. The importance of symbols to the Defarges' interactions reflects a general preoccupation of the revolutionaries. To mark their difference from the previous regime, the revolutionaries began marking the years after the revolution as Year One, Year Two, Year Three of the Republic. Dickens reiterates several of his themes in this chapter, namely those of water, time, and the ferocious nature of the mob. Gaspard is killed over a fountain, as his son was; this will inspire the revolutionaries to create their own sea and reach out for fountains of blood. The execution of Gaspard has its own place and analogue in historical time - it reflects the execution of Damiens, who tried to overthrow his own king a few years ago. The Defarges take the road-mender to Versailles to show him exactly whom he should hate. The very crowd that wildly celebrates the king and queen will rip them apart in the future. One of the characters who experiences the most growth is the mender of roads. We see him now in the first days of his revolutionary fervor. Right now he is still not fully involved in the revolutionary plot - he still wears the blue cap of pre-Revolutionary France, and he blindly follows the Jacques in their plots. Later we will see him change from this quiet, innocent man to one of the bloodthirsty leaders of the Revolution. In Chapter 15, Dickens foreshadows the beginnings of revolution with an image of the accused man being dragged along the road. The language that the road-mender uses to describe the sight of the man is almost supernatural, describing the people as having long, giant-like shadows. The soldiers that make up the man's escort taunt him for being lame, and his face is bloodied. The man begins to take on a Christ-like character when he is dragged through the village with a crowd watching. His reluctance and victimhood strongly resemble Jesus bearing the cross on the way to crucifixion. The man symbolizes the sacrifice of the lower classes at the hands of French aristocrats. Madame Defarge is the dominant character of Chapter 16, and she holds the same role in Paris that Lucie does in London - she is the center of everything, the thread that holds everyone together. As Lucie unites everyone with her threads of hair, Madame Defarge unites everyone with her woven threads. Yet the women serve as opposing forces. As Lucie binds everyone through her love, Madame Defarge binds everyone through her hatred of the nobility. Lucie is the nurturer and protecting woman, while Madame Defarge knits only to serve as a cover for the Revolution. Dickens uses various literary allusions in elaborating Madame Defarge's story. The ties between Madame Defarge and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare's Macbeth are very strong in this chapter, with the \"frightfully grand woman\" urging Defarge himself not to lose sight of his murderous goals. She demonstrates her violence by aggressively tying up her money in a piece of cloth as she describes how her husband should crush his enemies. This pattern echoes the scene in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth urges her husband to kill King Duncan, taunting him with his own uncertainty . Madame Defarge's knitting also invokes classical mythology. The patterns that she knits hold significance in terms of the future of the people around her. Dickens directly and repetitively compares her to the Fates. The Fates are three goddesses of Greek mythology who control human lives, and they too were often pictured knitting. They included Clotho, who spun the web of life, Lachesis, who measured the length of it, and Atropos who snipped it short. Because Madame Defarge is powerful in the revolutionary movement, she holds powers similar to those of the Fates. In a novel full of conflict and turbulence, Chapter 17 provides a rare bit of restfulness. Even so, Dickens keeps his audience engaged through foreshadowing about something ominous about to happen to the family that has finally found happiness. The dominant image in the chapter is of the moon, with the Doctor and his daughter having their conversation outdoors in the moonlight. The narrator reflects that moonlight, like the passage of human life, is invariably sad. This brings the reader away from the increased sentimentalism of the chapter and back to the sad reality that there are still unresolved problems in the novel to threaten the Manettes. The undefined threat in this chapter is so strong that it affects Lucie. When she goes to check on her father, she is \"not free from unshaped fears.\" The fears remain nameless and shapeless, but they take form very quickly in the following chapters. The main plot element of Chapter 17, however, is that Lucie's father does not object to her marriage. This point clarifies the supposition that Darnay alone is not the threat that hangs over their family. Lucie's importance as \"the golden thread\" is further demonstrated by her absence, moreso than in the previous sentimental scenes with her father. The change in Doctor Manette is made more painful by the earlier description of his rescue as a resurrection. His reversion to his jailtime behavior is therefore likened to a second death. The link to his prison days is so strong that he works on the very same woman's shoes that he had left unfinished. In accordance with the religious imagery surrounding Doctor Manette's resurrection from the dead, he is described in biblical terms in Chapter 18. \"Into his face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn\" is a reference to Psalm 126, in which God is asked to \"Turn again our captivity ... as the streams in the South,\" and Psalm 137, which reads: \"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.\" These Psalms are both considered to be written by a singer in exile, which highlights Doctor Manette's imprisonment as not merely an incarceration but an exile from his family. In Chapter 19, the violence of the destruction of the shoemaking equipment, although it has a farcical character, foreshadows the later violence in the novel. That the Doctor's associates do the deed late in the night makes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry feel like accomplices in a horrible crime, even though they are trying to help the Doctor. Their guilt pales beside the horrible brutality of a number of real crimes in this novel, but Dickens makes the comparison nevertheless, calling the bench \"the body.\" That this \"crime\" is upsetting for Miss Pross sheds light on how unprepared she will be to commit a real crime at the close of the novel. Dickens readies his reader for this role for Miss Pross, describing her at the shoemaking bench \"as if she were assisting a murder-for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure.\" Miss Pross is developed here again as a very moral character. She will prove, however, that she loves her Ladybird enough to engage in actions on the moral fringe in order to protect her."}

XIX. An Opinion Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell asleep at his post. On the tenth morning of his suspense, he was startled by the shining of the sun into the room where a heavy slumber had overtaken him when it was dark night. He rubbed his eyes and roused himself; but he doubted, when he had done so, whether he was not still asleep. For, going to the door of the Doctor's room and looking in, he perceived that the shoemaker's bench and tools were put aside again, and that the Doctor himself sat reading at the window. He was in his usual morning dress, and his face (which Mr. Lorry could distinctly see), though still very pale, was calmly studious and attentive. Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, Mr. Lorry felt giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoemaking might not be a disturbed dream of his own; for, did not his eyes show him his friend before him in his accustomed clothing and aspect, and employed as usual; and was there any sign within their range, that the change of which he had so strong an impression had actually happened? It was but the inquiry of his first confusion and astonishment, the answer being obvious. If the impression were not produced by a real corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there? How came he to have fallen asleep, in his clothes, on the sofa in Doctor Manette's consulting-room, and to be debating these points outside the Doctor's bedroom door in the early morning? Within a few minutes, Miss Pross stood whispering at his side. If he had had any particle of doubt left, her talk would of necessity have resolved it; but he was by that time clear-headed, and had none. He advised that they should let the time go by until the regular breakfast-hour, and should then meet the Doctor as if nothing unusual had occurred. If he appeared to be in his customary state of mind, Mr. Lorry would then cautiously proceed to seek direction and guidance from the opinion he had been, in his anxiety, so anxious to obtain. Miss Pross, submitting herself to his judgment, the scheme was worked out with care. Having abundance of time for his usual methodical toilette, Mr. Lorry presented himself at the breakfast-hour in his usual white linen, and with his usual neat leg. The Doctor was summoned in the usual way, and came to breakfast. So far as it was possible to comprehend him without overstepping those delicate and gradual approaches which Mr. Lorry felt to be the only safe advance, he at first supposed that his daughter's marriage had taken place yesterday. An incidental allusion, purposely thrown out, to the day of the week, and the day of the month, set him thinking and counting, and evidently made him uneasy. In all other respects, however, he was so composedly himself, that Mr. Lorry determined to have the aid he sought. And that aid was his own. Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared away, and he and the Doctor were left together, Mr. Lorry said, feelingly: "My dear Manette, I am anxious to have your opinion, in confidence, on a very curious case in which I am deeply interested; that is to say, it is very curious to me; perhaps, to your better information it may be less so." Glancing at his hands, which were discoloured by his late work, the Doctor looked troubled, and listened attentively. He had already glanced at his hands more than once. "Doctor Manette," said Mr. Lorry, touching him affectionately on the arm, "the case is the case of a particularly dear friend of mine. Pray give your mind to it, and advise me well for his sake--and above all, for his daughter's--his daughter's, my dear Manette." "If I understand," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, "some mental shock--?" "Yes!" "Be explicit," said the Doctor. "Spare no detail." Mr. Lorry saw that they understood one another, and proceeded. "My dear Manette, it is the case of an old and a prolonged shock, of great acuteness and severity to the affections, the feelings, the--the--as you express it--the mind. The mind. It is the case of a shock under which the sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for how long, because I believe he cannot calculate the time himself, and there are no other means of getting at it. It is the case of a shock from which the sufferer recovered, by a process that he cannot trace himself--as I once heard him publicly relate in a striking manner. It is the case of a shock from which he has recovered, so completely, as to be a highly intelligent man, capable of close application of mind, and great exertion of body, and of constantly making fresh additions to his stock of knowledge, which was already very large. But, unfortunately, there has been," he paused and took a deep breath--"a slight relapse." The Doctor, in a low voice, asked, "Of how long duration?" "Nine days and nights." "How did it show itself? I infer," glancing at his hands again, "in the resumption of some old pursuit connected with the shock?" "That is the fact." "Now, did you ever see him," asked the Doctor, distinctly and collectedly, though in the same low voice, "engaged in that pursuit originally?" "Once." "And when the relapse fell on him, was he in most respects--or in all respects--as he was then?" "I think in all respects." "You spoke of his daughter. Does his daughter know of the relapse?" "No. It has been kept from her, and I hope will always be kept from her. It is known only to myself, and to one other who may be trusted." The Doctor grasped his hand, and murmured, "That was very kind. That was very thoughtful!" Mr. Lorry grasped his hand in return, and neither of the two spoke for a little while. "Now, my dear Manette," said Mr. Lorry, at length, in his most considerate and most affectionate way, "I am a mere man of business, and unfit to cope with such intricate and difficult matters. I do not possess the kind of information necessary; I do not possess the kind of intelligence; I want guiding. There is no man in this world on whom I could so rely for right guidance, as on you. Tell me, how does this relapse come about? Is there danger of another? Could a repetition of it be prevented? How should a repetition of it be treated? How does it come about at all? What can I do for my friend? No man ever can have been more desirous in his heart to serve a friend, than I am to serve mine, if I knew how. "But I don't know how to originate, in such a case. If your sagacity, knowledge, and experience, could put me on the right track, I might be able to do so much; unenlightened and undirected, I can do so little. Pray discuss it with me; pray enable me to see it a little more clearly, and teach me how to be a little more useful." Doctor Manette sat meditating after these earnest words were spoken, and Mr. Lorry did not press him. "I think it probable," said the Doctor, breaking silence with an effort, "that the relapse you have described, my dear friend, was not quite unforeseen by its subject." "Was it dreaded by him?" Mr. Lorry ventured to ask. "Very much." He said it with an involuntary shudder. "You have no idea how such an apprehension weighs on the sufferer's mind, and how difficult--how almost impossible--it is, for him to force himself to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him." "Would he," asked Mr. Lorry, "be sensibly relieved if he could prevail upon himself to impart that secret brooding to any one, when it is on him?" "I think so. But it is, as I have told you, next to impossible. I even believe it--in some cases--to be quite impossible." "Now," said Mr. Lorry, gently laying his hand on the Doctor's arm again, after a short silence on both sides, "to what would you refer this attack?" "I believe," returned Doctor Manette, "that there had been a strong and extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remembrance that was the first cause of the malady. Some intense associations of a most distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think. It is probable that there had long been a dread lurking in his mind, that those associations would be recalled--say, under certain circumstances--say, on a particular occasion. He tried to prepare himself in vain; perhaps the effort to prepare himself made him less able to bear it." "Would he remember what took place in the relapse?" asked Mr. Lorry, with natural hesitation. The Doctor looked desolately round the room, shook his head, and answered, in a low voice, "Not at all." "Now, as to the future," hinted Mr. Lorry. "As to the future," said the Doctor, recovering firmness, "I should have great hope. As it pleased Heaven in its mercy to restore him so soon, I should have great hope. He, yielding under the pressure of a complicated something, long dreaded and long vaguely foreseen and contended against, and recovering after the cloud had burst and passed, I should hope that the worst was over." "Well, well! That's good comfort. I am thankful!" said Mr. Lorry. "I am thankful!" repeated the Doctor, bending his head with reverence. "There are two other points," said Mr. Lorry, "on which I am anxious to be instructed. I may go on?" "You cannot do your friend a better service." The Doctor gave him his hand. "To the first, then. He is of a studious habit, and unusually energetic; he applies himself with great ardour to the acquisition of professional knowledge, to the conducting of experiments, to many things. Now, does he do too much?" "I think not. It may be the character of his mind, to be always in singular need of occupation. That may be, in part, natural to it; in part, the result of affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy things, the more it would be in danger of turning in the unhealthy direction. He may have observed himself, and made the discovery." "You are sure that he is not under too great a strain?" "I think I am quite sure of it." "My dear Manette, if he were overworked now--" "My dear Lorry, I doubt if that could easily be. There has been a violent stress in one direction, and it needs a counterweight." "Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. Assuming for a moment, that he _was_ overworked; it would show itself in some renewal of this disorder?" "I do not think so. I do not think," said Doctor Manette with the firmness of self-conviction, "that anything but the one train of association would renew it. I think that, henceforth, nothing but some extraordinary jarring of that chord could renew it. After what has happened, and after his recovery, I find it difficult to imagine any such violent sounding of that string again. I trust, and I almost believe, that the circumstances likely to renew it are exhausted." He spoke with the diffidence of a man who knew how slight a thing would overset the delicate organisation of the mind, and yet with the confidence of a man who had slowly won his assurance out of personal endurance and distress. It was not for his friend to abate that confidence. He professed himself more relieved and encouraged than he really was, and approached his second and last point. He felt it to be the most difficult of all; but, remembering his old Sunday morning conversation with Miss Pross, and remembering what he had seen in the last nine days, he knew that he must face it. "The occupation resumed under the influence of this passing affliction so happily recovered from," said Mr. Lorry, clearing his throat, "we will call--Blacksmith's work, Blacksmith's work. We will say, to put a case and for the sake of illustration, that he had been used, in his bad time, to work at a little forge. We will say that he was unexpectedly found at his forge again. Is it not a pity that he should keep it by him?" The Doctor shaded his forehead with his hand, and beat his foot nervously on the ground. "He has always kept it by him," said Mr. Lorry, with an anxious look at his friend. "Now, would it not be better that he should let it go?" Still, the Doctor, with shaded forehead, beat his foot nervously on the ground. "You do not find it easy to advise me?" said Mr. Lorry. "I quite understand it to be a nice question. And yet I think--" And there he shook his head, and stopped. "You see," said Doctor Manette, turning to him after an uneasy pause, "it is very hard to explain, consistently, the innermost workings of this poor man's mind. He once yearned so frightfully for that occupation, and it was so welcome when it came; no doubt it relieved his pain so much, by substituting the perplexity of the fingers for the perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became more practised, the ingenuity of the hands, for the ingenuity of the mental torture; that he has never been able to bear the thought of putting it quite out of his reach. Even now, when I believe he is more hopeful of himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind of confidence, the idea that he might need that old employment, and not find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child." He looked like his illustration, as he raised his eyes to Mr. Lorry's face. "But may not--mind! I ask for information, as a plodding man of business who only deals with such material objects as guineas, shillings, and bank-notes--may not the retention of the thing involve the retention of the idea? If the thing were gone, my dear Manette, might not the fear go with it? In short, is it not a concession to the misgiving, to keep the forge?" There was another silence. "You see, too," said the Doctor, tremulously, "it is such an old companion." "I would not keep it," said Mr. Lorry, shaking his head; for he gained in firmness as he saw the Doctor disquieted. "I would recommend him to sacrifice it. I only want your authority. I am sure it does no good. Come! Give me your authority, like a dear good man. For his daughter's sake, my dear Manette!" Very strange to see what a struggle there was within him! "In her name, then, let it be done; I sanction it. But, I would not take it away while he was present. Let it be removed when he is not there; let him miss his old companion after an absence." Mr. Lorry readily engaged for that, and the conference was ended. They passed the day in the country, and the Doctor was quite restored. On the three following days he remained perfectly well, and on the fourteenth day he went away to join Lucie and her husband. The precaution that had been taken to account for his silence, Mr. Lorry had previously explained to him, and he had written to Lucie in accordance with it, and she had no suspicions. On the night of the day on which he left the house, Mr. Lorry went into his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer, attended by Miss Pross carrying a light. There, with closed doors, and in a mysterious and guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker's bench to pieces, while Miss Pross held the candle as if she were assisting at a murder--for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure. The burning of the body (previously reduced to pieces convenient for the purpose) was commenced without delay in the kitchen fire; and the tools, shoes, and leather, were buried in the garden. So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.

book 2, Chapter 19

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-15-19

An Opinion On the tenth morning, Mr. Lorry finds Doctor Manette behaving normally again. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross decide to proceed as if nothing had happened, but Mr. Lorry presents the Doctor's own case to him as if it were someone else. The Doctor realizes that he has been shoemaking by looking at his own blackened hands, and he acknowledges that his shoemaking equipment should be taken away from him--but without his knowledge. He also explains to Mr. Lorry that "the patient" is not able to remember what happened during his relapses, and that continuing his professional activities will not affect his condition. When Doctor Manette leaves the house to visit Lucie and her husband, Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross hack the shoemaking equipment to pieces in the middle of the night. They then burn the pieces in the kitchen fire

A Tale of Two Cities is divided into three books of unequal length. Their structure is defined by geographical movements between the two cities. The first book is an escape from Paris, and the major arc of the second book is to set up the return to Paris. The third deals with a more difficult, second escape from Paris. An important factor in the emotional nature of Darnay's return to Paris at the end of the second book involves the connections that he has made in London. The name of the second book, "The Golden Thread," refers to Lucie's hold over them all, a pull which Darnay has to resist for the first time in his decision to return to Paris without her. Lucie's pull is outweighed by the loadstone of Darnay's responsibilities in France. Allusion and symbolism are rife in the novel. There is a highly theatrical element to the way the Defarges give and receive symbols. When Defarge says that the weather is bad, all of the men know to get up and leave the wine-shop. This illustrates not only his power over the small community, but also the premeditated strategy in their plans. Madame Defarge keeps a register of those who have done wrong and those who are marked to be killed in her knitting, using patterns which are indecipherable to anyone else. The importance of symbols to the Defarges' interactions reflects a general preoccupation of the revolutionaries. To mark their difference from the previous regime, the revolutionaries began marking the years after the revolution as Year One, Year Two, Year Three of the Republic. Dickens reiterates several of his themes in this chapter, namely those of water, time, and the ferocious nature of the mob. Gaspard is killed over a fountain, as his son was; this will inspire the revolutionaries to create their own sea and reach out for fountains of blood. The execution of Gaspard has its own place and analogue in historical time - it reflects the execution of Damiens, who tried to overthrow his own king a few years ago. The Defarges take the road-mender to Versailles to show him exactly whom he should hate. The very crowd that wildly celebrates the king and queen will rip them apart in the future. One of the characters who experiences the most growth is the mender of roads. We see him now in the first days of his revolutionary fervor. Right now he is still not fully involved in the revolutionary plot - he still wears the blue cap of pre-Revolutionary France, and he blindly follows the Jacques in their plots. Later we will see him change from this quiet, innocent man to one of the bloodthirsty leaders of the Revolution. In Chapter 15, Dickens foreshadows the beginnings of revolution with an image of the accused man being dragged along the road. The language that the road-mender uses to describe the sight of the man is almost supernatural, describing the people as having long, giant-like shadows. The soldiers that make up the man's escort taunt him for being lame, and his face is bloodied. The man begins to take on a Christ-like character when he is dragged through the village with a crowd watching. His reluctance and victimhood strongly resemble Jesus bearing the cross on the way to crucifixion. The man symbolizes the sacrifice of the lower classes at the hands of French aristocrats. Madame Defarge is the dominant character of Chapter 16, and she holds the same role in Paris that Lucie does in London - she is the center of everything, the thread that holds everyone together. As Lucie unites everyone with her threads of hair, Madame Defarge unites everyone with her woven threads. Yet the women serve as opposing forces. As Lucie binds everyone through her love, Madame Defarge binds everyone through her hatred of the nobility. Lucie is the nurturer and protecting woman, while Madame Defarge knits only to serve as a cover for the Revolution. Dickens uses various literary allusions in elaborating Madame Defarge's story. The ties between Madame Defarge and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare's Macbeth are very strong in this chapter, with the "frightfully grand woman" urging Defarge himself not to lose sight of his murderous goals. She demonstrates her violence by aggressively tying up her money in a piece of cloth as she describes how her husband should crush his enemies. This pattern echoes the scene in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth urges her husband to kill King Duncan, taunting him with his own uncertainty . Madame Defarge's knitting also invokes classical mythology. The patterns that she knits hold significance in terms of the future of the people around her. Dickens directly and repetitively compares her to the Fates. The Fates are three goddesses of Greek mythology who control human lives, and they too were often pictured knitting. They included Clotho, who spun the web of life, Lachesis, who measured the length of it, and Atropos who snipped it short. Because Madame Defarge is powerful in the revolutionary movement, she holds powers similar to those of the Fates. In a novel full of conflict and turbulence, Chapter 17 provides a rare bit of restfulness. Even so, Dickens keeps his audience engaged through foreshadowing about something ominous about to happen to the family that has finally found happiness. The dominant image in the chapter is of the moon, with the Doctor and his daughter having their conversation outdoors in the moonlight. The narrator reflects that moonlight, like the passage of human life, is invariably sad. This brings the reader away from the increased sentimentalism of the chapter and back to the sad reality that there are still unresolved problems in the novel to threaten the Manettes. The undefined threat in this chapter is so strong that it affects Lucie. When she goes to check on her father, she is "not free from unshaped fears." The fears remain nameless and shapeless, but they take form very quickly in the following chapters. The main plot element of Chapter 17, however, is that Lucie's father does not object to her marriage. This point clarifies the supposition that Darnay alone is not the threat that hangs over their family. Lucie's importance as "the golden thread" is further demonstrated by her absence, moreso than in the previous sentimental scenes with her father. The change in Doctor Manette is made more painful by the earlier description of his rescue as a resurrection. His reversion to his jailtime behavior is therefore likened to a second death. The link to his prison days is so strong that he works on the very same woman's shoes that he had left unfinished. In accordance with the religious imagery surrounding Doctor Manette's resurrection from the dead, he is described in biblical terms in Chapter 18. "Into his face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn" is a reference to Psalm 126, in which God is asked to "Turn again our captivity ... as the streams in the South," and Psalm 137, which reads: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." These Psalms are both considered to be written by a singer in exile, which highlights Doctor Manette's imprisonment as not merely an incarceration but an exile from his family. In Chapter 19, the violence of the destruction of the shoemaking equipment, although it has a farcical character, foreshadows the later violence in the novel. That the Doctor's associates do the deed late in the night makes Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry feel like accomplices in a horrible crime, even though they are trying to help the Doctor. Their guilt pales beside the horrible brutality of a number of real crimes in this novel, but Dickens makes the comparison nevertheless, calling the bench "the body." That this "crime" is upsetting for Miss Pross sheds light on how unprepared she will be to commit a real crime at the close of the novel. Dickens readies his reader for this role for Miss Pross, describing her at the shoemaking bench "as if she were assisting a murder-for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure." Miss Pross is developed here again as a very moral character. She will prove, however, that she loves her Ladybird enough to engage in actions on the moral fringe in order to protect her.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/26.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_6_part_1.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 20

book 2, chapter 20

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 20", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-20-24", "summary": "A Plea When the Darnays return from their honeymoon, the first person to greet them is Sydney Carton. He takes Charles aside and asks him to forget the fact that he ever said that he didn't like him. Charles assures him that it was enough that Sydney saved his life at the trial, and he gives Carton the privilege of coming back and forth to the Soho house whenever he likes. Carton leaves. Darnay speaks generally of the conversation at dinner, remarking on what an odd and dissolute character he is. Darnay means no harm and is only speaking the truth, but later that night Lucie implores him not to speak of Carton in that way but to feel some sympathy for him, which Darnay readily agrees to do", "analysis": "Darnay is also portrayed as a moral hero. His wife's pity for another man, instead of making him jealous, makes him prize her even more. He responds to her beauty on a moral rather than a carnal level. The narrator reports, \"She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man that her husband could have looked on her as she was for hours.\" He is attracted to her goodness, rather than merely her appearance, although her goodness does have a positive effect on her beauty. The goodness of these two sets them quite apart from other Dickensian main characters. They lack the development and moral conflict of characters such as Pip in Great Expectations and Nancy in Oliver Twist. The setting in which Dickens places his characters in A Tale of Two Cities is itself the locus of conflict, rather than the characters themselves. Thus Dickens forgoes some of the human interest that makes his other novels great. Chapter 20 thus reads somewhat like a moral fable. The title of Chapter 21 refers to Lucie's presentiment about the footsteps that echo around the Manette household in Soho. She worried in a previous chapter that the footsteps were the echoes of people coming into the family's life, and now the outside world does break spitefully into their happy circle. The echoes have not yet overtaken the family in the way that they will, however, because Lucie can still hear her own child's steps first and foremost. Little Lucie is a product of the novel in that she is bilingual, bridging the gap between the two cities. Unusual for the novel, events in the two cities are brought together in Chapter 21, showing how linked the affairs of Paris and London are becoming. The two narrative threads of the Manette household and the Defarge household met briefly at the beginning of the novel, and now they are due to meet again. Events in Paris are becoming so extreme that even London is beginning to feel the shock waves or, to use Dickens's terminology, the echoes. The title of Chapter 22 refers to the French mob, which Dickens compared in the previous chapter to a sea. It would be unnatural for a sea to continue rising past high tide except in extreme conditions, and the storming of the Bastille would seem to be the extent of furor that the mob has been capable of. Dickens suggests the unnatural character of the mob by saying that its level of engagement is continuing to rise. The brute force of the mob stems from the fact that it empowers those who have never been empowered before. Even if the lower classes are starving and their life is not meaningful, they have found new meaning in the fact that they have the ability to kill others. Foulon provides another example of a resurrection. In addition to the more metaphorical resurrections of Doctor Manette and Darnay, who were almost sentenced to certain death, and the exhuming of bodies by Resurrection-Men, there are examples of more literal resurrections - that is, of men who were presumed dead. Both Foulon and the spy Robert Cly attempted mock funerals to trick their enemies into believing that they were dead, but both were apparently \"resurrected,\" being found alive. The metaphoric title of Chapter 23 reflects the progression of the Parisian mob into a still more dangerous phase. The French revolutionaries are shown in strict contrast with the English characters in the other chapters of the novel, who have a developed moral sense often associated with the influence of religion . In this chapter, the road-mender does not \"trouble himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return,\" in an allusion to the curse of Genesis 3:19, in which God turns Adam and Eve out of Eden and reminds them that \"dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.\" Also familiar would be the funerary oration \"ashes to ashes and dust to dust,\" which was also common in Dickens's time. The French lower class had more pressing concerns than religion, as they were often at the point of starving and it was hard to follow the New Testament injunction not to worry about what one eats. The road-mender's lack of preoccupation also illustrates his naA-vetA in an unstable revolutionary society where anyone was liable to be denounced and return to dust at any moment. More broadly, rabid idealism tends to distract people from the realities of life and death. Another biblical image in the chapter is that of the chateau on fire. The villagers describe it as a \"pillar of fire in the sky,\" which they estimate is forty feet high. The \"pillar of fire in the sky\" alludes to Exodus 13:21, in which God leads the Israelites out of Egypt: \"And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light.\" The house is lit afire in the night, and it serves as a symbol of deliverance for the French people. The fire also suggests the end of times, the destruction of the world in the book of Revelations. But for the French mob, revolutionary principles have temporarily displaced religion. The title of Chapter 24 presents yet another literary allusion, now to a story in the Arabian Nights called \"The Third Calender's Tale.\" A loadstone is a type of magnet which, in the story, irresistibly draws a ship towards it. Its force is so powerful that it draws the nails out of the vessel, shipwrecking it. The title illustrates the power that Paris has over Darnay; he is drawn back into the city as though unwillingly. Indirectly, this chapter illustrates the political climate of England at the time of the French Revolution. Although the revolutionaries had some admirers in England at the outbreak of the revolution, public opinion turned swiftly and heavily against them over the course of the terror. Mr. Stryver speaks on behalf of many Englishmen when he is disgusted by the seizure of property and the carnage of the Revolution, and it is obvious by the freedom of their conversation at Tellson's that Frenchmen of Monseigneur's class found safe haven in England. This conversation reveals Darnay as even more of a free-thinker in his continued sympathies for the French people, since they run counter not only to his own family, but also to the opinions of his adopted country. The courage of his opinions will only make the revolutionaries' behavior towards him more shocking after he returns to France."}

XX. A Plea When the newly-married pair came home, the first person who appeared, to offer his congratulations, was Sydney Carton. They had not been at home many hours, when he presented himself. He was not improved in habits, or in looks, or in manner; but there was a certain rugged air of fidelity about him, which was new to the observation of Charles Darnay. He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside into a window, and of speaking to him when no one overheard. "Mr. Darnay," said Carton, "I wish we might be friends." "We are already friends, I hope." "You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of speech; but, I don't mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I say I wish we might be friends, I scarcely mean quite that, either." Charles Darnay--as was natural--asked him, in all good-humour and good-fellowship, what he did mean? "Upon my life," said Carton, smiling, "I find that easier to comprehend in my own mind, than to convey to yours. However, let me try. You remember a certain famous occasion when I was more drunk than--than usual?" "I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to confess that you had been drinking." "I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is heavy upon me, for I always remember them. I hope it may be taken into account one day, when all days are at an end for me! Don't be alarmed; I am not going to preach." "I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you, is anything but alarming to me." "Ah!" said Carton, with a careless wave of his hand, as if he waved that away. "On the drunken occasion in question (one of a large number, as you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you. I wish you would forget it." "I forgot it long ago." "Fashion of speech again! But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion is not so easy to me, as you represent it to be to you. I have by no means forgotten it, and a light answer does not help me to forget it." "If it was a light answer," returned Darnay, "I beg your forgiveness for it. I had no other object than to turn a slight thing, which, to my surprise, seems to trouble you too much, aside. I declare to you, on the faith of a gentleman, that I have long dismissed it from my mind. Good Heaven, what was there to dismiss! Have I had nothing more important to remember, in the great service you rendered me that day?" "As to the great service," said Carton, "I am bound to avow to you, when you speak of it in that way, that it was mere professional claptrap, I don't know that I cared what became of you, when I rendered it.--Mind! I say when I rendered it; I am speaking of the past." "You make light of the obligation," returned Darnay, "but I will not quarrel with _your_ light answer." "Genuine truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me! I have gone aside from my purpose; I was speaking about our being friends. Now, you know me; you know I am incapable of all the higher and better flights of men. If you doubt it, ask Stryver, and he'll tell you so." "I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his." "Well! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never done any good, and never will." "I don't know that you 'never will.'" "But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well! If you could endure to have such a worthless fellow, and a fellow of such indifferent reputation, coming and going at odd times, I should ask that I might be permitted to come and go as a privileged person here; that I might be regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for the resemblance I detected between you and me, an unornamental) piece of furniture, tolerated for its old service, and taken no notice of. I doubt if I should abuse the permission. It is a hundred to one if I should avail myself of it four times in a year. It would satisfy me, I dare say, to know that I had it." "Will you try?" "That is another way of saying that I am placed on the footing I have indicated. I thank you, Darnay. I may use that freedom with your name?" "I think so, Carton, by this time." They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away. Within a minute afterwards, he was, to all outward appearance, as unsubstantial as ever. When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay made some mention of this conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a problem of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of him, in short, not bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but as anybody might who saw him as he showed himself. He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair young wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms, he found her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly marked. "We are thoughtful to-night!" said Darnay, drawing his arm about her. "Yes, dearest Charles," with her hands on his breast, and the inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon him; "we are rather thoughtful to-night, for we have something on our mind to-night." "What is it, my Lucie?" "Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you not to ask it?" "Will I promise? What will I not promise to my Love?" What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him! "I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more consideration and respect than you expressed for him to-night." "Indeed, my own? Why so?" "That is what you are not to ask me. But I think--I know--he does." "If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my Life?" "I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding." "It is a painful reflection to me," said Charles Darnay, quite astounded, "that I should have done him any wrong. I never thought this of him." "My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things." She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours. "And, O my dearest Love!" she urged, clinging nearer to him, laying her head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his, "remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery!" The supplication touched him home. "I will always remember it, dear Heart! I will remember it as long as I live." He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the dark streets, could have heard her innocent disclosure, and could have seen the drops of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft blue eyes so loving of that husband, he might have cried to the night--and the words would not have parted from his lips for the first time-- "God bless her for her sweet compassion!"

book 2, Chapter 20

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-20-24

A Plea When the Darnays return from their honeymoon, the first person to greet them is Sydney Carton. He takes Charles aside and asks him to forget the fact that he ever said that he didn't like him. Charles assures him that it was enough that Sydney saved his life at the trial, and he gives Carton the privilege of coming back and forth to the Soho house whenever he likes. Carton leaves. Darnay speaks generally of the conversation at dinner, remarking on what an odd and dissolute character he is. Darnay means no harm and is only speaking the truth, but later that night Lucie implores him not to speak of Carton in that way but to feel some sympathy for him, which Darnay readily agrees to do

Darnay is also portrayed as a moral hero. His wife's pity for another man, instead of making him jealous, makes him prize her even more. He responds to her beauty on a moral rather than a carnal level. The narrator reports, "She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man that her husband could have looked on her as she was for hours." He is attracted to her goodness, rather than merely her appearance, although her goodness does have a positive effect on her beauty. The goodness of these two sets them quite apart from other Dickensian main characters. They lack the development and moral conflict of characters such as Pip in Great Expectations and Nancy in Oliver Twist. The setting in which Dickens places his characters in A Tale of Two Cities is itself the locus of conflict, rather than the characters themselves. Thus Dickens forgoes some of the human interest that makes his other novels great. Chapter 20 thus reads somewhat like a moral fable. The title of Chapter 21 refers to Lucie's presentiment about the footsteps that echo around the Manette household in Soho. She worried in a previous chapter that the footsteps were the echoes of people coming into the family's life, and now the outside world does break spitefully into their happy circle. The echoes have not yet overtaken the family in the way that they will, however, because Lucie can still hear her own child's steps first and foremost. Little Lucie is a product of the novel in that she is bilingual, bridging the gap between the two cities. Unusual for the novel, events in the two cities are brought together in Chapter 21, showing how linked the affairs of Paris and London are becoming. The two narrative threads of the Manette household and the Defarge household met briefly at the beginning of the novel, and now they are due to meet again. Events in Paris are becoming so extreme that even London is beginning to feel the shock waves or, to use Dickens's terminology, the echoes. The title of Chapter 22 refers to the French mob, which Dickens compared in the previous chapter to a sea. It would be unnatural for a sea to continue rising past high tide except in extreme conditions, and the storming of the Bastille would seem to be the extent of furor that the mob has been capable of. Dickens suggests the unnatural character of the mob by saying that its level of engagement is continuing to rise. The brute force of the mob stems from the fact that it empowers those who have never been empowered before. Even if the lower classes are starving and their life is not meaningful, they have found new meaning in the fact that they have the ability to kill others. Foulon provides another example of a resurrection. In addition to the more metaphorical resurrections of Doctor Manette and Darnay, who were almost sentenced to certain death, and the exhuming of bodies by Resurrection-Men, there are examples of more literal resurrections - that is, of men who were presumed dead. Both Foulon and the spy Robert Cly attempted mock funerals to trick their enemies into believing that they were dead, but both were apparently "resurrected," being found alive. The metaphoric title of Chapter 23 reflects the progression of the Parisian mob into a still more dangerous phase. The French revolutionaries are shown in strict contrast with the English characters in the other chapters of the novel, who have a developed moral sense often associated with the influence of religion . In this chapter, the road-mender does not "trouble himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return," in an allusion to the curse of Genesis 3:19, in which God turns Adam and Eve out of Eden and reminds them that "dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." Also familiar would be the funerary oration "ashes to ashes and dust to dust," which was also common in Dickens's time. The French lower class had more pressing concerns than religion, as they were often at the point of starving and it was hard to follow the New Testament injunction not to worry about what one eats. The road-mender's lack of preoccupation also illustrates his naA-vetA in an unstable revolutionary society where anyone was liable to be denounced and return to dust at any moment. More broadly, rabid idealism tends to distract people from the realities of life and death. Another biblical image in the chapter is that of the chateau on fire. The villagers describe it as a "pillar of fire in the sky," which they estimate is forty feet high. The "pillar of fire in the sky" alludes to Exodus 13:21, in which God leads the Israelites out of Egypt: "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light." The house is lit afire in the night, and it serves as a symbol of deliverance for the French people. The fire also suggests the end of times, the destruction of the world in the book of Revelations. But for the French mob, revolutionary principles have temporarily displaced religion. The title of Chapter 24 presents yet another literary allusion, now to a story in the Arabian Nights called "The Third Calender's Tale." A loadstone is a type of magnet which, in the story, irresistibly draws a ship towards it. Its force is so powerful that it draws the nails out of the vessel, shipwrecking it. The title illustrates the power that Paris has over Darnay; he is drawn back into the city as though unwillingly. Indirectly, this chapter illustrates the political climate of England at the time of the French Revolution. Although the revolutionaries had some admirers in England at the outbreak of the revolution, public opinion turned swiftly and heavily against them over the course of the terror. Mr. Stryver speaks on behalf of many Englishmen when he is disgusted by the seizure of property and the carnage of the Revolution, and it is obvious by the freedom of their conversation at Tellson's that Frenchmen of Monseigneur's class found safe haven in England. This conversation reveals Darnay as even more of a free-thinker in his continued sympathies for the French people, since they run counter not only to his own family, but also to the opinions of his adopted country. The courage of his opinions will only make the revolutionaries' behavior towards him more shocking after he returns to France.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/27.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_6_part_2.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 21

book 2, chapter 21

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 21", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-20-24", "summary": "Echoing Footsteps Lucie grows older and continues to listen to the footsteps echoing around the house. She has an angelic baby boy who dies as a child, and she has a girl whom she names Lucie. Carton continues to hold a special and privileged place in the family. Stryver marries a wealthy widow with three children, offers these children as pupils to Darnay, and is offended when Darnay refuses. When Lucie turns six, in 1789, events in France begin to affect the household. Mr. Lorry says that the Paris customers of Tellson's are so nervous that they are beginning to send their money to London. He asks if little Lucie is safe in her bed, and then wonders why he is so nervous, because there is no reason that she would not be. Meanwhile, in Paris, the attack on the Bastille is brewing. Saint Antoine arms itself with weapons and stones and descends on the Bastille, led by Monsieur Defarge. Madame Defarge leads the women in the attack. Monsieur Defarge forces a turnkey to show him to One Hundred and Five, North Tower, the cell that Doctor Manette formerly occupied. Defarge knocks on the walls until he finds the hiding place of a document, which he removes before the Bastille is destroyed. The mob is waiting for Defarge to execute the governor. When he is beaten to death by the mob, Madame Defarge is close at hand with her knife to behead and mutilate the body. The mob carries seven prisoners released from the Bastille as heroes", "analysis": "Darnay is also portrayed as a moral hero. His wife's pity for another man, instead of making him jealous, makes him prize her even more. He responds to her beauty on a moral rather than a carnal level. The narrator reports, \"She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man that her husband could have looked on her as she was for hours.\" He is attracted to her goodness, rather than merely her appearance, although her goodness does have a positive effect on her beauty. The goodness of these two sets them quite apart from other Dickensian main characters. They lack the development and moral conflict of characters such as Pip in Great Expectations and Nancy in Oliver Twist. The setting in which Dickens places his characters in A Tale of Two Cities is itself the locus of conflict, rather than the characters themselves. Thus Dickens forgoes some of the human interest that makes his other novels great. Chapter 20 thus reads somewhat like a moral fable. The title of Chapter 21 refers to Lucie's presentiment about the footsteps that echo around the Manette household in Soho. She worried in a previous chapter that the footsteps were the echoes of people coming into the family's life, and now the outside world does break spitefully into their happy circle. The echoes have not yet overtaken the family in the way that they will, however, because Lucie can still hear her own child's steps first and foremost. Little Lucie is a product of the novel in that she is bilingual, bridging the gap between the two cities. Unusual for the novel, events in the two cities are brought together in Chapter 21, showing how linked the affairs of Paris and London are becoming. The two narrative threads of the Manette household and the Defarge household met briefly at the beginning of the novel, and now they are due to meet again. Events in Paris are becoming so extreme that even London is beginning to feel the shock waves or, to use Dickens's terminology, the echoes. The title of Chapter 22 refers to the French mob, which Dickens compared in the previous chapter to a sea. It would be unnatural for a sea to continue rising past high tide except in extreme conditions, and the storming of the Bastille would seem to be the extent of furor that the mob has been capable of. Dickens suggests the unnatural character of the mob by saying that its level of engagement is continuing to rise. The brute force of the mob stems from the fact that it empowers those who have never been empowered before. Even if the lower classes are starving and their life is not meaningful, they have found new meaning in the fact that they have the ability to kill others. Foulon provides another example of a resurrection. In addition to the more metaphorical resurrections of Doctor Manette and Darnay, who were almost sentenced to certain death, and the exhuming of bodies by Resurrection-Men, there are examples of more literal resurrections - that is, of men who were presumed dead. Both Foulon and the spy Robert Cly attempted mock funerals to trick their enemies into believing that they were dead, but both were apparently \"resurrected,\" being found alive. The metaphoric title of Chapter 23 reflects the progression of the Parisian mob into a still more dangerous phase. The French revolutionaries are shown in strict contrast with the English characters in the other chapters of the novel, who have a developed moral sense often associated with the influence of religion . In this chapter, the road-mender does not \"trouble himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return,\" in an allusion to the curse of Genesis 3:19, in which God turns Adam and Eve out of Eden and reminds them that \"dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.\" Also familiar would be the funerary oration \"ashes to ashes and dust to dust,\" which was also common in Dickens's time. The French lower class had more pressing concerns than religion, as they were often at the point of starving and it was hard to follow the New Testament injunction not to worry about what one eats. The road-mender's lack of preoccupation also illustrates his naA-vetA in an unstable revolutionary society where anyone was liable to be denounced and return to dust at any moment. More broadly, rabid idealism tends to distract people from the realities of life and death. Another biblical image in the chapter is that of the chateau on fire. The villagers describe it as a \"pillar of fire in the sky,\" which they estimate is forty feet high. The \"pillar of fire in the sky\" alludes to Exodus 13:21, in which God leads the Israelites out of Egypt: \"And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light.\" The house is lit afire in the night, and it serves as a symbol of deliverance for the French people. The fire also suggests the end of times, the destruction of the world in the book of Revelations. But for the French mob, revolutionary principles have temporarily displaced religion. The title of Chapter 24 presents yet another literary allusion, now to a story in the Arabian Nights called \"The Third Calender's Tale.\" A loadstone is a type of magnet which, in the story, irresistibly draws a ship towards it. Its force is so powerful that it draws the nails out of the vessel, shipwrecking it. The title illustrates the power that Paris has over Darnay; he is drawn back into the city as though unwillingly. Indirectly, this chapter illustrates the political climate of England at the time of the French Revolution. Although the revolutionaries had some admirers in England at the outbreak of the revolution, public opinion turned swiftly and heavily against them over the course of the terror. Mr. Stryver speaks on behalf of many Englishmen when he is disgusted by the seizure of property and the carnage of the Revolution, and it is obvious by the freedom of their conversation at Tellson's that Frenchmen of Monseigneur's class found safe haven in England. This conversation reveals Darnay as even more of a free-thinker in his continued sympathies for the French people, since they run counter not only to his own family, but also to the opinions of his adopted country. The courage of his opinions will only make the revolutionaries' behavior towards him more shocking after he returns to France."}

