DISCUSSION QUESTIONS CHAPTER BY CHAPTER
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 1 – THE PERIOD
1. What was the attitude of British and French nobility concerning the future of their rule?
2. In France, what was a common punishment for not kneeling to honor monks?
3. What was the crime situation in England at this time?
4. Why do you think Dickens keeps repeating the year?
5. Dickens also gives us a hint right at the end of the chapter as to what his purpose is for writing this novel. What do you think it might be?
6. After this first chapter, what do you think the narration (voice) of this novel is?
Vocab
Deficient
Potentate
Retinue
Blunderbusses
Chronicle
Literary Discussion
Find some examples of the following literary devices used by Dickens in chapter 1:
Paradox
Repetition
Metaphors
Similes
Personification
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 2 – THE MAIL
1. How did passengers on the Dover mail interact with each other? Why did they act this way?
2. What was the guard’s initial reaction to the arrival of Jerry Cruncher?
3. Who is Cruncher’s message for, and what is this gentleman’s occupation?
4. What was Cruncher’s message, and what was the reply? What do you think these messages mean?
5. What literary element do you think is most important in this chapter (ie. character, plot, setting, theme)? Why?
6. What is the mood or tone in this chapter? How does Dickens evoke this mood?
7. How does Dickens use suspense in this chapter?
Vocab
Mutinous
Endued
Capitulated
Tremulous
Confidential
Genial
Adjuration
Cessation
Audibly
Expeditiously
Secreted
Pretense
Literary Discussion
One of Dickens’s techniques is to use inverted sentences. What are they? Find examples
of inverted sentences.
Find examples of the following:
Simile
Personification
Imagery
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 3 – THE NIGHT SHADOWS
1. What is Cruncher’s reaction to the message he is to take to Tellson’s?
2. What question does Mr. Lorry ask the spectre? What is the spectre’s answer? What do you think this means?
3. Dickens is a master at feeding his audience bits and pieces of information, revealing his tale to us slowly and deliberately. The repetition of “Almost eighteen years” adds to the suspense of the story? What do you think it means? What hints does Dickens give us?
4. What now do you believe is the voice or narration of this story?
5. How does the mood or atmosphere of the story change right at the end of chapter 3? How does Dickens accomplish this?
Vocab
Unfathomable
Inexorable
Consolidation
Perpetuation
Inscrutable
Evincing
Perplexed
Tedious
Emaciated
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 4 – THE PREPARATION
1. Describe Mr. Jarvis Lorry’s dress and physical appearance.
2. Describe Tellson’s Bank or Tellson and Company.
3. Where does this chapter take place? What country is it in? Describe Dover and its physical relationship to France.
4. Who is Mr. Lorry waiting for in Dover?
5. Describe Miss Manette.
6. Have Mr. Lorry and the young Lady met before? If so, when and under what circumstances?
7. What news does Mr. Lorry have for the young Lady? How does Jarvis Lorry tell her of this news? Why does he have trouble, and what does he do to try to help himself with this predicament?
8. What is her reaction to the news?
9. Why has Miss Manette been kept from the truth all these years?
10. How is this news in itself yet another of Dickens’s paradoxes?
11. Why has this information been kept so secret, and what now do we understand the words “Recalled to life” to mean?
12. Who comes into the room to rescue Miss Manette? Describe this woman.
13. What would you say is the most important literary element in this chapter?
14. In what way is the title of this chapter relevant to the events of the chapter?
Vocab
Obscurity
Sonorous
Piscatory
Stolid
Perplexity
Acquit
Pecuniary
Supplicatory
Discomposed
Dispersal
Restoratives
Indignantly
Disconcerted
Gradations
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 5 – THE WINE SHOP
1. Where does this chapter take place?
2. What are the people’s reactions to the broken wine cask?
3. What does one person write on the wall using the spilled wine and how is the spilling of the wine cask symbolic and also a foreshadowing?
4. What analogy is used to describe the people of this town and of this place?
5. What is the power that has ground the people down? What does this tell us about conditions in France?
6. What condition is personified so repeatedly when the narrator describes the conditions in France?
7. Dickens offers us several vivid descriptions in this chapter. One is the streets of France and the other two are Monsieur Defarge and Madame Defarge. Recant these three descriptions.
