A Tale of Two Cities: Foreshadowing - Wine Shop

In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens (author), in chapter 5, foreshadows the French Revolution. Thus far in A Tale of Two Cities, I've come to realizes that Charles Dickens likes to write in many contradictions and metaphors. For example, "The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street stones, and the stain of it would be red upon many there" (Dickens 22). Charles Dickens foreshadows that there will be a bloody war that's to come. He's letting the reader know that the battle will pass through onto city streets and innocent people will die.

As he wrote, "The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it had spilled." (Dickens 21), it foreshadows that Saint Antoine will be a place in which the first blood shed will commence. Furthermore, "It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, many naked feet, and many wooden shoes" (Dickens 21). Nobody is safe from death not the wealthy nor the poor. No one is innocent. Everyone's hands with be red, tainted with the blood of their enemy.

Lastly, "...coming up afresh, was the sign, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of tall houses...Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper...Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of the firewood...Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimney...Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves...Hunger rattled it's dry bones on the roasting chestnuts...Hunger was shred into the atomies in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil" (Dickens 22).

Hunger will play a major roll in the French Revolution. As the expenses for war start to increase both sides will begin to pooling their money into war. Stores will have to raise their prices to earn a living, more and more people with become poor and hungry because they can't afford to buy food. Most jobs will close down from lack of business and people will lose their jobs. In conclusion, A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, is foreshadowing the beginnings of the French Revolution.

For the illustration, I chose the perceptive of an omniscient narrator looking on from above. In this scene, in chapter 5, of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens it shows the cobbles stones on the street right outside the wine shop in which Dr. Manette was being hidden away. When all of a sudden the wine barrel clashed on the pathway staining the stones with wine. Everyone stopped what they were doing to drink the wine.

As stated by Dickens, "Some men kneed down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped...others, men, women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs...or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths" (Dickens 21). It just goes to show how everyone was trying to get there hands on the wine. Also, as the wine game ended everyone returned to what they were doing with their hands and faces stained red. Then the day turned cloudy, "the darkness was heavy - cold, dirt, ignorance, and want" (Dickens 22). In closing, this illustration represents more than just a wine spill. You just have to look beyond the image, just as you have to look beyond the words Charles Dickens has written.