XXI. Echoing Footsteps A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner where the Doctor lived. Ever busily winding the golden thread which bound her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress and companion, in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still house in the tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing footsteps of years. At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly happy young wife, when her work would slowly fall from her hands, and her eyes would be dimmed. For, there was something coming in the echoes, something light, afar off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her heart too much. Fluttering hopes and doubts--hopes, of a love as yet unknown to her: doubts, of her remaining upon earth, to enjoy that new delight--divided her breast. Among the echoes then, there would arise the sound of footsteps at her own early grave; and thoughts of the husband who would be left so desolate, and who would mourn for her so much, swelled to her eyes, and broke like waves. That time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom. Then, among the advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the sound of her prattling words. Let greater echoes resound as they would, the young mother at the cradle side could always hear those coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny with a child's laugh, and the Divine friend of children, to whom in her trouble she had confided hers, seemed to take her child in his arms, as He took the child of old, and made it a sacred joy to her. Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them all together, weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of all their lives, and making it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in the echoes of years none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband's step was strong and prosperous among them; her father's firm and equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening the echoes, as an unruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting and pawing the earth under the plane-tree in the garden! Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the rest, they were not harsh nor cruel. Even when golden hair, like her own, lay in a halo on a pillow round the worn face of a little boy, and he said, with a radiant smile, "Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave you both, and to leave my pretty sister; but I am called, and I must go!" those were not tears all of agony that wetted his young mother's cheek, as the spirit departed from her embrace that had been entrusted to it. Suffer them and forbid them not. They see my Father's face. O Father, blessed words! Thus, the rustling of an Angel's wings got blended with the other echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie, in a hushed murmur--like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore--as the little Lucie, comically studious at the task of the morning, or dressing a doll at her mother's footstool, chattered in the tongues of the Two Cities that were blended in her life. The Echoes rarely answered to the actual tread of Sydney Carton. Some half-dozen times a year, at most, he claimed his privilege of coming in uninvited, and would sit among them through the evening, as he had once done often. He never came there heated with wine. And one other thing regarding him was whispered in the echoes, which has been whispered by all true echoes for ages and ages. No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with a blameless though an unchanged mind, when she was a wife and a mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him--an instinctive delicacy of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in such a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here. Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. "Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!" Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like some great engine forcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat towed astern. As the boat so favoured is usually in a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swamped life of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much easier and stronger in him than any stimulating sense of desert or disgrace, made it the life he was to lead; and he no more thought of emerging from his state of lion's jackal, than any real jackal may be supposed to think of rising to be a lion. Stryver was rich; had married a florid widow with property and three boys, who had nothing particularly shining about them but the straight hair of their dumpling heads. These three young gentlemen, Mr. Stryver, exuding patronage of the most offensive quality from every pore, had walked before him like three sheep to the quiet corner in Soho, and had offered as pupils to Lucie's husband: delicately saying "Halloa! here are three lumps of bread-and-cheese towards your matrimonial picnic, Darnay!" The polite rejection of the three lumps of bread-and-cheese had quite bloated Mr. Stryver with indignation, which he afterwards turned to account in the training of the young gentlemen, by directing them to beware of the pride of Beggars, like that tutor-fellow. He was also in the habit of declaiming to Mrs. Stryver, over his full-bodied wine, on the arts Mrs. Darnay had once put in practice to "catch" him, and on the diamond-cut-diamond arts in himself, madam, which had rendered him "not to be caught." Some of his King's Bench familiars, who were occasionally parties to the full-bodied wine and the lie, excused him for the latter by saying that he had told it so often, that he believed it himself--which is surely such an incorrigible aggravation of an originally bad offence, as to justify any such offender's being carried off to some suitably retired spot, and there hanged out of the way. These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes pensive, sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, until her little daughter was six years old. How near to her heart the echoes of her child's tread came, and those of her own dear father's, always active and self-possessed, and those of her dear husband's, need not be told. Nor, how the lightest echo of their united home, directed by herself with such a wise and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her. Nor, how there were echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found her more devoted to him married (if that could be) than single, and of the many times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties seemed to divide her love for him or her help to him, and asked her "What is the magic secret, my darling, of your being everything to all of us, as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much to do?" But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, about little Lucie's sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising. On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, Mr. Lorry came in late, from Tellson's, and sat himself down by Lucie and her husband in the dark window. It was a hot, wild night, and they were all three reminded of the old Sunday night when they had looked at the lightning from the same place. "I began to think," said Mr. Lorry, pushing his brown wig back, "that I should have to pass the night at Tellson's. We have been so full of business all day, that we have not known what to do first, or which way to turn. There is such an uneasiness in Paris, that we have actually a run of confidence upon us! Our customers over there, seem not to be able to confide their property to us fast enough. There is positively a mania among some of them for sending it to England." "That has a bad look," said Darnay-- "A bad look, you say, my dear Darnay? Yes, but we don't know what reason there is in it. People are so unreasonable! Some of us at Tellson's are getting old, and we really can't be troubled out of the ordinary course without due occasion." "Still," said Darnay, "you know how gloomy and threatening the sky is." "I know that, to be sure," assented Mr. Lorry, trying to persuade himself that his sweet temper was soured, and that he grumbled, "but I am determined to be peevish after my long day's botheration. Where is Manette?" "Here he is," said the Doctor, entering the dark room at the moment. "I am quite glad you are at home; for these hurries and forebodings by which I have been surrounded all day long, have made me nervous without reason. You are not going out, I hope?" "No; I am going to play backgammon with you, if you like," said the Doctor. "I don't think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I am not fit to be pitted against you to-night. Is the teaboard still there, Lucie? I can't see." "Of course, it has been kept for you." "Thank ye, my dear. The precious child is safe in bed?" "And sleeping soundly." "That's right; all safe and well! I don't know why anything should be otherwise than safe and well here, thank God; but I have been so put out all day, and I am not as young as I was! My tea, my dear! Thank ye. Now, come and take your place in the circle, and let us sit quiet, and hear the echoes about which you have your theory." "Not a theory; it was a fancy." "A fancy, then, my wise pet," said Mr. Lorry, patting her hand. "They are very numerous and very loud, though, are they not? Only hear them!" Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into anybody's life, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained red, the footsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat in the dark London window. Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass of scarecrows heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light above the billowy heads, where steel blades and bayonets shone in the sun. A tremendous roar arose from the throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked arms struggled in the air like shrivelled branches of trees in a winter wind: all the fingers convulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance of a weapon that was thrown up from the depths below, no matter how far off. Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they began, through what agency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over the heads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could have told; but, muskets were being distributed--so were cartridges, powder, and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, every weapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or devise. People who could lay hold of nothing else, set themselves with bleeding hands to force stones and bricks out of their places in walls. Every pulse and heart in Saint Antoine was on high-fever strain and at high-fever heat. Every living creature there held life as of no account, and was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it. As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this raging circled round Defarge's wine-shop, and every human drop in the caldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex where Defarge himself, already begrimed with gunpowder and sweat, issued orders, issued arms, thrust this man back, dragged this man forward, disarmed one to arm another, laboured and strove in the thickest of the uproar. "Keep near to me, Jacques Three," cried Defarge; "and do you, Jacques One and Two, separate and put yourselves at the head of as many of these patriots as you can. Where is my wife?" "Eh, well! Here you see me!" said madame, composed as ever, but not knitting to-day. Madame's resolute right hand was occupied with an axe, in place of the usual softer implements, and in her girdle were a pistol and a cruel knife. "Where do you go, my wife?" "I go," said madame, "with you at present. You shall see me at the head of women, by-and-bye." "Come, then!" cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. "Patriots and friends, we are ready! The Bastille!" With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into the detested word, the living sea rose, wave on wave, depth on depth, and overflowed the city to that point. Alarm-bells ringing, drums beating, the sea raging and thundering on its new beach, the attack began. Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and through the smoke--in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier--Defarge of the wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, Two fierce hours. Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One drawbridge down! "Work, comrades all, work! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty Thousand; in the name of all the Angels or the Devils--which you prefer--work!" Thus Defarge of the wine-shop, still at his gun, which had long grown hot. "To me, women!" cried madame his wife. "What! We can kill as well as the men when the place is taken!" And to her, with a shrill thirsty cry, trooping women variously armed, but all armed alike in hunger and revenge. Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke; but, still the deep ditch, the single drawbridge, the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers. Slight displacements of the raging sea, made by the falling wounded. Flashing weapons, blazing torches, smoking waggonloads of wet straw, hard work at neighbouring barricades in all directions, shrieks, volleys, execrations, bravery without stint, boom smash and rattle, and the furious sounding of the living sea; but, still the deep ditch, and the single drawbridge, and the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers, and still Defarge of the wine-shop at his gun, grown doubly hot by the service of Four fierce hours. A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley--this dimly perceptible through the raging storm, nothing audible in it--suddenly the sea rose immeasurably wider and higher, and swept Defarge of the wine-shop over the lowered drawbridge, past the massive stone outer walls, in among the eight great towers surrendered! So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him on, that even to draw his breath or turn his head was as impracticable as if he had been struggling in the surf at the South Sea, until he was landed in the outer courtyard of the Bastille. There, against an angle of a wall, he made a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was nearly at his side; Madame Defarge, still heading some of her women, was visible in the inner distance, and her knife was in her hand. Everywhere was tumult, exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilderment, astounding noise, yet furious dumb-show. "The Prisoners!" "The Records!" "The secret cells!" "The instruments of torture!" "The Prisoners!" Of all these cries, and ten thousand incoherences, "The Prisoners!" was the cry most taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there were an eternity of people, as well as of time and space. When the foremost billows rolled past, bearing the prison officers with them, and threatening them all with instant death if any secret nook remained undisclosed, Defarge laid his strong hand on the breast of one of these men--a man with a grey head, who had a lighted torch in his hand--separated him from the rest, and got him between himself and the wall. "Show me the North Tower!" said Defarge. "Quick!" "I will faithfully," replied the man, "if you will come with me. But there is no one there." "What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five, North Tower?" asked Defarge. "Quick!" "The meaning, monsieur?" "Does it mean a captive, or a place of captivity? Or do you mean that I shall strike you dead?" "Kill him!" croaked Jacques Three, who had come close up. "Monsieur, it is a cell." "Show it me!" "Pass this way, then." Jacques Three, with his usual craving on him, and evidently disappointed by the dialogue taking a turn that did not seem to promise bloodshed, held by Defarge's arm as he held by the turnkey's. Their three heads had been close together during this brief discourse, and it had been as much as they could do to hear one another, even then: so tremendous was the noise of the living ocean, in its irruption into the Fortress, and its inundation of the courts and passages and staircases. All around outside, too, it beat the walls with a deep, hoarse roar, from which, occasionally, some partial shouts of tumult broke and leaped into the air like spray. Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had never shone, past hideous doors of dark dens and cages, down cavernous flights of steps, and again up steep rugged ascents of stone and brick, more like dry waterfalls than staircases, Defarge, the turnkey, and Jacques Three, linked hand and arm, went with all the speed they could make. Here and there, especially at first, the inundation started on them and swept by; but when they had done descending, and were winding and climbing up a tower, they were alone. Hemmed in here by the massive thickness of walls and arches, the storm within the fortress and without was only audible to them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise out of which they had come had almost destroyed their sense of hearing. The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a clashing lock, swung the door slowly open, and said, as they all bent their heads and passed in: "One hundred and five, North Tower!" There was a small, heavily-grated, unglazed window high in the wall, with a stone screen before it, so that the sky could be only seen by stooping low and looking up. There was a small chimney, heavily barred across, a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery wood-ashes on the hearth. There was a stool, and table, and a straw bed. There were the four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring in one of them. "Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may see them," said Defarge to the turnkey. The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light closely with his eyes. "Stop!--Look here, Jacques!" "A. M.!" croaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily. "Alexandre Manette," said Defarge in his ear, following the letters with his swart forefinger, deeply engrained with gunpowder. "And here he wrote 'a poor physician.' And it was he, without doubt, who scratched a calendar on this stone. What is that in your hand? A crowbar? Give it me!" He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a sudden exchange of the two instruments, and turning on the worm-eaten stool and table, beat them to pieces in a few blows. "Hold the light higher!" he said, wrathfully, to the turnkey. "Look among those fragments with care, Jacques. And see! Here is my knife," throwing it to him; "rip open that bed, and search the straw. Hold the light higher, you!" With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon the hearth, and, peering up the chimney, struck and prised at its sides with the crowbar, and worked at the iron grating across it. In a few minutes, some mortar and dust came dropping down, which he averted his face to avoid; and in it, and in the old wood-ashes, and in a crevice in the chimney into which his weapon had slipped or wrought itself, he groped with a cautious touch. "Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, Jacques?" "Nothing." "Let us collect them together, in the middle of the cell. So! Light them, you!" The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and hot. Stooping again to come out at the low-arched door, they left it burning, and retraced their way to the courtyard; seeming to recover their sense of hearing as they came down, until they were in the raging flood once more. They found it surging and tossing, in quest of Defarge himself. Saint Antoine was clamorous to have its wine-shop keeper foremost in the guard upon the governor who had defended the Bastille and shot the people. Otherwise, the governor would not be marched to the Hotel de Ville for judgment. Otherwise, the governor would escape, and the people's blood (suddenly of some value, after many years of worthlessness) be unavenged. In the howling universe of passion and contention that seemed to encompass this grim old officer conspicuous in his grey coat and red decoration, there was but one quite steady figure, and that was a woman's. "See, there is my husband!" she cried, pointing him out. "See Defarge!" She stood immovable close to the grim old officer, and remained immovable close to him; remained immovable close to him through the streets, as Defarge and the rest bore him along; remained immovable close to him when he was got near his destination, and began to be struck at from behind; remained immovable close to him when the long-gathering rain of stabs and blows fell heavy; was so close to him when he dropped dead under it, that, suddenly animated, she put her foot upon his neck, and with her cruel knife--long ready--hewed off his head. The hour was come, when Saint Antoine was to execute his horrible idea of hoisting up men for lamps to show what he could be and do. Saint Antoine's blood was up, and the blood of tyranny and domination by the iron hand was down--down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville where the governor's body lay--down on the sole of the shoe of Madame Defarge where she had trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. "Lower the lamp yonder!" cried Saint Antoine, after glaring round for a new means of death; "here is one of his soldiers to be left on guard!" The swinging sentinel was posted, and the sea rushed on. The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destructive upheaving of wave against wave, whose depths were yet unfathomed and whose forces were yet unknown. The remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them. But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression was in vivid life, there were two groups of faces--each seven in number--so fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never did sea roll which bore more memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had burst their tomb, were carried high overhead: all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as if the Last Day were come, and those who rejoiced around them were lost spirits. Other seven faces there were, carried higher, seven dead faces, whose drooping eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassive faces, yet with a suspended--not an abolished--expression on them; faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the dropped lids of the eyes, and bear witness with the bloodless lips, "THOU DIDST IT!" Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys of the accursed fortress of the eight strong towers, some discovered letters and other memorials of prisoners of old time, long dead of broken hearts,--such, and such--like, the loudly echoing footsteps of Saint Antoine escort through the Paris streets in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. Now, Heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay, and keep these feet far out of her life! For, they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and in the years so long after the breaking of the cask at Defarge's wine-shop door, they are not easily purified when once stained red.

book 2, Chapter 21

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Echoing Footsteps Lucie grows older and continues to listen to the footsteps echoing around the house. She has an angelic baby boy who dies as a child, and she has a girl whom she names Lucie. Carton continues to hold a special and privileged place in the family. Stryver marries a wealthy widow with three children, offers these children as pupils to Darnay, and is offended when Darnay refuses. When Lucie turns six, in 1789, events in France begin to affect the household. Mr. Lorry says that the Paris customers of Tellson's are so nervous that they are beginning to send their money to London. He asks if little Lucie is safe in her bed, and then wonders why he is so nervous, because there is no reason that she would not be. Meanwhile, in Paris, the attack on the Bastille is brewing. Saint Antoine arms itself with weapons and stones and descends on the Bastille, led by Monsieur Defarge. Madame Defarge leads the women in the attack. Monsieur Defarge forces a turnkey to show him to One Hundred and Five, North Tower, the cell that Doctor Manette formerly occupied. Defarge knocks on the walls until he finds the hiding place of a document, which he removes before the Bastille is destroyed. The mob is waiting for Defarge to execute the governor. When he is beaten to death by the mob, Madame Defarge is close at hand with her knife to behead and mutilate the body. The mob carries seven prisoners released from the Bastille as heroes

Darnay is also portrayed as a moral hero. His wife's pity for another man, instead of making him jealous, makes him prize her even more. He responds to her beauty on a moral rather than a carnal level. The narrator reports, "She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man that her husband could have looked on her as she was for hours." He is attracted to her goodness, rather than merely her appearance, although her goodness does have a positive effect on her beauty. The goodness of these two sets them quite apart from other Dickensian main characters. They lack the development and moral conflict of characters such as Pip in Great Expectations and Nancy in Oliver Twist. The setting in which Dickens places his characters in A Tale of Two Cities is itself the locus of conflict, rather than the characters themselves. Thus Dickens forgoes some of the human interest that makes his other novels great. Chapter 20 thus reads somewhat like a moral fable. The title of Chapter 21 refers to Lucie's presentiment about the footsteps that echo around the Manette household in Soho. She worried in a previous chapter that the footsteps were the echoes of people coming into the family's life, and now the outside world does break spitefully into their happy circle. The echoes have not yet overtaken the family in the way that they will, however, because Lucie can still hear her own child's steps first and foremost. Little Lucie is a product of the novel in that she is bilingual, bridging the gap between the two cities. Unusual for the novel, events in the two cities are brought together in Chapter 21, showing how linked the affairs of Paris and London are becoming. The two narrative threads of the Manette household and the Defarge household met briefly at the beginning of the novel, and now they are due to meet again. Events in Paris are becoming so extreme that even London is beginning to feel the shock waves or, to use Dickens's terminology, the echoes. The title of Chapter 22 refers to the French mob, which Dickens compared in the previous chapter to a sea. It would be unnatural for a sea to continue rising past high tide except in extreme conditions, and the storming of the Bastille would seem to be the extent of furor that the mob has been capable of. Dickens suggests the unnatural character of the mob by saying that its level of engagement is continuing to rise. The brute force of the mob stems from the fact that it empowers those who have never been empowered before. Even if the lower classes are starving and their life is not meaningful, they have found new meaning in the fact that they have the ability to kill others. Foulon provides another example of a resurrection. In addition to the more metaphorical resurrections of Doctor Manette and Darnay, who were almost sentenced to certain death, and the exhuming of bodies by Resurrection-Men, there are examples of more literal resurrections - that is, of men who were presumed dead. Both Foulon and the spy Robert Cly attempted mock funerals to trick their enemies into believing that they were dead, but both were apparently "resurrected," being found alive. The metaphoric title of Chapter 23 reflects the progression of the Parisian mob into a still more dangerous phase. The French revolutionaries are shown in strict contrast with the English characters in the other chapters of the novel, who have a developed moral sense often associated with the influence of religion . In this chapter, the road-mender does not "trouble himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return," in an allusion to the curse of Genesis 3:19, in which God turns Adam and Eve out of Eden and reminds them that "dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." Also familiar would be the funerary oration "ashes to ashes and dust to dust," which was also common in Dickens's time. The French lower class had more pressing concerns than religion, as they were often at the point of starving and it was hard to follow the New Testament injunction not to worry about what one eats. The road-mender's lack of preoccupation also illustrates his naA-vetA in an unstable revolutionary society where anyone was liable to be denounced and return to dust at any moment. More broadly, rabid idealism tends to distract people from the realities of life and death. Another biblical image in the chapter is that of the chateau on fire. The villagers describe it as a "pillar of fire in the sky," which they estimate is forty feet high. The "pillar of fire in the sky" alludes to Exodus 13:21, in which God leads the Israelites out of Egypt: "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light." The house is lit afire in the night, and it serves as a symbol of deliverance for the French people. The fire also suggests the end of times, the destruction of the world in the book of Revelations. But for the French mob, revolutionary principles have temporarily displaced religion. The title of Chapter 24 presents yet another literary allusion, now to a story in the Arabian Nights called "The Third Calender's Tale." A loadstone is a type of magnet which, in the story, irresistibly draws a ship towards it. Its force is so powerful that it draws the nails out of the vessel, shipwrecking it. The title illustrates the power that Paris has over Darnay; he is drawn back into the city as though unwillingly. Indirectly, this chapter illustrates the political climate of England at the time of the French Revolution. Although the revolutionaries had some admirers in England at the outbreak of the revolution, public opinion turned swiftly and heavily against them over the course of the terror. Mr. Stryver speaks on behalf of many Englishmen when he is disgusted by the seizure of property and the carnage of the Revolution, and it is obvious by the freedom of their conversation at Tellson's that Frenchmen of Monseigneur's class found safe haven in England. This conversation reveals Darnay as even more of a free-thinker in his continued sympathies for the French people, since they run counter not only to his own family, but also to the opinions of his adopted country. The courage of his opinions will only make the revolutionaries' behavior towards him more shocking after he returns to France.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/28.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_6_part_3.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 22

book 2, chapter 22

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 22", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-20-24", "summary": "The Sea Still Rises A week after the storming of the Bastille, Madame Defarge is having a conversation with the Vengeance. Defarge bursts into the store with the news that the mob has found an aristocrat named Foulon, who told starving peasants that they should eat grass. The Defarges and the Vengeance immediately create a mob to punish Foulon. The women of the mob urge one another on. When they see that a bundle of grass has been tied to Foulon, they clap as if they were at a play. They successfully hang him on a lamppost the third time after the rope breaks the first two times. The mob is still anxious for blood, so they murder his son-in-law. They return to their homes in Saint Antoine and, although they are still starving, they feel satisfied and bonded after the violence of the day", "analysis": "Darnay is also portrayed as a moral hero. His wife's pity for another man, instead of making him jealous, makes him prize her even more. He responds to her beauty on a moral rather than a carnal level. The narrator reports, \"She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man that her husband could have looked on her as she was for hours.\" He is attracted to her goodness, rather than merely her appearance, although her goodness does have a positive effect on her beauty. The goodness of these two sets them quite apart from other Dickensian main characters. They lack the development and moral conflict of characters such as Pip in Great Expectations and Nancy in Oliver Twist. The setting in which Dickens places his characters in A Tale of Two Cities is itself the locus of conflict, rather than the characters themselves. Thus Dickens forgoes some of the human interest that makes his other novels great. Chapter 20 thus reads somewhat like a moral fable. The title of Chapter 21 refers to Lucie's presentiment about the footsteps that echo around the Manette household in Soho. She worried in a previous chapter that the footsteps were the echoes of people coming into the family's life, and now the outside world does break spitefully into their happy circle. The echoes have not yet overtaken the family in the way that they will, however, because Lucie can still hear her own child's steps first and foremost. Little Lucie is a product of the novel in that she is bilingual, bridging the gap between the two cities. Unusual for the novel, events in the two cities are brought together in Chapter 21, showing how linked the affairs of Paris and London are becoming. The two narrative threads of the Manette household and the Defarge household met briefly at the beginning of the novel, and now they are due to meet again. Events in Paris are becoming so extreme that even London is beginning to feel the shock waves or, to use Dickens's terminology, the echoes. The title of Chapter 22 refers to the French mob, which Dickens compared in the previous chapter to a sea. It would be unnatural for a sea to continue rising past high tide except in extreme conditions, and the storming of the Bastille would seem to be the extent of furor that the mob has been capable of. Dickens suggests the unnatural character of the mob by saying that its level of engagement is continuing to rise. The brute force of the mob stems from the fact that it empowers those who have never been empowered before. Even if the lower classes are starving and their life is not meaningful, they have found new meaning in the fact that they have the ability to kill others. Foulon provides another example of a resurrection. In addition to the more metaphorical resurrections of Doctor Manette and Darnay, who were almost sentenced to certain death, and the exhuming of bodies by Resurrection-Men, there are examples of more literal resurrections - that is, of men who were presumed dead. Both Foulon and the spy Robert Cly attempted mock funerals to trick their enemies into believing that they were dead, but both were apparently \"resurrected,\" being found alive. The metaphoric title of Chapter 23 reflects the progression of the Parisian mob into a still more dangerous phase. The French revolutionaries are shown in strict contrast with the English characters in the other chapters of the novel, who have a developed moral sense often associated with the influence of religion . In this chapter, the road-mender does not \"trouble himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return,\" in an allusion to the curse of Genesis 3:19, in which God turns Adam and Eve out of Eden and reminds them that \"dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.\" Also familiar would be the funerary oration \"ashes to ashes and dust to dust,\" which was also common in Dickens's time. The French lower class had more pressing concerns than religion, as they were often at the point of starving and it was hard to follow the New Testament injunction not to worry about what one eats. The road-mender's lack of preoccupation also illustrates his naA-vetA in an unstable revolutionary society where anyone was liable to be denounced and return to dust at any moment. More broadly, rabid idealism tends to distract people from the realities of life and death. Another biblical image in the chapter is that of the chateau on fire. The villagers describe it as a \"pillar of fire in the sky,\" which they estimate is forty feet high. The \"pillar of fire in the sky\" alludes to Exodus 13:21, in which God leads the Israelites out of Egypt: \"And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light.\" The house is lit afire in the night, and it serves as a symbol of deliverance for the French people. The fire also suggests the end of times, the destruction of the world in the book of Revelations. But for the French mob, revolutionary principles have temporarily displaced religion. The title of Chapter 24 presents yet another literary allusion, now to a story in the Arabian Nights called \"The Third Calender's Tale.\" A loadstone is a type of magnet which, in the story, irresistibly draws a ship towards it. Its force is so powerful that it draws the nails out of the vessel, shipwrecking it. The title illustrates the power that Paris has over Darnay; he is drawn back into the city as though unwillingly. Indirectly, this chapter illustrates the political climate of England at the time of the French Revolution. Although the revolutionaries had some admirers in England at the outbreak of the revolution, public opinion turned swiftly and heavily against them over the course of the terror. Mr. Stryver speaks on behalf of many Englishmen when he is disgusted by the seizure of property and the carnage of the Revolution, and it is obvious by the freedom of their conversation at Tellson's that Frenchmen of Monseigneur's class found safe haven in England. This conversation reveals Darnay as even more of a free-thinker in his continued sympathies for the French people, since they run counter not only to his own family, but also to the opinions of his adopted country. The courage of his opinions will only make the revolutionaries' behavior towards him more shocking after he returns to France."}

XXII. The Sea Still Rises Haggard Saint Antoine had had only one exultant week, in which to soften his modicum of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, with the relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trusting themselves to the saint's mercies. The lamps across his streets had a portentously elastic swing with them. Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both, there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it: "I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?" Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine; the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily on the expression. Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as was to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant had already earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance. "Hark!" said The Vengeance. "Listen, then! Who comes?" As if a train of powder laid from the outermost bound of Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreading murmur came rushing along. "It is Defarge," said madame. "Silence, patriots!" Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and looked around him! "Listen, everywhere!" said madame again. "Listen to him!" Defarge stood, panting, against a background of eager eyes and open mouths, formed outside the door; all those within the wine-shop had sprung to their feet. "Say then, my husband. What is it?" "News from the other world!" "How, then?" cried madame, contemptuously. "The other world?" "Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the famished people that they might eat grass, and who died, and went to Hell?" "Everybody!" from all throats. "The news is of him. He is among us!" "Among us!" from the universal throat again. "And dead?" "Not dead! He feared us so much--and with reason--that he caused himself to be represented as dead, and had a grand mock-funeral. But they have found him alive, hiding in the country, and have brought him in. I have seen him but now, on his way to the Hotel de Ville, a prisoner. I have said that he had reason to fear us. Say all! _Had_ he reason?" Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and ten, if he had never known it yet, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if he could have heard the answering cry. A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and his wife looked steadfastly at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drum was heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter. "Patriots!" said Defarge, in a determined voice, "are we ready?" Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her girdle; the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to house, rousing the women. The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! Husbands, and brothers, and young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon, Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him! With these cries, numbers of the women, lashed into blind frenzy, whirled about, striking and tearing at their own friends until they dropped into a passionate swoon, and were only saved by the men belonging to them from being trampled under foot. Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment! This Foulon was at the Hotel de Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knew his own sufferings, insults, and wrongs! Armed men and women flocked out of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs after them with such a force of suction, that within a quarter of an hour there was not a human creature in Saint Antoine's bosom but a few old crones and the wailing children. No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination where this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the adjacent open space and streets. The Defarges, husband and wife, The Vengeance, and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no great distance from him in the Hall. "See!" cried madame, pointing with her knife. "See the old villain bound with ropes. That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon his back. Ha, ha! That was well done. Let him eat it now!" Madame put her knife under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play. The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, explaining the cause of her satisfaction to those behind them, and those again explaining to others, and those to others, the neighbouring streets resounded with the clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl, and the winnowing of many bushels of words, Madame Defarge's frequent expressions of impatience were taken up, with marvellous quickness, at a distance: the more readily, because certain men who had by some wonderful exercise of agility climbed up the external architecture to look in from the windows, knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph between her and the crowd outside the building. At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of hope or protection, directly down upon the old prisoner's head. The favour was too much to bear; in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff that had stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had got him! It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd. Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserable wretch in a deadly embrace--Madame Defarge had but followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied--The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windows had not yet swooped into the Hall, like birds of prey from their high perches--when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, "Bring him out! Bring him to the lamp!" Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy; now full of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one another back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn through a forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go--as a cat might have done to a mouse--and silently and composedly looked at him while they made ready, and while he besought her: the women passionately screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; 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. Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint Antoine so shouted and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched, another of the people's enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a guard five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of paper, seized him--would have torn him out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon company--set his head and heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession through the streets. Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the children, wailing and breadless. Then, the miserable bakers' shops were beset by long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and while they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the time by embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and achieving them again in gossip. Gradually, these strings of ragged people shortened and frayed away; and then poor lights began to shine in high windows, and slender fires were made in the streets, at which neighbours cooked in common, afterwards supping at their doors. Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as of most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meagre children; and lovers, with such a world around them and before them, loved and hoped. It was almost morning, when Defarge's wine-shop parted with its last knot of customers, and Monsieur Defarge said to madame his wife, in husky tones, while fastening the door: "At last it is come, my dear!" "Eh well!" returned madame. "Almost." Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept: even The Vengeance slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum's was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine's bosom.

book 2, Chapter 22

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-20-24

The Sea Still Rises A week after the storming of the Bastille, Madame Defarge is having a conversation with the Vengeance. Defarge bursts into the store with the news that the mob has found an aristocrat named Foulon, who told starving peasants that they should eat grass. The Defarges and the Vengeance immediately create a mob to punish Foulon. The women of the mob urge one another on. When they see that a bundle of grass has been tied to Foulon, they clap as if they were at a play. They successfully hang him on a lamppost the third time after the rope breaks the first two times. The mob is still anxious for blood, so they murder his son-in-law. They return to their homes in Saint Antoine and, although they are still starving, they feel satisfied and bonded after the violence of the day

Darnay is also portrayed as a moral hero. His wife's pity for another man, instead of making him jealous, makes him prize her even more. He responds to her beauty on a moral rather than a carnal level. The narrator reports, "She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man that her husband could have looked on her as she was for hours." He is attracted to her goodness, rather than merely her appearance, although her goodness does have a positive effect on her beauty. The goodness of these two sets them quite apart from other Dickensian main characters. They lack the development and moral conflict of characters such as Pip in Great Expectations and Nancy in Oliver Twist. The setting in which Dickens places his characters in A Tale of Two Cities is itself the locus of conflict, rather than the characters themselves. Thus Dickens forgoes some of the human interest that makes his other novels great. Chapter 20 thus reads somewhat like a moral fable. The title of Chapter 21 refers to Lucie's presentiment about the footsteps that echo around the Manette household in Soho. She worried in a previous chapter that the footsteps were the echoes of people coming into the family's life, and now the outside world does break spitefully into their happy circle. The echoes have not yet overtaken the family in the way that they will, however, because Lucie can still hear her own child's steps first and foremost. Little Lucie is a product of the novel in that she is bilingual, bridging the gap between the two cities. Unusual for the novel, events in the two cities are brought together in Chapter 21, showing how linked the affairs of Paris and London are becoming. The two narrative threads of the Manette household and the Defarge household met briefly at the beginning of the novel, and now they are due to meet again. Events in Paris are becoming so extreme that even London is beginning to feel the shock waves or, to use Dickens's terminology, the echoes. The title of Chapter 22 refers to the French mob, which Dickens compared in the previous chapter to a sea. It would be unnatural for a sea to continue rising past high tide except in extreme conditions, and the storming of the Bastille would seem to be the extent of furor that the mob has been capable of. Dickens suggests the unnatural character of the mob by saying that its level of engagement is continuing to rise. The brute force of the mob stems from the fact that it empowers those who have never been empowered before. Even if the lower classes are starving and their life is not meaningful, they have found new meaning in the fact that they have the ability to kill others. Foulon provides another example of a resurrection. In addition to the more metaphorical resurrections of Doctor Manette and Darnay, who were almost sentenced to certain death, and the exhuming of bodies by Resurrection-Men, there are examples of more literal resurrections - that is, of men who were presumed dead. Both Foulon and the spy Robert Cly attempted mock funerals to trick their enemies into believing that they were dead, but both were apparently "resurrected," being found alive. The metaphoric title of Chapter 23 reflects the progression of the Parisian mob into a still more dangerous phase. The French revolutionaries are shown in strict contrast with the English characters in the other chapters of the novel, who have a developed moral sense often associated with the influence of religion . In this chapter, the road-mender does not "trouble himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return," in an allusion to the curse of Genesis 3:19, in which God turns Adam and Eve out of Eden and reminds them that "dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." Also familiar would be the funerary oration "ashes to ashes and dust to dust," which was also common in Dickens's time. The French lower class had more pressing concerns than religion, as they were often at the point of starving and it was hard to follow the New Testament injunction not to worry about what one eats. The road-mender's lack of preoccupation also illustrates his naA-vetA in an unstable revolutionary society where anyone was liable to be denounced and return to dust at any moment. More broadly, rabid idealism tends to distract people from the realities of life and death. Another biblical image in the chapter is that of the chateau on fire. The villagers describe it as a "pillar of fire in the sky," which they estimate is forty feet high. The "pillar of fire in the sky" alludes to Exodus 13:21, in which God leads the Israelites out of Egypt: "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light." The house is lit afire in the night, and it serves as a symbol of deliverance for the French people. The fire also suggests the end of times, the destruction of the world in the book of Revelations. But for the French mob, revolutionary principles have temporarily displaced religion. The title of Chapter 24 presents yet another literary allusion, now to a story in the Arabian Nights called "The Third Calender's Tale." A loadstone is a type of magnet which, in the story, irresistibly draws a ship towards it. Its force is so powerful that it draws the nails out of the vessel, shipwrecking it. The title illustrates the power that Paris has over Darnay; he is drawn back into the city as though unwillingly. Indirectly, this chapter illustrates the political climate of England at the time of the French Revolution. Although the revolutionaries had some admirers in England at the outbreak of the revolution, public opinion turned swiftly and heavily against them over the course of the terror. Mr. Stryver speaks on behalf of many Englishmen when he is disgusted by the seizure of property and the carnage of the Revolution, and it is obvious by the freedom of their conversation at Tellson's that Frenchmen of Monseigneur's class found safe haven in England. This conversation reveals Darnay as even more of a free-thinker in his continued sympathies for the French people, since they run counter not only to his own family, but also to the opinions of his adopted country. The courage of his opinions will only make the revolutionaries' behavior towards him more shocking after he returns to France.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/29.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_6_part_4.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 23

book 2, chapter 23

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 23", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-20-24", "summary": "Fire Rises Saint Antoine is a changed place without Monseigneur, as France is a changed place without people of his class. Although he was source of oppression, he was also a source of pride and a symbol of luxury. Two \"Jacques\" figures greet each other in the countryside. One explains that he has been walking for two straight days and asks the road-mender to wake him when he is done working. The road-mender is fascinated with him and examines him while he sleeps. He wakes him at the appointed hour, and they both go into town. Monsieur Gabelle grows nervous because they are all looking into the sky, and he also looks. The chateau where Monseigneur had lived is on fire. The villagers watch the fire without offering to help put it out, and they follow Monsieur Gabelle to his house to persecute him for being connected with tax collection. Gabelle locks himself in his house and resolves that, if attacked, he will jump off his own roof and crush some of the men below. The mob sets fire to other chateaux belonging to noblemen and hangs functionaries who are less fortunate than Gabelle, but Gabelle escapes", "analysis": "Darnay is also portrayed as a moral hero. His wife's pity for another man, instead of making him jealous, makes him prize her even more. He responds to her beauty on a moral rather than a carnal level. The narrator reports, \"She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man that her husband could have looked on her as she was for hours.\" He is attracted to her goodness, rather than merely her appearance, although her goodness does have a positive effect on her beauty. The goodness of these two sets them quite apart from other Dickensian main characters. They lack the development and moral conflict of characters such as Pip in Great Expectations and Nancy in Oliver Twist. The setting in which Dickens places his characters in A Tale of Two Cities is itself the locus of conflict, rather than the characters themselves. Thus Dickens forgoes some of the human interest that makes his other novels great. Chapter 20 thus reads somewhat like a moral fable. The title of Chapter 21 refers to Lucie's presentiment about the footsteps that echo around the Manette household in Soho. She worried in a previous chapter that the footsteps were the echoes of people coming into the family's life, and now the outside world does break spitefully into their happy circle. The echoes have not yet overtaken the family in the way that they will, however, because Lucie can still hear her own child's steps first and foremost. Little Lucie is a product of the novel in that she is bilingual, bridging the gap between the two cities. Unusual for the novel, events in the two cities are brought together in Chapter 21, showing how linked the affairs of Paris and London are becoming. The two narrative threads of the Manette household and the Defarge household met briefly at the beginning of the novel, and now they are due to meet again. Events in Paris are becoming so extreme that even London is beginning to feel the shock waves or, to use Dickens's terminology, the echoes. The title of Chapter 22 refers to the French mob, which Dickens compared in the previous chapter to a sea. It would be unnatural for a sea to continue rising past high tide except in extreme conditions, and the storming of the Bastille would seem to be the extent of furor that the mob has been capable of. Dickens suggests the unnatural character of the mob by saying that its level of engagement is continuing to rise. The brute force of the mob stems from the fact that it empowers those who have never been empowered before. Even if the lower classes are starving and their life is not meaningful, they have found new meaning in the fact that they have the ability to kill others. Foulon provides another example of a resurrection. In addition to the more metaphorical resurrections of Doctor Manette and Darnay, who were almost sentenced to certain death, and the exhuming of bodies by Resurrection-Men, there are examples of more literal resurrections - that is, of men who were presumed dead. Both Foulon and the spy Robert Cly attempted mock funerals to trick their enemies into believing that they were dead, but both were apparently \"resurrected,\" being found alive. The metaphoric title of Chapter 23 reflects the progression of the Parisian mob into a still more dangerous phase. The French revolutionaries are shown in strict contrast with the English characters in the other chapters of the novel, who have a developed moral sense often associated with the influence of religion . In this chapter, the road-mender does not \"trouble himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return,\" in an allusion to the curse of Genesis 3:19, in which God turns Adam and Eve out of Eden and reminds them that \"dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.\" Also familiar would be the funerary oration \"ashes to ashes and dust to dust,\" which was also common in Dickens's time. The French lower class had more pressing concerns than religion, as they were often at the point of starving and it was hard to follow the New Testament injunction not to worry about what one eats. The road-mender's lack of preoccupation also illustrates his naA-vetA in an unstable revolutionary society where anyone was liable to be denounced and return to dust at any moment. More broadly, rabid idealism tends to distract people from the realities of life and death. Another biblical image in the chapter is that of the chateau on fire. The villagers describe it as a \"pillar of fire in the sky,\" which they estimate is forty feet high. The \"pillar of fire in the sky\" alludes to Exodus 13:21, in which God leads the Israelites out of Egypt: \"And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light.\" The house is lit afire in the night, and it serves as a symbol of deliverance for the French people. The fire also suggests the end of times, the destruction of the world in the book of Revelations. But for the French mob, revolutionary principles have temporarily displaced religion. The title of Chapter 24 presents yet another literary allusion, now to a story in the Arabian Nights called \"The Third Calender's Tale.\" A loadstone is a type of magnet which, in the story, irresistibly draws a ship towards it. Its force is so powerful that it draws the nails out of the vessel, shipwrecking it. The title illustrates the power that Paris has over Darnay; he is drawn back into the city as though unwillingly. Indirectly, this chapter illustrates the political climate of England at the time of the French Revolution. Although the revolutionaries had some admirers in England at the outbreak of the revolution, public opinion turned swiftly and heavily against them over the course of the terror. Mr. Stryver speaks on behalf of many Englishmen when he is disgusted by the seizure of property and the carnage of the Revolution, and it is obvious by the freedom of their conversation at Tellson's that Frenchmen of Monseigneur's class found safe haven in England. This conversation reveals Darnay as even more of a free-thinker in his continued sympathies for the French people, since they run counter not only to his own family, but also to the opinions of his adopted country. The courage of his opinions will only make the revolutionaries' behavior towards him more shocking after he returns to France."}

