Despite the correction of Charles Darnay who "requested the speaker to take notice that he was a free traveler and French citizen," he is now stripped of his name and referred to like everyone else, "the prisoner." This is much alike Doctor Manette because when he was "the prisoner," he too was stripped of his name and was referred to as "One Hundred and Five North Tower." Not only does the jail keeper repeatedly refer to Darnay as "prisoner" but so does Dickens by means of narration. The prisoner motif comes in through this by showing that when you are in prison, you are like an object rather than a human being, nothing more. The doubles motif is not only present because of the similarity between Doctor Manette's naming experiences in prison and Charles Darnay's, but also their physical experience. The people that Darnay encounters look like ghosts with empty eyes, which is exactly what Doctor Manette looked like when we first saw him widdling away at a pair of shoes in Defarge's home. Later, when Darnay arrives in his solitary confinement cell, he sees that "there were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress" which is what we found out Doctor Manette had in his cell when Defarge sacks it. Almost immediately after being left alone, Darnay unintentionally conforms to fit the "prisoner" personality, "Now am I left, as if I were dead."
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Double Motifs Including Double Trouble?! Oh Snap.
"So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghots all! ... All waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming here" (265).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Interesting title! Anyway, this is another post that I would never have thought was anything to do with doubles, but I understand what you mean. Charles and Dr. Manette are a double, just like Dr. Manette is a double himself, and Charles is now a double himself. That's triple double in one chapter!!
First off, I totally agree with your analysis Savannah, there is definitely a clearly established double persona for Darnay in this chapter. And what Suzie pointed out about both Dr. Manette and Charles being doubles within themselves, as well as doubles of eachother makes me think about Sydney Carton. Now that Manette and Darnay have established inner doubles, we can't forget the Carton was also shown as a double of himself long ago, which makes me interested in how the three double characters are going interact during the end of the book. Especially because the third book seems to be all about Dickens pulling together his motifs, plot, and character, so these protagonists and their 'doubles' will be interesting characters to watch as the book comes to a close, and see which side of their double they end up in.
I like this post. I've always thought of the crowd/mob motif as dealing with ways in which an individual can be robbed of his/her identity (or voluntarily hand it over). But it's true that becoming "the prisoner" does that as well.
Charles as a double for The Doctor of Beauvais ... interesting. Whether you blog it or not, consider how this situation plays out in Book the Third. Look out for other ways in which Charles' situation mirrors Manette's situation so many years ago.
Post a Comment