After reading · Part I · Chapter 1

Part I · Chapter 1An Age of Contradictions

Reading boundary Start: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, Stop after: along the roads that lay before them.

Summary

In 1775, England and France appear full of opposites: wisdom and foolishness, belief and disbelief, hope and despair. Their monarchs and ruling classes behave as though the established order will last forever, while the narrator points to instability beneath that confidence.

France combines financial decline with brutal religious and legal punishment. In England, robbery and violence are ordinary, and the law answers crimes both great and small with frequent, grossly disproportionate executions. Dickens personifies Fate as a Woodman preparing timber and Death as a Farmer reserving carts, while rulers and ordinary people proceed unknowingly along the roads before them.

Who’s who

The narrator — A wide-ranging, ironic observer who compares the two countries and their age.
The English and French monarchs — Two kings and two queens presented as confident figures atop unsettled societies.
The Woodman, Fate — A personification silently marking trees for a terrible historical use.
The Farmer, Death — A personification silently setting aside rough carts.