XXIII. Fire Rises There was a change on the village where the fountain fell, and where the mender of roads went forth daily to hammer out of the stones on the highway such morsels of bread as might serve for patches to hold his poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together. The prison on the crag was not so dominant as of yore; there were soldiers to guard it, but not many; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of them knew what his men would do--beyond this: that it would probably not be what he was ordered. Far and wide lay a ruined country, yielding nothing but desolation. Every green leaf, every blade of grass and blade of grain, was as shrivelled and poor as the miserable people. Everything was bowed down, dejected, oppressed, and broken. Habitations, fences, domesticated animals, men, women, children, and the soil that bore them--all worn out. Monseigneur (often a most worthy individual gentleman) was a national blessing, gave a chivalrous tone to things, was a polite example of luxurious and shining life, and a great deal more to equal purpose; nevertheless, Monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other, brought things to this. Strange that Creation, designed expressly for Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung dry and squeezed out! There must be something short-sighted in the eternal arrangements, surely! Thus it was, however; and the last drop of blood having been extracted from the flints, and the last screw of the rack having been turned so often that its purchase crumbled, and it now turned and turned with nothing to bite, Monseigneur began to run away from a phenomenon so low and unaccountable. But, this was not the change on the village, and on many a village like it. For scores of years gone by, Monseigneur had squeezed it and wrung it, and had seldom graced it with his presence except for the pleasures of the chase--now, found in hunting the people; now, found in hunting the beasts, for whose preservation Monseigneur made edifying spaces of barbarous and barren wilderness. No. The change consisted in the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather than in the disappearance of the high caste, chiselled, and otherwise beautified and beautifying features of Monseigneur. For, in these times, as the mender of roads worked, solitary, in the dust, not often troubling himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return, being for the most part too much occupied in thinking how little he had for supper and how much more he would eat if he had it--in these times, as he raised his eyes from his lonely labour, and viewed the prospect, he would see some rough figure approaching on foot, the like of which was once a rarity in those parts, but was now a frequent presence. As it advanced, the mender of roads would discern without surprise, that it was a shaggy-haired man, of almost barbarian aspect, tall, in wooden shoes that were clumsy even to the eyes of a mender of roads, grim, rough, swart, steeped in the mud and dust of many highways, dank with the marshy moisture of many low grounds, sprinkled with the thorns and leaves and moss of many byways through woods. Such a man came upon him, like a ghost, at noon in the July weather, as he sat on his heap of stones under a bank, taking such shelter as he could get from a shower of hail. The man looked at him, looked at the village in the hollow, at the mill, and at the prison on the crag. When he had identified these objects in what benighted mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was just intelligible: "How goes it, Jacques?" "All well, Jacques." "Touch then!" They joined hands, and the man sat down on the heap of stones. "No dinner?" "Nothing but supper now," said the mender of roads, with a hungry face. "It is the fashion," growled the man. "I meet no dinner anywhere." He took out a blackened pipe, filled it, lighted it with flint and steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow: then, suddenly held it from him and dropped something into it from between his finger and thumb, that blazed and went out in a puff of smoke. "Touch then." It was the turn of the mender of roads to say it this time, after observing these operations. They again joined hands. "To-night?" said the mender of roads. "To-night," said the man, putting the pipe in his mouth. "Where?" "Here." He and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones looking silently at one another, with the hail driving in between them like a pigmy charge of bayonets, until the sky began to clear over the village. "Show me!" said the traveller then, moving to the brow of the hill. "See!" returned the mender of roads, with extended finger. "You go down here, and straight through the street, and past the fountain--" "To the Devil with all that!" interrupted the other, rolling his eye over the landscape. "_I_ go through no streets and past no fountains. Well?" "Well! About two leagues beyond the summit of that hill above the village." "Good. When do you cease to work?" "At sunset." "Will you wake me, before departing? I have walked two nights without resting. Let me finish my pipe, and I shall sleep like a child. Will you wake me?" "Surely." The wayfarer smoked his pipe out, put it in his breast, slipped off his great wooden shoes, and lay down on his back on the heap of stones. He was fast asleep directly. As the road-mender plied his dusty labour, and the hail-clouds, rolling away, revealed bright bars and streaks of sky which were responded to by silver gleams upon the landscape, the little man (who wore a red cap now, in place of his blue one) seemed fascinated by the figure on the heap of stones. His eyes were so often turned towards it, that he used his tools mechanically, and, one would have said, to very poor account. The bronze face, the shaggy black hair and beard, the coarse woollen red cap, the rough medley dress of home-spun stuff and hairy skins of beasts, the powerful frame attenuated by spare living, and the sullen and desperate compression of the lips in sleep, inspired the mender of roads with awe. The traveller had travelled far, and his feet were footsore, and his ankles chafed and bleeding; his great shoes, stuffed with leaves and grass, had been heavy to drag over the many long leagues, and his clothes were chafed into holes, as he himself was into sores. Stooping down beside him, the road-mender tried to get a peep at secret weapons in his breast or where not; but, in vain, for he slept with his arms crossed upon him, and set as resolutely as his lips. Fortified towns with their stockades, guard-houses, gates, trenches, and drawbridges, seemed to the mender of roads, to be so much air as against this figure. And when he lifted his eyes from it to the horizon and looked around, he saw in his small fancy similar figures, stopped by no obstacle, tending to centres all over France. The man slept on, indifferent to showers of hail and intervals of brightness, to sunshine on his face and shadow, to the paltering lumps of dull ice on his body and the diamonds into which the sun changed them, until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was glowing. Then, the mender of roads having got his tools together and all things ready to go down into the village, roused him. "Good!" said the sleeper, rising on his elbow. "Two leagues beyond the summit of the hill?" "About." "About. Good!" The mender of roads went home, with the dust going on before him according to the set of the wind, and was soon at the fountain, squeezing himself in among the lean kine brought there to drink, and appearing even to whisper to them in his whispering to all the village. When the village had taken its poor supper, it did not creep to bed, as it usually did, but came out of doors again, and remained there. A curious contagion of whispering was upon it, and also, when it gathered together at the fountain in the dark, another curious contagion of looking expectantly at the sky in one direction only. Monsieur Gabelle, chief functionary of the place, became uneasy; went out on his house-top alone, and looked in that direction too; glanced down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the keys of the church, that there might be need to ring the tocsin by-and-bye. The night deepened. The trees environing the old chateau, keeping its solitary state apart, moved in a rising wind, as though they threatened the pile of building massive and dark in the gloom. Up the two terrace flights of steps the rain ran wildly, and beat at the great door, like a swift messenger rousing those within; uneasy rushes of wind went through the hall, among the old spears and knives, and passed lamenting up the stairs, and shook the curtains of the bed where the last Marquis had slept. East, West, North, and South, through the woods, four heavy-treading, unkempt figures crushed the high grass and cracked the branches, striding on cautiously to come together in the courtyard. Four lights broke out there, and moved away in different directions, and all was black again. But, not for long. Presently, the chateau began to make itself strangely visible by some light of its own, as though it were growing luminous. Then, a flickering streak played behind the architecture of the front, picking out transparent places, and showing where balustrades, arches, and windows were. Then it soared higher, and grew broader and brighter. Soon, from a score of the great windows, flames burst forth, and the stone faces awakened, stared out of fire. A faint murmur arose about the house from the few people who were left there, and there was a saddling of a horse and riding away. There was spurring and splashing through the darkness, and bridle was drawn in the space by the village fountain, and the horse in a foam stood at Monsieur Gabelle's door. "Help, Gabelle! Help, every one!" The tocsin rang impatiently, but other help (if that were any) there was none. The mender of roads, and two hundred and fifty particular friends, stood with folded arms at the fountain, looking at the pillar of fire in the sky. "It must be forty feet high," said they, grimly; and never moved. The rider from the chateau, and the horse in a foam, clattered away through the village, and galloped up the stony steep, to the prison on the crag. At the gate, a group of officers were looking at the fire; removed from them, a group of soldiers. "Help, gentlemen--officers! The chateau is on fire; valuable objects may be saved from the flames by timely aid! Help, help!" The officers looked towards the soldiers who looked at the fire; gave no orders; and answered, with shrugs and biting of lips, "It must burn." As the rider rattled down the hill again and through the street, the village was illuminating. The mender of roads, and the two hundred and fifty particular friends, inspired as one man and woman by the idea of lighting up, had darted into their houses, and were putting candles in every dull little pane of glass. The general scarcity of everything, occasioned candles to be borrowed in a rather peremptory manner of Monsieur Gabelle; and in a moment of reluctance and hesitation on that functionary's part, the mender of roads, once so submissive to authority, had remarked that carriages were good to make bonfires with, and that post-horses would roast. The chateau was left to itself to flame and burn. In the roaring and raging of the conflagration, a red-hot wind, driving straight from the infernal regions, seemed to be blowing the edifice away. With the rising and falling of the blaze, the stone faces showed as if they were in torment. When great masses of stone and timber fell, the face with the two dints in the nose became obscured: anon struggled out of the smoke again, as if it were the face of the cruel Marquis, burning at the stake and contending with the fire. The chateau burned; the nearest trees, laid hold of by the fire, scorched and shrivelled; trees at a distance, fired by the four fierce figures, begirt the blazing edifice with a new forest of smoke. Molten lead and iron boiled in the marble basin of the fountain; the water ran dry; the extinguisher tops of the towers vanished like ice before the heat, and trickled down into four rugged wells of flame. Great rents and splits branched out in the solid walls, like crystallisation; stupefied birds wheeled about and dropped into the furnace; four fierce figures trudged away, East, West, North, and South, along the night-enshrouded roads, guided by the beacon they had lighted, towards their next destination. The illuminated village had seized hold of the tocsin, and, abolishing the lawful ringer, rang for joy. Not only that; but the village, light-headed with famine, fire, and bell-ringing, and bethinking itself that Monsieur Gabelle had to do with the collection of rent and taxes--though it was but a small instalment of taxes, and no rent at all, that Gabelle had got in those latter days--became impatient for an interview with him, and, surrounding his house, summoned him to come forth for personal conference. Whereupon, Monsieur Gabelle did heavily bar his door, and retire to hold counsel with himself. The result of that conference was, that Gabelle again withdrew himself to his housetop behind his stack of chimneys; this time resolved, if his door were broken in (he was a small Southern man of retaliative temperament), to pitch himself head foremost over the parapet, and crush a man or two below. Probably, Monsieur Gabelle passed a long night up there, with the distant chateau for fire and candle, and the beating at his door, combined with the joy-ringing, for music; not to mention his having an ill-omened lamp slung across the road before his posting-house gate, which the village showed a lively inclination to displace in his favour. A trying suspense, to be passing a whole summer night on the brink of the black ocean, ready to take that plunge into it upon which Monsieur Gabelle had resolved! But, the friendly dawn appearing at last, and the rush-candles of the village guttering out, the people happily dispersed, and Monsieur Gabelle came down bringing his life with him for that while. Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there were other functionaries less fortunate, that night and other nights, whom the rising sun found hanging across once-peaceful streets, where they had been born and bred; also, there were other villagers and townspeople less fortunate than the mender of roads and his fellows, upon whom the functionaries and soldiery turned with success, and whom they strung up in their turn. But, the fierce figures were steadily wending East, West, North, and South, be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire burned. The altitude of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it, no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate successfully.

book 2, Chapter 23

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-20-24

Fire Rises Saint Antoine is a changed place without Monseigneur, as France is a changed place without people of his class. Although he was source of oppression, he was also a source of pride and a symbol of luxury. Two "Jacques" figures greet each other in the countryside. One explains that he has been walking for two straight days and asks the road-mender to wake him when he is done working. The road-mender is fascinated with him and examines him while he sleeps. He wakes him at the appointed hour, and they both go into town. Monsieur Gabelle grows nervous because they are all looking into the sky, and he also looks. The chateau where Monseigneur had lived is on fire. The villagers watch the fire without offering to help put it out, and they follow Monsieur Gabelle to his house to persecute him for being connected with tax collection. Gabelle locks himself in his house and resolves that, if attacked, he will jump off his own roof and crush some of the men below. The mob sets fire to other chateaux belonging to noblemen and hangs functionaries who are less fortunate than Gabelle, but Gabelle escapes

Darnay is also portrayed as a moral hero. His wife's pity for another man, instead of making him jealous, makes him prize her even more. He responds to her beauty on a moral rather than a carnal level. The narrator reports, "She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man that her husband could have looked on her as she was for hours." He is attracted to her goodness, rather than merely her appearance, although her goodness does have a positive effect on her beauty. The goodness of these two sets them quite apart from other Dickensian main characters. They lack the development and moral conflict of characters such as Pip in Great Expectations and Nancy in Oliver Twist. The setting in which Dickens places his characters in A Tale of Two Cities is itself the locus of conflict, rather than the characters themselves. Thus Dickens forgoes some of the human interest that makes his other novels great. Chapter 20 thus reads somewhat like a moral fable. The title of Chapter 21 refers to Lucie's presentiment about the footsteps that echo around the Manette household in Soho. She worried in a previous chapter that the footsteps were the echoes of people coming into the family's life, and now the outside world does break spitefully into their happy circle. The echoes have not yet overtaken the family in the way that they will, however, because Lucie can still hear her own child's steps first and foremost. Little Lucie is a product of the novel in that she is bilingual, bridging the gap between the two cities. Unusual for the novel, events in the two cities are brought together in Chapter 21, showing how linked the affairs of Paris and London are becoming. The two narrative threads of the Manette household and the Defarge household met briefly at the beginning of the novel, and now they are due to meet again. Events in Paris are becoming so extreme that even London is beginning to feel the shock waves or, to use Dickens's terminology, the echoes. The title of Chapter 22 refers to the French mob, which Dickens compared in the previous chapter to a sea. It would be unnatural for a sea to continue rising past high tide except in extreme conditions, and the storming of the Bastille would seem to be the extent of furor that the mob has been capable of. Dickens suggests the unnatural character of the mob by saying that its level of engagement is continuing to rise. The brute force of the mob stems from the fact that it empowers those who have never been empowered before. Even if the lower classes are starving and their life is not meaningful, they have found new meaning in the fact that they have the ability to kill others. Foulon provides another example of a resurrection. In addition to the more metaphorical resurrections of Doctor Manette and Darnay, who were almost sentenced to certain death, and the exhuming of bodies by Resurrection-Men, there are examples of more literal resurrections - that is, of men who were presumed dead. Both Foulon and the spy Robert Cly attempted mock funerals to trick their enemies into believing that they were dead, but both were apparently "resurrected," being found alive. The metaphoric title of Chapter 23 reflects the progression of the Parisian mob into a still more dangerous phase. The French revolutionaries are shown in strict contrast with the English characters in the other chapters of the novel, who have a developed moral sense often associated with the influence of religion . In this chapter, the road-mender does not "trouble himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return," in an allusion to the curse of Genesis 3:19, in which God turns Adam and Eve out of Eden and reminds them that "dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." Also familiar would be the funerary oration "ashes to ashes and dust to dust," which was also common in Dickens's time. The French lower class had more pressing concerns than religion, as they were often at the point of starving and it was hard to follow the New Testament injunction not to worry about what one eats. The road-mender's lack of preoccupation also illustrates his naA-vetA in an unstable revolutionary society where anyone was liable to be denounced and return to dust at any moment. More broadly, rabid idealism tends to distract people from the realities of life and death. Another biblical image in the chapter is that of the chateau on fire. The villagers describe it as a "pillar of fire in the sky," which they estimate is forty feet high. The "pillar of fire in the sky" alludes to Exodus 13:21, in which God leads the Israelites out of Egypt: "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light." The house is lit afire in the night, and it serves as a symbol of deliverance for the French people. The fire also suggests the end of times, the destruction of the world in the book of Revelations. But for the French mob, revolutionary principles have temporarily displaced religion. The title of Chapter 24 presents yet another literary allusion, now to a story in the Arabian Nights called "The Third Calender's Tale." A loadstone is a type of magnet which, in the story, irresistibly draws a ship towards it. Its force is so powerful that it draws the nails out of the vessel, shipwrecking it. The title illustrates the power that Paris has over Darnay; he is drawn back into the city as though unwillingly. Indirectly, this chapter illustrates the political climate of England at the time of the French Revolution. Although the revolutionaries had some admirers in England at the outbreak of the revolution, public opinion turned swiftly and heavily against them over the course of the terror. Mr. Stryver speaks on behalf of many Englishmen when he is disgusted by the seizure of property and the carnage of the Revolution, and it is obvious by the freedom of their conversation at Tellson's that Frenchmen of Monseigneur's class found safe haven in England. This conversation reveals Darnay as even more of a free-thinker in his continued sympathies for the French people, since they run counter not only to his own family, but also to the opinions of his adopted country. The courage of his opinions will only make the revolutionaries' behavior towards him more shocking after he returns to France.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/30.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_6_part_5.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 24

book 2, chapter 24

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 24", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-20-24", "summary": "Drawn to the Loadstone Rock Three more years of revolution in France go by. Monseigneur's class is dying out, and the monarchy no longer exists. Because Frenchmen come immediately to Tellson's upon arriving in London to discuss financial issues, it has become a center of intelligence about the revolution. Charles Darnay visits Mr. Lorry at Tellson's to try to dissuade him from traveling to Paris on business. Darnay grows angry when he hears men of Monseigneur's class and Mr. Stryver discussing how they will punish the peasants when the revolution is over. He overhears another Tellson's clerk asking Mr. Lorry if he has found the man to whom to give a letter addressed to the Marquis St. EvrAmonde. The address is shown around, and the other French noblemen admit that they don't know him personally but do know that he supported the revolution and parceled out his land among his peasants. Darnay claims to know the man and promises to deliver the letter to him. He opens it, and it is a plea for help from Monsieur Gabelle, who has been imprisoned after all. Darnay feels justified in having renounced his title, but he worries that he did not settle affairs in the manner that he should have, and he resolves to go to Paris. He assumes that his gesture of handing over his title will make him welcomed by the revolutionaries. He conveys a verbal message from the recipient of the letter to Mr. Lorry, saying simply that he will come and is leaving immediately. After writing two letters-one to Lucie and another to the Doctor-he leaves for Paris in the middle of the night, without informing either of them in person", "analysis": "Darnay is also portrayed as a moral hero. His wife's pity for another man, instead of making him jealous, makes him prize her even more. He responds to her beauty on a moral rather than a carnal level. The narrator reports, \"She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man that her husband could have looked on her as she was for hours.\" He is attracted to her goodness, rather than merely her appearance, although her goodness does have a positive effect on her beauty. The goodness of these two sets them quite apart from other Dickensian main characters. They lack the development and moral conflict of characters such as Pip in Great Expectations and Nancy in Oliver Twist. The setting in which Dickens places his characters in A Tale of Two Cities is itself the locus of conflict, rather than the characters themselves. Thus Dickens forgoes some of the human interest that makes his other novels great. Chapter 20 thus reads somewhat like a moral fable. The title of Chapter 21 refers to Lucie's presentiment about the footsteps that echo around the Manette household in Soho. She worried in a previous chapter that the footsteps were the echoes of people coming into the family's life, and now the outside world does break spitefully into their happy circle. The echoes have not yet overtaken the family in the way that they will, however, because Lucie can still hear her own child's steps first and foremost. Little Lucie is a product of the novel in that she is bilingual, bridging the gap between the two cities. Unusual for the novel, events in the two cities are brought together in Chapter 21, showing how linked the affairs of Paris and London are becoming. The two narrative threads of the Manette household and the Defarge household met briefly at the beginning of the novel, and now they are due to meet again. Events in Paris are becoming so extreme that even London is beginning to feel the shock waves or, to use Dickens's terminology, the echoes. The title of Chapter 22 refers to the French mob, which Dickens compared in the previous chapter to a sea. It would be unnatural for a sea to continue rising past high tide except in extreme conditions, and the storming of the Bastille would seem to be the extent of furor that the mob has been capable of. Dickens suggests the unnatural character of the mob by saying that its level of engagement is continuing to rise. The brute force of the mob stems from the fact that it empowers those who have never been empowered before. Even if the lower classes are starving and their life is not meaningful, they have found new meaning in the fact that they have the ability to kill others. Foulon provides another example of a resurrection. In addition to the more metaphorical resurrections of Doctor Manette and Darnay, who were almost sentenced to certain death, and the exhuming of bodies by Resurrection-Men, there are examples of more literal resurrections - that is, of men who were presumed dead. Both Foulon and the spy Robert Cly attempted mock funerals to trick their enemies into believing that they were dead, but both were apparently \"resurrected,\" being found alive. The metaphoric title of Chapter 23 reflects the progression of the Parisian mob into a still more dangerous phase. The French revolutionaries are shown in strict contrast with the English characters in the other chapters of the novel, who have a developed moral sense often associated with the influence of religion . In this chapter, the road-mender does not \"trouble himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return,\" in an allusion to the curse of Genesis 3:19, in which God turns Adam and Eve out of Eden and reminds them that \"dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.\" Also familiar would be the funerary oration \"ashes to ashes and dust to dust,\" which was also common in Dickens's time. The French lower class had more pressing concerns than religion, as they were often at the point of starving and it was hard to follow the New Testament injunction not to worry about what one eats. The road-mender's lack of preoccupation also illustrates his naA-vetA in an unstable revolutionary society where anyone was liable to be denounced and return to dust at any moment. More broadly, rabid idealism tends to distract people from the realities of life and death. Another biblical image in the chapter is that of the chateau on fire. The villagers describe it as a \"pillar of fire in the sky,\" which they estimate is forty feet high. The \"pillar of fire in the sky\" alludes to Exodus 13:21, in which God leads the Israelites out of Egypt: \"And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light.\" The house is lit afire in the night, and it serves as a symbol of deliverance for the French people. The fire also suggests the end of times, the destruction of the world in the book of Revelations. But for the French mob, revolutionary principles have temporarily displaced religion. The title of Chapter 24 presents yet another literary allusion, now to a story in the Arabian Nights called \"The Third Calender's Tale.\" A loadstone is a type of magnet which, in the story, irresistibly draws a ship towards it. Its force is so powerful that it draws the nails out of the vessel, shipwrecking it. The title illustrates the power that Paris has over Darnay; he is drawn back into the city as though unwillingly. Indirectly, this chapter illustrates the political climate of England at the time of the French Revolution. Although the revolutionaries had some admirers in England at the outbreak of the revolution, public opinion turned swiftly and heavily against them over the course of the terror. Mr. Stryver speaks on behalf of many Englishmen when he is disgusted by the seizure of property and the carnage of the Revolution, and it is obvious by the freedom of their conversation at Tellson's that Frenchmen of Monseigneur's class found safe haven in England. This conversation reveals Darnay as even more of a free-thinker in his continued sympathies for the French people, since they run counter not only to his own family, but also to the opinions of his adopted country. The courage of his opinions will only make the revolutionaries' behavior towards him more shocking after he returns to France."}

XXIV. Drawn to the Loadstone Rock In such risings of fire and risings of sea--the firm earth shaken by the rushes of an angry ocean which had now no ebb, but was always on the flow, higher and higher, to the terror and wonder of the beholders on the shore--three years of tempest were consumed. Three more birthdays of little Lucie had been woven by the golden thread into the peaceful tissue of the life of her home. Many a night and many a day had its inmates listened to the echoes in the corner, with hearts that failed them when they heard the thronging feet. For, the footsteps had become to their minds as the footsteps of a people, tumultuous under a red flag and with their country declared in danger, changed into wild beasts, by terrible enchantment long persisted in. Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from the phenomenon of his not being appreciated: of his being so little wanted in France, as to incur considerable danger of receiving his dismissal from it, and this life together. Like the fabled rustic who raised the Devil with infinite pains, and was so terrified at the sight of him that he could ask the Enemy no question, but immediately fled; so, Monseigneur, after boldly reading the Lord's Prayer backwards for a great number of years, and performing many other potent spells for compelling the Evil One, no sooner beheld him in his terrors than he took to his noble heels. The shining Bull's Eye of the Court was gone, or it would have been the mark for a hurricane of national bullets. It had never been a good eye to see with--had long had the mote in it of Lucifer's pride, Sardanapalus's luxury, and a mole's blindness--but it had dropped out and was gone. The Court, from that exclusive inner circle to its outermost rotten ring of intrigue, corruption, and dissimulation, was all gone together. Royalty was gone; had been besieged in its Palace and "suspended," when the last tidings came over. The August of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two was come, and Monseigneur was by this time scattered far and wide. As was natural, the head-quarters and great gathering-place of Monseigneur, in London, was Tellson's Bank. Spirits are supposed to haunt the places where their bodies most resorted, and Monseigneur without a guinea haunted the spot where his guineas used to be. Moreover, it was the spot to which such French intelligence as was most to be relied upon, came quickest. Again: Tellson's was a munificent house, and extended great liberality to old customers who had fallen from their high estate. Again: those nobles who had seen the coming storm in time, and anticipating plunder or confiscation, had made provident remittances to Tellson's, were always to be heard of there by their needy brethren. To which it must be added that every new-comer from France reported himself and his tidings at Tellson's, almost as a matter of course. For such variety of reasons, Tellson's was at that time, as to French intelligence, a kind of High Exchange; and this was so well known to the public, and the inquiries made there were in consequence so numerous, that Tellson's sometimes wrote the latest news out in a line or so and posted it in the Bank windows, for all who ran through Temple Bar to read. On a steaming, misty afternoon, Mr. Lorry sat at his desk, and Charles Darnay stood leaning on it, talking with him in a low voice. The penitential den once set apart for interviews with the House, was now the news-Exchange, and was filled to overflowing. It was within half an hour or so of the time of closing. "But, although you are the youngest man that ever lived," said Charles Darnay, rather hesitating, "I must still suggest to you--" "I understand. That I am too old?" said Mr. Lorry. "Unsettled weather, a long journey, uncertain means of travelling, a disorganised country, a city that may not be even safe for you." "My dear Charles," said Mr. Lorry, with cheerful confidence, "you touch some of the reasons for my going: not for my staying away. It is safe enough for me; nobody will care to interfere with an old fellow of hard upon fourscore when there are so many people there much better worth interfering with. As to its being a disorganised city, if it were not a disorganised city there would be no occasion to send somebody from our House here to our House there, who knows the city and the business, of old, and is in Tellson's confidence. As to the uncertain travelling, the long journey, and the winter weather, if I were not prepared to submit myself to a few inconveniences for the sake of Tellson's, after all these years, who ought to be?" "I wish I were going myself," said Charles Darnay, somewhat restlessly, and like one thinking aloud. "Indeed! You are a pretty fellow to object and advise!" exclaimed Mr. Lorry. "You wish you were going yourself? And you a Frenchman born? You are a wise counsellor." "My dear Mr. Lorry, it is because I am a Frenchman born, that the thought (which I did not mean to utter here, however) has passed through my mind often. One cannot help thinking, having had some sympathy for the miserable people, and having abandoned something to them," he spoke here in his former thoughtful manner, "that one might be listened to, and might have the power to persuade to some restraint. Only last night, after you had left us, when I was talking to Lucie--" "When you were talking to Lucie," Mr. Lorry repeated. "Yes. I wonder you are not ashamed to mention the name of Lucie! Wishing you were going to France at this time of day!" "However, I am not going," said Charles Darnay, with a smile. "It is more to the purpose that you say you are." "And I am, in plain reality. The truth is, my dear Charles," Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and lowered his voice, "you can have no conception of the difficulty with which our business is transacted, and of the peril in which our books and papers over yonder are involved. The Lord above knows what the compromising consequences would be to numbers of people, if some of our documents were seized or destroyed; and they might be, at any time, you know, for who can say that Paris is not set afire to-day, or sacked to-morrow! Now, a judicious selection from these with the least possible delay, and the burying of them, or otherwise getting of them out of harm's way, is within the power (without loss of precious time) of scarcely any one but myself, if any one. And shall I hang back, when Tellson's knows this and says this--Tellson's, whose bread I have eaten these sixty years--because I am a little stiff about the joints? Why, I am a boy, sir, to half a dozen old codgers here!" "How I admire the gallantry of your youthful spirit, Mr. Lorry." "Tut! Nonsense, sir!--And, my dear Charles," said Mr. Lorry, glancing at the House again, "you are to remember, that getting things out of Paris at this present time, no matter what things, is next to an impossibility. Papers and precious matters were this very day brought to us here (I speak in strict confidence; it is not business-like to whisper it, even to you), by the strangest bearers you can imagine, every one of whom had his head hanging on by a single hair as he passed the Barriers. At another time, our parcels would come and go, as easily as in business-like Old England; but now, everything is stopped." "And do you really go to-night?" "I really go to-night, for the case has become too pressing to admit of delay." "And do you take no one with you?" "All sorts of people have been proposed to me, but I will have nothing to say to any of them. I intend to take Jerry. Jerry has been my bodyguard on Sunday nights for a long time past and I am used to him. Nobody will suspect Jerry of being anything but an English bull-dog, or of having any design in his head but to fly at anybody who touches his master." "I must say again that I heartily admire your gallantry and youthfulness." "I must say again, nonsense, nonsense! When I have executed this little commission, I shall, perhaps, accept Tellson's proposal to retire and live at my ease. Time enough, then, to think about growing old." This dialogue had taken place at Mr. Lorry's usual desk, with Monseigneur swarming within a yard or two of it, boastful of what he would do to avenge himself on the rascal-people before long. It was too much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it was much too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible Revolution as if it were the only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown--as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it--as if observers of the wretched millions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before, and had not in plain words recorded what they saw. Such vapouring, combined with the extravagant plots of Monseigneur for the restoration of a state of things that had utterly exhausted itself, and worn out Heaven and earth as well as itself, was hard to be endured without some remonstrance by any sane man who knew the truth. And it was such vapouring all about his ears, like a troublesome confusion of blood in his own head, added to a latent uneasiness in his mind, which had already made Charles Darnay restless, and which still kept him so. Among the talkers, was Stryver, of the King's Bench Bar, far on his way to state promotion, and, therefore, loud on the theme: broaching to Monseigneur, his devices for blowing the people up and exterminating them from the face of the earth, and doing without them: and for accomplishing many similar objects akin in their nature to the abolition of eagles by sprinkling salt on the tails of the race. Him, Darnay heard with a particular feeling of objection; and Darnay stood divided between going away that he might hear no more, and remaining to interpose his word, when the thing that was to be, went on to shape itself out. The House approached Mr. Lorry, and laying a soiled and unopened letter before him, asked if he had yet discovered any traces of the person to whom it was addressed? The House laid the letter down so close to Darnay that he saw the direction--the more quickly because it was his own right name. The address, turned into English, ran: "Very pressing. To Monsieur heretofore the Marquis St. Evremonde, of France. Confided to the cares of Messrs. Tellson and Co., Bankers, London, England." On the marriage morning, Doctor Manette had made it his one urgent and express request to Charles Darnay, that the secret of this name should be--unless he, the Doctor, dissolved the obligation--kept inviolate between them. Nobody else knew it to be his name; his own wife had no suspicion of the fact; Mr. Lorry could have none. "No," said Mr. Lorry, in reply to the House; "I have referred it, I think, to everybody now here, and no one can tell me where this gentleman is to be found." The hands of the clock verging upon the hour of closing the Bank, there was a general set of the current of talkers past Mr. Lorry's desk. He held the letter out inquiringly; and Monseigneur looked at it, in the person of this plotting and indignant refugee; and Monseigneur looked at it in the person of that plotting and indignant refugee; and This, That, and The Other, all had something disparaging to say, in French or in English, concerning the Marquis who was not to be found. "Nephew, I believe--but in any case degenerate successor--of the polished Marquis who was murdered," said one. "Happy to say, I never knew him." "A craven who abandoned his post," said another--this Monseigneur had been got out of Paris, legs uppermost and half suffocated, in a load of hay--"some years ago." "Infected with the new doctrines," said a third, eyeing the direction through his glass in passing; "set himself in opposition to the last Marquis, abandoned the estates when he inherited them, and left them to the ruffian herd. They will recompense him now, I hope, as he deserves." "Hey?" cried the blatant Stryver. "Did he though? Is that the sort of fellow? Let us look at his infamous name. D--n the fellow!" Darnay, unable to restrain himself any longer, touched Mr. Stryver on the shoulder, and said: "I know the fellow." "Do you, by Jupiter?" said Stryver. "I am sorry for it." "Why?" "Why, Mr. Darnay? D'ye hear what he did? Don't ask, why, in these times." "But I do ask why?" "Then I tell you again, Mr. Darnay, I am sorry for it. I am sorry to hear you putting any such extraordinary questions. Here is a fellow, who, infected by the most pestilent and blasphemous code of devilry that ever was known, abandoned his property to the vilest scum of the earth that ever did murder by wholesale, and you ask me why I am sorry that a man who instructs youth knows him? Well, but I'll answer you. I am sorry because I believe there is contamination in such a scoundrel. That's why." Mindful of the secret, Darnay with great difficulty checked himself, and said: "You may not understand the gentleman." "I understand how to put _you_ in a corner, Mr. Darnay," said Bully Stryver, "and I'll do it. If this fellow is a gentleman, I _don't_ understand him. You may tell him so, with my compliments. You may also tell him, from me, that after abandoning his worldly goods and position to this butcherly mob, I wonder he is not at the head of them. But, no, gentlemen," said Stryver, looking all round, and snapping his fingers, "I know something of human nature, and I tell you that you'll never find a fellow like this fellow, trusting himself to the mercies of such precious _proteges_. No, gentlemen; he'll always show 'em a clean pair of heels very early in the scuffle, and sneak away." With those words, and a final snap of his fingers, Mr. Stryver shouldered himself into Fleet-street, amidst the general approbation of his hearers. Mr. Lorry and Charles Darnay were left alone at the desk, in the general departure from the Bank. "Will you take charge of the letter?" said Mr. Lorry. "You know where to deliver it?" "I do." "Will you undertake to explain, that we suppose it to have been addressed here, on the chance of our knowing where to forward it, and that it has been here some time?" "I will do so. Do you start for Paris from here?" "From here, at eight." "I will come back, to see you off." Very ill at ease with himself, and with Stryver and most other men, Darnay made the best of his way into the quiet of the Temple, opened the letter, and read it. These were its contents: "Prison of the Abbaye, Paris. "June 21, 1792. "MONSIEUR HERETOFORE THE MARQUIS. "After having long been in danger of my life at the hands of the village, I have been seized, with great violence and indignity, and brought a long journey on foot to Paris. On the road I have suffered a great deal. Nor is that all; my house has been destroyed--razed to the ground. "The crime for which I am imprisoned, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, and for which I shall be summoned before the tribunal, and shall lose my life (without your so generous help), is, they tell me, treason against the majesty of the people, in that I have acted against them for an emigrant. It is in vain I represent that I have acted for them, and not against, according to your commands. It is in vain I represent that, before the sequestration of emigrant property, I had remitted the imposts they had ceased to pay; that I had collected no rent; that I had had recourse to no process. The only response is, that I have acted for an emigrant, and where is that emigrant? "Ah! most gracious Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, where is that emigrant? I cry in my sleep where is he? I demand of Heaven, will he not come to deliver me? No answer. Ah Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I send my desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may perhaps reach your ears through the great bank of Tilson known at Paris! "For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name, I supplicate you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, to succour and release me. My fault is, that I have been true to you. Oh Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I pray you be you true to me! "From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend nearer and nearer to destruction, I send you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, the assurance of my dolorous and unhappy service. "Your afflicted, "Gabelle." The latent uneasiness in Darnay's mind was roused to vigourous life by this letter. The peril of an old servant and a good one, whose only crime was fidelity to himself and his family, stared him so reproachfully in the face, that, as he walked to and fro in the Temple considering what to do, he almost hid his face from the passersby. He knew very well, that in his horror of the deed which had culminated the bad deeds and bad reputation of the old family house, in his resentful suspicions of his uncle, and in the aversion with which his conscience regarded the crumbling fabric that he was supposed to uphold, he had acted imperfectly. He knew very well, that in his love for Lucie, his renunciation of his social place, though by no means new to his own mind, had been hurried and incomplete. He knew that he ought to have systematically worked it out and supervised it, and that he had meant to do it, and that it had never been done. The happiness of his own chosen English home, the necessity of being always actively employed, the swift changes and troubles of the time which had followed on one another so fast, that the events of this week annihilated the immature plans of last week, and the events of the week following made all new again; he knew very well, that to the force of these circumstances he had yielded:--not without disquiet, but still without continuous and accumulating resistance. That he had watched the times for a time of action, and that they had shifted and struggled until the time had gone by, and the nobility were trooping from France by every highway and byway, and their property was in course of confiscation and destruction, and their very names were blotting out, was as well known to himself as it could be to any new authority in France that might impeach him for it. But, he had oppressed no man, he had imprisoned no man; he was so far from having harshly exacted payment of his dues, that he had relinquished them of his own will, thrown himself on a world with no favour in it, won his own private place there, and earned his own bread. Monsieur Gabelle had held the impoverished and involved estate on written instructions, to spare the people, to give them what little there was to give--such fuel as the heavy creditors would let them have in the winter, and such produce as could be saved from the same grip in the summer--and no doubt he had put the fact in plea and proof, for his own safety, so that it could not but appear now. This favoured the desperate resolution Charles Darnay had begun to make, that he would go to Paris. Yes. Like the mariner in the old story, the winds and streams had driven him within the influence of the Loadstone Rock, and it was drawing him to itself, and he must go. Everything that arose before his mind drifted him on, faster and faster, more and more steadily, to the terrible attraction. His latent uneasiness had been, that bad aims were being worked out in his own unhappy land by bad instruments, and that he who could not fail to know that he was better than they, was not there, trying to do something to stay bloodshed, and assert the claims of mercy and humanity. With this uneasiness half stifled, and half reproaching him, he had been brought to the pointed comparison of himself with the brave old gentleman in whom duty was so strong; upon that comparison (injurious to himself) had instantly followed the sneers of Monseigneur, which had stung him bitterly, and those of Stryver, which above all were coarse and galling, for old reasons. Upon those, had followed Gabelle's letter: the appeal of an innocent prisoner, in danger of death, to his justice, honour, and good name. His resolution was made. He must go to Paris. Yes. The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he must sail on, until he struck. He knew of no rock; he saw hardly any danger. The intention with which he had done what he had done, even although he had left it incomplete, presented it before him in an aspect that would be gratefully acknowledged in France on his presenting himself to assert it. Then, that glorious vision of doing good, which is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds, arose before him, and he even saw himself in the illusion with some influence to guide this raging Revolution that was running so fearfully wild. As he walked to and fro with his resolution made, he considered that neither Lucie nor her father must know of it until he was gone. Lucie should be spared the pain of separation; and her father, always reluctant to turn his thoughts towards the dangerous ground of old, should come to the knowledge of the step, as a step taken, and not in the balance of suspense and doubt. How much of the incompleteness of his situation was referable to her father, through the painful anxiety to avoid reviving old associations of France in his mind, he did not discuss with himself. But, that circumstance too, had had its influence in his course. He walked to and fro, with thoughts very busy, until it was time to return to Tellson's and take leave of Mr. Lorry. As soon as he arrived in Paris he would present himself to this old friend, but he must say nothing of his intention now. A carriage with post-horses was ready at the Bank door, and Jerry was booted and equipped. "I have delivered that letter," said Charles Darnay to Mr. Lorry. "I would not consent to your being charged with any written answer, but perhaps you will take a verbal one?" "That I will, and readily," said Mr. Lorry, "if it is not dangerous." "Not at all. Though it is to a prisoner in the Abbaye." "What is his name?" said Mr. Lorry, with his open pocket-book in his hand. "Gabelle." "Gabelle. And what is the message to the unfortunate Gabelle in prison?" "Simply, 'that he has received the letter, and will come.'" "Any time mentioned?" "He will start upon his journey to-morrow night." "Any person mentioned?" "No." He helped Mr. Lorry to wrap himself in a number of coats and cloaks, and went out with him from the warm atmosphere of the old Bank, into the misty air of Fleet-street. "My love to Lucie, and to little Lucie," said Mr. Lorry at parting, "and take precious care of them till I come back." Charles Darnay shook his head and doubtfully smiled, as the carriage rolled away. That night--it was the fourteenth of August--he sat up late, and wrote two fervent letters; one was to Lucie, explaining the strong obligation he was under to go to Paris, and showing her, at length, the reasons that he had, for feeling confident that he could become involved in no personal danger there; the other was to the Doctor, confiding Lucie and their dear child to his care, and dwelling on the same topics with the strongest assurances. To both, he wrote that he would despatch letters in proof of his safety, immediately after his arrival. It was a hard day, that day of being among them, with the first reservation of their joint lives on his mind. It was a hard matter to preserve the innocent deceit of which they were profoundly unsuspicious. But, an affectionate glance at his wife, so happy and busy, made him resolute not to tell her what impended (he had been half moved to do it, so strange it was to him to act in anything without her quiet aid), and the day passed quickly. Early in the evening he embraced her, and her scarcely less dear namesake, pretending that he would return by-and-bye (an imaginary engagement took him out, and he had secreted a valise of clothes ready), and so he emerged into the heavy mist of the heavy streets, with a heavier heart. The unseen force was drawing him fast to itself, now, and all the tides and winds were setting straight and strong towards it. He left his two letters with a trusty porter, to be delivered half an hour before midnight, and no sooner; took horse for Dover; and began his journey. "For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name!" was the poor prisoner's cry with which he strengthened his sinking heart, as he left all that was dear on earth behind him, and floated away for the Loadstone Rock. The end of the second book. Book the Third--the Track of a Storm

book 2, Chapter 24

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-ii-chapters-20-24

Drawn to the Loadstone Rock Three more years of revolution in France go by. Monseigneur's class is dying out, and the monarchy no longer exists. Because Frenchmen come immediately to Tellson's upon arriving in London to discuss financial issues, it has become a center of intelligence about the revolution. Charles Darnay visits Mr. Lorry at Tellson's to try to dissuade him from traveling to Paris on business. Darnay grows angry when he hears men of Monseigneur's class and Mr. Stryver discussing how they will punish the peasants when the revolution is over. He overhears another Tellson's clerk asking Mr. Lorry if he has found the man to whom to give a letter addressed to the Marquis St. EvrAmonde. The address is shown around, and the other French noblemen admit that they don't know him personally but do know that he supported the revolution and parceled out his land among his peasants. Darnay claims to know the man and promises to deliver the letter to him. He opens it, and it is a plea for help from Monsieur Gabelle, who has been imprisoned after all. Darnay feels justified in having renounced his title, but he worries that he did not settle affairs in the manner that he should have, and he resolves to go to Paris. He assumes that his gesture of handing over his title will make him welcomed by the revolutionaries. He conveys a verbal message from the recipient of the letter to Mr. Lorry, saying simply that he will come and is leaving immediately. After writing two letters-one to Lucie and another to the Doctor-he leaves for Paris in the middle of the night, without informing either of them in person

Darnay is also portrayed as a moral hero. His wife's pity for another man, instead of making him jealous, makes him prize her even more. He responds to her beauty on a moral rather than a carnal level. The narrator reports, "She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man that her husband could have looked on her as she was for hours." He is attracted to her goodness, rather than merely her appearance, although her goodness does have a positive effect on her beauty. The goodness of these two sets them quite apart from other Dickensian main characters. They lack the development and moral conflict of characters such as Pip in Great Expectations and Nancy in Oliver Twist. The setting in which Dickens places his characters in A Tale of Two Cities is itself the locus of conflict, rather than the characters themselves. Thus Dickens forgoes some of the human interest that makes his other novels great. Chapter 20 thus reads somewhat like a moral fable. The title of Chapter 21 refers to Lucie's presentiment about the footsteps that echo around the Manette household in Soho. She worried in a previous chapter that the footsteps were the echoes of people coming into the family's life, and now the outside world does break spitefully into their happy circle. The echoes have not yet overtaken the family in the way that they will, however, because Lucie can still hear her own child's steps first and foremost. Little Lucie is a product of the novel in that she is bilingual, bridging the gap between the two cities. Unusual for the novel, events in the two cities are brought together in Chapter 21, showing how linked the affairs of Paris and London are becoming. The two narrative threads of the Manette household and the Defarge household met briefly at the beginning of the novel, and now they are due to meet again. Events in Paris are becoming so extreme that even London is beginning to feel the shock waves or, to use Dickens's terminology, the echoes. The title of Chapter 22 refers to the French mob, which Dickens compared in the previous chapter to a sea. It would be unnatural for a sea to continue rising past high tide except in extreme conditions, and the storming of the Bastille would seem to be the extent of furor that the mob has been capable of. Dickens suggests the unnatural character of the mob by saying that its level of engagement is continuing to rise. The brute force of the mob stems from the fact that it empowers those who have never been empowered before. Even if the lower classes are starving and their life is not meaningful, they have found new meaning in the fact that they have the ability to kill others. Foulon provides another example of a resurrection. In addition to the more metaphorical resurrections of Doctor Manette and Darnay, who were almost sentenced to certain death, and the exhuming of bodies by Resurrection-Men, there are examples of more literal resurrections - that is, of men who were presumed dead. Both Foulon and the spy Robert Cly attempted mock funerals to trick their enemies into believing that they were dead, but both were apparently "resurrected," being found alive. The metaphoric title of Chapter 23 reflects the progression of the Parisian mob into a still more dangerous phase. The French revolutionaries are shown in strict contrast with the English characters in the other chapters of the novel, who have a developed moral sense often associated with the influence of religion . In this chapter, the road-mender does not "trouble himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return," in an allusion to the curse of Genesis 3:19, in which God turns Adam and Eve out of Eden and reminds them that "dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." Also familiar would be the funerary oration "ashes to ashes and dust to dust," which was also common in Dickens's time. The French lower class had more pressing concerns than religion, as they were often at the point of starving and it was hard to follow the New Testament injunction not to worry about what one eats. The road-mender's lack of preoccupation also illustrates his naA-vetA in an unstable revolutionary society where anyone was liable to be denounced and return to dust at any moment. More broadly, rabid idealism tends to distract people from the realities of life and death. Another biblical image in the chapter is that of the chateau on fire. The villagers describe it as a "pillar of fire in the sky," which they estimate is forty feet high. The "pillar of fire in the sky" alludes to Exodus 13:21, in which God leads the Israelites out of Egypt: "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light." The house is lit afire in the night, and it serves as a symbol of deliverance for the French people. The fire also suggests the end of times, the destruction of the world in the book of Revelations. But for the French mob, revolutionary principles have temporarily displaced religion. The title of Chapter 24 presents yet another literary allusion, now to a story in the Arabian Nights called "The Third Calender's Tale." A loadstone is a type of magnet which, in the story, irresistibly draws a ship towards it. Its force is so powerful that it draws the nails out of the vessel, shipwrecking it. The title illustrates the power that Paris has over Darnay; he is drawn back into the city as though unwillingly. Indirectly, this chapter illustrates the political climate of England at the time of the French Revolution. Although the revolutionaries had some admirers in England at the outbreak of the revolution, public opinion turned swiftly and heavily against them over the course of the terror. Mr. Stryver speaks on behalf of many Englishmen when he is disgusted by the seizure of property and the carnage of the Revolution, and it is obvious by the freedom of their conversation at Tellson's that Frenchmen of Monseigneur's class found safe haven in England. This conversation reveals Darnay as even more of a free-thinker in his continued sympathies for the French people, since they run counter not only to his own family, but also to the opinions of his adopted country. The courage of his opinions will only make the revolutionaries' behavior towards him more shocking after he returns to France.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_7_part_1.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 3.chapter 1

book 3, chapter 1

{"name": "book 3, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7", "summary": "In Secret The disorganization of France makes Darnay's trip long, and he is questioned at every step. When he nears Paris, he is woken in the middle of the night and told he is to be sent to Paris with an escort, which he is forced to accept and pay for. This escort is Monsieur Defarge. When they enter the town of Beauvais, people shout \"down with the emigrant. and Darnay knows he is in trouble. A decree had been passed the day Darnay left England, authorizing the sale of the property of emigrants and condemning those who return to death. When he reaches Paris, Darnay is condemned to prison in La Force. Defarge reveals his identity and the fact that he knows that Darnay is married to Lucie Manette, but he refuses to help. Darnay is thrown into the La Force Prison, where he finds the other prisoners surprisingly genteel. He paces in his room and begins to understand what drove Doctor Manette to shoemaking", "analysis": "As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, \"He made shoes.\" The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is \"awry with howling\" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie \"as if it were the finger of Fate.\" Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the \"golden thread,\" in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her \"sister-woman.\" But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as \"the sign of the regeneration of the human race.\" Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: \"The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder.\" The executioner was known as \"Samson\" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the \"National Razor which shaved close,\" punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a \"fallen sport.\" It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts \"no\" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats \"I have saved him,\" the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from \"God Save the King\" or \"God Save the Queen\" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true."}

