A Tale of Two Cities

1. A Tale of Two Cities Chapter 15 Book 2 Knitting By Lauren Quigley

2. Title Description Knitting has a symbolic message throughout the novel. Madam Defarge knitted a list of names that the revolutionaries want to kill which is in a sense condemning them to a deadly fate.

3. Summary • Around noon two men entered the wine shop thirsty and dusty one of them was Monsieur Defarge and the other was a man wearing a blue cap who repaired roads. Although no one in the wine shop said anything, they all had been watching the two men. No one looked at Monsieur Defarge not even his wife who had been busy knitting. Three men leave the wine shop and Monsieur Defarge and the man in the blue cap go up to the garret where Doctor Manette had been hidden. There they meet up with three men who left the shop, Defarge calls them“Jacques”. The man in the blue cap states that he saw a man hanging by a chain underneath the Marquis’ carriage and then sees him again months later being let to prison by soldiers. The man remained in an iron cage for several days because he was accused of killing the marqis. Gallows were build in the middle of town and the man was soon hanged. Defarge and his wife then take the man in the blue cap to Versailles to see King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.

4. Literary devices • An example of Imagery on page 169 is “I see no more then 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 they are covered with dust and that dust moves with them as they come, tramp, tramp.” • An example of a simile on page 170 is “ 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. • An example of a personification on page 173 is “ 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.”

5. Essential Quote • On page 174 – “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 stiches 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 of crimes from the knitter register of Madame Defarge.”