Book 2 chapter 17 one night

1. Book 2 chapter 17one night Nanette Crush

2. Significance of title • The title, One Night, has a very straight forward meaning. This chapter takes place during night time, so the title refers to the setting. • It also signifies the nights that Doctor Manette talks about from his time spent in prison, looking through his barred window at the moon.

3. Chapter plot • Doctor Manette and his daughter are sitting outside talking on the day before her wedding, and she asks him if he is happy. He says that he is and that his future looks much brighter because of her marriage, and that it is better than her wasting her youth on him. He also remarks that he could never be truly happy if she was not happy. • Doctor Manette then begins to talk about his time in prison and how he would look up at the moon at night and be jealous that she(the moon) could shine down on all the things he had lost. Lucie has not heard him speak about his experiences in prison since Charles’ trial. • As he talks about the time he spent in prison he begins to tell her about the things he would imagine while looking up at the moon.

4. Chapter plot • Doctor Manette explains how he would imagine what his unborn child was like, be it a boy or a girl. He tells Lucie how he would sometimes imagine his daughter as being married and starting a family and never thinking twice about her absent father. He then tells her that on other nights he would imagine his daughter coming before him and taking him to see her family and her life but then returning him to prison. • After their conversation they return inside, later on that night Lucie sneaks down to her fathers room to check on him and finds him fast asleep. She then prays that she will be able to love him and be truthful to him as much as he deserves.

5. Literary devices • Idyll: “Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner of Soho” (194) • It sounds nice, beautiful, and even peaceful. Even though all that’s happening is the two of them sitting and talking. • Imagery: “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.” (195) • Life as it starts and ends is sad. Lucie is starting a new life with Darnay and ending an old life with her father. • Pathos: “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.” (196) • You feel a definite pity for him because of the horrors he must have endured while he was in prison.

6. Important quote • “‘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.’” (198)