I. In Secret The traveller fared slowly on his way, who fared towards Paris from England in the autumn of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two. More than enough of bad roads, bad equipages, and bad horses, he would have encountered to delay him, though the fallen and unfortunate King of France had been upon his throne in all his glory; but, the changed times were fraught with other obstacles than these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death. A very few French leagues of his journey were accomplished, when Charles Darnay began to perceive that for him along these country roads there was no hope of return until he should have been declared a good citizen at Paris. Whatever might befall now, he must on to his journey's end. Not a mean village closed upon him, not a common barrier dropped across the road behind him, but he knew it to be another iron door in the series that was barred between him and England. The universal watchfulness so encompassed him, that if he had been taken in a net, or were being forwarded to his destination in a cage, he could not have felt his freedom more completely gone. This universal watchfulness not only stopped him on the highway twenty times in a stage, but retarded his progress twenty times in a day, by riding after him and taking him back, riding before him and stopping him by anticipation, riding with him and keeping him in charge. He had been days upon his journey in France alone, when he went to bed tired out, in a little town on the high road, still a long way from Paris. Nothing but the production of the afflicted Gabelle's letter from his prison of the Abbaye would have got him on so far. His difficulty at the guard-house in this small place had been such, that he felt his journey to have come to a crisis. And he was, therefore, as little surprised as a man could be, to find himself awakened at the small inn to which he had been remitted until morning, in the middle of the night. Awakened by a timid local functionary and three armed patriots in rough red caps and with pipes in their mouths, who sat down on the bed. "Emigrant," said the functionary, "I am going to send you on to Paris, under an escort." "Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris, though I could dispense with the escort." "Silence!" growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the butt-end of his musket. "Peace, aristocrat!" "It is as the good patriot says," observed the timid functionary. "You are an aristocrat, and must have an escort--and must pay for it." "I have no choice," said Charles Darnay. "Choice! Listen to him!" cried the same scowling red-cap. "As if it was not a favour to be protected from the lamp-iron!" "It is always as the good patriot says," observed the functionary. "Rise and dress yourself, emigrant." Darnay complied, and was taken back to the guard-house, where other patriots in rough red caps were smoking, drinking, and sleeping, by a watch-fire. Here he paid a heavy price for his escort, and hence he started with it on the wet, wet roads at three o'clock in the morning. The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and tri-coloured cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres, who rode one on either side of him. The escorted governed his own horse, but a loose line was attached to his bridle, the end of which one of the patriots kept girded round his wrist. In this state they set forth with the sharp rain driving in their faces: clattering at a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town pavement, and out upon the mire-deep roads. In this state they traversed without change, except of horses and pace, all the mire-deep leagues that lay between them and the capital. They travelled in the night, halting an hour or two after daybreak, and lying by until the twilight fell. The escort were so wretchedly clothed, that they twisted straw round their bare legs, and thatched their ragged shoulders to keep the wet off. Apart from the personal discomfort of being so attended, and apart from such considerations of present danger as arose from one of the patriots being chronically drunk, and carrying his musket very recklessly, Charles Darnay did not allow the restraint that was laid upon him to awaken any serious fears in his breast; for, he reasoned with himself that it could have no reference to the merits of an individual case that was not yet stated, and of representations, confirmable by the prisoner in the Abbaye, that were not yet made. But when they came to the town of Beauvais--which they did at eventide, when the streets were filled with people--he could not conceal from himself that the aspect of affairs was very alarming. An ominous crowd gathered to see him dismount of the posting-yard, and many voices called out loudly, "Down with the emigrant!" He stopped in the act of swinging himself out of his saddle, and, resuming it as his safest place, said: "Emigrant, my friends! Do you not see me here, in France, of my own will?" "You are a cursed emigrant," cried a farrier, making at him in a furious manner through the press, hammer in hand; "and you are a cursed aristocrat!" The postmaster interposed himself between this man and the rider's bridle (at which he was evidently making), and soothingly said, "Let him be; let him be! He will be judged at Paris." "Judged!" repeated the farrier, swinging his hammer. "Ay! and condemned as a traitor." At this the crowd roared approval. Checking the postmaster, who was for turning his horse's head to the yard (the drunken patriot sat composedly in his saddle looking on, with the line round his wrist), Darnay said, as soon as he could make his voice heard: "Friends, you deceive yourselves, or you are deceived. I am not a traitor." "He lies!" cried the smith. "He is a traitor since the decree. His life is forfeit to the people. His cursed life is not his own!" At the instant when Darnay saw a rush in the eyes of the crowd, which another instant would have brought upon him, the postmaster turned his horse into the yard, the escort rode in close upon his horse's flanks, and the postmaster shut and barred the crazy double gates. The farrier struck a blow upon them with his hammer, and the crowd groaned; but, no more was done. "What is this decree that the smith spoke of?" Darnay asked the postmaster, when he had thanked him, and stood beside him in the yard. "Truly, a decree for selling the property of emigrants." "When passed?" "On the fourteenth." "The day I left England!" "Everybody says it is but one of several, and that there will be others--if there are not already--banishing all emigrants, and condemning all to death who return. That is what he meant when he said your life was not your own." "But there are no such decrees yet?" "What do I know!" said the postmaster, shrugging his shoulders; "there may be, or there will be. It is all the same. What would you have?" They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of the night, and then rode forward again when all the town was asleep. Among the many wild changes observable on familiar things which made this wild ride unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep. After long and lonely spurring over dreary roads, they would come to a cluster of poor cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all glittering with lights, and would find the people, in a ghostly manner in the dead of the night, circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn up together singing a Liberty song. Happily, however, there was sleep in Beauvais that night to help them out of it and they passed on once more into solitude and loneliness: jingling through the untimely cold and wet, among impoverished fields that had yielded no fruits of the earth that year, diversified by the blackened remains of burnt houses, and by the sudden emergence from ambuscade, and sharp reining up across their way, of patriot patrols on the watch on all the roads. Daylight at last found them before the wall of Paris. The barrier was closed and strongly guarded when they rode up to it. "Where are the papers of this prisoner?" demanded a resolute-looking man in authority, who was summoned out by the guard. Naturally struck by the disagreeable word, Charles Darnay requested the speaker to take notice that he was a free traveller and French citizen, in charge of an escort which the disturbed state of the country had imposed upon him, and which he had paid for. "Where," repeated the same personage, without taking any heed of him whatever, "are the papers of this prisoner?" The drunken patriot had them in his cap, and produced them. Casting his eyes over Gabelle's letter, the same personage in authority showed some disorder and surprise, and looked at Darnay with a close attention. He left escort and escorted without saying a word, however, and went into the guard-room; meanwhile, they sat upon their horses outside the gate. Looking about him while in this state of suspense, Charles Darnay observed that the gate was held by a mixed guard of soldiers and patriots, the latter far outnumbering the former; and that while ingress into the city for peasants' carts bringing in supplies, and for similar traffic and traffickers, was easy enough, egress, even for the homeliest people, was very difficult. A numerous medley of men and women, not to mention beasts and vehicles of various sorts, was waiting to issue forth; but, the previous identification was so strict, that they filtered through the barrier very slowly. Some of these people knew their turn for examination to be so far off, that they lay down on the ground to sleep or smoke, while others talked together, or loitered about. The red cap and tri-colour cockade were universal, both among men and women. When he had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking note of these things, Darnay found himself confronted by the same man in authority, who directed the guard to open the barrier. Then he delivered to the escort, drunk and sober, a receipt for the escorted, and requested him to dismount. He did so, and the two patriots, leading his tired horse, turned and rode away without entering the city. He accompanied his conductor into a guard-room, smelling of common wine and tobacco, where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep and awake, drunk and sober, and in various neutral states between sleeping and waking, drunkenness and sobriety, were standing and lying about. The light in the guard-house, half derived from the waning oil-lamps of the night, and half from the overcast day, was in a correspondingly uncertain condition. Some registers were lying open on a desk, and an officer of a coarse, dark aspect, presided over these. "Citizen Defarge," said he to Darnay's conductor, as he took a slip of paper to write on. "Is this the emigrant Evremonde?" "This is the man." "Your age, Evremonde?" "Thirty-seven." "Married, Evremonde?" "Yes." "Where married?" "In England." "Without doubt. Where is your wife, Evremonde?" "In England." "Without doubt. You are consigned, Evremonde, to the prison of La Force." "Just Heaven!" exclaimed Darnay. "Under what law, and for what offence?" The officer looked up from his slip of paper for a moment. "We have new laws, Evremonde, and new offences, since you were here." He said it with a hard smile, and went on writing. "I entreat you to observe that I have come here voluntarily, in response to that written appeal of a fellow-countryman which lies before you. I demand no more than the opportunity to do so without delay. Is not that my right?" "Emigrants have no rights, Evremonde," was the stolid reply. The officer wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he had written, sanded it, and handed it to Defarge, with the words "In secret." Defarge motioned with the paper to the prisoner that he must accompany him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two armed patriots attended them. "Is it you," said Defarge, in a low voice, as they went down the guardhouse steps and turned into Paris, "who married the daughter of Doctor Manette, once a prisoner in the Bastille that is no more?" "Yes," replied Darnay, looking at him with surprise. "My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop in the Quarter Saint Antoine. Possibly you have heard of me." "My wife came to your house to reclaim her father? Yes!" The word "wife" seemed to serve as a gloomy reminder to Defarge, to say with sudden impatience, "In the name of that sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine, why did you come to France?" "You heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not believe it is the truth?" "A bad truth for you," said Defarge, speaking with knitted brows, and looking straight before him. "Indeed I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented, so changed, so sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely lost. Will you render me a little help?" "None." Defarge spoke, always looking straight before him. "Will you answer me a single question?" "Perhaps. According to its nature. You can say what it is." "In this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall I have some free communication with the world outside?" "You will see." "I am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without any means of presenting my case?" "You will see. But, what then? Other people have been similarly buried in worse prisons, before now." "But never by me, Citizen Defarge." Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked on in a steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence, the fainter hope there was--or so Darnay thought--of his softening in any slight degree. He, therefore, made haste to say: "It is of the utmost importance to me (you know, Citizen, even better than I, of how much importance), that I should be able to communicate to Mr. Lorry of Tellson's Bank, an English gentleman who is now in Paris, the simple fact, without comment, that I have been thrown into the prison of La Force. Will you cause that to be done for me?" "I will do," Defarge doggedly rejoined, "nothing for you. My duty is to my country and the People. I am the sworn servant of both, against you. I will do nothing for you." Charles Darnay felt it hopeless to entreat him further, and his pride was touched besides. As they walked on in silence, he could not but see how used the people were to the spectacle of prisoners passing along the streets. The very children scarcely noticed him. A few passers turned their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him as an aristocrat; otherwise, that a man in good clothes should be going to prison, was no more remarkable than that a labourer in working clothes should be going to work. In one narrow, dark, and dirty street through which they passed, an excited orator, mounted on a stool, was addressing an excited audience on the crimes against the people, of the king and the royal family. The few words that he caught from this man's lips, first made it known to Charles Darnay that the king was in prison, and that the foreign ambassadors had one and all left Paris. On the road (except at Beauvais) he had heard absolutely nothing. The escort and the universal watchfulness had completely isolated him. That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had developed themselves when he left England, he of course knew now. That perils had thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster and faster yet, he of course knew now. He could not but admit to himself that he might not have made this journey, if he could have foreseen the events of a few days. And yet his misgivings were not so dark as, imagined by the light of this later time, they would appear. Troubled as the future was, it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant hope. The horrible massacre, days and nights long, which, within a few rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark of blood upon the blessed garnering time of harvest, was as far out of his knowledge as if it had been a hundred thousand years away. The "sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine," was hardly known to him, or to the generality of people, by name. The frightful deeds that were to be soon done, were probably unimagined at that time in the brains of the doers. How could they have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a gentle mind? Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and in cruel separation from his wife and child, he foreshadowed the likelihood, or the certainty; but, beyond this, he dreaded nothing distinctly. With this on his mind, which was enough to carry into a dreary prison courtyard, he arrived at the prison of La Force. A man with a bloated face opened the strong wicket, to whom Defarge presented "The Emigrant Evremonde." "What the Devil! How many more of them!" exclaimed the man with the bloated face. Defarge took his receipt without noticing the exclamation, and withdrew, with his two fellow-patriots. "What the Devil, I say again!" exclaimed the gaoler, left with his wife. "How many more!" The gaoler's wife, being provided with no answer to the question, merely replied, "One must have patience, my dear!" Three turnkeys who entered responsive to a bell she rang, echoed the sentiment, and one added, "For the love of Liberty;" which sounded in that place like an inappropriate conclusion. The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark and filthy, and with a horrible smell of foul sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon the noisome flavour of imprisoned sleep, becomes manifest in all such places that are ill cared for! "In secret, too," grumbled the gaoler, looking at the written paper. "As if I was not already full to bursting!" He stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour, and Charles Darnay awaited his further pleasure for half an hour: sometimes, pacing to and fro in the strong arched room: sometimes, resting on a stone seat: in either case detained to be imprinted on the memory of the chief and his subordinates. "Come!" said the chief, at length taking up his keys, "come with me, emigrant." Through the dismal prison twilight, his new charge accompanied him by corridor and staircase, many doors clanging and locking behind them, until they came into a large, low, vaulted chamber, crowded with prisoners of both sexes. The women were seated at a long table, reading and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroidering; the men were for the most part standing behind their chairs, or lingering up and down the room. In the instinctive association of prisoners with shameful crime and disgrace, the new-comer recoiled from this company. But the crowning unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all at once rising to receive him, with every refinement of manner known to the time, and with all the engaging graces and courtesies of life. So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming there. It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his side, and the other gaolers moving about, who would have been well enough as to appearance in the ordinary exercise of their functions, looked so extravagantly coarse contrasted with sorrowing mothers and blooming daughters who were there--with the apparitions of the coquette, the young beauty, and the mature woman delicately bred--that the inversion of all experience and likelihood which the scene of shadows presented, was heightened to its utmost. Surely, ghosts all. Surely, the long unreal ride some progress of disease that had brought him to these gloomy shades! "In the name of the assembled companions in misfortune," said a gentleman of courtly appearance and address, coming forward, "I have the honour of giving you welcome to La Force, and of condoling with you on the calamity that has brought you among us. May it soon terminate happily! It would be an impertinence elsewhere, but it is not so here, to ask your name and condition?" Charles Darnay roused himself, and gave the required information, in words as suitable as he could find. "But I hope," said the gentleman, following the chief gaoler with his eyes, who moved across the room, "that you are not in secret?" "I do not understand the meaning of the term, but I have heard them say so." "Ah, what a pity! We so much regret it! But take courage; several members of our society have been in secret, at first, and it has lasted but a short time." Then he added, raising his voice, "I grieve to inform the society--in secret." There was a murmur of commiseration as Charles Darnay crossed the room to a grated door where the gaoler awaited him, and many voices--among which, the soft and compassionate voices of women were conspicuous--gave him good wishes and encouragement. He turned at the grated door, to render the thanks of his heart; it closed under the gaoler's hand; and the apparitions vanished from his sight forever. The wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading upward. When they had ascended forty steps (the prisoner of half an hour already counted them), the gaoler opened a low black door, and they passed into a solitary cell. It struck cold and damp, but was not dark. "Yours," said the gaoler. "Why am I confined alone?" "How do I know!" "I can buy pen, ink, and paper?" "Such are not my orders. You will be visited, and can ask then. At present, you may buy your food, and nothing more." There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of the four walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered through the mind of the prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him, that this gaoler was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and person, as to look like a man who had been drowned and filled with water. When the gaoler was gone, he thought in the same wandering way, "Now am I left, as if I were dead." Stopping then, to look down at the mattress, he turned from it with a sick feeling, and thought, "And here in these crawling creatures is the first condition of the body after death." "Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half." The prisoner walked to and fro in his cell, counting its measurement, and the roar of the city arose like muffled drums with a wild swell of voices added to them. "He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes." The prisoner counted the measurement again, and paced faster, to draw his mind with him from that latter repetition. "The ghosts that vanished when the wicket closed. There was one among them, the appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in the embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her golden hair, and she looked like * * * * Let us ride on again, for God's sake, through the illuminated villages with the people all awake! * * * * He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. * * * * Five paces by four and a half." With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from the depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting and counting; and the roar of the city changed to this extent--that it still rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he knew, in the swell that rose above them.

book 3, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7

In Secret The disorganization of France makes Darnay's trip long, and he is questioned at every step. When he nears Paris, he is woken in the middle of the night and told he is to be sent to Paris with an escort, which he is forced to accept and pay for. This escort is Monsieur Defarge. When they enter the town of Beauvais, people shout "down with the emigrant. and Darnay knows he is in trouble. A decree had been passed the day Darnay left England, authorizing the sale of the property of emigrants and condemning those who return to death. When he reaches Paris, Darnay is condemned to prison in La Force. Defarge reveals his identity and the fact that he knows that Darnay is married to Lucie Manette, but he refuses to help. Darnay is thrown into the La Force Prison, where he finds the other prisoners surprisingly genteel. He paces in his room and begins to understand what drove Doctor Manette to shoemaking

As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, "He made shoes." The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is "awry with howling" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie "as if it were the finger of Fate." Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the "golden thread," in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her "sister-woman." But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as "the sign of the regeneration of the human race." Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: "The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder." The executioner was known as "Samson" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the "National Razor which shaved close," punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a "fallen sport." It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts "no" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats "I have saved him," the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from "God Save the King" or "God Save the Queen" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/32.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_7_part_2.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 3.chapter 2

book 3, chapter 2

{"name": "book 3, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7", "summary": "The Grindstone Mr. Lorry occupies rooms in Tellson's Bank in Paris, preoccupied with the fact that the noblemen will not live to collect their money. He nervously hears the sounds of conflict on the streets and praises God that no one he loves is in Paris, at which point Doctor Manette and Lucie rush into his room with the news that Darnay is in prison. Manette is not susceptible to the violence of the revolutionaries, because they respect the fact that he was a prisoner in the Bastille. Mr. Lorry asks Lucie to retire to a back room so that he can discuss the situation privately with the Doctor. They look together out into the courtyard, where a brutal-looking mob is using the grindstone to sharpen their weapons. Mr. Lorry explains to the doctor that they are murdering the prisoners. The Doctor descends to the courtyard, makes it known that he was a prisoner in the Bastille, and is hailed as a hero by the crowd. He is carried to La Force on the backs of the crowd, who are now as anxious to save Darnay for the Doctor's sake as they had been to kill him", "analysis": "As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, \"He made shoes.\" The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is \"awry with howling\" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie \"as if it were the finger of Fate.\" Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the \"golden thread,\" in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her \"sister-woman.\" But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as \"the sign of the regeneration of the human race.\" Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: \"The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder.\" The executioner was known as \"Samson\" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the \"National Razor which shaved close,\" punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a \"fallen sport.\" It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts \"no\" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats \"I have saved him,\" the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from \"God Save the King\" or \"God Save the Queen\" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true."}

II. The Grindstone Tellson's Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris, was in a wing of a large house, approached by a courtyard and shut off from the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house belonged to a great nobleman who had lived in it until he made a flight from the troubles, in his own cook's dress, and got across the borders. A mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was still in his metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur, the preparation of whose chocolate for whose lips had once occupied three strong men besides the cook in question. Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving themselves from the sin of having drawn his high wages, by being more than ready and willing to cut his throat on the altar of the dawning Republic one and indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, Monseigneur's house had been first sequestrated, and then confiscated. For, all things moved so fast, and decree followed decree with that fierce precipitation, that now upon the third night of the autumn month of September, patriot emissaries of the law were in possession of Monseigneur's house, and had marked it with the tri-colour, and were drinking brandy in its state apartments. A place of business in London like Tellson's place of business in Paris, would soon have driven the House out of its mind and into the Gazette. For, what would staid British responsibility and respectability have said to orange-trees in boxes in a Bank courtyard, and even to a Cupid over the counter? Yet such things were. Tellson's had whitewashed the Cupid, but he was still to be seen on the ceiling, in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very often does) at money from morning to night. Bankruptcy must inevitably have come of this young Pagan, in Lombard-street, London, and also of a curtained alcove in the rear of the immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into the wall, and also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public on the slightest provocation. Yet, a French Tellson's could get on with these things exceedingly well, and, as long as the times held together, no man had taken fright at them, and drawn out his money. What money would be drawn out of Tellson's henceforth, and what would lie there, lost and forgotten; what plate and jewels would tarnish in Tellson's hiding-places, while the depositors rusted in prisons, and when they should have violently perished; how many accounts with Tellson's never to be balanced in this world, must be carried over into the next; no man could have said, that night, any more than Mr. Jarvis Lorry could, though he thought heavily of these questions. He sat by a newly-lighted wood fire (the blighted and unfruitful year was prematurely cold), and on his honest and courageous face there was a deeper shade than the pendent lamp could throw, or any object in the room distortedly reflect--a shade of horror. He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the House of which he had grown to be a part, like strong root-ivy. It chanced that they derived a kind of security from the patriotic occupation of the main building, but the true-hearted old gentleman never calculated about that. All such circumstances were indifferent to him, so that he did his duty. On the opposite side of the courtyard, under a colonnade, was extensive standing--for carriages--where, indeed, some carriages of Monseigneur yet stood. Against two of the pillars were fastened two great flaring flambeaux, and in the light of these, standing out in the open air, was a large grindstone: a roughly mounted thing which appeared to have hurriedly been brought there from some neighbouring smithy, or other workshop. Rising and looking out of window at these harmless objects, Mr. Lorry shivered, and retired to his seat by the fire. He had opened, not only the glass window, but the lattice blind outside it, and he had closed both again, and he shivered through his frame. From the streets beyond the high wall and the strong gate, there came the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring in it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were going up to Heaven. "Thank God," said Mr. Lorry, clasping his hands, "that no one near and dear to me is in this dreadful town to-night. May He have mercy on all who are in danger!" Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and he thought, "They have come back!" and sat listening. But, there was no loud irruption into the courtyard, as he had expected, and he heard the gate clash again, and all was quiet. The nervousness and dread that were upon him inspired that vague uneasiness respecting the Bank, which a great change would naturally awaken, with such feelings roused. It was well guarded, and he got up to go among the trusty people who were watching it, when his door suddenly opened, and two figures rushed in, at sight of which he fell back in amazement. Lucie and her father! Lucie with her arms stretched out to him, and with that old look of earnestness so concentrated and intensified, that it seemed as though it had been stamped upon her face expressly to give force and power to it in this one passage of her life. "What is this?" cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and confused. "What is the matter? Lucie! Manette! What has happened? What has brought you here? What is it?" With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and wildness, she panted out in his arms, imploringly, "O my dear friend! My husband!" "Your husband, Lucie?" "Charles." "What of Charles?" "Here. "Here, in Paris?" "Has been here some days--three or four--I don't know how many--I can't collect my thoughts. An errand of generosity brought him here unknown to us; he was stopped at the barrier, and sent to prison." The old man uttered an irrepressible cry. Almost at the same moment, the bell of the great gate rang again, and a loud noise of feet and voices came pouring into the courtyard. "What is that noise?" said the Doctor, turning towards the window. "Don't look!" cried Mr. Lorry. "Don't look out! Manette, for your life, don't touch the blind!" The Doctor turned, with his hand upon the fastening of the window, and said, with a cool, bold smile: "My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city. I have been a Bastille prisoner. There is no patriot in Paris--in Paris? In France--who, knowing me to have been a prisoner in the Bastille, would touch me, except to overwhelm me with embraces, or carry me in triumph. My old pain has given me a power that has brought us through the barrier, and gained us news of Charles there, and brought us here. I knew it would be so; I knew I could help Charles out of all danger; I told Lucie so.--What is that noise?" His hand was again upon the window. "Don't look!" cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate. "No, Lucie, my dear, nor you!" He got his arm round her, and held her. "Don't be so terrified, my love. I solemnly swear to you that I know of no harm having happened to Charles; that I had no suspicion even of his being in this fatal place. What prison is he in?" "La Force!" "La Force! Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave and serviceable in your life--and you were always both--you will compose yourself now, to do exactly as I bid you; for more depends upon it than you can think, or I can say. There is no help for you in any action on your part to-night; you cannot possibly stir out. I say this, because what I must bid you to do for Charles's sake, is the hardest thing to do of all. You must instantly be obedient, still, and quiet. You must let me put you in a room at the back here. You must leave your father and me alone for two minutes, and as there are Life and Death in the world you must not delay." "I will be submissive to you. I see in your face that you know I can do nothing else than this. I know you are true." The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his room, and turned the key; then, came hurrying back to the Doctor, and opened the window and partly opened the blind, and put his hand upon the Doctor's arm, and looked out with him into the courtyard. Looked out upon a throng of men and women: not enough in number, or near enough, to fill the courtyard: not more than forty or fifty in all. The people in possession of the house had let them in at the gate, and they had rushed in to work at the grindstone; it had evidently been set up there for their purpose, as in a convenient and retired spot. But, such awful workers, and such awful work! The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it madly were two men, whose faces, as their long hair flapped back when the whirlings of the grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than the visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous disguise. False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck upon them, and their hideous countenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of sleep. As these ruffians turned and turned, their matted locks now flung forward over their eyes, now flung backward over their necks, some women held wine to their mouths that they might drink; and 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 eye could not detect one creature in the group free from the smear of blood. Shouldering one another to get next at the sharpening-stone, were men stripped to the waist, with the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of rags, with the stain upon those rags; men devilishly set off with spoils of women's lace and silk and ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles through and through. Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened, were all red with it. Some of the hacked swords were tied to the wrists of those who carried them, with strips of linen and fragments of dress: ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the one colour. And as the frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in their frenzied eyes;--eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun. All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or of any human creature at any very great pass, could see a world if it were there. They drew back from the window, and the Doctor looked for explanation in his friend's ashy face. "They are," Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing fearfully round at the locked room, "murdering the prisoners. If you are sure of what you say; if you really have the power you think you have--as I believe you have--make yourself known to these devils, and get taken to La Force. It may be too late, I don't know, but let it not be a minute later!" Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of the room, and was in the courtyard when Mr. Lorry regained the blind. His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the impetuous confidence of his manner, as he put the weapons aside like water, carried him in an instant to the heart of the concourse at the stone. For a few moments there was a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur, and the unintelligible sound of his voice; and then Mr. Lorry saw him, surrounded by all, and in the midst of a line of twenty men long, all linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried out with cries of--"Live the Bastille prisoner! Help for the Bastille prisoner's kindred in La Force! Room for the Bastille prisoner in front there! Save the prisoner Evremonde at La Force!" and a thousand answering shouts. He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed the window and the curtain, hastened to Lucie, and told her that her father was assisted by the people, and gone in search of her husband. He found her child and Miss Pross with her; but, it never occurred to him to be surprised by their appearance until a long time afterwards, when he sat watching them in such quiet as the night knew. Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor at his feet, clinging to his hand. Miss Pross had laid the child down on his own bed, and her head had gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty charge. O the long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife! And O the long, long night, with no return of her father and no tidings! Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate sounded, and the irruption was repeated, and the grindstone whirled and spluttered. "What is it?" cried Lucie, affrighted. "Hush! The soldiers' swords are sharpened there," said Mr. Lorry. "The place is national property now, and used as a kind of armoury, my love." Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble and fitful. Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and he softly detached himself from the clasping hand, and cautiously looked out again. A man, so besmeared that he might have been a sorely wounded soldier creeping back to consciousness on a field of slain, was rising from the pavement by the side of the grindstone, and looking about him with a vacant air. Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the imperfect light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, and, staggering to that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the door, and shut himself up to take his rest on its dainty cushions. The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again, and the sun was red on the courtyard. But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.

book 3, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7

The Grindstone Mr. Lorry occupies rooms in Tellson's Bank in Paris, preoccupied with the fact that the noblemen will not live to collect their money. He nervously hears the sounds of conflict on the streets and praises God that no one he loves is in Paris, at which point Doctor Manette and Lucie rush into his room with the news that Darnay is in prison. Manette is not susceptible to the violence of the revolutionaries, because they respect the fact that he was a prisoner in the Bastille. Mr. Lorry asks Lucie to retire to a back room so that he can discuss the situation privately with the Doctor. They look together out into the courtyard, where a brutal-looking mob is using the grindstone to sharpen their weapons. Mr. Lorry explains to the doctor that they are murdering the prisoners. The Doctor descends to the courtyard, makes it known that he was a prisoner in the Bastille, and is hailed as a hero by the crowd. He is carried to La Force on the backs of the crowd, who are now as anxious to save Darnay for the Doctor's sake as they had been to kill him

As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, "He made shoes." The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is "awry with howling" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie "as if it were the finger of Fate." Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the "golden thread," in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her "sister-woman." But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as "the sign of the regeneration of the human race." Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: "The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder." The executioner was known as "Samson" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the "National Razor which shaved close," punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a "fallen sport." It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts "no" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats "I have saved him," the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from "God Save the King" or "God Save the Queen" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/33.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_7_part_3.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 3.chapter 3

book 3, chapter 3

{"name": "book 3, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7", "summary": "The Shadow Mr. Lorry worries that he is endangering Tellson's Bank by housing the wife of an emigrant prisoner, Lucie, in their lodgings. After shrewdly deciding not to ask Defarge for advice for fear that he might be wrapped up in the revolution, he finds Lucie, her daughter, the Doctor, and Miss Pross a suitable apartment near his own. Jerry Cruncher, whom Mr. Lorry brought with him as a bodyguard, now guards their house. Mr. Lorry returns to his own lodgings, where he is visited by Monsieur Defarge with a message from Doctor Manette, who says that Darnay is safe, but that neither of them can leave prison yet. Defarge also carries a message for Lucie, and Mr. Lorry accompanies him to her new apartment. They are joined in the street by Madame Defarge, whom Mr. Lorry recognizes by her knitting. Lucie is overjoyed to receive her husband's message that he is safe for the time being and that her father has influence. She kisses Madame Defarge's hand in thanks, but the woman does not respond. Mr. Lorry explains that Madame Defarge wants to see the whole family so she knows who to protect during uprisings in the street. Lucie begs her to help her husband if at all possible, but Madame Defarge says that after the poverty and suffering she has seen, the troubles of one woman mean little to her", "analysis": "As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, \"He made shoes.\" The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is \"awry with howling\" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie \"as if it were the finger of Fate.\" Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the \"golden thread,\" in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her \"sister-woman.\" But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as \"the sign of the regeneration of the human race.\" Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: \"The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder.\" The executioner was known as \"Samson\" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the \"National Razor which shaved close,\" punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a \"fallen sport.\" It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts \"no\" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats \"I have saved him,\" the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from \"God Save the King\" or \"God Save the Queen\" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true."}

III. The Shadow One of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr. Lorry when business hours came round, was this:--that he had no right to imperil Tellson's by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded for Lucie and her child, without a moment's demur; but the great trust he held was not his own, and as to that business charge he was a strict man of business. At first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought of finding out the wine-shop again and taking counsel with its master in reference to the safest dwelling-place in the distracted state of the city. But, the same consideration that suggested him, repudiated him; he lived in the most violent Quarter, and doubtless was influential there, and deep in its dangerous workings. Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning, and every minute's delay tending to compromise Tellson's, Mr. Lorry advised with Lucie. She said that her father had spoken of hiring a lodging for a short term, in that Quarter, near the Banking-house. As there was no business objection to this, and as he foresaw that even if it were all well with Charles, and he were to be released, he could not hope to leave the city, Mr. Lorry went out in quest of such a lodging, and found a suitable one, high up in a removed by-street where the closed blinds in all the other windows of a high melancholy square of buildings marked deserted homes. To this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, and Miss Pross: giving them what comfort he could, and much more than he had himself. He left Jerry with them, as a figure to fill a doorway that would bear considerable knocking on the head, and returned to his own occupations. A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to bear upon them, and slowly and heavily the day lagged on with him. It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed. He was again alone in his room of the previous night, considering what to do next, when he heard a foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a man stood in his presence, who, with a keenly observant look at him, addressed him by his name. "Your servant," said Mr. Lorry. "Do you know me?" He was a strongly made man with dark curling hair, from forty-five to fifty years of age. For answer he repeated, without any change of emphasis, the words: "Do you know me?" "I have seen you somewhere." "Perhaps at my wine-shop?" Much interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said: "You come from Doctor Manette?" "Yes. I come from Doctor Manette." "And what says he? What does he send me?" Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of paper. It bore the words in the Doctor's writing: "Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet. I have obtained the favour that the bearer has a short note from Charles to his wife. Let the bearer see his wife." It was dated from La Force, within an hour. "Will you accompany me," said Mr. Lorry, joyfully relieved after reading this note aloud, "to where his wife resides?" "Yes," returned Defarge. Scarcely noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical way Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on his hat and they went down into the courtyard. There, they found two women; one, knitting. "Madame Defarge, surely!" said Mr. Lorry, who had left her in exactly the same attitude some seventeen years ago. "It is she," observed her husband. "Does Madame go with us?" inquired Mr. Lorry, seeing that she moved as they moved. "Yes. That she may be able to recognise the faces and know the persons. It is for their safety." Beginning to be struck by Defarge's manner, Mr. Lorry looked dubiously at him, and led the way. Both the women followed; the second woman being The Vengeance. They passed through the intervening streets as quickly as they might, ascended the staircase of the new domicile, were admitted by Jerry, and found Lucie weeping, alone. She was thrown into a transport by the tidings Mr. Lorry gave her of her husband, and clasped the hand that delivered his note--little thinking what it had been doing near him in the night, and might, but for a chance, have done to him. "DEAREST,--Take courage. I am well, and your father has influence around me. You cannot answer this. Kiss our child for me." That was all the writing. It was so much, however, to her who received it, that she turned from Defarge to his wife, and kissed one of the hands that knitted. It was a passionate, loving, thankful, womanly action, but the hand made no response--dropped cold and heavy, and took to its knitting again. There was something in its touch that gave Lucie a check. She stopped in the act of putting the note in her bosom, and, with her hands yet at her neck, looked terrified at Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge met the lifted eyebrows and forehead with a cold, impassive stare. "My dear," said Mr. Lorry, striking in to explain; "there are frequent risings in the streets; and, although it is not likely they will ever trouble you, Madame Defarge wishes to see those whom she has the power to protect at such times, to the end that she may know them--that she may identify them. I believe," said Mr. Lorry, rather halting in his reassuring words, as the stony manner of all the three impressed itself upon him more and more, "I state the case, Citizen Defarge?" Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other answer than a gruff sound of acquiescence. "You had better, Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, doing all he could to propitiate, by tone and manner, "have the dear child here, and our good Pross. Our good Pross, Defarge, is an English lady, and knows no French." The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was more than a match for any foreigner, was not to be shaken by distress and, danger, appeared with folded arms, and observed in English to The Vengeance, whom her eyes first encountered, "Well, I am sure, Boldface! I hope _you_ are pretty well!" She also bestowed a British cough on Madame Defarge; but, neither of the two took much heed of her. "Is that his child?" said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work for the first time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as if it were the finger of Fate. "Yes, madame," answered Mr. Lorry; "this is our poor prisoner's darling daughter, and only child." The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed to fall so threatening and dark on the child, that her mother instinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, and held her to her breast. The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both the mother and the child. "It is enough, my husband," said Madame Defarge. "I have seen them. We may go." But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it--not visible and presented, but indistinct and withheld--to alarm Lucie into saying, as she laid her appealing hand on Madame Defarge's dress: "You will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no harm. You will help me to see him if you can?" "Your husband is not my business here," returned Madame Defarge, looking down at her with perfect composure. "It is the daughter of your father who is my business here." "For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child's sake! She will put her hands together and pray you to be merciful. We are more afraid of you than of these others." Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her husband. Defarge, who had been uneasily biting his thumb-nail and looking at her, collected his face into a sterner expression. "What is it that your husband says in that little letter?" asked Madame Defarge, with a lowering smile. "Influence; he says something touching influence?" "That my father," said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it, "has much influence around him." "Surely it will release him!" said Madame Defarge. "Let it do so." "As a wife and mother," cried Lucie, most earnestly, "I implore you to have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against my innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me. As a wife and mother!" Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said, turning to her friend The Vengeance: "The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known _their_ husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds?" "We have seen nothing else," returned The Vengeance. "We have borne this a long time," said Madame Defarge, turning her eyes again upon Lucie. "Judge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?" She resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed. Defarge went last, and closed the door. "Courage, my dear Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, as he raised her. "Courage, courage! So far all goes well with us--much, much better than it has of late gone with many poor souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful heart." "I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes." "Tut, tut!" said Mr. Lorry; "what is this despondency in the brave little breast? A shadow indeed! No substance in it, Lucie." But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself, for all that, and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.

book 3, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7

The Shadow Mr. Lorry worries that he is endangering Tellson's Bank by housing the wife of an emigrant prisoner, Lucie, in their lodgings. After shrewdly deciding not to ask Defarge for advice for fear that he might be wrapped up in the revolution, he finds Lucie, her daughter, the Doctor, and Miss Pross a suitable apartment near his own. Jerry Cruncher, whom Mr. Lorry brought with him as a bodyguard, now guards their house. Mr. Lorry returns to his own lodgings, where he is visited by Monsieur Defarge with a message from Doctor Manette, who says that Darnay is safe, but that neither of them can leave prison yet. Defarge also carries a message for Lucie, and Mr. Lorry accompanies him to her new apartment. They are joined in the street by Madame Defarge, whom Mr. Lorry recognizes by her knitting. Lucie is overjoyed to receive her husband's message that he is safe for the time being and that her father has influence. She kisses Madame Defarge's hand in thanks, but the woman does not respond. Mr. Lorry explains that Madame Defarge wants to see the whole family so she knows who to protect during uprisings in the street. Lucie begs her to help her husband if at all possible, but Madame Defarge says that after the poverty and suffering she has seen, the troubles of one woman mean little to her

As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, "He made shoes." The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is "awry with howling" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie "as if it were the finger of Fate." Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the "golden thread," in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her "sister-woman." But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as "the sign of the regeneration of the human race." Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: "The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder." The executioner was known as "Samson" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the "National Razor which shaved close," punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a "fallen sport." It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts "no" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats "I have saved him," the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from "God Save the King" or "God Save the Queen" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/34.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_7_part_4.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 3.chapter 4

book 3, chapter 4

{"name": "book 3, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7", "summary": "Calm in Storm Doctor Manette does not return for four days, during which time 1,100 prisoners are killed. Manette announced himself as having been a prisoner in the Bastille without trial, a fact which Monsieur Defarge reinforces, popularizing the Doctor immensely. He almost secured Darnay's immediate release, but the prisoner was arbitrarily returned to his cell. Doctor Manette gained permission to stay with him in the cell to ensure that he would not be murdered like the other prisoners. The Doctor is asked to tend to a prisoner who was released but attacked with a pike anyway by mistake. He works hard to dress the wounds and save both the attacker and the attacked. Instead of reviving his old psychological problems, the Doctor's activities give him a sense of importance and help him become more confident. He has usee his influence to ensure that Darnay is not imprisoned alone but with others, and he has seen Darnay weekly to check on his health and convey messages from him to Lucy. Try as he might to get Darnay released, the Revolution has moved too fast; the king and queen are tried and beheaded, and Year One of the Republic has been declared. Charles is to lie in prison for a year and three months", "analysis": "As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, \"He made shoes.\" The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is \"awry with howling\" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie \"as if it were the finger of Fate.\" Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the \"golden thread,\" in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her \"sister-woman.\" But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as \"the sign of the regeneration of the human race.\" Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: \"The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder.\" The executioner was known as \"Samson\" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the \"National Razor which shaved close,\" punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a \"fallen sport.\" It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts \"no\" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats \"I have saved him,\" the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from \"God Save the King\" or \"God Save the Queen\" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true."}

IV. Calm in Storm Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day of his absence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time as could be kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from her, that not until long afterwards, when France and she were far apart, did she know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the populace; that four days and nights had been darkened by this deed of horror; and that the air around her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and that some had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered. To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy on which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells. That, presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced himself by name and profession as having been for eighteen years a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, one of the body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and that this man was Defarge. That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table, that his son-in-law was among the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard to the Tribunal--of whom some members were asleep and some awake, some dirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some not--for his life and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself as a notable sufferer under the overthrown system, it had been accorded to him to have Charles Darnay brought before the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret conference. That, the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner was removed to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, the Doctor, had then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and assure himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance, delivered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate had often drowned the proceedings, that he had obtained the permission, and had remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger was over. The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep by intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who were saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who had been discharged into the street free, but at whom a mistaken savage had thrust a pike as he passed out. Being besought to go to him and dress the wound, the Doctor had passed out at the same gate, and had found him in the arms of a company of Samaritans, who were seated on the bodies of their victims. With an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the wounded man with the gentlest solicitude--had made a litter for him and escorted him carefully from the spot--had then caught up their weapons and plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and swooned away in the midst of it. As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the face of his friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within him that such dread experiences would revive the old danger. But, he had never seen his friend in his present aspect: he had never at all known him in his present character. For the first time the Doctor felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. For the first time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door of his daughter's husband, and deliver him. "It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin. As my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid of Heaven I will do it!" Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped, like a clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an energy which had lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed. Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with, would have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he kept himself in his place, as a physician, whose business was with all degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physician of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could now assure Lucie that her husband was no longer confined alone, but was mixed with the general body of prisoners; he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweet messages to her, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himself sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor's hand), but she was not permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions of plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who were known to have made friends or permanent connections abroad. This new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no doubt; still, the sagacious Mr. Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it. Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride; it was a natural and worthy one; but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew, that up to that time, his imprisonment had been associated in the minds of his daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction, deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, and he knew himself to be invested through that old trial with forces to which they both looked for Charles's ultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far exalted by the change, that he took the lead and direction, and required them as the weak, to trust to him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself and Lucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him. "All curious to see," thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, "but all natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; it couldn't be in better hands." But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial, the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him. The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty--the deluge rising from below, not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened! There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the head of the king--and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it grey. And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world--the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied. It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple every day. Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor walked with a steady head: confident in his power, cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he would save Lucie's husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by, so strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one year and three months when the Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much more wicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month, that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines and squares under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor walked among the terrors with a steady head. No man better known than he, in Paris at that day; no man in a stranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital and prison, using his art equally among assassins and victims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of his skill, the appearance and the story of the Bastille Captive removed him from all other men. He was not suspected or brought in question, any more than if he had indeed been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a Spirit moving among mortals.

