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Guillotine In A Tale Of Two Cities Essay

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Oppression was a highly protruding fact in the 19th century. One could even consider it a calamity. It completely overwhelmed the way people in France lived. Various implements were executed in order to "control" the people during this time period. Within those implements was the disastrous mechanism known as the guillotine. A deadly instrument used for the decapitation of people. The british author G.K Chesterton stated in one of his pieces of writing, “ the guillotine is not the calamity, but rather the solution of the calamity.” Meaning that the guillotine was not the problem but the solution to the problem: the oppression. In A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens we get a viewpoint on the guillotine and its institutionalization during the French Revolution. The guillotine in fact worsened the oppression or “calamity” reigned upon the people. It was not the solution to the “calamity” . By taking on a life of its own and by brutally submerging the people in its power and increasing their need to use it, it was only the calamity itself. Through Dickens’ tone and use diction, to characterize the guillotine, one is able to understand how the guillotine is brought to life and maintained alive by the people’s blood thirst to constantly use it. …show more content…

This inanimate object became alive but in the most horrible of ways. In a way that it merged all possible monsters that could be imagined. Through the author's tone during this especidic part in the novel, Dickens would most likely not consider the guillotine to be that of being useful. The voice within his words doesn't show any significant point of agreement with what the guillotine caused. It is almost as if we catch a hint of the author actually being displeased when mentioning the guillotine. This happens to contribute to Dickens thinking that the guillotine did not improve the

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