According to Wikipedia, the tale depicts the plight of the French peasantry under the demoralization of the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and a number of unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. It follows the lives of several protagonists through these events, most notably Charles Darnay, a French once-aristocrat who falls victim to the indiscriminate wrath of the revolution despite his virtuous nature, and Sydney Carton, a dissipated British barrister who endeavours to redeem his ill-spent life out of love for Darnay's wife, Lucie Manette.
And why does the current situation remind me of that book? It is the theme of social injustice.
Wikipedia states:
Charles Dickens was a champion of the maltreated poor because of his terrible experience when he was forced to work in a factory as a child. His sympathies, however, lie only up to a point with the revolutionaries; he condemns the mob madness which soon sets in. When madmen and -women massacre eleven hundred detainees in one night and hustle back to sharpen their weapons on the grindstone, they display "eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun".
The reader is shown the poor are brutalised in France and England alike. As crime proliferates, the executioner in England is "stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now hanging housebreaker ... now burning people in the hand" or hanging a broke man for stealing sixpence. In France, a boy is sentenced to have his hands removed and be burned alive, only because he did not kneel down in the rain before a parade of monks passing some fifty metres away. At the lavish residence of Monseigneur, we find "brazen ecclesiastics of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives ... Military officers destitute of military knowledge ... [and] Doctors who made great fortunes ... for imaginary disorders".
The Marquis recalls with pleasure the days when his family had the right of life and death over their slaves, "when many such dogs were taken out to be hanged". He won't even allow a widow to put up a board bearing her dead husband’s name, to discern his resting place from all the others. He orders Madame Defarge's sick brother-in-law to heave a cart all day and allay frogs at night to exacerbate the young man's illness and hasten his death.
In England, even banks endorse unbalanced sentences: a man may be condemned to death for nicking a horse or opening a letter. Conditions in the prisons are dreadful. "Most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practised, and ... dire diseases were bred", sometimes killing the judge before the accused.
So riled is Dickens at the brutality of English law that he depicts some of its punishments with sarcasm: "the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action". He faults the law for not seeking reform: "Whatever is right" is the dictum of the Old Bailey. The gruesome portrayal of quartering highlights its atrocity. CLICK HERE for more.
I wonder why in some cases, action is taken against certain quarters with lightning speed while in other infamous cases, NOTHING HAPPENS no matter what is written/published/spoken.
I surmise the story being written is "A TALE OF ONE LAND, TWO MEASURES" or "A TALE OF TWO OUTCOMES".
In response to one comment from Anon @ 10.35am, I wrote "Things are not normal when made to sound normal in an abnormal state :-)." It is almost as though that sentence was prophetic as then, I did not know what was ahead along this journey...Looks like there is global warming of a different sort as a storm could be brewing in a tea-cup while others are in closeted safety with Amazons guarding their doors and windows!
Anyway, while some are seething in fury and madness, here's Peter, Paul and Mary singing WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE? CLICK HERE for the youtube video clip. Alternatively, you could CLICK HERE for the Joan Baez version.
Where have all the _______ gone? I could fill in that blank with lots of values missing today. Where did it all go? How could it just vanish into the air just like that?
Sighs.
Most saddening today and I am, for once, speechless for now.
Do leave a comment if you wish to share your thoughts. Thanks and have a nice day even though...., in spite of ....cos no matter what, we have to persevere and to keep the good fight in our hearts and fill it with hope. God bless all of us, God bless Malaysia!
Anonymous And Kutuksan is spitting out rabble rousing sedition virtually daily with absolute impunity.
Only the blind cannot see!
~wits0~