book 3, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7

Calm in Storm Doctor Manette does not return for four days, during which time 1,100 prisoners are killed. Manette announced himself as having been a prisoner in the Bastille without trial, a fact which Monsieur Defarge reinforces, popularizing the Doctor immensely. He almost secured Darnay's immediate release, but the prisoner was arbitrarily returned to his cell. Doctor Manette gained permission to stay with him in the cell to ensure that he would not be murdered like the other prisoners. The Doctor is asked to tend to a prisoner who was released but attacked with a pike anyway by mistake. He works hard to dress the wounds and save both the attacker and the attacked. Instead of reviving his old psychological problems, the Doctor's activities give him a sense of importance and help him become more confident. He has usee his influence to ensure that Darnay is not imprisoned alone but with others, and he has seen Darnay weekly to check on his health and convey messages from him to Lucy. Try as he might to get Darnay released, the Revolution has moved too fast; the king and queen are tried and beheaded, and Year One of the Republic has been declared. Charles is to lie in prison for a year and three months

As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, "He made shoes." The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is "awry with howling" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie "as if it were the finger of Fate." Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the "golden thread," in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her "sister-woman." But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as "the sign of the regeneration of the human race." Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: "The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder." The executioner was known as "Samson" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the "National Razor which shaved close," punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a "fallen sport." It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts "no" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats "I have saved him," the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from "God Save the King" or "God Save the Queen" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/35.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_7_part_5.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 3.chapter 5

book 3, chapter 5

{"name": "book 3, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7", "summary": "The Wood-Sawyer Lucie is unsure for one year and three months whether her husband has been alive or dead. She establishes a routine in their new home, and she keeps herself hopeful by setting aside a chair or books for her husband and otherwise behaving as if he lived there, too. Her father informs her that there is a place that she can stand on the sidewalk during certain hours which is overlooked by a window in the prison which her husband may sometimes look out. Lucie faithfully walks back and forth on that sidewalk for two hours each day. Jacques Four has now become a wood-sawyer and has a shack to cut wood near where Lucie walks. He notices that she is there every day, and he mocks her for knowing someone in the prison, pretending to guillotine the whole family with his saw. During December, a crowd of five hundred including Jacques Four and the Vengeance descend on Lucie while she is walking near the prison. She is frightened, but her father reassures her that they will not harm her. Madame Defarge walks by and salutes them. Charles is summoned to appear in court the next day", "analysis": "As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, \"He made shoes.\" The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is \"awry with howling\" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie \"as if it were the finger of Fate.\" Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the \"golden thread,\" in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her \"sister-woman.\" But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as \"the sign of the regeneration of the human race.\" Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: \"The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder.\" The executioner was known as \"Samson\" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the \"National Razor which shaved close,\" punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a \"fallen sport.\" It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts \"no\" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats \"I have saved him,\" the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from \"God Save the King\" or \"God Save the Queen\" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true."}

V. The Wood-Sawyer One year and three months. During all that time Lucie was never sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine would strike off her husband's head next day. Every day, through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst. Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death;--the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine! If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of the time, had stunned the Doctor's daughter into awaiting the result in idle despair, it would but have been with her as it was with many. But, from the hour when she had taken the white head to her fresh young bosom in the garret of Saint Antoine, she had been true to her duties. She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be. As soon as they were established in their new residence, and her father had entered on the routine of his avocations, she arranged the little household as exactly as if her husband had been there. Everything had its appointed place and its appointed time. Little Lucie she taught, as regularly, as if they had all been united in their English home. The slight devices with which she cheated herself into the show of a belief that they would soon be reunited--the little preparations for his speedy return, the setting aside of his chair and his books--these, and the solemn prayer at night for one dear prisoner especially, among the many unhappy souls in prison and the shadow of death--were almost the only outspoken reliefs of her heavy mind. She did not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses, akin to mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat and as well attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days. She lost her colour, and the old and intent expression was a constant, not an occasional, thing; otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely. Sometimes, at night on kissing her father, she would burst into the grief she had repressed all day, and would say that her sole reliance, under Heaven, was on him. He always resolutely answered: "Nothing can happen to him without my knowledge, and I know that I can save him, Lucie." They had not made the round of their changed life many weeks, when her father said to her, on coming home one evening: "My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to which Charles can sometimes gain access at three in the afternoon. When he can get to it--which depends on many uncertainties and incidents--he might see you in the street, he thinks, if you stood in a certain place that I can show you. But you will not be able to see him, my poor child, and even if you could, it would be unsafe for you to make a sign of recognition." "O show me the place, my father, and I will go there every day." From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two hours. As the clock struck two, she was there, and at four she turned resignedly away. When it was not too wet or inclement for her child to be with her, they went together; at other times she was alone; but, she never missed a single day. It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street. The hovel of a cutter of wood into lengths for burning, was the only house at that end; all else was wall. On the third day of her being there, he noticed her. "Good day, citizeness." "Good day, citizen." This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It had been established voluntarily some time ago, among the more thorough patriots; but, was now law for everybody. "Walking here again, citizeness?" "You see me, citizen!" The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of gesture (he had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the prison, pointed at the prison, and putting his ten fingers before his face to represent bars, peeped through them jocosely. "But it's not my business," said he. And went on sawing his wood. Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her the moment she appeared. "What? Walking here again, citizeness?" "Yes, citizen." "Ah! A child too! Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness?" "Do I say yes, mamma?" whispered little Lucie, drawing close to her. "Yes, dearest." "Yes, citizen." "Ah! But it's not my business. My work is my business. See my saw! I call it my Little Guillotine. La, la, la; La, la, la! And off his head comes!" The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket. "I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See here again! Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off _her_ head comes! Now, a child. Tickle, tickle; Pickle, pickle! And off _its_ head comes. All the family!" Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket, but it was impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was at work, and not be in his sight. Thenceforth, to secure his good will, she always spoke to him first, and often gave him drink-money, which he readily received. He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had quite forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and in lifting her heart up to her husband, she would come to herself to find him looking at her, with his knee on his bench and his saw stopped in its work. "But it's not my business!" he would generally say at those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again. In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter winds of spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of autumn, and again in the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passed two hours of every day at this place; and every day on leaving it, she kissed the prison wall. Her husband saw her (so she learned from her father) it might be once in five or six times: it might be twice or thrice running: it might be, not for a week or a fortnight together. It was enough that he could and did see her when the chances served, and on that possibility she would have waited out the day, seven days a week. These occupations brought her round to the December month, wherein her father walked among the terrors with a steady head. On a lightly-snowing afternoon she arrived at the usual corner. It was a day of some wild rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen the houses, as she came along, decorated with little pikes, and with little red caps stuck upon them; also, with tricoloured ribbons; also, with the standard inscription (tricoloured letters were the favourite), Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death! The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its whole surface furnished very indifferent space for this legend. He had got somebody to scrawl it up for him, however, who had squeezed Death in with most inappropriate difficulty. On his house-top, he displayed pike and cap, as a good citizen must, and in a window he had stationed his saw inscribed as his "Little Sainte Guillotine"--for the great sharp female was by that time popularly canonised. His shop was shut and he was not there, which was a relief to Lucie, and left her quite alone. But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled movement and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear. A moment afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring round the corner by the prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer hand in hand with The Vengeance. There could not be fewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing like five thousand demons. There was no other music than their own singing. They danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. Men and women danced together, women danced together, men danced together, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they were a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, as they filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, some ghastly apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among them. They advanced, retreated, struck at one another's hands, clutched at one another's heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped. While those were down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spun round together: then the ring broke, and in separate rings of two and four they turned and turned until they all stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the spin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the width of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their hands high up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have been half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen sport--a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry--a healthy pastime changed into a means of angering the blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of the disjointed time. This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie frightened and bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer's house, the feathery snow fell as quietly and lay as white and soft, as if it had never been. "O my father!" for he stood before her when she lifted up the eyes she had momentarily darkened with her hand; "such a cruel, bad sight." "I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don't be frightened! Not one of them would harm you." "I am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I think of my husband, and the mercies of these people--" "We will set him above their mercies very soon. I left him climbing to the window, and I came to tell you. There is no one here to see. You may kiss your hand towards that highest shelving roof." "I do so, father, and I send him my Soul with it!" "You cannot see him, my poor dear?" "No, father," said Lucie, yearning and weeping as she kissed her hand, "no." A footstep in the snow. Madame Defarge. "I salute you, citizeness," from the Doctor. "I salute you, citizen." This in passing. Nothing more. Madame Defarge gone, like a shadow over the white road. "Give me your arm, my love. Pass from here with an air of cheerfulness and courage, for his sake. That was well done;" they had left the spot; "it shall not be in vain. Charles is summoned for to-morrow." "For to-morrow!" "There is no time to lose. I am well prepared, but there are precautions to be taken, that could not be taken until he was actually summoned before the Tribunal. He has not received the notice yet, but I know that he will presently be summoned for to-morrow, and removed to the Conciergerie; I have timely information. You are not afraid?" She could scarcely answer, "I trust in you." "Do so, implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended, my darling; he shall be restored to you within a few hours; I have encompassed him with every protection. I must see Lorry." He stopped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels within hearing. They both knew too well what it meant. One. Two. Three. Three tumbrils faring away with their dread loads over the hushing snow. "I must see Lorry," the Doctor repeated, turning her another way. The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust; had never left it. He and his books were in frequent requisition as to property confiscated and made national. What he could save for the owners, he saved. No better man living to hold fast by what Tellson's had in keeping, and to hold his peace. A murky red and yellow sky, and a rising mist from the Seine, denoted the approach of darkness. It was almost dark when they arrived at the Bank. The stately residence of Monseigneur was altogether blighted and deserted. Above a heap of dust and ashes in the court, ran the letters: National Property. Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death! Who could that be with Mr. Lorry--the owner of the riding-coat upon the chair--who must not be seen? From whom newly arrived, did he come out, agitated and surprised, to take his favourite in his arms? To whom did he appear to repeat her faltering words, when, raising his voice and turning his head towards the door of the room from which he had issued, he said: "Removed to the Conciergerie, and summoned for to-morrow?"

book 3, Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7

The Wood-Sawyer Lucie is unsure for one year and three months whether her husband has been alive or dead. She establishes a routine in their new home, and she keeps herself hopeful by setting aside a chair or books for her husband and otherwise behaving as if he lived there, too. Her father informs her that there is a place that she can stand on the sidewalk during certain hours which is overlooked by a window in the prison which her husband may sometimes look out. Lucie faithfully walks back and forth on that sidewalk for two hours each day. Jacques Four has now become a wood-sawyer and has a shack to cut wood near where Lucie walks. He notices that she is there every day, and he mocks her for knowing someone in the prison, pretending to guillotine the whole family with his saw. During December, a crowd of five hundred including Jacques Four and the Vengeance descend on Lucie while she is walking near the prison. She is frightened, but her father reassures her that they will not harm her. Madame Defarge walks by and salutes them. Charles is summoned to appear in court the next day

As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, "He made shoes." The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is "awry with howling" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie "as if it were the finger of Fate." Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the "golden thread," in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her "sister-woman." But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as "the sign of the regeneration of the human race." Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: "The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder." The executioner was known as "Samson" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the "National Razor which shaved close," punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a "fallen sport." It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts "no" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats "I have saved him," the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from "God Save the King" or "God Save the Queen" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/36.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_7_part_6.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 3.chapter 6

book 3, chapter 6

{"name": "book 3, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7", "summary": "Triumph Charles Darnay is on a list of twenty-three people to be tried the following day. He says goodbye to his friends in prison. The next morning, he is called to the Tribunal, where it seems that criminals are trying honest men. The Defarges are sitting in the front row. Darnay is charged with being an emigrant, and the public cries to take off his head. The fact that he renounced his aristocratic title has no bearing. When he reveals that he is married to Lucie, Doctor Manette's daughter, the crowd calls out in his favor. Gabelle testifies on his behalf, as does Doctor Manette, who points out that far from being sympathetic to the English aristocratic government, that very government had tried him for his life for being a friend of France and America. Darnay is acquitted, and the crowd greets him with rapture. They lead him back to his home, holding him up in a chair. When Lucie comes to meet her freed husband, the crowd dances the Carmagnole around them. Lucie lays her head on her father's breast to thank him, just as he had laid his head on her when she had first met him in Paris", "analysis": "As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, \"He made shoes.\" The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is \"awry with howling\" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie \"as if it were the finger of Fate.\" Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the \"golden thread,\" in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her \"sister-woman.\" But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as \"the sign of the regeneration of the human race.\" Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: \"The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder.\" The executioner was known as \"Samson\" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the \"National Razor which shaved close,\" punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a \"fallen sport.\" It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts \"no\" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats \"I have saved him,\" the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from \"God Save the King\" or \"God Save the Queen\" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true."}

VI. Triumph The dread tribunal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor, and determined Jury, sat every day. Their lists went forth every evening, and were read out by the gaolers of the various prisons to their prisoners. The standard gaoler-joke was, "Come out and listen to the Evening Paper, you inside there!" "Charles Evremonde, called Darnay!" So at last began the Evening Paper at La Force. When a name was called, its owner stepped apart into a spot reserved for those who were announced as being thus fatally recorded. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, had reason to know the usage; he had seen hundreds pass away so. His bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with, glanced over them to assure himself that he had taken his place, and went through the list, making a similar short pause at each name. There were twenty-three names, but only twenty were responded to; for one of the prisoners so summoned had died in gaol and been forgotten, and two had already been guillotined and forgotten. The list was read, in the vaulted chamber where Darnay had seen the associated prisoners on the night of his arrival. Every one of those had perished in the massacre; every human creature he had since cared for and parted with, had died on the scaffold. There were hurried words of farewell and kindness, but the parting was soon over. It was the incident of every day, and the society of La Force were engaged in the preparation of some games of forfeits and a little concert, for that evening. They crowded to the grates and shed tears there; but, twenty places in the projected entertainments had to be refilled, and the time was, at best, short to the lock-up hour, when the common rooms and corridors would be delivered over to the great dogs who kept watch there through the night. The prisoners were far from insensible or unfeeling; their ways arose out of the condition of the time. Similarly, though with a subtle difference, a species of fervour or intoxication, known, without doubt, to have led some persons to brave the guillotine unnecessarily, and to die by it, was not mere boastfulness, but a wild infection of the wildly shaken public mind. In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease--a terrible passing inclination to die of it. And all of us have like wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them. The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark; the night in its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. Next day, fifteen prisoners were put to the bar before Charles Darnay's name was called. All the fifteen were condemned, and the trials of the whole occupied an hour and a half. "Charles Evremonde, called Darnay," was at length arraigned. His judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats; but the rough red cap and tricoloured cockade was the head-dress otherwise prevailing. Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he might have thought that the usual order of things was reversed, and that the felons were trying the honest men. The lowest, cruelest, and worst populace of a city, never without its quantity of low, cruel, and bad, were the directing spirits of the scene: noisily commenting, applauding, disapproving, anticipating, and precipitating the result, without a check. Of the men, the greater part were armed in various ways; of the women, some wore knives, some daggers, some ate and drank as they looked on, many knitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare piece of knitting under her arm as she worked. She was in a front row, by the side of a man whom he had never seen since his arrival at the Barrier, but whom he directly remembered as Defarge. He noticed that she once or twice whispered in his ear, and that she seemed to be his wife; but, what he most noticed in the two figures was, that although they were posted as close to himself as they could be, they never looked towards him. They seemed to be waiting for something with a dogged determination, and they looked at the Jury, but at nothing else. Under the President sat Doctor Manette, in his usual quiet dress. As well as the prisoner could see, he and Mr. Lorry were the only men there, unconnected with the Tribunal, who wore their usual clothes, and had not assumed the coarse garb of the Carmagnole. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, was accused by the public prosecutor as an emigrant, whose life was forfeit to the Republic, under the decree which banished all emigrants on pain of Death. It was nothing that the decree bore date since his return to France. There he was, and there was the decree; he had been taken in France, and his head was demanded. "Take off his head!" cried the audience. "An enemy to the Republic!" The President rang his bell to silence those cries, and asked the prisoner whether it was not true that he had lived many years in England? Undoubtedly it was. Was he not an emigrant then? What did he call himself? Not an emigrant, he hoped, within the sense and spirit of the law. Why not? the President desired to know. Because he had voluntarily relinquished a title that was distasteful to him, and a station that was distasteful to him, and had left his country--he submitted before the word emigrant in the present acceptation by the Tribunal was in use--to live by his own industry in England, rather than on the industry of the overladen people of France. What proof had he of this? He handed in the names of two witnesses; Theophile Gabelle, and Alexandre Manette. But he had married in England? the President reminded him. True, but not an English woman. A citizeness of France? Yes. By birth. Her name and family? "Lucie Manette, only daughter of Doctor Manette, the good physician who sits there." This answer had a happy effect upon the audience. Cries in exaltation of the well-known good physician rent the hall. So capriciously were the people moved, that tears immediately rolled down several ferocious countenances which had been glaring at the prisoner a moment before, as if with impatience to pluck him out into the streets and kill him. On these few steps of his dangerous way, Charles Darnay had set his foot according to Doctor Manette's reiterated instructions. The same cautious counsel directed every step that lay before him, and had prepared every inch of his road. The President asked, why had he returned to France when he did, and not sooner? He had not returned sooner, he replied, simply because he had no means of living in France, save those he had resigned; whereas, in England, he lived by giving instruction in the French language and literature. He had returned when he did, on the pressing and written entreaty of a French citizen, who represented that his life was endangered by his absence. He had come back, to save a citizen's life, and to bear his testimony, at whatever personal hazard, to the truth. Was that criminal in the eyes of the Republic? The populace cried enthusiastically, "No!" and the President rang his bell to quiet them. Which it did not, for they continued to cry "No!" until they left off, of their own will. The President required the name of that citizen. The accused explained that the citizen was his first witness. He also referred with confidence to the citizen's letter, which had been taken from him at the Barrier, but which he did not doubt would be found among the papers then before the President. The Doctor had taken care that it should be there--had assured him that it would be there--and at this stage of the proceedings it was produced and read. Citizen Gabelle was called to confirm it, and did so. Citizen Gabelle hinted, with infinite delicacy and politeness, that in the pressure of business imposed on the Tribunal by the multitude of enemies of the Republic with which it had to deal, he had been slightly overlooked in his prison of the Abbaye--in fact, had rather passed out of the Tribunal's patriotic remembrance--until three days ago; when he had been summoned before it, and had been set at liberty on the Jury's declaring themselves satisfied that the accusation against him was answered, as to himself, by the surrender of the citizen Evremonde, called Darnay. Doctor Manette was next questioned. His high personal popularity, and the clearness of his answers, made a great impression; but, as he proceeded, as he showed that the Accused was his first friend on his release from his long imprisonment; that, the accused had remained in England, always faithful and devoted to his daughter and himself in their exile; that, so far from being in favour with the Aristocrat government there, he had actually been tried for his life by it, as the foe of England and friend of the United States--as he brought these circumstances into view, with the greatest discretion and with the straightforward force of truth and earnestness, the Jury and the populace became one. At last, when he appealed by name to Monsieur Lorry, an English gentleman then and there present, who, like himself, had been a witness on that English trial and could corroborate his account of it, the Jury declared that they had heard enough, and that they were ready with their votes if the President were content to receive them. At every vote (the Jurymen voted aloud and individually), the populace set up a shout of applause. All the voices were in the prisoner's favour, and the President declared him free. Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes with which the populace sometimes gratified their fickleness, or their better impulses towards generosity and mercy, or which they regarded as some set-off against their swollen account of cruel rage. No man can decide now to which of these motives such extraordinary scenes were referable; it is probable, to a blending of all the three, with the second predominating. No sooner was the acquittal pronounced, than tears were shed as freely as blood at another time, and such fraternal embraces were bestowed upon the prisoner by as many of both sexes as could rush at him, that after his long and unwholesome confinement he was in danger of fainting from exhaustion; none the less because he knew very well, that the very same people, carried by another current, would have rushed at him with the very same intensity, to rend him to pieces and strew him over the streets. His removal, to make way for other accused persons who were to be tried, rescued him from these caresses for the moment. Five were to be tried together, next, as enemies of the Republic, forasmuch as they had not assisted it by word or deed. So quick was the Tribunal to compensate itself and the nation for a chance lost, that these five came down to him before he left the place, condemned to die within twenty-four hours. The first of them told him so, with the customary prison sign of Death--a raised finger--and they all added in words, "Long live the Republic!" The five had had, it is true, no audience to lengthen their proceedings, for when he and Doctor Manette emerged from the gate, there was a great crowd about it, in which there seemed to be every face he had seen in Court--except two, for which he looked in vain. On his coming out, the concourse made at him anew, weeping, embracing, and shouting, all by turns and all together, until the very tide of the river on the bank of which the mad scene was acted, seemed to run mad, like the people on the shore. They put him into a great chair they had among them, and which they had taken either out of the Court itself, or one of its rooms or passages. Over the chair they had thrown a red flag, and to the back of it they had bound a pike with a red cap on its top. In this car of triumph, not even the Doctor's entreaties could prevent his being carried to his home on men's shoulders, with a confused sea of red caps heaving about him, and casting up to sight from the stormy deep such wrecks of faces, that he more than once misdoubted his mind being in confusion, and that he was in the tumbril on his way to the Guillotine. In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they met and pointing him out, they carried him on. Reddening the snowy streets with the prevailing Republican colour, in winding and tramping through them, as they had reddened them below the snow with a deeper dye, they carried him thus into the courtyard of the building where he lived. Her father had gone on before, to prepare her, and when her husband stood upon his feet, she dropped insensible in his arms. As he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful head between his face and the brawling crowd, so that his tears and her lips might come together unseen, a few of the people fell to dancing. Instantly, all the rest fell to dancing, and the courtyard overflowed with the Carmagnole. Then, they elevated into the vacant chair a young woman from the crowd to be carried as the Goddess of Liberty, and then swelling and overflowing out into the adjacent streets, and along the river's bank, and over the bridge, the Carmagnole absorbed them every one and whirled them away. After grasping the Doctor's hand, as he stood victorious and proud before him; after grasping the hand of Mr. Lorry, who came panting in breathless from his struggle against the waterspout of the Carmagnole; after kissing little Lucie, who was lifted up to clasp her arms round his neck; and after embracing the ever zealous and faithful Pross who lifted her; he took his wife in his arms, and carried her up to their rooms. "Lucie! My own! I am safe." "O dearest Charles, let me thank God for this on my knees as I have prayed to Him." They all reverently bowed their heads and hearts. When she was again in his arms, he said to her: "And now speak to your father, dearest. No other man in all this France could have done what he has done for me." She laid her head upon her father's breast, as she had laid his poor head on her own breast, long, long ago. He was happy in the return he had made her, he was recompensed for his suffering, he was proud of his strength. "You must not be weak, my darling," he remonstrated; "don't tremble so. I have saved him."

book 3, Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7

Triumph Charles Darnay is on a list of twenty-three people to be tried the following day. He says goodbye to his friends in prison. The next morning, he is called to the Tribunal, where it seems that criminals are trying honest men. The Defarges are sitting in the front row. Darnay is charged with being an emigrant, and the public cries to take off his head. The fact that he renounced his aristocratic title has no bearing. When he reveals that he is married to Lucie, Doctor Manette's daughter, the crowd calls out in his favor. Gabelle testifies on his behalf, as does Doctor Manette, who points out that far from being sympathetic to the English aristocratic government, that very government had tried him for his life for being a friend of France and America. Darnay is acquitted, and the crowd greets him with rapture. They lead him back to his home, holding him up in a chair. When Lucie comes to meet her freed husband, the crowd dances the Carmagnole around them. Lucie lays her head on her father's breast to thank him, just as he had laid his head on her when she had first met him in Paris

As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, "He made shoes." The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is "awry with howling" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie "as if it were the finger of Fate." Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the "golden thread," in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her "sister-woman." But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as "the sign of the regeneration of the human race." Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: "The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder." The executioner was known as "Samson" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the "National Razor which shaved close," punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a "fallen sport." It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts "no" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats "I have saved him," the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from "God Save the King" or "God Save the Queen" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/37.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/A Tale of Two Cities/section_7_part_7.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 3.chapter 7

book 3, chapter 7

{"name": "book 3, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7", "summary": "A Knock at the Door Darnay has had to pay dearly for his food while he was in prison, so the household began to live very frugally. Even so, Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher, who usually went food shopping, had to shop at different stores to keep from raising suspicion or envy of their relative wealth. Before they go shopping, they staunchly pronounce themselves English citizens loyal to the King. Once Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher have departed, four men pound on the door and re-arrest Charles Darnay without giving any reason. They say that he has been denounced by Saint Antoine, specifically by Madame and Monsieur Defarge, as well as one other person", "analysis": "As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, \"He made shoes.\" The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is \"awry with howling\" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie \"as if it were the finger of Fate.\" Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the \"golden thread,\" in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her \"sister-woman.\" But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as \"the sign of the regeneration of the human race.\" Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: \"The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder.\" The executioner was known as \"Samson\" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the \"National Razor which shaved close,\" punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a \"fallen sport.\" It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts \"no\" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats \"I have saved him,\" the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from \"God Save the King\" or \"God Save the Queen\" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true."}

VII. A Knock at the Door "I have saved him." It was not another of the dreams in which he had often come back; he was really here. And yet his wife trembled, and a vague but heavy fear was upon her. All the air round was so thick and dark, the people were so passionately revengeful and fitful, the innocent were so constantly put to death on vague suspicion and black malice, it was so impossible to forget that many as blameless as her husband and as dear to others as he was to her, every day shared the fate from which he had been clutched, that her heart could not be as lightened of its load as she felt it ought to be. The shadows of the wintry afternoon were beginning to fall, and even now the dreadful carts were rolling through the streets. Her mind pursued them, looking for him among the Condemned; and then she clung closer to his real presence and trembled more. Her father, cheering her, showed a compassionate superiority to this woman's weakness, which was wonderful to see. No garret, no shoemaking, no One Hundred and Five, North Tower, now! He had accomplished the task he had set himself, his promise was redeemed, he had saved Charles. Let them all lean upon him. Their housekeeping was of a very frugal kind: not only because that was the safest way of life, involving the least offence to the people, but because they were not rich, and Charles, throughout his imprisonment, had had to pay heavily for his bad food, and for his guard, and towards the living of the poorer prisoners. Partly on this account, and partly to avoid a domestic spy, they kept no servant; the citizen and citizeness who acted as porters at the courtyard gate, rendered them occasional service; and Jerry (almost wholly transferred to them by Mr. Lorry) had become their daily retainer, and had his bed there every night. It was an ordinance of the Republic One and Indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, that on the door or doorpost of every house, the name of every inmate must be legibly inscribed in letters of a certain size, at a certain convenient height from the ground. Mr. Jerry Cruncher's name, therefore, duly embellished the doorpost down below; and, as the afternoon shadows deepened, the owner of that name himself appeared, from overlooking a painter whom Doctor Manette had employed to add to the list the name of Charles Evremonde, called Darnay. In the universal fear and distrust that darkened the time, all the usual harmless ways of life were changed. In the Doctor's little household, as in very many others, the articles of daily consumption that were wanted were purchased every evening, in small quantities and at various small shops. To avoid attracting notice, and to give as little occasion as possible for talk and envy, was the general desire. For some months past, Miss Pross and Mr. Cruncher had discharged the office of purveyors; the former carrying the money; the latter, the basket. Every afternoon at about the time when the public lamps were lighted, they fared forth on this duty, and made and brought home such purchases as were needful. Although Miss Pross, through her long association with a French family, might have known as much of their language as of her own, if she had had a mind, she had no mind in that direction; consequently she knew no more of that "nonsense" (as she was pleased to call it) than Mr. Cruncher did. So her manner of marketing was to plump a noun-substantive at the head of a shopkeeper without any introduction in the nature of an article, and, if it happened not to be the name of the thing she wanted, to look round for that thing, lay hold of it, and hold on by it until the bargain was concluded. She always made a bargain for it, by holding up, as a statement of its just price, one finger less than the merchant held up, whatever his number might be. "Now, Mr. Cruncher," said Miss Pross, whose eyes were red with felicity; "if you are ready, I am." Jerry hoarsely professed himself at Miss Pross's service. He had worn all his rust off long ago, but nothing would file his spiky head down. "There's all manner of things wanted," said Miss Pross, "and we shall have a precious time of it. We want wine, among the rest. Nice toasts these Redheads will be drinking, wherever we buy it." "It will be much the same to your knowledge, miss, I should think," retorted Jerry, "whether they drink your health or the Old Un's." "Who's he?" said Miss Pross. Mr. Cruncher, with some diffidence, explained himself as meaning "Old Nick's." "Ha!" said Miss Pross, "it doesn't need an interpreter to explain the meaning of these creatures. They have but one, and it's Midnight Murder, and Mischief." "Hush, dear! Pray, pray, be cautious!" cried Lucie. "Yes, yes, yes, I'll be cautious," said Miss Pross; "but I may say among ourselves, that I do hope there will be no oniony and tobaccoey smotherings in the form of embracings all round, going on in the streets. Now, Ladybird, never you stir from that fire till I come back! Take care of the dear husband you have recovered, and don't move your pretty head from his shoulder as you have it now, till you see me again! May I ask a question, Doctor Manette, before I go?" "I think you may take that liberty," the Doctor answered, smiling. "For gracious sake, don't talk about Liberty; we have quite enough of that," said Miss Pross. "Hush, dear! Again?" Lucie remonstrated. "Well, my sweet," said Miss Pross, nodding her head emphatically, "the short and the long of it is, that I am a subject of His Most Gracious Majesty King George the Third;" Miss Pross curtseyed at the name; "and as such, my maxim is, Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God save the King!" Mr. Cruncher, in an access of loyalty, growlingly repeated the words after Miss Pross, like somebody at church. "I am glad you have so much of the Englishman in you, though I wish you had never taken that cold in your voice," said Miss Pross, approvingly. "But the question, Doctor Manette. Is there"--it was the good creature's way to affect to make light of anything that was a great anxiety with them all, and to come at it in this chance manner--"is there any prospect yet, of our getting out of this place?" "I fear not yet. It would be dangerous for Charles yet." "Heigh-ho-hum!" said Miss Pross, cheerfully repressing a sigh as she glanced at her darling's golden hair in the light of the fire, "then we must have patience and wait: that's all. We must hold up our heads and fight low, as my brother Solomon used to say. Now, Mr. Cruncher!--Don't you move, Ladybird!" They went out, leaving Lucie, and her husband, her father, and the child, by a bright fire. Mr. Lorry was expected back presently from the Banking House. Miss Pross had lighted the lamp, but had put it aside in a corner, that they might enjoy the fire-light undisturbed. Little Lucie sat by her grandfather with her hands clasped through his arm: and he, in a tone not rising much above a whisper, began to tell her a story of a great and powerful Fairy who had opened a prison-wall and let out a captive who had once done the Fairy a service. All was subdued and quiet, and Lucie was more at ease than she had been. "What is that?" she cried, all at once. "My dear!" said her father, stopping in his story, and laying his hand on hers, "command yourself. What a disordered state you are in! The least thing--nothing--startles you! _You_, your father's daughter!" "I thought, my father," said Lucie, excusing herself, with a pale face and in a faltering voice, "that I heard strange feet upon the stairs." "My love, the staircase is as still as Death." As he said the word, a blow was struck upon the door. "Oh father, father. What can this be! Hide Charles. Save him!" "My child," said the Doctor, rising, and laying his hand upon her shoulder, "I _have_ saved him. What weakness is this, my dear! Let me go to the door." He took the lamp in his hand, crossed the two intervening outer rooms, and opened it. A rude clattering of feet over the floor, and four rough men in red caps, armed with sabres and pistols, entered the room. "The Citizen Evremonde, called Darnay," said the first. "Who seeks him?" answered Darnay. "I seek him. We seek him. I know you, Evremonde; I saw you before the Tribunal to-day. You are again the prisoner of the Republic." The four surrounded him, where he stood with his wife and child clinging to him. "Tell me how and why am I again a prisoner?" "It is enough that you return straight to the Conciergerie, and will know to-morrow. You are summoned for to-morrow." Doctor Manette, whom this visitation had so turned into stone, that he stood with the lamp in his hand, as if he were a statue made to hold it, moved after these words were spoken, put the lamp down, and confronting the speaker, and taking him, not ungently, by the loose front of his red woollen shirt, said: "You know him, you have said. Do you know me?" "Yes, I know you, Citizen Doctor." "We all know you, Citizen Doctor," said the other three. He looked abstractedly from one to another, and said, in a lower voice, after a pause: "Will you answer his question to me then? How does this happen?" "Citizen Doctor," said the first, reluctantly, "he has been denounced to the Section of Saint Antoine. This citizen," pointing out the second who had entered, "is from Saint Antoine." The citizen here indicated nodded his head, and added: "He is accused by Saint Antoine." "Of what?" asked the Doctor. "Citizen Doctor," said the first, with his former reluctance, "ask no more. If the Republic demands sacrifices from you, without doubt you as a good patriot will be happy to make them. The Republic goes before all. The People is supreme. Evremonde, we are pressed." "One word," the Doctor entreated. "Will you tell me who denounced him?" "It is against rule," answered the first; "but you can ask Him of Saint Antoine here." The Doctor turned his eyes upon that man. Who moved uneasily on his feet, rubbed his beard a little, and at length said: "Well! Truly it is against rule. But he is denounced--and gravely--by the Citizen and Citizeness Defarge. And by one other." "What other?" "Do _you_ ask, Citizen Doctor?" "Yes." "Then," said he of Saint Antoine, with a strange look, "you will be answered to-morrow. Now, I am dumb!"

book 3, Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410065304/https://www.gradesaver.com/tale-of-two-cities/study-guide/summary-book-iii-chapters-1-7

A Knock at the Door Darnay has had to pay dearly for his food while he was in prison, so the household began to live very frugally. Even so, Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher, who usually went food shopping, had to shop at different stores to keep from raising suspicion or envy of their relative wealth. Before they go shopping, they staunchly pronounce themselves English citizens loyal to the King. Once Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher have departed, four men pound on the door and re-arrest Charles Darnay without giving any reason. They say that he has been denounced by Saint Antoine, specifically by Madame and Monsieur Defarge, as well as one other person

As Darnay travels through France, however, he recreates the journey to prison that Dr. Manette made long ago. Through this journey the reader receives a wider view of how the Revolution has affected society as a whole. The bloodthirstiness of the people has become routine, and it does not even need to be stirred up by a mob. Moreover, Darnay's escorts are irresponsible, and one of them is an alcoholic. Eventually he is thrown in prison, and soon after into solitary confinement, just as Dr. Manette was. All this happens without explanation. Thus Dickens is able to show the image of Darnay, in the same situation as Dr. Manette, pacing and saying, "He made shoes." The two central themes of this chapter are reversals and death. The incarceration of aristocrats has become so common that no one in the street even notices Darnay being conducted to jail; it is as normal for an aristocrat to go to prison as it is for a laborer to go to work. Although Darnay has an understandable fear of the sort of characters he might find in prison, the refined members of society are jailed by coarse and vulgar men, rather than the other way around. Death is omnipresent in French society, and Dickens describes the imprisoned gentlemen as ghosts. The French Revolution has killed off the traits that were admirable in the French people, and the prison is filled with ghosts of beauty, stateliness, pride, and so on. Their jailors are also associated with death, but of a less attractive type. Their puffy faces recall victims of drowning. By Chapter 2, the force of the mob is revealed as even more terrifying. Whereas Dickens formerly compared them to the natural forces of fire and water, they are now depicted in terms of savagery. Their thirst for blood dehumanizes them, and false mustaches and eyebrows stuck on their faces hide their identities so that they can kill with impunity. The crowd is "awry with howling" and seems bestial in its rage. The transgressive and hedonistic nature of the mob is illustrated not only in that the people's faces are smeared in sweat, blood, and wine, but also in that the men wear women's lace, silk, and ribbon on their clothing. The image of blood on stone is consistent throughout the novel in its association with the violence in France; the blood spattered on the grindstone connects this scene to the spilled wine on the cobblestones of Saint Antoine, as well as to the murder of Monseigneur . The position of the Manettes and Darnay in revolutionary France is complicated. Despite the fact that they all reside in England, they are all French, and as such they are not as clearly opposed to the Revolution as most emigrants are. Doctor Manette and Darnay have the most torn sympathies, with Manette angry at the aristocratic regime that imprisoned him but horrified at the excesses of the revolutionaries, and with Darnay concerned about the oppression that the peasants underwent but in fear for his life, being ultimately of the aristocratic class. A threatening shadow in Chapter 3 is thrown by Madame Defarge, who only becomes more terrible as the novel continues. Her incitement of her husband to violence in previous chapters has given her the awfulness of Lady Macbeth, and her actions in Chapter 3 remain ominous. She interrupts her knitting to point a needle at little Lucie "as if it were the finger of Fate." Her sternness, combined with the fact that the Fates had the power to cut a life short if they wanted to, does not bode well for little Lucie. Lucie is set directly into opposition with Madame Defarge for the first time in this chapter, and the contrast is described in terms of dark and light. Madame Defarge has dark, glistening hair emblematic of her dark nature, whereas Lucie is still the "golden thread," in her hair color and her sentimental, moral goodness. The darkness of Madame Defarge's nature is extended as a threat in this chapter when she stands over little Lucie, throwing a shadow over her. Recognizing the threat to her child, Lucie kneels next to little Lucie to protect her, which throws darkness over both of them. Madame Defarge seems to win the battle, at least in this chapter, because her darkness overwhelms their light. Lucie tries to appeal to Madame Defarge's femininity, highlighting the supposed bond between them on this count by calling her "sister-woman." But Madame Defarge has been dehumanized and dismisses these claims, always arguing that class struggle is more important than an individual's suffering. The theme of resurrection is raised once again in Chapter 4. The Doctor's newfound power is an affirmation of his full resurrection. The power of resurrection is depicted as something transferable, and Doctor Manette hopes to use his own resurrection to affect that of his son-in-law. Now the role reversal of Dr. Manette and the Darnays is complete. This time, Dr. Manette must protect the prisoner and his family, when Lucie once protected the prisoner. In his power as temporary head of the family, Dr. Manette must protect Lucie, but he also does it to repay Lucie for her own loving care. In short, he is a new provider of magic: he protects Darnay and Lucie, and he motivates the mobs to peace. He has done precisely what the weak Darnay wanted to do, but could not. The defining characteristic of the post-revolutionary society is its backwardness, demonstrated by the fact that criminals jail virtuous men rather than the other way around, the opposite of the storming of the Bastille. The inversions are evident in other aspects of the Manettes' experience in Paris. For example, the Doctor's imprisonment, which had previously been a source of darkness and shame, becomes the primary source of his pride and power. The very conception of resurrection is turned on its head in this chapter, with the description of the guillotine as "the sign of the regeneration of the human race." Dickens's ironic tone in describing a killing machine as a source of resurrection is made more biting by the fact that this was a common belief among revolutionaries, who wore miniatures of it on necklaces in place of a cross. Dickens disapproves of this use of religious imagery in the secular French Republic. Describing the guillotine he writes: "The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder." The executioner was known as "Samson" after the strong man in the Bible. The French Samson's blindness indicates that his work is counterproductive compared with what is intended by God. He also refers to the guillotine as the "National Razor which shaved close," punning on the part of the story of Samson in which he takes revenge on the Philistines for blinding him after a betraying woman named Delilah cut his hair. In Chapter 5, the Carmagnole was a dance specific to revolutionary France. It was an equalizing and wild dance, executed in a circle with the combinations of dancers constantly changing. The horror of the French Revolution is not only evident in its violence, but also in the role reversals and transgressions that the revolutionaries engage in. Dances tended to be organized in pairs, following a rigid pattern. The revolutionaries smash these patterns, with men dancing with women, women with women, and men with men. Dickens is more repelled by this sort of savagery than of an originally savage society, calling the dance a "fallen sport." It is repulsive to him because it represents the breakdown of an order that existed, rather than the absence of order to begin with. The mender of roads has now transformed into a completely different person, the wood-sawyer. He has fully adopted the revolutionary fervor and has changed professions to prove it. One he fixed things that brought people together as the road-mender; now he kills and divides as the wood-sawyer. Lucie's weakness in such a violent world is brought home to her in the wood-sawyer's metaphor of cutting the family. Although the wood-sawyer has a lot of influence in the mob, there is still one larger than him - Madame Defarge, who walks by quietly, casting shadows. The court scene in chapter 6 is one of the many manifestations of Dickens's dread of the power of mobs. Although the trial is ostensibly run by the president, it is really the reaction of the crowd to the trial that decides the result. When Darnay asks if it is a crime to hazard his life to save another French citizen, the populace shouts "no" and refuses to be silenced by the president's bell, continuing to shout until the shouting dies out of its own accord. The danger of this power is in the fickle nature of the crowd, who call for blood one moment and in the next moment cry in sympathy with the prisoner. In this upside-down society, triumph is uncomfortably akin to its opposite. The mob descends on Darnay when he is acquitted in the exact same way that they would have if he had been condemned, with only slightly different results. The pike-decorated chair that the crowd places Darnay on seems more ominous than celebratory. The knowledge that the same crowd could just as easily decide to tear him to pieces almost makes Darnay faint, and the triumphal procession back to his home is so similar to the procession to the guillotine that Darnay has to remind himself which one he is involved in. The connections between this trial and Darnay's trial in England are clear. As in England, Darnay's trial in France is also of treason - a class treason, of being a noble when all others are poor and equal. Being a man of two nations has troubled him in both trials - in England because of his French roots, and in France because of his years in England. In both trials, he was captured because he went on errands to save the family honor. Fortunately, this trial resembles the English trial in his triumphant departure on the arms of the wild crowd. In this third mob scene, the crowd that would have killed him now carries him home. Dickens repeats "I have saved him," the last line of Chapter 6, as the first line of Chapter 7. To the readers of his serialized novel, it would have been a foreboding last line. The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is the mystery of who the third person to denounce Darnay is. Miss Pross's pledge of allegiance to the King before she exits the shop is drawn directly from "God Save the King" or "God Save the Queen" , a British patriotic anthem. Before the Defarges enter, Lucie thinks that she hears footsteps on the stairs. This again ties the Defarges' malevolent intervention into her life with her previous fears of the echoing footsteps in her London home. Her earlier fancy that the footsteps that echo outside her house portended people coming to interfere in her life now comes true.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/A Tale of Two Cities/section_16_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 11

book 2, chapter 11

{"name": "Volume II, Chapter Eleven - A Companion Picture", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-2-chapter-11", "summary": "It's late at night. Sydney Carton is working. Stryver is drinking. He's so happy about drinking, in fact, that he asks Carton to make another bowl of punch for the two of them. He has news. Stryver, it seems, has decided to marry. Carton knows Stryver pretty well. He asks if the woman has money. Stryver takes Carton to task for being such a cynic. He's actually fallen in love this time. In fact, Stryver's a bit worried that Carton won't like his choice of a bride. Once upon a time, Carton spoke slightingly of the woman whom Stryver has decided to make his bride. Carton starts a little bit. Could Stryver mean.... Yes. Stryver means to marry Lucie. Apparently, Stryver's willing to overlook her poverty. He's pretty magnanimous about the whole thing. Lucie will benefit a lot from the marriage, he thinks, but he's willing to take her, anyway. We just want to put our opinion on the record: Stryver's a pompous fool. Carton thinks so, too. While Stryver tells Carton about his plans, he also tries to dispense some free advice on how he thinks Carton should lead his own life. Perhaps Carton could find someone like...well, Lucie to marry. Lucie? Carton jumps uncomfortably. Stryver continues to offer unwelcome advice about Carton's love life. Luckily, Carton chooses to ignore him.", "analysis": ""}

XI. A Companion Picture "Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same night, or morning, to his jackal; "mix another bowl of punch; I have something to say to you." Sydney had been working double tides that night, and the night before, and the night before that, and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver's papers before the setting in of the long vacation. The clearance was effected at last; the Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up; everything was got rid of until November should come with its fogs atmospheric, and fogs legal, and bring grist to the mill again. Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much application. It had taken a deal of extra wet-towelling to pull him through the night; a correspondingly extra quantity of wine had preceded the towelling; and he was in a very damaged condition, as he now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped it at intervals for the last six hours. "Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?" said Stryver the portly, with his hands in his waistband, glancing round from the sofa where he lay on his back. "I am." "Now, look here! I am going to tell you something that will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry." "_Do_ you?" "Yes. And not for money. What do you say now?" "I don't feel disposed to say much. Who is she?" "Guess." "Do I know her?" "Guess." "I am not going to guess, at five o'clock in the morning, with my brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner." "Well then, I'll tell you," said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting posture. "Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you, because you are such an insensible dog." "And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, "are such a sensitive and poetical spirit--" "Come!" rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, "though I don't prefer any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know better), still I am a tenderer sort of fellow than _you_." "You are a luckier, if you mean that." "I don't mean that. I mean I am a man of more--more--" "Say gallantry, while you are about it," suggested Carton. "Well! I'll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man," said Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as he made the punch, "who cares more to be agreeable, who takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better how to be agreeable, in a woman's society, than you do." "Go on," said Sydney Carton. "No; but before I go on," said Stryver, shaking his head in his bullying way, "I'll have this out with you. You've been at Doctor Manette's house as much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your moroseness there! Your manners have been of that silent and sullen and hangdog kind, that, upon my life and soul, I have been ashamed of you, Sydney!" "It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar, to be ashamed of anything," returned Sydney; "you ought to be much obliged to me." "You shall not get off in that way," rejoined Stryver, shouldering the rejoinder at him; "no, Sydney, it's my duty to tell you--and I tell you to your face to do you good--that you are a devilish ill-conditioned fellow in that sort of society. You are a disagreeable fellow." Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and laughed. "Look at me!" said Stryver, squaring himself; "I have less need to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in circumstances. Why do I do it?" "I never saw you do it yet," muttered Carton. "I do it because it's politic; I do it on principle. And look at me! I get on." "You don't get on with your account of your matrimonial intentions," answered Carton, with a careless air; "I wish you would keep to that. As to me--will you never understand that I am incorrigible?" He asked the question with some appearance of scorn. "You have no business to be incorrigible," was his friend's answer, delivered in no very soothing tone. "I have no business to be, at all, that I know of," said Sydney Carton. "Who is the lady?" "Now, don't let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, "because I know you don't mean half you say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance. I make this little preface, because you once mentioned the young lady to me in slighting terms." "I did?" "Certainly; and in these chambers." Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend. "You made mention of the young lady as a golden-haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette. If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a little resentful of your employing such a designation; but you are not. You want that sense altogether; therefore I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures: or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music." Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by bumpers, looking at his friend. "Now you know all about it, Syd," said Mr. Stryver. "I don't care about fortune: she is a charming creature, and I have made up my mind to please myself: on the whole, I think I can afford to please myself. She will have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly rising man, and a man of some distinction: it is a piece of good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune. Are you astonished?" Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I be astonished?" "You approve?" Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I not approve?" "Well!" said his friend Stryver, "you take it more easily than I fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my behalf than I thought you would be; though, to be sure, you know well enough by this time that your ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong will. Yes, Sydney, I have had enough of this style of life, with no other as a change from it; I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man to have a home when he feels inclined to go to it (when he doesn't, he can stay away), and I feel that Miss Manette will tell well in any station, and will always do me credit. So I have made up my mind. And now, Sydney, old boy, I want to say a word to _you_ about _your_ prospects. You are in a bad way, you know; you really are in a bad way. You don't know the value of money, you live hard, you'll knock up one of these days, and be ill and poor; you really ought to think about a nurse." The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made him look twice as big as he was, and four times as offensive. "Now, let me recommend you," pursued Stryver, "to look it in the face. I have looked it in the face, in my different way; look it in the face, you, in your different way. Marry. Provide somebody to take care of you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of women's society, nor understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find out somebody. Find out some respectable woman with a little property--somebody in the landlady way, or lodging-letting way--and marry her, against a rainy day. That's the kind of thing for _you_. Now think of it, Sydney." "I'll think of it," said Sydney.

Volume II, Chapter Eleven - A Companion Picture

https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-2-chapter-11

It's late at night. Sydney Carton is working. Stryver is drinking. He's so happy about drinking, in fact, that he asks Carton to make another bowl of punch for the two of them. He has news. Stryver, it seems, has decided to marry. Carton knows Stryver pretty well. He asks if the woman has money. Stryver takes Carton to task for being such a cynic. He's actually fallen in love this time. In fact, Stryver's a bit worried that Carton won't like his choice of a bride. Once upon a time, Carton spoke slightingly of the woman whom Stryver has decided to make his bride. Carton starts a little bit. Could Stryver mean.... Yes. Stryver means to marry Lucie. Apparently, Stryver's willing to overlook her poverty. He's pretty magnanimous about the whole thing. Lucie will benefit a lot from the marriage, he thinks, but he's willing to take her, anyway. We just want to put our opinion on the record: Stryver's a pompous fool. Carton thinks so, too. While Stryver tells Carton about his plans, he also tries to dispense some free advice on how he thinks Carton should lead his own life. Perhaps Carton could find someone like...well, Lucie to marry. Lucie? Carton jumps uncomfortably. Stryver continues to offer unwelcome advice about Carton's love life. Luckily, Carton chooses to ignore him.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/23.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/A Tale of Two Cities/section_22_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 17

book 2, chapter 17

{"name": "Volume II, Chapter Seventeen - One Night", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-2-chapter-17", "summary": "London. The night before Lucie's wedding. Lucie sits by her father's side underneath a tree in their yard. She's very, very happy. She worries, however, that her father will be made unhappy by her upcoming marriage. Asking to be reassured that nothing will be changed by her marriage, she begs her father to tell her if he will be at all unhappy in the future. Dr. Manette assures Lucie that he will be happier if she's fully happy. After all, he realizes that she's devoted herself to him. He wouldn't want her life to be spent completely in tending for an old man. As he sits looking at the moon, Dr. Manette remembers the times that the moon was the only thing he could see from his prison window. He tells Lucie that he used to look at the moon and dream of the child whom he'd abandoned when he was sent to prison. Imagining that she'd forgotten him completely, the doctor used to think that the child would grow up without any thought of him troubling her mind. Lucie interrupts him. She's troubled by the thought that he could imagine her to be uncaring. Dr. Manette gently stops her. At other times, he explains, he would imagine his daughter leading him out of his prison cell into the world. This vision, he insisted, was a specter. Lucie struggles to understand all of this. Continuing, the doctor says that, at other times, he imagined his child with a full and happy life--one that he came into when he left prison. That, Lucie recognizes, was his dream of her. The next day, Lucie will get married. No one is invited to the ceremony but Mr. Lorry. Miss Pross will be there, as well. That night, Miss Pross, Lucie, and the doctor have a cheerful supper together. After the doctor goes to bed, Lucie creeps into his room to check on him. He's sleeping soundly. Relieved, she goes to sleep herself.", "analysis": ""}

XVII. One Night Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves. Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father, and they sat alone under the plane-tree. "You are happy, my dear father?" "Quite, my child." They had said little, though they had been there a long time. When it was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged herself in her usual work, nor had she read to him. She had employed herself in both ways, at his side under the tree, many and many a time; but, this time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so. "And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeply happy in the love that Heaven has so blessed--my love for Charles, and Charles's love for me. But, if my life were not to be still consecrated to you, or if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy and self-reproachful now than I can tell you. Even as it is--" Even as it was, she could not command her voice. In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face upon his breast. In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its coming and its going. "Dearest dear! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite, quite sure, no new affections of mine, and no new duties of mine, will ever interpose between us? _I_ know it well, but do you know it? In your own heart, do you feel quite certain?" Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could scarcely have assumed, "Quite sure, my darling! More than that," he added, as he tenderly kissed her: "my future is far brighter, Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it could have been--nay, than it ever was--without it." "If I could hope _that_, my father!--" "Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain it is, my dear, that it should be so. You, devoted and young, cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be wasted--" She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and repeated the word. "--wasted, my child--should not be wasted, struck aside from the natural order of things--for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?" "If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite happy with you." He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy without Charles, having seen him; and replied: "My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had not been Charles, it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other, I should have been the cause, and then the dark part of my life would have cast its shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on you." It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him refer to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new sensation while his words were in her ears; and she remembered it long afterwards. "See!" said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon. "I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dull and lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines with which I could intersect them." He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looked at the moon, "It was twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in." The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her in the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over. "I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had killed it. Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his father. (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance was unbearable.) Whether it was a son who would never know his father's story; who might even live to weigh the possibility of his father's having disappeared of his own will and act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman." She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand. "I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful of me--rather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a blank." "My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child." "You, Lucie? It is out of the Consolation and restoration you have brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us and the moon on this last night.--What did I say just now?" "She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you." "So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence have touched me in a different way--have affected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its foundations could--I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I never held her in my arms; it stood between the little grated window and the door. But, you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of?" "The figure was not; the--the--image; the fancy?" "No. That was another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense of sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too--as you have--but was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think? I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions." His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition. "In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her married life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father. My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active, cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded it all." "I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love that was I." "And she showed me her children," said the Doctor of Beauvais, "and they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me. When they passed a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me; I imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things. But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and blessed her." "I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless me as fervently to-morrow?" "Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the happiness that I have known with you, and that we have before us." He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked Heaven for having bestowed her on him. By-and-bye, they went into the house. There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry; there was even to be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage was to make no change in their place of residence; they had been able to extend it, by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more. Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only three at table, and Miss Pross made the third. He regretted that Charles was not there; was more than half disposed to object to the loving little plot that kept him away; and drank to him affectionately. So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night, and they separated. But, in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucie came downstairs again, and stole into his room; not free from unshaped fears, beforehand. All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; and he lay asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and his hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle in the shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips to his; then, leaned over him, and looked at him. Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night. She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer that she might ever be as true to him as her love aspired to be, and as his sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of the leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as her lips had moved in praying for him.

Volume II, Chapter Seventeen - One Night

https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-2-chapter-17

London. The night before Lucie's wedding. Lucie sits by her father's side underneath a tree in their yard. She's very, very happy. She worries, however, that her father will be made unhappy by her upcoming marriage. Asking to be reassured that nothing will be changed by her marriage, she begs her father to tell her if he will be at all unhappy in the future. Dr. Manette assures Lucie that he will be happier if she's fully happy. After all, he realizes that she's devoted herself to him. He wouldn't want her life to be spent completely in tending for an old man. As he sits looking at the moon, Dr. Manette remembers the times that the moon was the only thing he could see from his prison window. He tells Lucie that he used to look at the moon and dream of the child whom he'd abandoned when he was sent to prison. Imagining that she'd forgotten him completely, the doctor used to think that the child would grow up without any thought of him troubling her mind. Lucie interrupts him. She's troubled by the thought that he could imagine her to be uncaring. Dr. Manette gently stops her. At other times, he explains, he would imagine his daughter leading him out of his prison cell into the world. This vision, he insisted, was a specter. Lucie struggles to understand all of this. Continuing, the doctor says that, at other times, he imagined his child with a full and happy life--one that he came into when he left prison. That, Lucie recognizes, was his dream of her. The next day, Lucie will get married. No one is invited to the ceremony but Mr. Lorry. Miss Pross will be there, as well. That night, Miss Pross, Lucie, and the doctor have a cheerful supper together. After the doctor goes to bed, Lucie creeps into his room to check on him. He's sleeping soundly. Relieved, she goes to sleep herself.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/A Tale of Two Cities/section_23_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 18

book 2, chapter 18

{"name": "Volume II, Chapter Eighteen - Nine Days", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-2-chapter-18", "summary": "It's the day of the wedding. Everyone is ready to head to the church. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross chat amicably together. By now, they're actually pretty good friends. Darnay is in the doctor's room, having a last-minute discussion before the wedding. Suddenly, the doctor emerges from his room. He's white as a sheet. Nothing else seems to be the matter, however. He doesn't say anything. Lucie takes his arm. Together, they head to the church. After the wedding, Lucie and Darnay leave for their honeymoon. Dr. Manette helps Lucie into the carriage, and then the three older people walk back to the Manettes' house. Mr. Lorry glances worriedly at the doctor. The old scared look has returned to his face. Advising Miss Pross to leave the doctor in peace for the time being, Mr. Lorry decides that he'll return later in the night to check on the doctor. Sure enough, when he comes back later that evening, Dr. Manette is holed up in his room, working furiously at making shoes. When Mr. Lorry tries to call out to him, the doctor doesn't even recognize his old friend. Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry hold a hurried conference. They don't want to disturb Lucie on her honeymoon, so they send her a letter supposedly written by her father. They also agree to keep a constant watch on the doctor for a few days. Maybe he'll snap out of it. On the first night, however, that doesn't happen. Dr. Manette takes food when it's given to him, but otherwise he just works at his bench. He doesn't recognize anyone. The same thing happens the next day. And the next. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross try to talk to the doctor. He listens...but he never replies. After nine days, the doctor hasn't shaken out of his relapse. If anything, he's gotten more and more skillful at making shoes. With growing terror, Mr. Lorry watches his old friend regress further and further into his prison-identity.", "analysis": ""}

XVIII. Nine Days The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the closed door of the Doctor's room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross--to whom the event, through a gradual process of reconcilement to the inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom. "And so," said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently admire the bride, and who had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet, pretty dress; "and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought you across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me! How little I thought what I was doing! How lightly I valued the obligation I was conferring on my friend Mr. Charles!" "You didn't mean it," remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Pross, "and therefore how could you know it? Nonsense!" "Really? Well; but don't cry," said the gentle Mr. Lorry. "I am not crying," said Miss Pross; "_you_ are." "I, my Pross?" (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant with her, on occasion.) "You were, just now; I saw you do it, and I don't wonder at it. Such a present of plate as you have made 'em, is enough to bring tears into anybody's eyes. There's not a fork or a spoon in the collection," said Miss Pross, "that I didn't cry over, last night after the box came, till I couldn't see it." "I am highly gratified," said Mr. Lorry, "though, upon my honour, I had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance invisible to any one. Dear me! This is an occasion that makes a man speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To think that there might have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time these fifty years almost!" "Not at all!" From Miss Pross. "You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?" asked the gentleman of that name. "Pooh!" rejoined Miss Pross; "you were a bachelor in your cradle." "Well!" observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig, "that seems probable, too." "And you were cut out for a bachelor," pursued Miss Pross, "before you were put in your cradle." "Then, I think," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was very unhandsomely dealt with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my pattern. Enough! Now, my dear Lucie," drawing his arm soothingly round her waist, "I hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to lose the final opportunity of saying something to you that you wish to hear. You leave your good father, my dear, in hands as earnest and as loving as your own; he shall be taken every conceivable care of; during the next fortnight, while you are in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson's shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking) before him. And when, at the fortnight's end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband, on your other fortnight's trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now, I hear Somebody's step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear girl with an old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Somebody comes to claim his own." For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at the well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then laid the bright golden hair against his little brown wig, with a genuine tenderness and delicacy which, if such things be old-fashioned, were as old as Adam. The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came out with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale--which had not been the case when they went in together--that no vestige of colour was to be seen in his face. But, in the composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to the shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of avoidance and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold wind. He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her down-stairs to the chariot which Mr. Lorry had hired in honour of the day. The rest followed in another carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring church, where no strange eyes looked on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette were happily married. Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling, glanced on the bride's hand, which were newly released from the dark obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry's pockets. They returned home to breakfast, and all went well, and in due course the golden hair that had mingled with the poor shoemaker's white locks in the Paris garret, were mingled with them again in the morning sunlight, on the threshold of the door at parting. It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But her father cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her enfolding arms, "Take her, Charles! She is yours!" And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window, and she was gone. The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross, were left quite alone. It was when they turned into the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great change to have come over the Doctor; as if the golden arm uplifted there, had struck him a poisoned blow. He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might have been expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone. But, it was the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry; and through his absent manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his own room when they got up-stairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded of Defarge the wine-shop keeper, and the starlight ride. "I think," he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious consideration, "I think we had best not speak to him just now, or at all disturb him. I must look in at Tellson's; so I will go there at once and come back presently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country, and dine there, and all will be well." It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson's, than to look out of Tellson's. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he ascended the old staircase alone, having asked no question of the servant; going thus into the Doctor's rooms, he was stopped by a low sound of knocking. "Good God!" he said, with a start. "What's that?" Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. "O me, O me! All is lost!" cried she, wringing her hands. "What is to be told to Ladybird? He doesn't know me, and is making shoes!" Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the Doctor's room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent down, and he was very busy. "Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette!" The Doctor looked at him for a moment--half inquiringly, half as if he were angry at being spoken to--and bent over his work again. He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was open at the throat, as it used to be when he did that work; and even the old haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked hard--impatiently--as if in some sense of having been interrupted. Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was lying by him, and asked what it was. "A young lady's walking shoe," he muttered, without looking up. "It ought to have been finished long ago. Let it be." "But, Doctor Manette. Look at me!" He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, without pausing in his work. "You know me, my dear friend? Think again. This is not your proper occupation. Think, dear friend!" Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked up, for an instant at a time, when he was requested to do so; but, no persuasion would extract a word from him. He worked, and worked, and worked, in silence, and words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echoless wall, or on the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Lorry could discover, was, that he sometimes furtively looked up without being asked. In that, there seemed a faint expression of curiosity or perplexity--as though he were trying to reconcile some doubts in his mind. Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr. Lorry, as important above all others; the first, that this must be kept secret from Lucie; the second, that it must be kept secret from all who knew him. In conjunction with Miss Pross, he took immediate steps towards the latter precaution, by giving out that the Doctor was not well, and required a few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind deception to be practised on his daughter, Miss Pross was to write, describing his having been called away professionally, and referring to an imaginary letter of two or three hurried lines in his own hand, represented to have been addressed to her by the same post. These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. Lorry took in the hope of his coming to himself. If that should happen soon, he kept another course in reserve; which was, to have a certain opinion that he thought the best, on the Doctor's case. In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third course being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry resolved to watch him attentively, with as little appearance as possible of doing so. He therefore made arrangements to absent himself from Tellson's for the first time in his life, and took his post by the window in the same room. He was not long in discovering that it was worse than useless to speak to him, since, on being pressed, he became worried. He abandoned that attempt on the first day, and resolved merely to keep himself always before him, as a silent protest against the delusion into which he had fallen, or was falling. He remained, therefore, in his seat near the window, reading and writing, and expressing in as many pleasant and natural ways as he could think of, that it was a free place. Doctor Manette took what was given him to eat and drink, and worked on, that first day, until it was too dark to see--worked on, half an hour after Mr. Lorry could not have seen, for his life, to read or write. When he put his tools aside as useless, until morning, Mr. Lorry rose and said to him: "Will you go out?" He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the old manner, looked up in the old manner, and repeated in the old low voice: "Out?" "Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?" He made no effort to say why not, and said not a word more. But, Mr. Lorry thought he saw, as he leaned forward on his bench in the dusk, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, that he was in some misty way asking himself, "Why not?" The sagacity of the man of business perceived an advantage here, and determined to hold it. Miss Pross and he divided the night into two watches, and observed him at intervals from the adjoining room. He paced up and down for a long time before he lay down; but, when he did finally lay himself down, he fell asleep. In the morning, he was up betimes, and went straight to his bench and to work. On this second day, Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully by his name, and spoke to him on topics that had been of late familiar to them. He returned no reply, but it was evident that he heard what was said, and that he thought about it, however confusedly. This encouraged Mr. Lorry to have Miss Pross in with her work, several times during the day; at those times, they quietly spoke of Lucie, and of her father then present, precisely in the usual manner, and as if there were nothing amiss. This was done without any demonstrative accompaniment, not long enough, or often enough to harass him; and it lightened Mr. Lorry's friendly heart to believe that he looked up oftener, and that he appeared to be stirred by some perception of inconsistencies surrounding him. When it fell dark again, Mr. Lorry asked him as before: "Dear Doctor, will you go out?" As before, he repeated, "Out?" "Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?" This time, Mr. Lorry feigned to go out when he could extract no answer from him, and, after remaining absent for an hour, returned. In the meanwhile, the Doctor had removed to the seat in the window, and had sat there looking down at the plane-tree; but, on Mr. Lorry's return, he slipped away to his bench. The time went very slowly on, and Mr. Lorry's hope darkened, and his heart grew heavier again, and grew yet heavier and heavier every day. The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days, six days, seven days, eight days, nine days. With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart always growing heavier and heavier, Mr. Lorry passed through this anxious time. The secret was well kept, and Lucie was unconscious and happy; but he could not fail to observe that the shoemaker, whose hand had been a little out at first, was growing dreadfully skilful, and that he had never been so intent on his work, and that his hands had never been so nimble and expert, as in the dusk of the ninth evening.

Volume II, Chapter Eighteen - Nine Days

https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-2-chapter-18

It's the day of the wedding. Everyone is ready to head to the church. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross chat amicably together. By now, they're actually pretty good friends. Darnay is in the doctor's room, having a last-minute discussion before the wedding. Suddenly, the doctor emerges from his room. He's white as a sheet. Nothing else seems to be the matter, however. He doesn't say anything. Lucie takes his arm. Together, they head to the church. After the wedding, Lucie and Darnay leave for their honeymoon. Dr. Manette helps Lucie into the carriage, and then the three older people walk back to the Manettes' house. Mr. Lorry glances worriedly at the doctor. The old scared look has returned to his face. Advising Miss Pross to leave the doctor in peace for the time being, Mr. Lorry decides that he'll return later in the night to check on the doctor. Sure enough, when he comes back later that evening, Dr. Manette is holed up in his room, working furiously at making shoes. When Mr. Lorry tries to call out to him, the doctor doesn't even recognize his old friend. Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry hold a hurried conference. They don't want to disturb Lucie on her honeymoon, so they send her a letter supposedly written by her father. They also agree to keep a constant watch on the doctor for a few days. Maybe he'll snap out of it. On the first night, however, that doesn't happen. Dr. Manette takes food when it's given to him, but otherwise he just works at his bench. He doesn't recognize anyone. The same thing happens the next day. And the next. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross try to talk to the doctor. He listens...but he never replies. After nine days, the doctor hasn't shaken out of his relapse. If anything, he's gotten more and more skillful at making shoes. With growing terror, Mr. Lorry watches his old friend regress further and further into his prison-identity.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/26.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/A Tale of Two Cities/section_25_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 20

book 2, chapter 20

{"name": "Volume II, Chapter Twenty - A Plea", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-2-chapter-20", "summary": "The first person to visit Lucie and Darnay after they get married is Sydney Carton. Are you really surprised? Darnay is. He's even more surprised when Carton makes a rather strange request: he wants to be Darnay's friend. There's not exactly a ton of love lost between the two men, remember? Nonetheless, Carton wants to be pals. More specifically, he wants to be able to pop over to their house without any warning, just like an old family friend would. Darnay doesn't seem especially inclined to agree, but Carton reminds him of how Carton saved his life in court. Okay, he's got Darnay there. Darnay agrees to be friends. That doesn't mean, however, that he has to like it. Later in the day, he grumbles to Lucie about Carton's strange request. Astonishingly, Lucie gets a bit angry at him for saying mean things about Carton. She tells Darnay to remember that they're very, very happy together--and that Carton is very, very unhappy. As she says, it's hard for happy people to judge unhappy people. It just doesn't seem fair. Darnay seems pretty wowed by the wonderfulness of his wife. The two newlyweds agree to always be kind to poor old Carton. Lucie kisses Darnay and thanks him for his kindness. Darnay kisses Lucie and blesses her for her compassion. Life, in other words, is pretty perfect.", "analysis": ""}

XX. A Plea When the newly-married pair came home, the first person who appeared, to offer his congratulations, was Sydney Carton. They had not been at home many hours, when he presented himself. He was not improved in habits, or in looks, or in manner; but there was a certain rugged air of fidelity about him, which was new to the observation of Charles Darnay. He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside into a window, and of speaking to him when no one overheard. "Mr. Darnay," said Carton, "I wish we might be friends." "We are already friends, I hope." "You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of speech; but, I don't mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I say I wish we might be friends, I scarcely mean quite that, either." Charles Darnay--as was natural--asked him, in all good-humour and good-fellowship, what he did mean? "Upon my life," said Carton, smiling, "I find that easier to comprehend in my own mind, than to convey to yours. However, let me try. You remember a certain famous occasion when I was more drunk than--than usual?" "I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to confess that you had been drinking." "I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is heavy upon me, for I always remember them. I hope it may be taken into account one day, when all days are at an end for me! Don't be alarmed; I am not going to preach." "I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you, is anything but alarming to me." "Ah!" said Carton, with a careless wave of his hand, as if he waved that away. "On the drunken occasion in question (one of a large number, as you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you. I wish you would forget it." "I forgot it long ago." "Fashion of speech again! But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion is not so easy to me, as you represent it to be to you. I have by no means forgotten it, and a light answer does not help me to forget it." "If it was a light answer," returned Darnay, "I beg your forgiveness for it. I had no other object than to turn a slight thing, which, to my surprise, seems to trouble you too much, aside. I declare to you, on the faith of a gentleman, that I have long dismissed it from my mind. Good Heaven, what was there to dismiss! Have I had nothing more important to remember, in the great service you rendered me that day?" "As to the great service," said Carton, "I am bound to avow to you, when you speak of it in that way, that it was mere professional claptrap, I don't know that I cared what became of you, when I rendered it.--Mind! I say when I rendered it; I am speaking of the past." "You make light of the obligation," returned Darnay, "but I will not quarrel with _your_ light answer." "Genuine truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me! I have gone aside from my purpose; I was speaking about our being friends. Now, you know me; you know I am incapable of all the higher and better flights of men. If you doubt it, ask Stryver, and he'll tell you so." "I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his." "Well! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never done any good, and never will." "I don't know that you 'never will.'" "But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well! If you could endure to have such a worthless fellow, and a fellow of such indifferent reputation, coming and going at odd times, I should ask that I might be permitted to come and go as a privileged person here; that I might be regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for the resemblance I detected between you and me, an unornamental) piece of furniture, tolerated for its old service, and taken no notice of. I doubt if I should abuse the permission. It is a hundred to one if I should avail myself of it four times in a year. It would satisfy me, I dare say, to know that I had it." "Will you try?" "That is another way of saying that I am placed on the footing I have indicated. I thank you, Darnay. I may use that freedom with your name?" "I think so, Carton, by this time." They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away. Within a minute afterwards, he was, to all outward appearance, as unsubstantial as ever. When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay made some mention of this conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a problem of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of him, in short, not bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but as anybody might who saw him as he showed himself. He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair young wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms, he found her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly marked. "We are thoughtful to-night!" said Darnay, drawing his arm about her. "Yes, dearest Charles," with her hands on his breast, and the inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon him; "we are rather thoughtful to-night, for we have something on our mind to-night." "What is it, my Lucie?" "Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you not to ask it?" "Will I promise? What will I not promise to my Love?" What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him! "I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more consideration and respect than you expressed for him to-night." "Indeed, my own? Why so?" "That is what you are not to ask me. But I think--I know--he does." "If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my Life?" "I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding." "It is a painful reflection to me," said Charles Darnay, quite astounded, "that I should have done him any wrong. I never thought this of him." "My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things." She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours. "And, O my dearest Love!" she urged, clinging nearer to him, laying her head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his, "remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery!" The supplication touched him home. "I will always remember it, dear Heart! I will remember it as long as I live." He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the dark streets, could have heard her innocent disclosure, and could have seen the drops of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft blue eyes so loving of that husband, he might have cried to the night--and the words would not have parted from his lips for the first time-- "God bless her for her sweet compassion!"

Volume II, Chapter Twenty - A Plea

https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-2-chapter-20

The first person to visit Lucie and Darnay after they get married is Sydney Carton. Are you really surprised? Darnay is. He's even more surprised when Carton makes a rather strange request: he wants to be Darnay's friend. There's not exactly a ton of love lost between the two men, remember? Nonetheless, Carton wants to be pals. More specifically, he wants to be able to pop over to their house without any warning, just like an old family friend would. Darnay doesn't seem especially inclined to agree, but Carton reminds him of how Carton saved his life in court. Okay, he's got Darnay there. Darnay agrees to be friends. That doesn't mean, however, that he has to like it. Later in the day, he grumbles to Lucie about Carton's strange request. Astonishingly, Lucie gets a bit angry at him for saying mean things about Carton. She tells Darnay to remember that they're very, very happy together--and that Carton is very, very unhappy. As she says, it's hard for happy people to judge unhappy people. It just doesn't seem fair. Darnay seems pretty wowed by the wonderfulness of his wife. The two newlyweds agree to always be kind to poor old Carton. Lucie kisses Darnay and thanks him for his kindness. Darnay kisses Lucie and blesses her for her compassion. Life, in other words, is pretty perfect.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/28.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/A Tale of Two Cities/section_27_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 22

book 2, chapter 22

{"name": "Volume II, Chapter Twenty-Two - The Sea Still Rises", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-2-chapter-22", "summary": "A week after the Storming of the Bastille, Madame Defarge sits at the counter of her shop. Another woman, the short, plump wife of the grocer, sits with her. In the past week, this woman has taken on a new name: she's now called \"The Vengeance.\" We're guessing it's not because she's all that friendly. Defarge enters the shop. Immediately, everyone quiets down to hear what he has to say. Luckily, he actually does have something to say: Foulon, an old aristocrat who once told the peasants that they could eat grass, has been imprisoned. He's on his way to Paris now, escorted by a revolutionary guard. Defarge pauses, then asks if the \"patriots\" are ready for action. Madame Defarge grabs her knife. The Vengeance begins to shriek. They run to different houses in the area with the news. Soon an entire crowd has gathered outside the house where Foulon has been taken. Madame Defarge rushes into the house to see the old man bound up in ropes. She begins to clap as if she's just seen a great play. Defarge rushes up to Foulon and \"folds him in a deadly embrace.\" We're guessing that means he kills the guy. Madame Defarge tries to strangle him with his ropes. The Vengeance and Jacques Three drag the body out into the streets. Hoards of people scream at the sight. They begin to stuff the dead man's pockets with grass. Poetic justice, eh? Once his head and heart are set on pikes, however, the crowd begins to disperse. After all, they're still poor and miserable. They all head to the bread lines to beg for some loaves of bread. As Monsieur Defarge returns to his wine-shop, he remarks to his wife that the revolution seems to have come at last.", "analysis": ""}

XXII. The Sea Still Rises Haggard Saint Antoine had had only one exultant week, in which to soften his modicum of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, with the relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trusting themselves to the saint's mercies. The lamps across his streets had a portentously elastic swing with them. Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both, there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it: "I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?" Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine; the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily on the expression. Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as was to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant had already earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance. "Hark!" said The Vengeance. "Listen, then! Who comes?" As if a train of powder laid from the outermost bound of Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreading murmur came rushing along. "It is Defarge," said madame. "Silence, patriots!" Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and looked around him! "Listen, everywhere!" said madame again. "Listen to him!" Defarge stood, panting, against a background of eager eyes and open mouths, formed outside the door; all those within the wine-shop had sprung to their feet. "Say then, my husband. What is it?" "News from the other world!" "How, then?" cried madame, contemptuously. "The other world?" "Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the famished people that they might eat grass, and who died, and went to Hell?" "Everybody!" from all throats. "The news is of him. He is among us!" "Among us!" from the universal throat again. "And dead?" "Not dead! He feared us so much--and with reason--that he caused himself to be represented as dead, and had a grand mock-funeral. But they have found him alive, hiding in the country, and have brought him in. I have seen him but now, on his way to the Hotel de Ville, a prisoner. I have said that he had reason to fear us. Say all! _Had_ he reason?" Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and ten, if he had never known it yet, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if he could have heard the answering cry. A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and his wife looked steadfastly at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drum was heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter. "Patriots!" said Defarge, in a determined voice, "are we ready?" Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her girdle; the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to house, rousing the women. The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! Husbands, and brothers, and young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon, Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him! With these cries, numbers of the women, lashed into blind frenzy, whirled about, striking and tearing at their own friends until they dropped into a passionate swoon, and were only saved by the men belonging to them from being trampled under foot. Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment! This Foulon was at the Hotel de Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knew his own sufferings, insults, and wrongs! Armed men and women flocked out of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs after them with such a force of suction, that within a quarter of an hour there was not a human creature in Saint Antoine's bosom but a few old crones and the wailing children. No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination where this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the adjacent open space and streets. The Defarges, husband and wife, The Vengeance, and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no great distance from him in the Hall. "See!" cried madame, pointing with her knife. "See the old villain bound with ropes. That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon his back. Ha, ha! That was well done. Let him eat it now!" Madame put her knife under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play. The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, explaining the cause of her satisfaction to those behind them, and those again explaining to others, and those to others, the neighbouring streets resounded with the clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl, and the winnowing of many bushels of words, Madame Defarge's frequent expressions of impatience were taken up, with marvellous quickness, at a distance: the more readily, because certain men who had by some wonderful exercise of agility climbed up the external architecture to look in from the windows, knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph between her and the crowd outside the building. At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of hope or protection, directly down upon the old prisoner's head. The favour was too much to bear; in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff that had stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had got him! It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd. Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserable wretch in a deadly embrace--Madame Defarge had but followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied--The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windows had not yet swooped into the Hall, like birds of prey from their high perches--when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, "Bring him out! Bring him to the lamp!" Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy; now full of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one another back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn through a forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go--as a cat might have done to a mouse--and silently and composedly looked at him while they made ready, and while he besought her: the women passionately screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; 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. Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint Antoine so shouted and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched, another of the people's enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a guard five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of paper, seized him--would have torn him out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon company--set his head and heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession through the streets. Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the children, wailing and breadless. Then, the miserable bakers' shops were beset by long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and while they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the time by embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and achieving them again in gossip. Gradually, these strings of ragged people shortened and frayed away; and then poor lights began to shine in high windows, and slender fires were made in the streets, at which neighbours cooked in common, afterwards supping at their doors. Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as of most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meagre children; and lovers, with such a world around them and before them, loved and hoped. It was almost morning, when Defarge's wine-shop parted with its last knot of customers, and Monsieur Defarge said to madame his wife, in husky tones, while fastening the door: "At last it is come, my dear!" "Eh well!" returned madame. "Almost." Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept: even The Vengeance slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum's was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine's bosom.

Volume II, Chapter Twenty-Two - The Sea Still Rises

https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-2-chapter-22

A week after the Storming of the Bastille, Madame Defarge sits at the counter of her shop. Another woman, the short, plump wife of the grocer, sits with her. In the past week, this woman has taken on a new name: she's now called "The Vengeance." We're guessing it's not because she's all that friendly. Defarge enters the shop. Immediately, everyone quiets down to hear what he has to say. Luckily, he actually does have something to say: Foulon, an old aristocrat who once told the peasants that they could eat grass, has been imprisoned. He's on his way to Paris now, escorted by a revolutionary guard. Defarge pauses, then asks if the "patriots" are ready for action. Madame Defarge grabs her knife. The Vengeance begins to shriek. They run to different houses in the area with the news. Soon an entire crowd has gathered outside the house where Foulon has been taken. Madame Defarge rushes into the house to see the old man bound up in ropes. She begins to clap as if she's just seen a great play. Defarge rushes up to Foulon and "folds him in a deadly embrace." We're guessing that means he kills the guy. Madame Defarge tries to strangle him with his ropes. The Vengeance and Jacques Three drag the body out into the streets. Hoards of people scream at the sight. They begin to stuff the dead man's pockets with grass. Poetic justice, eh? Once his head and heart are set on pikes, however, the crowd begins to disperse. After all, they're still poor and miserable. They all head to the bread lines to beg for some loaves of bread. As Monsieur Defarge returns to his wine-shop, he remarks to his wife that the revolution seems to have come at last.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/34.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/A Tale of Two Cities/section_33_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 3.chapter 4

book 3, chapter 4

{"name": "Volume III, Chapter Four - Calm in a Storm", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-3-chapter-4", "summary": "Dr. Manette doesn't return for four days. When he finally makes it back to the house, he tells Lucie a condensed version of what he's seen. Mr. Lorry, however, gets the full story: Dr. Manette went to the Tribunal that tries all the prisoners. He announced himself as a former prisoner of the Bastille, and was awarded special status in the Tribunal. From his seat, he saw Darnay brought before the court and almost released. At the last minute, however, the President of the Tribunal got some new information. He ordered that Darnay be held in prison. He won't be executed, but he won't be set free. Dr. Manette describes the Tribunals as madness. There's not any justice or even any attempt at observing any laws. Finally, however, he decides to use all the influence he has to save Darnay. In fact, for the first time since he was released from prison, he seems like a socially powerful man. The doctor becomes the head medical inspector of three prisons. In that position, he's able to bring back occasional news of Darnay. Strangely enough, Mr. Lorry observes that the doctor begins to take pride in his ability to do things for his family. For a long time, Lucie took care of him. Now he's able to return the favor. Nonetheless, despite all the doctor's efforts, Darnay remains in prison. Time passes without any real markers. And now, friends, we're introduced to the real star of this novel: the guillotine. Our narrator takes a good, long time to describe the ways that it influences and symbolizes the new Republic. It's actually a really good bit of the novel--we recommend that you check it out for yourselves. The doctor moves through all the madness of this time. The guillotine chops off heads right and left, Darnay remains in prison, and Lucie...waits.", "analysis": ""}

IV. Calm in Storm Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day of his absence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time as could be kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from her, that not until long afterwards, when France and she were far apart, did she know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the populace; that four days and nights had been darkened by this deed of horror; and that the air around her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and that some had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered. To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy on which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells. That, presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced himself by name and profession as having been for eighteen years a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, one of the body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and that this man was Defarge. That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table, that his son-in-law was among the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard to the Tribunal--of whom some members were asleep and some awake, some dirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some not--for his life and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself as a notable sufferer under the overthrown system, it had been accorded to him to have Charles Darnay brought before the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret conference. That, the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner was removed to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, the Doctor, had then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and assure himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance, delivered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate had often drowned the proceedings, that he had obtained the permission, and had remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger was over. The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep by intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who were saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who had been discharged into the street free, but at whom a mistaken savage had thrust a pike as he passed out. Being besought to go to him and dress the wound, the Doctor had passed out at the same gate, and had found him in the arms of a company of Samaritans, who were seated on the bodies of their victims. With an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the wounded man with the gentlest solicitude--had made a litter for him and escorted him carefully from the spot--had then caught up their weapons and plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and swooned away in the midst of it. As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the face of his friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within him that such dread experiences would revive the old danger. But, he had never seen his friend in his present aspect: he had never at all known him in his present character. For the first time the Doctor felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. For the first time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door of his daughter's husband, and deliver him. "It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin. As my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid of Heaven I will do it!" Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped, like a clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an energy which had lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed. Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with, would have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he kept himself in his place, as a physician, whose business was with all degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physician of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could now assure Lucie that her husband was no longer confined alone, but was mixed with the general body of prisoners; he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweet messages to her, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himself sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor's hand), but she was not permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions of plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who were known to have made friends or permanent connections abroad. This new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no doubt; still, the sagacious Mr. Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it. Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride; it was a natural and worthy one; but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew, that up to that time, his imprisonment had been associated in the minds of his daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction, deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, and he knew himself to be invested through that old trial with forces to which they both looked for Charles's ultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far exalted by the change, that he took the lead and direction, and required them as the weak, to trust to him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself and Lucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him. "All curious to see," thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, "but all natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; it couldn't be in better hands." But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial, the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him. The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty--the deluge rising from below, not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened! There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the head of the king--and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it grey. And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world--the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied. It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple every day. Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor walked with a steady head: confident in his power, cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he would save Lucie's husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by, so strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one year and three months when the Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much more wicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month, that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines and squares under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor walked among the terrors with a steady head. No man better known than he, in Paris at that day; no man in a stranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital and prison, using his art equally among assassins and victims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of his skill, the appearance and the story of the Bastille Captive removed him from all other men. He was not suspected or brought in question, any more than if he had indeed been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a Spirit moving among mortals.

Volume III, Chapter Four - Calm in a Storm

https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-3-chapter-4

Dr. Manette doesn't return for four days. When he finally makes it back to the house, he tells Lucie a condensed version of what he's seen. Mr. Lorry, however, gets the full story: Dr. Manette went to the Tribunal that tries all the prisoners. He announced himself as a former prisoner of the Bastille, and was awarded special status in the Tribunal. From his seat, he saw Darnay brought before the court and almost released. At the last minute, however, the President of the Tribunal got some new information. He ordered that Darnay be held in prison. He won't be executed, but he won't be set free. Dr. Manette describes the Tribunals as madness. There's not any justice or even any attempt at observing any laws. Finally, however, he decides to use all the influence he has to save Darnay. In fact, for the first time since he was released from prison, he seems like a socially powerful man. The doctor becomes the head medical inspector of three prisons. In that position, he's able to bring back occasional news of Darnay. Strangely enough, Mr. Lorry observes that the doctor begins to take pride in his ability to do things for his family. For a long time, Lucie took care of him. Now he's able to return the favor. Nonetheless, despite all the doctor's efforts, Darnay remains in prison. Time passes without any real markers. And now, friends, we're introduced to the real star of this novel: the guillotine. Our narrator takes a good, long time to describe the ways that it influences and symbolizes the new Republic. It's actually a really good bit of the novel--we recommend that you check it out for yourselves. The doctor moves through all the madness of this time. The guillotine chops off heads right and left, Darnay remains in prison, and Lucie...waits.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/37.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/A Tale of Two Cities/section_36_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 3.chapter 7

book 3, chapter 7

{"name": "Volume III, Chapter Seven - A Knock at the Door", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-3-chapter-7", "summary": "The Manettes have been living pretty frugally, as they've had to pay for all of Darnay's food and lodging in prison. It hasn't been cheap. Nonetheless, they decide to have a little feast to celebrate Darnay's return. Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher have been taking care of the shopping for the past few months. It's actually a harder job than it might seem. See, since everyone is now suspicious of anyone who has money, Miss Pross and Jerry have to go around buying things in really small quantities. They buy one thing at one store, then go across town to buy another thing at another store. As they set out that night, Miss Pross expresses her opinion of the patriots of the new Republic. She doesn't like them all that much. In fact, she thinks that they're a bunch of hooligans. Before they leave, though, Miss Pross has one question for the Manettes: when will they be able to leave? Dr. Manette thinks that they should stay in Paris for a few days, just so that no one gets suspicious. With that, Miss Pross and Jerry set out on their errands. Lucie and her father stay downstairs for a minute. Suddenly, Lucie starts. She thinks she hears footsteps on the stairs. The doctor assures her that nothing can be wrong now. He's saved Darnay. Sure enough, though, soldiers appear at the door. They ask for Darnay. He's been denounced by Saint Antoine. The doctor demands to know why. The soldiers reply that the doctor shouldn't ask questions. If the Republic needs him to sacrifice his son-in-law, then he should do it happily. After all, it's for the good of the Republic. Sound a little creepy? We think so, too. Finally, though, the soldier relents. Darnay has been denounced by Monsieur and Madame Defarge...and one other. When the doctor asks who the other person is, the soldier stares at him for a minute. He doesn't know?", "analysis": ""}

VII. A Knock at the Door "I have saved him." It was not another of the dreams in which he had often come back; he was really here. And yet his wife trembled, and a vague but heavy fear was upon her. All the air round was so thick and dark, the people were so passionately revengeful and fitful, the innocent were so constantly put to death on vague suspicion and black malice, it was so impossible to forget that many as blameless as her husband and as dear to others as he was to her, every day shared the fate from which he had been clutched, that her heart could not be as lightened of its load as she felt it ought to be. The shadows of the wintry afternoon were beginning to fall, and even now the dreadful carts were rolling through the streets. Her mind pursued them, looking for him among the Condemned; and then she clung closer to his real presence and trembled more. Her father, cheering her, showed a compassionate superiority to this woman's weakness, which was wonderful to see. No garret, no shoemaking, no One Hundred and Five, North Tower, now! He had accomplished the task he had set himself, his promise was redeemed, he had saved Charles. Let them all lean upon him. Their housekeeping was of a very frugal kind: not only because that was the safest way of life, involving the least offence to the people, but because they were not rich, and Charles, throughout his imprisonment, had had to pay heavily for his bad food, and for his guard, and towards the living of the poorer prisoners. Partly on this account, and partly to avoid a domestic spy, they kept no servant; the citizen and citizeness who acted as porters at the courtyard gate, rendered them occasional service; and Jerry (almost wholly transferred to them by Mr. Lorry) had become their daily retainer, and had his bed there every night. It was an ordinance of the Republic One and Indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, that on the door or doorpost of every house, the name of every inmate must be legibly inscribed in letters of a certain size, at a certain convenient height from the ground. Mr. Jerry Cruncher's name, therefore, duly embellished the doorpost down below; and, as the afternoon shadows deepened, the owner of that name himself appeared, from overlooking a painter whom Doctor Manette had employed to add to the list the name of Charles Evremonde, called Darnay. In the universal fear and distrust that darkened the time, all the usual harmless ways of life were changed. In the Doctor's little household, as in very many others, the articles of daily consumption that were wanted were purchased every evening, in small quantities and at various small shops. To avoid attracting notice, and to give as little occasion as possible for talk and envy, was the general desire. For some months past, Miss Pross and Mr. Cruncher had discharged the office of purveyors; the former carrying the money; the latter, the basket. Every afternoon at about the time when the public lamps were lighted, they fared forth on this duty, and made and brought home such purchases as were needful. Although Miss Pross, through her long association with a French family, might have known as much of their language as of her own, if she had had a mind, she had no mind in that direction; consequently she knew no more of that "nonsense" (as she was pleased to call it) than Mr. Cruncher did. So her manner of marketing was to plump a noun-substantive at the head of a shopkeeper without any introduction in the nature of an article, and, if it happened not to be the name of the thing she wanted, to look round for that thing, lay hold of it, and hold on by it until the bargain was concluded. She always made a bargain for it, by holding up, as a statement of its just price, one finger less than the merchant held up, whatever his number might be. "Now, Mr. Cruncher," said Miss Pross, whose eyes were red with felicity; "if you are ready, I am." Jerry hoarsely professed himself at Miss Pross's service. He had worn all his rust off long ago, but nothing would file his spiky head down. "There's all manner of things wanted," said Miss Pross, "and we shall have a precious time of it. We want wine, among the rest. Nice toasts these Redheads will be drinking, wherever we buy it." "It will be much the same to your knowledge, miss, I should think," retorted Jerry, "whether they drink your health or the Old Un's." "Who's he?" said Miss Pross. Mr. Cruncher, with some diffidence, explained himself as meaning "Old Nick's." "Ha!" said Miss Pross, "it doesn't need an interpreter to explain the meaning of these creatures. They have but one, and it's Midnight Murder, and Mischief." "Hush, dear! Pray, pray, be cautious!" cried Lucie. "Yes, yes, yes, I'll be cautious," said Miss Pross; "but I may say among ourselves, that I do hope there will be no oniony and tobaccoey smotherings in the form of embracings all round, going on in the streets. Now, Ladybird, never you stir from that fire till I come back! Take care of the dear husband you have recovered, and don't move your pretty head from his shoulder as you have it now, till you see me again! May I ask a question, Doctor Manette, before I go?" "I think you may take that liberty," the Doctor answered, smiling. "For gracious sake, don't talk about Liberty; we have quite enough of that," said Miss Pross. "Hush, dear! Again?" Lucie remonstrated. "Well, my sweet," said Miss Pross, nodding her head emphatically, "the short and the long of it is, that I am a subject of His Most Gracious Majesty King George the Third;" Miss Pross curtseyed at the name; "and as such, my maxim is, Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God save the King!" Mr. Cruncher, in an access of loyalty, growlingly repeated the words after Miss Pross, like somebody at church. "I am glad you have so much of the Englishman in you, though I wish you had never taken that cold in your voice," said Miss Pross, approvingly. "But the question, Doctor Manette. Is there"--it was the good creature's way to affect to make light of anything that was a great anxiety with them all, and to come at it in this chance manner--"is there any prospect yet, of our getting out of this place?" "I fear not yet. It would be dangerous for Charles yet." "Heigh-ho-hum!" said Miss Pross, cheerfully repressing a sigh as she glanced at her darling's golden hair in the light of the fire, "then we must have patience and wait: that's all. We must hold up our heads and fight low, as my brother Solomon used to say. Now, Mr. Cruncher!--Don't you move, Ladybird!" They went out, leaving Lucie, and her husband, her father, and the child, by a bright fire. Mr. Lorry was expected back presently from the Banking House. Miss Pross had lighted the lamp, but had put it aside in a corner, that they might enjoy the fire-light undisturbed. Little Lucie sat by her grandfather with her hands clasped through his arm: and he, in a tone not rising much above a whisper, began to tell her a story of a great and powerful Fairy who had opened a prison-wall and let out a captive who had once done the Fairy a service. All was subdued and quiet, and Lucie was more at ease than she had been. "What is that?" she cried, all at once. "My dear!" said her father, stopping in his story, and laying his hand on hers, "command yourself. What a disordered state you are in! The least thing--nothing--startles you! _You_, your father's daughter!" "I thought, my father," said Lucie, excusing herself, with a pale face and in a faltering voice, "that I heard strange feet upon the stairs." "My love, the staircase is as still as Death." As he said the word, a blow was struck upon the door. "Oh father, father. What can this be! Hide Charles. Save him!" "My child," said the Doctor, rising, and laying his hand upon her shoulder, "I _have_ saved him. What weakness is this, my dear! Let me go to the door." He took the lamp in his hand, crossed the two intervening outer rooms, and opened it. A rude clattering of feet over the floor, and four rough men in red caps, armed with sabres and pistols, entered the room. "The Citizen Evremonde, called Darnay," said the first. "Who seeks him?" answered Darnay. "I seek him. We seek him. I know you, Evremonde; I saw you before the Tribunal to-day. You are again the prisoner of the Republic." The four surrounded him, where he stood with his wife and child clinging to him. "Tell me how and why am I again a prisoner?" "It is enough that you return straight to the Conciergerie, and will know to-morrow. You are summoned for to-morrow." Doctor Manette, whom this visitation had so turned into stone, that he stood with the lamp in his hand, as if he were a statue made to hold it, moved after these words were spoken, put the lamp down, and confronting the speaker, and taking him, not ungently, by the loose front of his red woollen shirt, said: "You know him, you have said. Do you know me?" "Yes, I know you, Citizen Doctor." "We all know you, Citizen Doctor," said the other three. He looked abstractedly from one to another, and said, in a lower voice, after a pause: "Will you answer his question to me then? How does this happen?" "Citizen Doctor," said the first, reluctantly, "he has been denounced to the Section of Saint Antoine. This citizen," pointing out the second who had entered, "is from Saint Antoine." The citizen here indicated nodded his head, and added: "He is accused by Saint Antoine." "Of what?" asked the Doctor. "Citizen Doctor," said the first, with his former reluctance, "ask no more. If the Republic demands sacrifices from you, without doubt you as a good patriot will be happy to make them. The Republic goes before all. The People is supreme. Evremonde, we are pressed." "One word," the Doctor entreated. "Will you tell me who denounced him?" "It is against rule," answered the first; "but you can ask Him of Saint Antoine here." The Doctor turned his eyes upon that man. Who moved uneasily on his feet, rubbed his beard a little, and at length said: "Well! Truly it is against rule. But he is denounced--and gravely--by the Citizen and Citizeness Defarge. And by one other." "What other?" "Do _you_ ask, Citizen Doctor?" "Yes." "Then," said he of Saint Antoine, with a strange look, "you will be answered to-morrow. Now, I am dumb!"

Volume III, Chapter Seven - A Knock at the Door

https://web.archive.org/web/20210115212823/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tale-of-two-cities/summary/volume-3-chapter-7

The Manettes have been living pretty frugally, as they've had to pay for all of Darnay's food and lodging in prison. It hasn't been cheap. Nonetheless, they decide to have a little feast to celebrate Darnay's return. Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher have been taking care of the shopping for the past few months. It's actually a harder job than it might seem. See, since everyone is now suspicious of anyone who has money, Miss Pross and Jerry have to go around buying things in really small quantities. They buy one thing at one store, then go across town to buy another thing at another store. As they set out that night, Miss Pross expresses her opinion of the patriots of the new Republic. She doesn't like them all that much. In fact, she thinks that they're a bunch of hooligans. Before they leave, though, Miss Pross has one question for the Manettes: when will they be able to leave? Dr. Manette thinks that they should stay in Paris for a few days, just so that no one gets suspicious. With that, Miss Pross and Jerry set out on their errands. Lucie and her father stay downstairs for a minute. Suddenly, Lucie starts. She thinks she hears footsteps on the stairs. The doctor assures her that nothing can be wrong now. He's saved Darnay. Sure enough, though, soldiers appear at the door. They ask for Darnay. He's been denounced by Saint Antoine. The doctor demands to know why. The soldiers reply that the doctor shouldn't ask questions. If the Republic needs him to sacrifice his son-in-law, then he should do it happily. After all, it's for the good of the Republic. Sound a little creepy? We think so, too. Finally, though, the soldier relents. Darnay has been denounced by Monsieur and Madame Defarge...and one other. When the doctor asks who the other person is, the soldier stares at him for a minute. He doesn't know?

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/1.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/A Tale of Two Cities/section_0_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-1", "summary": "The year is 1775, and life in England and France seems paradoxically the best and the worst that it can be. The rulers and ruling classes of both countries may have the best of life, but they are out of touch with the common people and believe that the status quo will continue forever. In France, inflation is out of control and an oppressive social system results in intolerable and extreme injustices being committed against average citizens, who believe they have the worst of life. The breaking point -- riotous rebellion -- is near, and the populace of France secretly but steadily moves toward revolution. Meanwhile, in England, people give spiritualists and the supernatural more attention than the revolutionary rumblings from American colonists, and an ineffective justice system leads to widespread violence and crime. While the English and French kings and queens carelessly ignore the unrest and misery prevalent in their countries, silent forces guide the rulers and their people toward fate and death.", "analysis": "This first chapter presents the sweeping backdrop of forces and events that will shape the lives of the novel's characters. From the first paragraph, Dickens begins developing the central theme of duality. His pairings of contrasting concepts such as the \"best\"and \"worst\"of times, \"Light\"and \"Darkness,\"and \"hope\"and \"despair\"reflect the mirror images of good and evil that will recur in characters and situations throughout the novel. England and France in 1775 embody the concept of duality that Dickens outlines in the first paragraph. Both countries are simultaneously experiencing very similar and very different situations. For example, both the English and French monarchs -- George III and Louis XVI, respectively -- seem indifferent to the plight of their people and cannot comprehend any power being great enough to eclipse their divine right to rule. However, while their attitudes will result in revolutions for both countries, the American revolution occurs an ocean away, leaving the British infrastructure unscathed and saving the British population from the massive loss of life and the horrors that will take place during the French revolution. The differences between the two countries become more pronounced when Dickens compares the concepts of spirituality and justice in each country. In England, people are enthralled with the supernatural, especially with visionaries and ghosts that communicate mystical messages. In France, though, people pay attention to religious leaders out of fear rather than fascination. A man neglecting to kneel to a distant procession of monks may be condemned to a torturous death for his transgression. Dickens contrasts France's harsh justice system to England's lax one. Criminals overrun England: Highwaymen rob seemingly at will, prisoners revolt against their jailers, and violence is answered with more violence. When the courts serve justice in England, they serve it indiscriminately, with murderers and petty thieves alike receiving the death penalty. Glossary a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face on the throne of England King George III and Queen Charlotte Sophia. a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face on the throne of France King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. Mrs. Southcott Joanna Southcott , an English religious visionary. Cock-lane ghost a poltergeist phenomenon studied by Horace Walpole, Dr. Johnson, and Oliver Goldsmith. People greatly debated its authenticity. \"a congress of British subjects in America\"In January 1775, the American Continental Congress presented a petition of its grievances to the British Parliament. a certain movable framework that is, the guillotine. highwayman a man, especially one on horseback, who robbed travelers on a highway. stand and deliver a highwayman's order to his victims to stand still and deliver their money and valuables. gaols British spelling of jails. turnkey a person in charge of the keys of a prison; warder; jailer. blunderbusses muskets with a large bore and a broad, flaring muzzle, accurate only at close range. Newgate a London prison notorious for its inhumane conditions. Westminster Hall Westminster Hall, located in London, was the chief law court of England until 1870."}

I. The Period It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever. It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood. France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous. In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:" after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence. All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures--the creatures of this chronicle among the rest--along the roads that lay before them.

Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-1

The year is 1775, and life in England and France seems paradoxically the best and the worst that it can be. The rulers and ruling classes of both countries may have the best of life, but they are out of touch with the common people and believe that the status quo will continue forever. In France, inflation is out of control and an oppressive social system results in intolerable and extreme injustices being committed against average citizens, who believe they have the worst of life. The breaking point -- riotous rebellion -- is near, and the populace of France secretly but steadily moves toward revolution. Meanwhile, in England, people give spiritualists and the supernatural more attention than the revolutionary rumblings from American colonists, and an ineffective justice system leads to widespread violence and crime. While the English and French kings and queens carelessly ignore the unrest and misery prevalent in their countries, silent forces guide the rulers and their people toward fate and death.

This first chapter presents the sweeping backdrop of forces and events that will shape the lives of the novel's characters. From the first paragraph, Dickens begins developing the central theme of duality. His pairings of contrasting concepts such as the "best"and "worst"of times, "Light"and "Darkness,"and "hope"and "despair"reflect the mirror images of good and evil that will recur in characters and situations throughout the novel. England and France in 1775 embody the concept of duality that Dickens outlines in the first paragraph. Both countries are simultaneously experiencing very similar and very different situations. For example, both the English and French monarchs -- George III and Louis XVI, respectively -- seem indifferent to the plight of their people and cannot comprehend any power being great enough to eclipse their divine right to rule. However, while their attitudes will result in revolutions for both countries, the American revolution occurs an ocean away, leaving the British infrastructure unscathed and saving the British population from the massive loss of life and the horrors that will take place during the French revolution. The differences between the two countries become more pronounced when Dickens compares the concepts of spirituality and justice in each country. In England, people are enthralled with the supernatural, especially with visionaries and ghosts that communicate mystical messages. In France, though, people pay attention to religious leaders out of fear rather than fascination. A man neglecting to kneel to a distant procession of monks may be condemned to a torturous death for his transgression. Dickens contrasts France's harsh justice system to England's lax one. Criminals overrun England: Highwaymen rob seemingly at will, prisoners revolt against their jailers, and violence is answered with more violence. When the courts serve justice in England, they serve it indiscriminately, with murderers and petty thieves alike receiving the death penalty. Glossary a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face on the throne of England King George III and Queen Charlotte Sophia. a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face on the throne of France King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. Mrs. Southcott Joanna Southcott , an English religious visionary. Cock-lane ghost a poltergeist phenomenon studied by Horace Walpole, Dr. Johnson, and Oliver Goldsmith. People greatly debated its authenticity. "a congress of British subjects in America"In January 1775, the American Continental Congress presented a petition of its grievances to the British Parliament. a certain movable framework that is, the guillotine. highwayman a man, especially one on horseback, who robbed travelers on a highway. stand and deliver a highwayman's order to his victims to stand still and deliver their money and valuables. gaols British spelling of jails. turnkey a person in charge of the keys of a prison; warder; jailer. blunderbusses muskets with a large bore and a broad, flaring muzzle, accurate only at close range. Newgate a London prison notorious for its inhumane conditions. Westminster Hall Westminster Hall, located in London, was the chief law court of England until 1870.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/2.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/A Tale of Two Cities/section_1_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-2", "summary": "In England, the Dover mail coach makes its way up a hill one late November night. The foreboding atmosphere of night and mist makes everyone uneasy -- the passengers, the coachman, and the guard. Highway robberies are common, and the travelers are as wary of each other as they are of anyone else they might meet on the road. As the coach reaches the top of the hill, the travelers hear a horse approaching at a gallop. The rider, Jerry, is a messenger from Tellson's Bank in London, and he has a message for one of the passengers, Mr. Jarvis Lorry, an employee of the bank. Mr. Lorry reads the message, which states, \"Wait at Dover for Mam'selle.\"Mr. Lorry tells Jerry to return the answer, \"Recalled to Life,\"and the coach continues on its way. As Jerry gallops back to London, he muses over Mr. Lorry's mysterious response.", "analysis": "Like many nineteenth-century authors, Dickens uses atmosphere and setting to establish the mood of a story, and this chapter exemplifies his mastery of the technique. The action of the novel begins with discomfort and anxiety as the characters slog along the muddy highway in the dark, damp chill of a late November mist. The threat of highway robbery that Dickens describes in the first chapter combines with the misty cold to create a sense of vulnerability and apprehension. Mr. Lorry serves as a figurative and actual link between France and England throughout the book. As Dickens reveals in later chapters, Mr. Lorry is first and foremost a man of business, and his business -- Tellson's Bank -- carries him between England and France. At this point, though, his current business is a mystery to everyone but himself. The messages exchanged between him and Jerry are a puzzle to all that hear them, especially Mr. Lorry's response: \"Recalled to life.\"This theme of mystery and secrecy will recur repeatedly and will play a central role in the unfolding of the plot. Glossary the mail \"short for \"mail coach,\"a coach that carried mail and passengers. arm-chest a chest containing weapons. cutlass a short, curving sword, originally used by sailors. jack-boots heavy, sturdy military boots that extend above the knees. \"The rider's horse was blown\"The horse was out of breath. flint and steel Flint is a fine-grained, very hard rock that produces sparks when struck against a piece of steel. Before the invention of matches, people used flint and steel to start fires."}

II. The Mail It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November, before the first of the persons with whom this history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter's Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brute animals are endued with Reason; and the team had capitulated and returned to their duty. With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a wary "Wo-ho! so-ho-then!" the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it--like an unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind. 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. Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, from anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days, travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter, when every posting-house and ale-house could produce somebody in "the Captain's" pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable non-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter's Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass. The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey. "Wo-ho!" said the coachman. "So, then! One more pull and you're at the top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you to it!--Joe!" "Halloa!" the guard replied. "What o'clock do you make it, Joe?" "Ten minutes, good, past eleven." "My blood!" ejaculated the vexed coachman, "and not atop of Shooter's yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!" The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its passengers squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the coach stopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of the three had had the hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little ahead into the mist and darkness, he would have put himself in a fair way of getting shot instantly as a highwayman. The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in. "Tst! Joe!" cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking down from his box. "What do you say, Tom?" They both listened. "I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe." "_I_ say a horse at a gallop, Tom," returned the guard, leaving his hold of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. "Gentlemen! In the king's name, all of you!" With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on the offensive. The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in; the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without contradicting. The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and labouring of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quiet indeed. The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion to the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate, the quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out of breath, and holding the breath, and having the pulses quickened by expectation. The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill. "So-ho!" the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. "Yo there! Stand! I shall fire!" The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering, a man's voice called from the mist, "Is that the Dover mail?" "Never you mind what it is!" the guard retorted. "What are you?" "_Is_ that the Dover mail?" "Why do you want to know?" "I want a passenger, if it is." "What passenger?" "Mr. Jarvis Lorry." Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him distrustfully. "Keep where you are," the guard called to the voice in the mist, "because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight." "What is the matter?" asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering speech. "Who wants me? Is it Jerry?" ("I don't like Jerry's voice, if it is Jerry," growled the guard to himself. "He's hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.") "Yes, Mr. Lorry." "What is the matter?" "A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co." "I know this messenger, guard," said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the road--assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. "He may come close; there's nothing wrong." "I hope there ain't, but I can't make so 'Nation sure of that," said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. "Hallo you!" "Well! And hallo you!" said Jerry, more hoarsely than before. "Come on at a footpace! d'ye mind me? And if you've got holsters to that saddle o' yourn, don't let me see your hand go nigh 'em. For I'm a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So now let's look at you." The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man. "Guard!" said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence. The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman, answered curtly, "Sir." "There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson's Bank. You must know Tellson's Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?" "If so be as you're quick, sir." He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and read--first to himself and then aloud: "'Wait at Dover for Mam'selle.' It's not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE." Jerry started in his saddle. "That's a Blazing strange answer, too," said he, at his hoarsest. "Take that message back, and they will know that I received this, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night." With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general pretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of action. The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing round it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents, and having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a few smith's tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five minutes. "Tom!" softly over the coach roof. "Hallo, Joe." "Did you hear the message?" "I did, Joe." "What did you make of it, Tom?" "Nothing at all, Joe." "That's a coincidence, too," the guard mused, "for I made the same of it myself." Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of holding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer within hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk down the hill. "After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won't trust your fore-legs till I get you on the level," said this hoarse messenger, glancing at his mare. "'Recalled to life.' That's a Blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn't do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You'd be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!"

Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-2

In England, the Dover mail coach makes its way up a hill one late November night. The foreboding atmosphere of night and mist makes everyone uneasy -- the passengers, the coachman, and the guard. Highway robberies are common, and the travelers are as wary of each other as they are of anyone else they might meet on the road. As the coach reaches the top of the hill, the travelers hear a horse approaching at a gallop. The rider, Jerry, is a messenger from Tellson's Bank in London, and he has a message for one of the passengers, Mr. Jarvis Lorry, an employee of the bank. Mr. Lorry reads the message, which states, "Wait at Dover for Mam'selle."Mr. Lorry tells Jerry to return the answer, "Recalled to Life,"and the coach continues on its way. As Jerry gallops back to London, he muses over Mr. Lorry's mysterious response.

Like many nineteenth-century authors, Dickens uses atmosphere and setting to establish the mood of a story, and this chapter exemplifies his mastery of the technique. The action of the novel begins with discomfort and anxiety as the characters slog along the muddy highway in the dark, damp chill of a late November mist. The threat of highway robbery that Dickens describes in the first chapter combines with the misty cold to create a sense of vulnerability and apprehension. Mr. Lorry serves as a figurative and actual link between France and England throughout the book. As Dickens reveals in later chapters, Mr. Lorry is first and foremost a man of business, and his business -- Tellson's Bank -- carries him between England and France. At this point, though, his current business is a mystery to everyone but himself. The messages exchanged between him and Jerry are a puzzle to all that hear them, especially Mr. Lorry's response: "Recalled to life."This theme of mystery and secrecy will recur repeatedly and will play a central role in the unfolding of the plot. Glossary the mail "short for "mail coach,"a coach that carried mail and passengers. arm-chest a chest containing weapons. cutlass a short, curving sword, originally used by sailors. jack-boots heavy, sturdy military boots that extend above the knees. "The rider's horse was blown"The horse was out of breath. flint and steel Flint is a fine-grained, very hard rock that produces sparks when struck against a piece of steel. Before the invention of matches, people used flint and steel to start fires.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/3.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/A Tale of Two Cities/section_2_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-3", "summary": "As the coach rattles its way toward Dover, Mr. Lorry dozes restlessly, reflecting upon his mission, \"to dig some one out of a grave\"who has been \"buried alive for eighteen years.\"He envisions what the face of the man must look like and contemplates how severely the years may have affected him. Haunted by visions of the man's face, Mr. Lorry imagines a dialogue in which he repeatedly asks the man, \"I hope you care to live?\"and the man always responds, \"I can't say.\"", "analysis": "Continuing the theme of secrecy, Dickens compares Mr. Lorry's secret to the inner lives of all people, stating that every person is a \"profound secret and mystery to every other.\"Dickens uses the passengers in the coach to demonstrate his point: Although the three men are traveling a long distance together in very close quarters, they act solitary enough to be traveling alone. Additionally, as described in Chapter 2, the passengers are so bundled up against the cold that distinguishing any of their features is impossible. Their physical anonymity, combined with their mistrust of each other due to the prevalence of robberies, causes the three passengers to completely isolate themselves from one another. This concept of mystery and isolation becomes increasingly important as the book progresses and characters begin to make decisions based upon close-kept secrets. Also important in this chapter is the introduction of the resurrection theme. Someone is indeed going to be \"recalled to life,\"and the questions raised by such an event haunt Mr. Lorry. \"Recalled to Life\"is also the title of Book I of A Tale of Two Cities, which indicates that the upcoming resurrection is vital to the development of the plot in this section of the novel. Although you still don't know who the \"dead\"man is or from where he is being resurrected, you do know that he is somehow central to the plot. Dickens symbolically represents the significance of the resurrection at the end of the chapter when Mr. Lorry awakens at daybreak and looks out the coach window at a partially ploughed field, a wood, and the sun rising into the clear sky. His troubled dreams have been dissolved by the sunrise -- a rebirth or resurrection of the sun -- and the sun rises to illuminate a field and a wood -- the provinces of Death and Fate that Dickens introduced in the first chapter. With this imagery, Dickens suggests that recalling the mystery man to life will also bring to light the silent forces that are moving France toward revolution. Glossary \"Something of the awfulness\"Something of the impressiveness. \"Awfulness\"here means \"inspiring awe\"rather than \"terrible.\" coach and six a coach drawn by six horses. alehouse a a place where ale is sold and served; tavern. cocked-hat a three-cornered hat with a turned-up brim."}

III. The Night Shadows A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them? As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So with the three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one lumbering old mail coach; they were mysteries to one another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county between him and the next. The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often at ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep his own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface black, with no depth in the colour or form, and much too near together--as if they were afraid of being found out in something, singly, if they kept too far apart. They had a sinister expression, under an old cocked-hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and throat, which descended nearly to the wearer's knees. When he stopped for drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand, only while he poured his liquor in with his right; as soon as that was done, he muffled again. "No, Jerry, no!" said the messenger, harping on one theme as he rode. "It wouldn't do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honest tradesman, it wouldn't suit _your_ line of business! Recalled--! Bust me if I don't think he'd been a drinking!" His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over. While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson's Bank, by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of _her_ private topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road. What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested. Tellson's Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank passenger--with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger, and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special jolt--nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson's, with all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson's, with such of their valuable stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them. But, though the bank was almost always with him, and though the coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain under an opiate) was always with him, there was another current of impression that never ceased to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig some one out of a grave. Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves before him was the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the night did not indicate; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by years, and they differed principally in the passions they expressed, and in the ghastliness of their worn and wasted state. Pride, contempt, defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation, succeeded one another; so did varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour, emaciated hands and figures. But the face was in the main one face, and every head was prematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger inquired of this spectre: "Buried how long?" The answer was always the same: "Almost eighteen years." "You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?" "Long ago." "You know that you are recalled to life?" "They tell me so." "I hope you care to live?" "I can't say." "Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?" The answers to this question were various and contradictory. Sometimes the broken reply was, "Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too soon." Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was, "Take me to her." Sometimes it was staring and bewildered, and then it was, "I don't know her. I don't understand." After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancy would dig, and dig, dig--now with a spade, now with a great key, now with his hands--to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with earth hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fan away to dust. The passenger would then start to himself, and lower the window, to get the reality of mist and rain on his cheek. Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the moving patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadside retreating by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall into the train of the night shadows within. The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, the real business of the past day, the real strong rooms, the real express sent after him, and the real message returned, would all be there. Out of the midst of them, the ghostly face would rise, and he would accost it again. "Buried how long?" "Almost eighteen years." "I hope you care to live?" "I can't say." Dig--dig--dig--until an impatient movement from one of the two passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his arm securely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the two slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and they again slid away into the bank and the grave. "Buried how long?" "Almost eighteen years." "You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?" "Long ago." The words were still in his hearing as just spoken--distinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life--when the weary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the shadows of the night were gone. He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful. "Eighteen years!" said the passenger, looking at the sun. "Gracious Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!"

Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-3

As the coach rattles its way toward Dover, Mr. Lorry dozes restlessly, reflecting upon his mission, "to dig some one out of a grave"who has been "buried alive for eighteen years."He envisions what the face of the man must look like and contemplates how severely the years may have affected him. Haunted by visions of the man's face, Mr. Lorry imagines a dialogue in which he repeatedly asks the man, "I hope you care to live?"and the man always responds, "I can't say."

Continuing the theme of secrecy, Dickens compares Mr. Lorry's secret to the inner lives of all people, stating that every person is a "profound secret and mystery to every other."Dickens uses the passengers in the coach to demonstrate his point: Although the three men are traveling a long distance together in very close quarters, they act solitary enough to be traveling alone. Additionally, as described in Chapter 2, the passengers are so bundled up against the cold that distinguishing any of their features is impossible. Their physical anonymity, combined with their mistrust of each other due to the prevalence of robberies, causes the three passengers to completely isolate themselves from one another. This concept of mystery and isolation becomes increasingly important as the book progresses and characters begin to make decisions based upon close-kept secrets. Also important in this chapter is the introduction of the resurrection theme. Someone is indeed going to be "recalled to life,"and the questions raised by such an event haunt Mr. Lorry. "Recalled to Life"is also the title of Book I of A Tale of Two Cities, which indicates that the upcoming resurrection is vital to the development of the plot in this section of the novel. Although you still don't know who the "dead"man is or from where he is being resurrected, you do know that he is somehow central to the plot. Dickens symbolically represents the significance of the resurrection at the end of the chapter when Mr. Lorry awakens at daybreak and looks out the coach window at a partially ploughed field, a wood, and the sun rising into the clear sky. His troubled dreams have been dissolved by the sunrise -- a rebirth or resurrection of the sun -- and the sun rises to illuminate a field and a wood -- the provinces of Death and Fate that Dickens introduced in the first chapter. With this imagery, Dickens suggests that recalling the mystery man to life will also bring to light the silent forces that are moving France toward revolution. Glossary "Something of the awfulness"Something of the impressiveness. "Awfulness"here means "inspiring awe"rather than "terrible." coach and six a coach drawn by six horses. alehouse a a place where ale is sold and served; tavern. cocked-hat a three-cornered hat with a turned-up brim.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/4.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/A Tale of Two Cities/section_3_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-4", "summary": "Mr. Lorry arrives at the Royal George Hotel in Dover in the late morning. After freshening up, he spends the day relaxing and meditating on his mission while he waits for the young woman, Lucie Manette, to arrive. When Lucie arrives, Mr. Lorry introduces himself and proceeds to divulge the nature of her involvement in his current business in Paris. Apparently Lucie's father, Doctor Alexandre Manette, whom she believed to be dead, is alive, and has been secretly imprisoned in Paris for the past eighteen years. The French authorities have recently released Doctor Manette, and Tellson's Bank is sending Mr. Lorry to identify the Doctor and bring him to the safety of England. As the Doctor's daughter, Lucie will be responsible for caring for him and nursing him back to health. The story shocks Lucie; when Mr. Lorry tries to comfort her, she simply stares at him, gripping his arm. Concerned by her numbed state, Mr. Lorry calls for help. A large, red-haired woman runs into the room, shoves Mr. Lorry away from Lucie and into a wall, and begins yelling at the inn's servants to bring smelling salts and cold water.", "analysis": "As Mr. Lorry emerges from his room at the Royal George, the curious servants hover nearby to see what he looks like after shedding his bulky winter coat and hat. Similarly, Dickens' readers also wait for Dickens to reveal Mr. Lorry and his secret. As Dickens fills in the physical details of Mr. Lorry's person, he is signifying that the details of Mr. Lorry's character and his mission will also soon be revealed. What you discover is that, although Mr. Lorry insists that he is simply a man of business with no more feelings than a machine, he is actually a kind man who is deeply troubled by the Manettes' situation. His concern is apparent in his dreams about digging out Doctor Manette and in the gentle way in which he discloses to Lucie that her father is alive; he initially presents her father's story as the story of an anonymous customer to give her time to adjust to the shocking news. Notice, however, that although Mr. Lorry's mission is no longer a secret, the resolution to one mystery leads to another -- why was Doctor Manette secretly imprisoned? Glossary forenoon morning; the part of the day before noon. drawer a bartender; tapster. packet a boat that travels a regular route, as along a coast or river, carrying passengers, mail, and freight. Calais a seaport in northern France, on the Strait of Dover; located across the English Channel from Dover. claret a dry, red wine, especially red Bordeaux. linen things made of linen; in this case, shirts. piscatory flavor a fishy flavor. horsehair a stiff fabric made from the hair of the mane or tail of a horse. Channel the English Channel. pier glass a tall mirror set on a pier, or wall section, between two windows. Beauvais a town in France north of Paris. pecuniary of or involving money. compatriot a fellow countryman. \"the privilege of filling up blank forms\"members of the French aristocracy could issue warrants for the indefinite imprisonment of their enemies without a trial. Grenadier wooden measure a tall, cylindrical measuring cup. smelling salts an aromatic mixture of carbonate of ammonium and some fragrant scent used as an inhalant in relieving faintness, headaches, and the like."}

IV. The Preparation When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon, the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveller upon. By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left be congratulated: for the two others had been set down at their respective roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a larger sort of dog. "There will be a packet to Calais, tomorrow, drawer?" "Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair. The tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir. Bed, sir?" "I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, and a barber." "And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please. Show Concord! Gentleman's valise and hot water to Concord. Pull off gentleman's boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.) Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord!" The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a passenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room had the odd interest for the establishment of the Royal George, that although but one kind of man was seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it. Consequently, another drawer, and two porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all loitering by accident at various points of the road between the Concord and the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with large square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on his way to his breakfast. The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than the gentleman in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the fire, and as he sat, with its light shining on him, waiting for the meal, he sat so still, that he might have been sitting for his portrait. Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waist-coat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a little vain of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or glass. His linen, though not of a fineness in accordance with his stockings, was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighbouring beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. A face habitually suppressed and quieted, was still lighted up under the quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have cost their owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the composed and reserved expression of Tellson's Bank. He had a healthy colour in his cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson's Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on. Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. The arrival of his breakfast roused him, and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it: "I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who may come here at any time to-day. She may ask for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, or she may only ask for a gentleman from Tellson's Bank. Please to let me know." "Yes, sir. Tellson's Bank in London, sir?" "Yes." "Yes, sir. We have oftentimes the honour to entertain your gentlemen in their travelling backwards and forwards betwixt London and Paris, sir. A vast deal of travelling, sir, in Tellson and Company's House." "Yes. We are quite a French House, as well as an English one." "Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling yourself, I think, sir?" "Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we--since I--came last from France." "Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir. Before our people's time here, sir. The George was in other hands at that time, sir." "I believe so." "But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like Tellson and Company was flourishing, a matter of fifty, not to speak of fifteen years ago?" "You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty, yet not be far from the truth." "Indeed, sir!" Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped backward from the table, the waiter shifted his napkin from his right arm to his left, dropped into a comfortable attitude, and stood surveying the guest while he ate and drank, as from an observatory or watchtower. According to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages. When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll on the beach. The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide made, and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes, and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter. As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had been at intervals clear enough to allow the French coast to be seen, became again charged with mist and vapour, Mr. Lorry's thoughts seemed to cloud too. When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was busily digging, digging, digging, in the live red coals. A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a long time, and had just poured out his last glassful of wine with as complete an appearance of satisfaction as is ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who has got to the end of a bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow street, and rumbled into the inn-yard. He set down his glass untouched. "This is Mam'selle!" said he. In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce that Miss Manette had arrived from London, and would be happy to see the gentleman from Tellson's. "So soon?" Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, and required none then, and was extremely anxious to see the gentleman from Tellson's immediately, if it suited his pleasure and convenience. The gentleman from Tellson's had nothing left for it but to empty his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to Miss Manette's apartment. It was a large, dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with black horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled and oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle of the room were gloomily reflected on every leaf; as if _they_ were buried, in deep graves of black mahogany, and no light to speak of could be expected from them until they were dug out. The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr. Lorry, picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past the two tall candles, he saw standing to receive him by the table between them and the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and smooth it was), of rifting and knitting itself into an expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all the four expressions--as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high. The likeness passed away, like a breath along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which, a hospital procession of negro cupids, several headless and all cripples, were offering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender--and he made his formal bow to Miss Manette. "Pray take a seat, sir." In a very clear and pleasant young voice; a little foreign in its accent, but a very little indeed. "I kiss your hand, miss," said Mr. Lorry, with the manners of an earlier date, as he made his formal bow again, and took his seat. "I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, informing me that some intelligence--or discovery--" "The word is not material, miss; either word will do." "--respecting the small property of my poor father, whom I never saw--so long dead--" Mr. Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look towards the hospital procession of negro cupids. As if _they_ had any help for anybody in their absurd baskets! "--rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris, there to communicate with a gentleman of the Bank, so good as to be despatched to Paris for the purpose." "Myself." "As I was prepared to hear, sir." She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in those days), with a pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he was than she. He made her another bow. "I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered necessary, by those who know, and who are so kind as to advise me, that I should go to France, and that as I am an orphan and have no friend who could go with me, I should esteem it highly if I might be permitted to place myself, during the journey, under that worthy gentleman's protection. The gentleman had left London, but I think a messenger was sent after him to beg the favour of his waiting for me here." "I was happy," said Mr. Lorry, "to be entrusted with the charge. I shall be more happy to execute it." "Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gratefully. It was told me by the Bank that the gentleman would explain to me the details of the business, and that I must prepare myself to find them of a surprising nature. I have done my best to prepare myself, and I naturally have a strong and eager interest to know what they are." "Naturally," said Mr. Lorry. "Yes--I--" After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at the ears, "It is very difficult to begin." He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. The young forehead lifted itself into that singular expression--but it was pretty and characteristic, besides being singular--and she raised her hand, as if with an involuntary action she caught at, or stayed some passing shadow. "Are you quite a stranger to me, sir?" "Am I not?" Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and extended them outwards with an argumentative smile. Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose, the line of which was as delicate and fine as it was possible to be, the expression deepened itself as she took her seat thoughtfully in the chair by which she had hitherto remained standing. He watched her as she mused, and the moment she raised her eyes again, went on: "In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than address you as a young English lady, Miss Manette?" "If you please, sir." "Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business charge to acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don't heed me any more than if I was a speaking machine--truly, I am not much else. I will, with your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of our customers." "Story!" He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he added, in a hurry, "Yes, customers; in the banking business we usually call our connection our customers. He was a French gentleman; a scientific gentleman; a man of great acquirements--a Doctor." "Not of Beauvais?" "Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honour of knowing him there. Our relations were business relations, but confidential. I was at that time in our French House, and had been--oh! twenty years." "At that time--I may ask, at what time, sir?" "I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married--an English lady--and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs of many other French gentlemen and French families, were entirely in Tellson's hands. In a similar way I am, or I have been, trustee of one kind or other for scores of our customers. These are mere business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our customers to another in the course of my business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine. To go on--" "But this is my father's story, sir; and I begin to think"--the curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon him--"that when I was left an orphan through my mother's surviving my father only two years, it was you who brought me to England. I am almost sure it was you." Mr. Lorry took the hesitating little hand that confidingly advanced to take his, and he put it with some ceremony to his lips. He then conducted the young lady straightway to her chair again, and, holding the chair-back with his left hand, and using his right by turns to rub his chin, pull his wig at the ears, or point what he said, stood looking down into her face while she sat looking up into his. "Miss Manette, it _was_ I. And you will see how truly I spoke of myself just now, in saying I had no feelings, and that all the relations I hold with my fellow-creatures are mere business relations, when you reflect that I have never seen you since. No; you have been the ward of Tellson's House since, and I have been busy with the other business of Tellson's House since. Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle." After this odd description of his daily routine of employment, Mr. Lorry flattened his flaxen wig upon his head with both hands (which was most unnecessary, for nothing could be flatter than its shining surface was before), and resumed his former attitude. "So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the story of your regretted father. Now comes the difference. If your father had not died when he did--Don't be frightened! How you start!" She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with both her hands. "Pray," said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the supplicatory fingers that clasped him in so violent a tremble: "pray control your agitation--a matter of business. As I was saying--" Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, and began anew: "As I was saying; if Monsieur Manette had not died; if he had suddenly and silently disappeared; if he had been spirited away; if it had not been difficult to guess to what dreadful place, though no art could trace him; if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could exercise a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water there; for instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his wife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any tidings of him, and all quite in vain;--then the history of your father would have been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor of Beauvais." "I entreat you to tell me more, sir." "I will. I am going to. You can bear it?" "I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me in at this moment." "You speak collectedly, and you--_are_ collected. That's good!" (Though his manner was less satisfied than his words.) "A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of business--business that must be done. Now if this doctor's wife, though a lady of great courage and spirit, had suffered so intensely from this cause before her little child was born--" "The little child was a daughter, sir." "A daughter. A-a-matter of business--don't be distressed. Miss, if the poor lady had suffered so intensely before her little child was born, that she came to the determination of sparing the poor child the inheritance of any part of the agony she had known the pains of, by rearing her in the belief that her father was dead--No, don't kneel! In Heaven's name why should you kneel to me!" "For the truth. O dear, good, compassionate sir, for the truth!" "A--a matter of business. You confuse me, and how can I transact business if I am confused? Let us be clear-headed. If you could kindly mention now, for instance, what nine times ninepence are, or how many shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should be so much more at my ease about your state of mind." Without directly answering to this appeal, she sat so still when he had very gently raised her, and the hands that had not ceased to clasp his wrists were so much more steady than they had been, that she communicated some reassurance to Mr. Jarvis Lorry. "That's right, that's right. Courage! Business! You have business before you; useful business. Miss Manette, your mother took this course with you. And when she died--I believe broken-hearted--having never slackened her unavailing search for your father, she left you, at two years old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy, without the dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty whether your father soon wore his heart out in prison, or wasted there through many lingering years." As he said the words he looked down, with an admiring pity, on the flowing golden hair; as if he pictured to himself that it might have been already tinged with grey. "You know that your parents had no great possession, and that what they had was secured to your mother and to you. There has been no new discovery, of money, or of any other property; but--" He felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The expression in the forehead, which had so particularly attracted his notice, and which was now immovable, had deepened into one of pain and horror. "But he has been--been found. He is alive. Greatly changed, it is too probable; almost a wreck, it is possible; though we will hope the best. Still, alive. Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and we are going there: I, to identify him if I can: you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort." A shiver ran through her frame, and from it through his. She said, in a low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as if she were saying it in a dream, "I am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost--not him!" Mr. Lorry quietly chafed the hands that held his arm. "There, there, there! See now, see now! The best and the worst are known to you, now. You are well on your way to the poor wronged gentleman, and, with a fair sea voyage, and a fair land journey, you will be soon at his dear side." She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, "I have been free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has never haunted me!" "Only one thing more," said Mr. Lorry, laying stress upon it as a wholesome means of enforcing her attention: "he has been found under another name; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It would be worse than useless now to inquire which; worse than useless to seek to know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always designedly held prisoner. It would be worse than useless now to make any inquiries, because it would be dangerous. Better not to mention the subject, anywhere or in any way, and to remove him--for a while at all events--out of France. Even I, safe as an Englishman, and even Tellson's, important as they are to French credit, avoid all naming of the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of writing openly referring to it. This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, 'Recalled to Life;' which may mean anything. But what is the matter! She doesn't notice a word! Miss Manette!" Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her chair, she sat under his hand, utterly insensible; with her eyes open and fixed upon him, and with that last expression looking as if it were carved or branded into her forehead. So close was her hold upon his arm, that he feared to detach himself lest he should hurt her; therefore he called out loudly for assistance without moving. A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. Lorry observed to be all of a red colour, and to have red hair, and to be dressed in some extraordinary tight-fitting fashion, and to have on her head a most wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came running into the room in advance of the inn servants, and soon settled the question of his detachment from the poor young lady, by laying a brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him flying back against the nearest wall. ("I really think this must be a man!" was Mr. Lorry's breathless reflection, simultaneously with his coming against the wall.) "Why, look at you all!" bawled this figure, addressing the inn servants. "Why don't you go and fetch things, instead of standing there staring at me? I am not so much to look at, am I? Why don't you go and fetch things? I'll let you know, if you don't bring smelling-salts, cold water, and vinegar, quick, I will." There was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives, and she softly laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her with great skill and gentleness: calling her "my precious!" and "my bird!" and spreading her golden hair aside over her shoulders with great pride and care. "And you in brown!" she said, indignantly turning to Mr. Lorry; "couldn't you tell her what you had to tell her, without frightening her to death? Look at her, with her pretty pale face and her cold hands. Do you call _that_ being a Banker?" Mr. Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a question so hard to answer, that he could only look on, at a distance, with much feebler sympathy and humility, while the strong woman, having banished the inn servants under the mysterious penalty of "letting them know" something not mentioned if they stayed there, staring, recovered her charge by a regular series of gradations, and coaxed her to lay her drooping head upon her shoulder. "I hope she will do well now," said Mr. Lorry. "No thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling pretty!" "I hope," said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of feeble sympathy and humility, "that you accompany Miss Manette to France?" "A likely thing, too!" replied the strong woman. "If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island?" This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis Lorry withdrew to consider it.

Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-4

Mr. Lorry arrives at the Royal George Hotel in Dover in the late morning. After freshening up, he spends the day relaxing and meditating on his mission while he waits for the young woman, Lucie Manette, to arrive. When Lucie arrives, Mr. Lorry introduces himself and proceeds to divulge the nature of her involvement in his current business in Paris. Apparently Lucie's father, Doctor Alexandre Manette, whom she believed to be dead, is alive, and has been secretly imprisoned in Paris for the past eighteen years. The French authorities have recently released Doctor Manette, and Tellson's Bank is sending Mr. Lorry to identify the Doctor and bring him to the safety of England. As the Doctor's daughter, Lucie will be responsible for caring for him and nursing him back to health. The story shocks Lucie; when Mr. Lorry tries to comfort her, she simply stares at him, gripping his arm. Concerned by her numbed state, Mr. Lorry calls for help. A large, red-haired woman runs into the room, shoves Mr. Lorry away from Lucie and into a wall, and begins yelling at the inn's servants to bring smelling salts and cold water.

As Mr. Lorry emerges from his room at the Royal George, the curious servants hover nearby to see what he looks like after shedding his bulky winter coat and hat. Similarly, Dickens' readers also wait for Dickens to reveal Mr. Lorry and his secret. As Dickens fills in the physical details of Mr. Lorry's person, he is signifying that the details of Mr. Lorry's character and his mission will also soon be revealed. What you discover is that, although Mr. Lorry insists that he is simply a man of business with no more feelings than a machine, he is actually a kind man who is deeply troubled by the Manettes' situation. His concern is apparent in his dreams about digging out Doctor Manette and in the gentle way in which he discloses to Lucie that her father is alive; he initially presents her father's story as the story of an anonymous customer to give her time to adjust to the shocking news. Notice, however, that although Mr. Lorry's mission is no longer a secret, the resolution to one mystery leads to another -- why was Doctor Manette secretly imprisoned? Glossary forenoon morning; the part of the day before noon. drawer a bartender; tapster. packet a boat that travels a regular route, as along a coast or river, carrying passengers, mail, and freight. Calais a seaport in northern France, on the Strait of Dover; located across the English Channel from Dover. claret a dry, red wine, especially red Bordeaux. linen things made of linen; in this case, shirts. piscatory flavor a fishy flavor. horsehair a stiff fabric made from the hair of the mane or tail of a horse. Channel the English Channel. pier glass a tall mirror set on a pier, or wall section, between two windows. Beauvais a town in France north of Paris. pecuniary of or involving money. compatriot a fellow countryman. "the privilege of filling up blank forms"members of the French aristocracy could issue warrants for the indefinite imprisonment of their enemies without a trial. Grenadier wooden measure a tall, cylindrical measuring cup. smelling salts an aromatic mixture of carbonate of ammonium and some fragrant scent used as an inhalant in relieving faintness, headaches, and the like.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/5.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/A Tale of Two Cities/section_4_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-5", "summary": "A street in the Parisian suburb of Saint Antoine is the scene of chaos as a crowd gathers in front of a wine-shop to scoop up pools of wine spilled from a broken cask. When the wine is gone, the people resume their everyday activities. Left behind, however, are the stains of the red wine on the street and the people's hands, faces, and feet, foreshadowing the blood that will be spilled there in later years. Inside the wine-shop, Monsieur and Madame Defarge converse with three other men, all called \"Jacques.\"Monsieur Defarge sends the men upstairs, to a chamber on the fifth floor. Meanwhile, Mr. Lorry and Lucie have entered the shop and, after a brief discussion with Monsieur Defarge, they follow him upstairs to the fifth floor chamber, where the three Jacques are peering inside through holes in the wall. Monsieur Defarge unlocks the door, and he, Mr. Lorry, and Lucie enter the room. Inside the darkened room, they see a white-haired man sitting on a bench making shoes.", "analysis": "Dickens leaves no doubt that the crowd scene in front of the wine-shop is a glimpse of things to come. The wine soaking into the street and smearing people's faces and hands represents the blood that the people will shed during the violence of the Revolution. To reinforce that imagery, Dickens goes so far as to have one of the men in the crowd dip his finger in the muddy wine and write \"Blood\"on a wall. As Dickens predicts future violence, he also hints at how hunger, want, and anger will transform decent, caring human beings into unthinking, bloodthirsty animals. He describes some of the wine drinkers as having \"a tigerish smear about the mouth,\"and the residents of Saint Antoine have a \"hunted air\"and harbor a \"wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay.\"The image of the tiger will appear again later in the book, as will the vision of an oppressed people losing their humanity in their anger and quest for revenge. This chapter also introduces Monsieur and Madame Defarge, characters that Dickens uses to embody the ideas and emotions of the Revolution. Monsieur Defarge is a man of authority, as shown when he reprimands Gaspard for writing \"Blood\"on the wall and in his conversation with the three Jacques. Although Dickens describes Monsieur Defarge as \"good-humored-looking,\"and Monsieur Defarge demonstrates kindness and loyalty to Doctor Manette, when considering the injustice of the Doctor's imprisonment, Monsieur Defarge becomes \"a secret, angry, dangerous man.\" In the subdued atmosphere of the wine-shop, Monsieur Defarge's air of authority and resolution are exceeded only by that of his wife. Although she doesn't say much, Madame Defarge communicates secretively with her husband through coughs and facial expressions. She also seems more hardened than her husband does. While the plight of Doctor Manette enrages Monsieur Defarge, Therese Defarge remains unresponsive. When Mr. Lorry and Lucie go with Monsieur Defarge to see the Doctor, \"Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing.\"Her eerie calm and concentrated focus indicate a steadfastness and determination that may in the end prove more dangerous than the anger growing in the hearts of her husband and the populace of Saint Antoine. Glossary lee-dyed soaked with the dregs of the wine. Jacques the use of the name Jacques to signify French peasants began in the peasant revolts in 1358. To maintain anonymity and to show solidarity, rebels called each other by the same name. The network of rebels using the Jacques appellation is referred to as the Jacquerie. Notre-Dame \"Our Lady\": a famous, early Gothic cathedral in Paris; the full name is Notre-Dame de Paris. the window of dormer shape a window set vertically in a sloping roof."}

V. The Wine-shop A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell. All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence. A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices--voices of men, women, and children--resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine. The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees--BLOOD. The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there. And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy--cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence--nobles of great power all of them; but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil. Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or inflicting. The trade signs (and they were almost as many as the shops) were, all, grim illustrations of Want. The butcher and the porkman painted up, only the leanest scrags of meat; the baker, the coarsest of meagre loaves. The people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops, croaked over their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, and were gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was represented in a flourishing condition, save tools and weapons; but, the cutler's knives and axes were sharp and bright, the smith's hammers were heavy, and the gunmaker's stock was murderous. The crippling stones of the pavement, with their many little reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but broke off abruptly at the doors. The kennel, to make amends, ran down the middle of the street--when it ran at all: which was only after heavy rains, and then it ran, by many eccentric fits, into the houses. Across the streets, at wide intervals, one clumsy lamp was slung by a rope and pulley; at night, when the lamplighter had let these down, and lighted, and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim wicks swung in a sickly manner overhead, as if they were at sea. Indeed they were at sea, and the ship and crew were in peril of tempest. For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that region should have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their condition. But, the time was not come yet; and every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather, took no warning. The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others in its appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at the struggle for the lost wine. "It's not my affair," said he, with a final shrug of the shoulders. "The people from the market did it. Let them bring another." There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his joke, he called to him across the way: "Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?" The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completely failed, as is often the way with his tribe too. "What now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital?" said the wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with a handful of mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it. "Why do you write in the public streets? Is there--tell me thou--is there no other place to write such words in?" In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) upon the joker's heart. The joker rapped it with his own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a fantastic dancing attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot into his hand, and held out. A joker of an extremely, not to say wolfishly practical character, he looked, under those circumstances. "Put it on, put it on," said the other. "Call wine, wine; and finish there." With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker's dress, such as it was--quite deliberately, as having dirtied the hand on his account; and then recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop. This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn the man. Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as he came in. Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure of manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which one might have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided. Madame Defarge being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large earrings. Her knitting was before her, but she had laid it down to pick her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the way. The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated in a corner. Other company were there: two playing cards, two playing dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, "This is our man." "What the devil do _you_ do in that galley there?" said Monsieur Defarge to himself; "I don't know you." But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter. "How goes it, Jacques?" said one of these three to Monsieur Defarge. "Is all the spilt wine swallowed?" "Every drop, Jacques," answered Monsieur Defarge. When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. "It is not often," said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur Defarge, "that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?" "It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned. At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Defarge, still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips. "Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques?" "You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur Defarge. This third interchange of the Christian name was completed at the moment when Madame Defarge put her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in her seat. "Hold then! True!" muttered her husband. "Gentlemen--my wife!" The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it. "Gentlemen," said her husband, who had kept his bright eye observantly upon her, "good day. The chamber, furnished bachelor-fashion, that you wished to see, and were inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little courtyard close to the left here," pointing with his hand, "near to the window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, one of you has already been there, and can show the way. Gentlemen, adieu!" They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes of Monsieur Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favour of a word. "Willingly, sir," said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly stepped with him to the door. Their conference was very short, but very decided. Almost at the first word, Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out. Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing. Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the wine-shop thus, joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway to which he had directed his own company just before. It opened from a stinking little black courtyard, and was the general public entrance to a great pile of houses, inhabited by a great number of people. In the gloomy tile-paved entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge bent down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to his lips. It was a gentle action, but not at all gently done; a very remarkable transformation had come over him in a few seconds. He had no good-humour in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but had become a secret, angry, dangerous man. "It is very high; it is a little difficult. Better to begin slowly." Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice, to Mr. Lorry, as they began ascending the stairs. "Is he alone?" the latter whispered. "Alone! God help him, who should be with him!" said the other, in the same low voice. "Is he always alone, then?" "Yes." "Of his own desire?" "Of his own necessity. As he was, when I first saw him after they found me and demanded to know if I would take him, and, at my peril be discreet--as he was then, so he is now." "He is greatly changed?" "Changed!" The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the wall with his hand, and mutter a tremendous curse. No direct answer could have been half so forcible. Mr. Lorry's spirits grew heavier and heavier, as he and his two companions ascended higher and higher. Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and more crowded parts of Paris, would be bad enough now; but, at that time, it was vile indeed to unaccustomed and unhardened senses. Every little habitation within the great foul nest of one high building--that is to say, the room or rooms within every door that opened on the general staircase--left its own heap of refuse on its own landing, besides flinging other refuse from its own windows. The uncontrollable and hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would have polluted the air, even if poverty and deprivation had not loaded it with their intangible impurities; the two bad sources combined made it almost insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft of dirt and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his own disturbance of mind, and to his young companion's agitation, which became greater every instant, Mr. Jarvis Lorry twice stopped to rest. Each of these stoppages was made at a doleful grating, by which any languishing good airs that were left uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all spoilt and sickly vapours seemed to crawl in. Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations. At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they stopped for the third time. There was yet an upper staircase, of a steeper inclination and of contracted dimensions, to be ascended, before the garret story was reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going a little in advance, and always going on the side which Mr. Lorry took, as though he dreaded to be asked any question by the young lady, turned himself about here, and, carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat he carried over his shoulder, took out a key. "The door is locked then, my friend?" said Mr. Lorry, surprised. "Ay. Yes," was the grim reply of Monsieur Defarge. "You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate gentleman so retired?" "I think it necessary to turn the key." Monsieur Defarge whispered it closer in his ear, and frowned heavily. "Why?" "Why! Because he has lived so long, locked up, that he would be frightened--rave--tear himself to pieces--die--come to I know not what harm--if his door was left open." "Is it possible!" exclaimed Mr. Lorry. "Is it possible!" repeated Defarge, bitterly. "Yes. And a beautiful world we live in, when it _is_ possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done--done, see you!--under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on." This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper, that not a word of it had reached the young lady's ears. But, by this time she trembled under such strong emotion, and her face expressed such deep anxiety, and, above all, such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry felt it incumbent on him to speak a word or two of reassurance. "Courage, dear miss! Courage! Business! The worst will be over in a moment; it is but passing the room-door, and the worst is over. Then, all the good you bring to him, all the relief, all the happiness you bring to him, begin. Let our good friend here, assist you on that side. That's well, friend Defarge. Come, now. Business, business!" They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was short, and they were soon at the top. There, as it had an abrupt turn in it, they came all at once in sight of three men, whose heads were bent down close together at the side of a door, and who were intently looking into the room to which the door belonged, through some chinks or holes in the wall. On hearing footsteps close at hand, these three turned, and rose, and showed themselves to be the three of one name who had been drinking in the wine-shop. "I forgot them in the surprise of your visit," explained Monsieur Defarge. "Leave us, good boys; we have business here." The three glided by, and went silently down. There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a whisper, with a little anger: "Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette?" "I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few." "Is that well?" "_I_ think it is well." "Who are the few? How do you choose them?" "I choose them as real men, of my name--Jacques is my name--to whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough; you are English; that is another thing. Stay there, if you please, a little moment." With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice upon the door--evidently with no other object than to make a noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key across it, three or four times, before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could. The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into the room and said something. A faint voice answered something. Little more than a single syllable could have been spoken on either side. He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the daughter's waist, and held her; for he felt that she was sinking. "A-a-a-business, business!" he urged, with a moisture that was not of business shining on his cheek. "Come in, come in!" "I am afraid of it," she answered, shuddering. "Of it? What?" "I mean of him. Of my father." Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He sat her down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him. Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there, and faced round. The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim and dark: for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.

Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-5

A street in the Parisian suburb of Saint Antoine is the scene of chaos as a crowd gathers in front of a wine-shop to scoop up pools of wine spilled from a broken cask. When the wine is gone, the people resume their everyday activities. Left behind, however, are the stains of the red wine on the street and the people's hands, faces, and feet, foreshadowing the blood that will be spilled there in later years. Inside the wine-shop, Monsieur and Madame Defarge converse with three other men, all called "Jacques."Monsieur Defarge sends the men upstairs, to a chamber on the fifth floor. Meanwhile, Mr. Lorry and Lucie have entered the shop and, after a brief discussion with Monsieur Defarge, they follow him upstairs to the fifth floor chamber, where the three Jacques are peering inside through holes in the wall. Monsieur Defarge unlocks the door, and he, Mr. Lorry, and Lucie enter the room. Inside the darkened room, they see a white-haired man sitting on a bench making shoes.

Dickens leaves no doubt that the crowd scene in front of the wine-shop is a glimpse of things to come. The wine soaking into the street and smearing people's faces and hands represents the blood that the people will shed during the violence of the Revolution. To reinforce that imagery, Dickens goes so far as to have one of the men in the crowd dip his finger in the muddy wine and write "Blood"on a wall. As Dickens predicts future violence, he also hints at how hunger, want, and anger will transform decent, caring human beings into unthinking, bloodthirsty animals. He describes some of the wine drinkers as having "a tigerish smear about the mouth,"and the residents of Saint Antoine have a "hunted air"and harbor a "wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay."The image of the tiger will appear again later in the book, as will the vision of an oppressed people losing their humanity in their anger and quest for revenge. This chapter also introduces Monsieur and Madame Defarge, characters that Dickens uses to embody the ideas and emotions of the Revolution. Monsieur Defarge is a man of authority, as shown when he reprimands Gaspard for writing "Blood"on the wall and in his conversation with the three Jacques. Although Dickens describes Monsieur Defarge as "good-humored-looking,"and Monsieur Defarge demonstrates kindness and loyalty to Doctor Manette, when considering the injustice of the Doctor's imprisonment, Monsieur Defarge becomes "a secret, angry, dangerous man." In the subdued atmosphere of the wine-shop, Monsieur Defarge's air of authority and resolution are exceeded only by that of his wife. Although she doesn't say much, Madame Defarge communicates secretively with her husband through coughs and facial expressions. She also seems more hardened than her husband does. While the plight of Doctor Manette enrages Monsieur Defarge, Therese Defarge remains unresponsive. When Mr. Lorry and Lucie go with Monsieur Defarge to see the Doctor, "Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing."Her eerie calm and concentrated focus indicate a steadfastness and determination that may in the end prove more dangerous than the anger growing in the hearts of her husband and the populace of Saint Antoine. Glossary lee-dyed soaked with the dregs of the wine. Jacques the use of the name Jacques to signify French peasants began in the peasant revolts in 1358. To maintain anonymity and to show solidarity, rebels called each other by the same name. The network of rebels using the Jacques appellation is referred to as the Jacquerie. Notre-Dame "Our Lady": a famous, early Gothic cathedral in Paris; the full name is Notre-Dame de Paris. the window of dormer shape a window set vertically in a sloping roof.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/6.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/A Tale of Two Cities/section_5_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 1.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-6", "summary": "The man making shoes works steadily at his bench. Aged and weakened by his long years in prison, he seems to be aware only of the task at hand -- shoemaking -- and does not even know that he has been released from prison. When asked his name, he responds, \"One Hundred and Five, North Tower.\"When Lucie approaches him, however, she seems familiar to him, especially after he compares her hair to two golden hairs that he kept tied in a cloth around his neck. He begins remembering Lucie's mother and is confused and troubled when he hears Lucie's voice, which sounds like her mother's voice. Lucie embraces her father, comforting him as he begins to weep. Later, Monsieur Defarge helps Mr. Lorry and Lucie to remove Doctor Manette from the city. As the coach carrying Mr. Lorry, Lucie, and Doctor Manette rumbles to the ship that will take them back to England, Mr. Lorry can't help looking at the man they have recovered and wondering if the Doctor will be able to be \"recalled to life.\"", "analysis": "After eighteen years of being physically and mentally removed from the world, the Doctor has suffered greatly and appears to have lost all sense of time, place, and self. Despite the fact that he is no longer in prison, he still seems \"buried alive\"when you first see him. Both his mind and body are hidden from view. Even after some light enters the garret where he works, the Doctor looks more dead than alive, with his hollow face, withered body, and a hand so thin that it looks transparent. Similarly, when Monsieur Defarge and Mr. Lorry try to talk to him, his mind seems starved and wasted to the point of being able to comprehend only the most basic questions and to focus solely on his work. Just as light enters the garret to reveal the Doctor physically, contact with Lucie seems to awaken part of the Doctor's mind and memories. The images of light and dark that run through A Tale of Two Cities are especially apparent in this chapter. As Dickens literally and symbolically depicts the resurrection of the Doctor, the Doctor is drawn out of the darkness of his imprisonment and into the light of life. For instance, when for a moment the Doctor seems to nearly recognize Mr. Lorry, Dickens describes his returning blankness of expression as \"a black mist\"or as \"darkness.\" Meanwhile, Lucie's face mirrors his fleeting expression of awareness \"as though it had passed like a moving light from him to her.\"When Lucie goes to sit next to her father, his attention falls on her golden hair. He shows her his wife's golden hairs that he has kept with him and, concentrating, \"turned her full to the light and looked at her.\"Later, when father and daughter embrace, \"his cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.\"The warmth and love of his daughter are strong enough to bring Doctor Manette back from the cold, colorless place his mind retreated to during his years of imprisonment. The melodramatic sentimentality of Lucie's speeches to her father somewhat spoil the poignant reunion scene between the Doctor and Lucie. \"Weep for it, weep for it!\"she exclaims, and modern readers struggle not to roll their eyes or laugh aloud. However, keep in mind that the Victorians greatly enjoyed this type of melodrama, and when Lucie cried out, \"Weep for it,\"Dickens' readers wept. Glossary One hundred and five, North Tower Doctor Manette's designation in the Bastille. provender food. pallet bed a small bed or pad filled as with straw and used directly on the floor the box the driver's seat of a coach. adieu French for \"farewell.\""}

VI. The Shoemaker "Good day!" said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that bent low over the shoemaking. It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance: "Good day!" "You are still hard at work, I see?" After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the voice replied, "Yes--I am working." This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, before the face had dropped again. The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die. Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception, beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty. "I want," said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker, "to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more?" The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening, at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor on the other side of him; then, upward at the speaker. "What did you say?" "You can bear a little more light?" "I must bear it, if you let it in." (Laying the palest shadow of a stress upon the second word.) The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and showed the workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few common tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and thinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they had been really otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and looked unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say which was which. He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him, without first looking down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound; he never spoke, without first wandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak. "Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?" asked Defarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward. "What did you say?" "Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?" "I can't say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don't know." But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it again. Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When he had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and the action had occupied but an instant. "You have a visitor, you see," said Monsieur Defarge. "What did you say?" "Here is a visitor." The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a hand from his work. "Come!" said Defarge. "Here is monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe when he sees one. Show him that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur." Mr. Lorry took it in his hand. "Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name." There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoemaker replied: "I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?" "I said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur's information?" "It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. It is in the present mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand." He glanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of pride. "And the maker's name?" said Defarge. Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand in the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so on in regular changes, without a moment's intermission. The task of recalling him from the vagrancy into which he always sank when he had spoken, was like recalling some very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in the hope of some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man. "Did you ask me for my name?" "Assuredly I did." "One Hundred and Five, North Tower." "Is that all?" "One Hundred and Five, North Tower." With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he bent to work again, until the silence was again broken. "You are not a shoemaker by trade?" said Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly at him. His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have transferred the question to him: but as no help came from that quarter, they turned back on the questioner when they had sought the ground. "I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoemaker by trade. I-I learnt it here. I taught myself. I asked leave to--" He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes on his hands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from which they had wandered; when they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in the manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting to a subject of last night. "I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficulty after a long while, and I have made shoes ever since." As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken from him, Mr. Lorry said, still looking steadfastly in his face: "Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing of me?" The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fixedly at the questioner. "Monsieur Manette"; Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defarge's arm; "do you remember nothing of this man? Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old banker, no old business, no old servant, no old time, rising in your mind, Monsieur Manette?" As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by turns, at Mr. Lorry and at Defarge, some long obliterated marks of an actively intent intelligence in the middle of the forehead, gradually forced themselves through the black mist that had fallen on him. They were overclouded again, they were fainter, they were gone; but they had been there. And so exactly was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her who had crept along the wall to a point where she could see him, and where she now stood looking at him, with hands which at first had been only raised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him off and shut out the sight of him, but which were now extending towards him, trembling with eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back to life and hope--so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed like a moving light, from him to her. Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He looked at the two, less and less attentively, and his eyes in gloomy abstraction sought the ground and looked about him in the old way. Finally, with a deep long sigh, he took the shoe up, and resumed his work. "Have you recognised him, monsieur?" asked Defarge in a whisper. "Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it quite hopeless, but I have unquestionably seen, for a single moment, the face that I once knew so well. Hush! Let us draw further back. Hush!" She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stooped over his labour. Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work. It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in his hand, for his shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward, but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife, though they had. He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say: "What is this?" With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined head there. "You are not the gaoler's daughter?" She sighed "No." "Who are you?" Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her. Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemaking. But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger. He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. "It is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!" As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her. "She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out--she had a fear of my going, though I had none--and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. 'You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.' Those were the words I said. I remember them very well." He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly. "How was this?--_Was it you_?" Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only said, in a low voice, "I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come near us, do not speak, do not move!" "Hark!" he exclaimed. "Whose voice was that?" His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his white hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but his shoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little packet and tried to secure it in his breast; but he still looked at her, and gloomily shook his head. "No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See what the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She was--and He was--before the slow years of the North Tower--ages ago. What is your name, my gentle angel?" Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast. "O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother was, and who my father, and how I never knew their hard, hard history. But I cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell you here. All that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, my dear!" His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him. "If you hear in my voice--I don't know that it is so, but I hope it is--if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch, in touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service, I bring back the remembrance of a Home long desolate, while your poor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!" She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like a child. "If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it! And if, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my father who is living, and of my mother who is dead, you learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and implore his pardon for having never for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep for it! Weep for her, then, and for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred tears upon my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! Thank God for us, thank God!" He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a sight so touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering which had gone before it, that the two beholders covered their faces. When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his heaving breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm that must follow all storms--emblem to humanity, of the rest and silence into which the storm called Life must hush at last--they came forward to raise the father and daughter from the ground. He had gradually dropped to the floor, and lay there in a lethargy, worn out. She had nestled down with him, that his head might lie upon her arm; and her hair drooping over him curtained him from the light. "If, without disturbing him," she said, raising her hand to Mr. Lorry as he stooped over them, after repeated blowings of his nose, "all could be arranged for our leaving Paris at once, so that, from the very door, he could be taken away--" "But, consider. Is he fit for the journey?" asked Mr. Lorry. "More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, so dreadful to him." "It is true," said Defarge, who was kneeling to look on and hear. "More than that; Monsieur Manette is, for all reasons, best out of France. Say, shall I hire a carriage and post-horses?" "That's business," said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortest notice his methodical manners; "and if business is to be done, I had better do it." "Then be so kind," urged Miss Manette, "as to leave us here. You see how composed he has become, and you cannot be afraid to leave him with me now. Why should you be? If you will lock the door to secure us from interruption, I do not doubt that you will find him, when you come back, as quiet as you leave him. In any case, I will take care of him until you return, and then we will remove him straight." Both Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to this course, and in favour of one of them remaining. But, as there were not only carriage and horses to be seen to, but travelling papers; and as time pressed, for the day was drawing to an end, it came at last to their hastily dividing the business that was necessary to be done, and hurrying away to do it. Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down on the hard ground close at the father's side, and watched him. The darkness deepened and deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed through the chinks in the wall. Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the journey, and had brought with them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and meat, wine, and hot coffee. Monsieur Defarge put this provender, and the lamp he carried, on the shoemaker's bench (there was nothing else in the garret but a pallet bed), and he and Mr. Lorry roused the captive, and assisted him to his feet. No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind, in the scared blank wonder of his face. Whether he knew what had happened, whether he recollected what they had said to him, whether he knew that he was free, were questions which no sagacity could have solved. They tried speaking to him; but, he was so confused, and so very slow to answer, that they took fright at his bewilderment, and agreed for the time to tamper with him no more. He had a wild, lost manner of occasionally clasping his head in his hands, that had not been seen in him before; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere sound of his daughter's voice, and invariably turned to it when she spoke. In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under coercion, he ate and drank what they gave him to eat and drink, and put on the cloak and other wrappings, that they gave him to wear. He readily responded to his daughter's drawing her arm through his, and took--and kept--her hand in both his own. They began to descend; Monsieur Defarge going first with the lamp, Mr. Lorry closing the little procession. They had not traversed many steps of the long main staircase when he stopped, and stared at the roof and round at the walls. "You remember the place, my father? You remember coming up here?" "What did you say?" But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer as if she had repeated it. "Remember? No, I don't remember. It was so very long ago." That he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought from his prison to that house, was apparent to them. They heard him mutter, "One Hundred and Five, North Tower;" and when he looked about him, it evidently was for the strong fortress-walls which had long encompassed him. On their reaching the courtyard he instinctively altered his tread, as being in expectation of a drawbridge; and when there was no drawbridge, and he saw the carriage waiting in the open street, he dropped his daughter's hand and clasped his head again. No crowd was about the door; no people were discernible at any of the many windows; not even a chance passerby was in the street. An unnatural silence and desertion reigned there. Only one soul was to be seen, and that was Madame Defarge--who leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing. The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed him, when Mr. Lorry's feet were arrested on the step by his asking, miserably, for his shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes. Madame Defarge immediately called to her husband that she would get them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the courtyard. She quickly brought them down and handed them in;--and immediately afterwards leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing. Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word "To the Barrier!" The postilion cracked his whip, and they clattered away under the feeble over-swinging lamps. Under the over-swinging lamps--swinging ever brighter in the better streets, and ever dimmer in the worse--and by lighted shops, gay crowds, illuminated coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the city gates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. "Your papers, travellers!" "See here then, Monsieur the Officer," said Defarge, getting down, and taking him gravely apart, "these are the papers of monsieur inside, with the white head. They were consigned to me, with him, at the--" He dropped his voice, there was a flutter among the military lanterns, and one of them being handed into the coach by an arm in uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked, not an every day or an every night look, at monsieur with the white head. "It is well. Forward!" from the uniform. "Adieu!" from Defarge. And so, under a short grove of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out under the great grove of stars. Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered or done: the shadows of the night were broad and black. All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry--sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable of restoration--the old inquiry: "I hope you care to be recalled to life?" And the old answer: "I can't say." The end of the first book. Book the Second--the Golden Thread

Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapter-6

The man making shoes works steadily at his bench. Aged and weakened by his long years in prison, he seems to be aware only of the task at hand -- shoemaking -- and does not even know that he has been released from prison. When asked his name, he responds, "One Hundred and Five, North Tower."When Lucie approaches him, however, she seems familiar to him, especially after he compares her hair to two golden hairs that he kept tied in a cloth around his neck. He begins remembering Lucie's mother and is confused and troubled when he hears Lucie's voice, which sounds like her mother's voice. Lucie embraces her father, comforting him as he begins to weep. Later, Monsieur Defarge helps Mr. Lorry and Lucie to remove Doctor Manette from the city. As the coach carrying Mr. Lorry, Lucie, and Doctor Manette rumbles to the ship that will take them back to England, Mr. Lorry can't help looking at the man they have recovered and wondering if the Doctor will be able to be "recalled to life."

After eighteen years of being physically and mentally removed from the world, the Doctor has suffered greatly and appears to have lost all sense of time, place, and self. Despite the fact that he is no longer in prison, he still seems "buried alive"when you first see him. Both his mind and body are hidden from view. Even after some light enters the garret where he works, the Doctor looks more dead than alive, with his hollow face, withered body, and a hand so thin that it looks transparent. Similarly, when Monsieur Defarge and Mr. Lorry try to talk to him, his mind seems starved and wasted to the point of being able to comprehend only the most basic questions and to focus solely on his work. Just as light enters the garret to reveal the Doctor physically, contact with Lucie seems to awaken part of the Doctor's mind and memories. The images of light and dark that run through A Tale of Two Cities are especially apparent in this chapter. As Dickens literally and symbolically depicts the resurrection of the Doctor, the Doctor is drawn out of the darkness of his imprisonment and into the light of life. For instance, when for a moment the Doctor seems to nearly recognize Mr. Lorry, Dickens describes his returning blankness of expression as "a black mist"or as "darkness." Meanwhile, Lucie's face mirrors his fleeting expression of awareness "as though it had passed like a moving light from him to her."When Lucie goes to sit next to her father, his attention falls on her golden hair. He shows her his wife's golden hairs that he has kept with him and, concentrating, "turned her full to the light and looked at her."Later, when father and daughter embrace, "his cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him."The warmth and love of his daughter are strong enough to bring Doctor Manette back from the cold, colorless place his mind retreated to during his years of imprisonment. The melodramatic sentimentality of Lucie's speeches to her father somewhat spoil the poignant reunion scene between the Doctor and Lucie. "Weep for it, weep for it!"she exclaims, and modern readers struggle not to roll their eyes or laugh aloud. However, keep in mind that the Victorians greatly enjoyed this type of melodrama, and when Lucie cried out, "Weep for it,"Dickens' readers wept. Glossary One hundred and five, North Tower Doctor Manette's designation in the Bastille. provender food. pallet bed a small bed or pad filled as with straw and used directly on the floor the box the driver's seat of a coach. adieu French for "farewell."

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/98-chapters/7.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/A Tale of Two Cities/section_6_part_0.txt

A Tale of Two Cities.book 2.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-2-chapter-1", "summary": "Five years have passed since Tellson's Bank sent Mr. Lorry to bring Doctor Manette back to England. Tellson's continues to be \"the triumphant perfection of inconvenience,\"with its old-fashioned dark and cramped facility lending it an air of respectability and security. Jerry Cruncher acts as a porter and messenger for the bank, and his son, who is also called Jerry, often accompanies him. At home before work one morning, the sight of his wife praying frustrates Jerry. He complains that she prays against his prosperity and tells her he won't tolerate it. After breakfast, Jerry and his son walk to Tellson's and station themselves in front of the bank before it opens. Soon the bank calls Jerry to deliver a message. Meanwhile, Young Jerry puzzles over the source of the iron rust that is always on his father's fingers.", "analysis": "Dickens depicts the venerable Tellson's Bank as being in the business of death. Described as dark, ugly, and cramped, Tellson's boasts an atmosphere of deliberate grimness and decay. Money, documents, and valuables that go into Tellson's for safekeeping are buried in \"wormy old wooden drawers\"and acquire \"a musty odor, as if they were fast decomposing\"or being \"corrupted.\" Just as material goods are buried and decay in Tellson's, the bank transforms the people who deal with it as well. The bank hides clerks who go to work at Tellson's as young men until they become old. Additionally, Tellson's literally sends people to their deaths; the bank identifies forgers, debtors, counterfeiters, and petty thieves who eventually go to their graves under the harsh death penalty. Not coincidentally, Dickens locates Tellson's next to the Temple Bar, an arched gateway to the city where the government sometimes displayed the heads of the executed. Jerry Cruncher, the messenger, serves as \"the live sign of the house,\"which indicates that he may have something to do with death as well. Like many of the other characters in the novel, Jerry appears to have a secret. Some of his physical characteristics and personality traits create an air of mystery, such as his muddy boots, his rusty fingers, and his paranoia regarding his wife's prayers. Glossary bank note a promissory note issued by a bank, payable to the bearer on demand and which can be used as money. plate tableware, often made of silver or covered with a layer of silver . Barmecide room a room in which things are an illusion. Barmecide was a prince in the Arabian Nights who offered a beggar a feast and set an empty plate before him. purloiner a thief. Whitefriars a district of central London between Fleet Street and the Temple area where criminals and fugitive debtors lived. personal board a person's daily meals. choused cheated, swindled. hackney coach a coach for hire, oftentimes a six-seat carriage drawn by two horses. laudanum a solution of opium in alcohol or wine used as a painkiller or sleeping aid, or drunk as an intoxicant."}

I. Five Years Later Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but Tellson's, thank Heaven--! Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable. Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing "the House," you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of their parchments into the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of family papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had a great dining-table in it and never had a dinner, and where, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by your little children, were but newly released from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee. But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of being privately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what little light the ground floor had, in a rather significant manner. Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson's, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment. Outside Tellson's--never by any means in it, unless called in--was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image. People understood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church of Hounsditch, he had received the added appellation of Jerry. The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private lodging in Hanging-sword-alley, Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.) Mr. Cruncher's apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood, and were but two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glass in it might be counted as one. But they were very decently kept. Early as it was, on the windy March morning, the room in which he lay abed was already scrubbed throughout; and between the cups and saucers arranged for breakfast, and the lumbering deal table, a very clean white cloth was spread. Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a Harlequin at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, by degrees, began to roll and surge in bed, until he rose above the surface, with his spiky hair looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At which juncture, he exclaimed, in a voice of dire exasperation: "Bust me, if she ain't at it agin!" A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from her knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show that she was the person referred to. "What!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot. "You're at it agin, are you?" After hailing the morn with this second salutation, he threw a boot at the woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher's domestic economy, that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with clean boots, he often got up next morning to find the same boots covered with clay. "What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe after missing his mark--"what are you up to, Aggerawayter?" "I was only saying my prayers." "Saying your prayers! You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" "I was not praying against you; I was praying for you." "You weren't. And if you were, I won't be took the liberty with. Here! your mother's a nice woman, young Jerry, going a praying agin your father's prosperity. You've got a dutiful mother, you have, my son. You've got a religious mother, you have, my boy: going and flopping herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter may be snatched out of the mouth of her only child." Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and, turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of his personal board. "And what do you suppose, you conceited female," said Mr. Cruncher, with unconscious inconsistency, "that the worth of _your_ prayers may be? Name the price that you put _your_ prayers at!" "They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are worth no more than that." "Worth no more than that," repeated Mr. Cruncher. "They ain't worth much, then. Whether or no, I won't be prayed agin, I tell you. I can't afford it. I'm not a going to be made unlucky by _your_ sneaking. If you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favour of your husband and child, and not in opposition to 'em. If I had had any but a unnat'ral wife, and this poor boy had had any but a unnat'ral mother, I might have made some money last week instead of being counter-prayed and countermined and religiously circumwented into the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust me!" said Mr. Cruncher, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, "if I ain't, what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call. For, I tell you," here he addressed his wife once more, "I won't be gone agin, in this manner. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't for the pain in 'em, which was me and which somebody else, yet I'm none the better for it in pocket; and it's my suspicion that you've been at it from morning to night to prevent me from being the better for it in pocket, and I won't put up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now!" Growling, in addition, such phrases as "Ah! yes! You're religious, too. You wouldn't put yourself in opposition to the interests of your husband and child, would you? Not you!" and throwing off other sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparation for business. In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes, and whose young eyes stood close by one another, as his father's did, kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed that poor woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet, where he made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of "You are going to flop, mother. --Halloa, father!" and, after raising this fictitious alarm, darting in again with an undutiful grin. Mr. Cruncher's temper was not at all improved when he came to his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher's saying grace with particular animosity. "Now, Aggerawayter! What are you up to? At it again?" His wife explained that she had merely "asked a blessing." "Don't do it!" said Mr. Crunches looking about, as if he rather expected to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife's petitions. "I ain't a going to be blest out of house and home. I won't have my wittles blest off my table. Keep still!" Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night at a party which had taken anything but a convivial turn, Jerry Cruncher worried his breakfast rather than ate it, growling over it like any four-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o'clock he smoothed his ruffled aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-like an exterior as he could overlay his natural self with, issued forth to the occupation of the day. It could scarcely be called a trade, in spite of his favourite description of himself as "a honest tradesman." His stock consisted of a wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chair cut down, which stool, young Jerry, walking at his father's side, carried every morning to beneath the banking-house window that was nearest Temple Bar: where, with the addition of the first handful of straw that could be gleaned from any passing vehicle to keep the cold and wet from the odd-job-man's feet, it formed the encampment for the day. On this post of his, Mr. Cruncher was as well known to Fleet-street and the Temple, as the Bar itself,--and was almost as in-looking. Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to touch his three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed in to Tellson's, Jerry took up his station on this windy March morning, with young Jerry standing by him, when not engaged in making forays through the Bar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute description on passing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. Father and son, extremely like each other, looking silently on at the morning traffic in Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to one another as the two eyes of each were, bore a considerable resemblance to a pair of monkeys. The resemblance was not lessened by the accidental circumstance, that the mature Jerry bit and spat out straw, while the twinkling eyes of the youthful Jerry were as restlessly watchful of him as of everything else in Fleet-street. The head of one of the regular indoor messengers attached to Tellson's establishment was put through the door, and the word was given: "Porter wanted!" "Hooray, father! Here's an early job to begin with!" Having thus given his parent God speed, young Jerry seated himself on the stool, entered on his reversionary interest in the straw his father had been chewing, and cogitated. "Al-ways rusty! His fingers is al-ways rusty!" muttered young Jerry. "Where does my father get all that iron rust from? He don't get no iron rust here!"

Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022070227/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-2-chapter-1

Five years have passed since Tellson's Bank sent Mr. Lorry to bring Doctor Manette back to England. Tellson's continues to be "the triumphant perfection of inconvenience,"with its old-fashioned dark and cramped facility lending it an air of respectability and security. Jerry Cruncher acts as a porter and messenger for the bank, and his son, who is also called Jerry, often accompanies him. At home before work one morning, the sight of his wife praying frustrates Jerry. He complains that she prays against his prosperity and tells her he won't tolerate it. After breakfast, Jerry and his son walk to Tellson's and station themselves in front of the bank before it opens. Soon the bank calls Jerry to deliver a message. Meanwhile, Young Jerry puzzles over the source of the iron rust that is always on his father's fingers.

Dickens depicts the venerable Tellson's Bank as being in the business of death. Described as dark, ugly, and cramped, Tellson's boasts an atmosphere of deliberate grimness and decay. Money, documents, and valuables that go into Tellson's for safekeeping are buried in "wormy old wooden drawers"and acquire "a musty odor, as if they were fast decomposing"or being "corrupted." Just as material goods are buried and decay in Tellson's, the bank transforms the people who deal with it as well. The bank hides clerks who go to work at Tellson's as young men until they become old. Additionally, Tellson's literally sends people to their deaths; the bank identifies forgers, debtors, counterfeiters, and petty thieves who eventually go to their graves under the harsh death penalty. Not coincidentally, Dickens locates Tellson's next to the Temple Bar, an arched gateway to the city where the government sometimes displayed the heads of the executed. Jerry Cruncher, the messenger, serves as "the live sign of the house,"which indicates that he may have something to do with death as well. Like many of the other characters in the novel, Jerry appears to have a secret. Some of his physical characteristics and personality traits create an air of mystery, such as his muddy boots, his rusty fingers, and his paranoia regarding his wife's prayers. Glossary bank note a promissory note issued by a bank, payable to the bearer on demand and which can be used as money. plate tableware, often made of silver or covered with a layer of silver . Barmecide room a room in which things are an illusion. Barmecide was a prince in the Arabian Nights who offered a beggar a feast and set an empty plate before him. purloiner a thief. Whitefriars a district of central London between Fleet Street and the Temple area where criminals and fugitive debtors lived. personal board a person's daily meals. choused cheated, swindled. hackney coach a coach for hire, oftentimes a six-seat carriage drawn by two horses. laudanum a solution of opium in alcohol or wine used as a painkiller or sleeping aid, or drunk as an intoxicant.