8. Why do the men in the wine shop refer to each other as Jacques? (Look up the word “jacquerie” for a hint.)
9. Why have Mr. Lorry and Miss Manette come to Defarge’s wine shop? Why was Defarge chosen for this duty?
10. How does Defarge describe the person he is keeping on the fifth floor of his shop? Who do we find out is this person Defarge is keeping shut away? What precautions are taken and why does he take them?
11. Why do you think Defarge shows Dr. Manette to the Jacques?
Vocab
Suspended
Vestige
Expostulation
Implacable
Feigned
Triumvirate
Doleful
Languishing
Aspirations
Incumbent
Admonitory
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 6 – The SHOEMAKER
1. What is Dr. Manette doing when they enter the room?
2. Describe the Doctor’s physical appearance. What does this say about his prison experience?
3. Describe the first few moments when Miss Manette and her father see and experience each other’s presence.
4. What finally does Monsieur Manette do that shows he has recognized the young lady as possibly his daughter?
5. When the doctor compares the strands of golden hair in his “locket” to Lucie’s hair, what is his first conclusion? Does he finally figure out the truth?
6. As Lucy Manette loves her father back to life, what things does she say to him? What information do we glean from her own dronings to her father?
7. “One Hundred and Five North Tower.” What is it and how is it symbolic?
8. “Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered or done: the shadows of the night were broad and black.” What is the narrator saying? What is ironic yet true about what he says?
Vocab
Resonance
Transparent
Vagrancy
Obliterated
Gaoler
Lethargy
Disinclined
Provender
Sagacity
Coercion
Discernible
Postilion
BOOK 2, CHAPTER 1 – FIVE YEARS LATER
1. Describe Tellson’s bank. What is the bank’s attitude toward change?
2. How does Tellson’s treat the young men in its employ?
3. As Hunger was personified in chapter five, what is personified in this chapter as the “recipe” and solution for everything that goes wrong or for every problem? According to the narrator, was this solution effective?
4. What is Mr. Cruncher’s position at Tellson’s Bank?
5. Describe Cruncher’s character, his speech, his relationship with his wife?
6. What behavior of Mrs. Cruncher makes Mr. Cruncher angry? What is ironic about what she is doing? Why does this anger him?
7. Why does the narrator compare Mr. Cruncher and his son to a pair of monkeys?
8. What physical characteristic of his father’s does young Jerry wonder about? Can you make a guess about it?
Vocab
Incommodious
Eminence
Obstinacy
Extemporized
Insensate
Purloiner
Gaiters
Proxy
Appellation
Animosity
Efficacy
Reversionary
Cogitated
Literary Discussion
1. Find the metaphor in the first paragraph.
2. Find the personification in the fifth paragraph.
3. Find the similes Jerry uses to describe himself when he complains about his wife praying for him.
4. Find an example of irony in the chapter.
5. Find an example of literary dialect.
6. Which literary element would you say is most important in this chapter and why?
BOOK 2, CHAPTER 2 – A SIGHT
1. What is Mr. Cruncher supposed to do for his errand from Tellson’s Bank?
2. What is the “Old Bailey” and for what is it famous?
3. Old Bailey was compared to Bedlam. What can you deduce what Bedlam is, and what was the comparison made?
4. What was ironic about the closely guarded doors of Old Bailey?
5. Who is being tried, and what is the charge against him?
6. How does the courtroom react to the accused when he walks in?
7. Describe the accused. What are his physical characteristics? What can you conclude or deduce about his character from what is told us about him?
8. What happens to change the attention and focus of the courtroom? To whom is the focus redirected? Who are they and what do you think is their purpose in the court?
9. What amendment to the US constitution would you say the people in this courtroom are missing?
10. What is Jerry doing while he is in the courtroom? Do you have any speculations yet as to why he has this problem?
Vocab
Debauchery
Traversing
Aphorism
Demur
Proviso
Conspicuous
Engendered
BOOK 2, CHAPTER 3 – A DISAPPOINTMENT
1. What is the Fifth Amendment? How might the Fifth Amendment have helped Charles Darnay? What evidence must he give in which he incriminates himself?
2. The first witness against Darnay is Roger Cly. What evidence does he give that incriminates Darnay?
3. The second witness is Jarvis Lorry. What do you think Mr. Lorry’s opinion of Charles Darnay is? Does the testimony he gives hurt or help Darnay?
4. Miss Lucie Manette is the third witness called to testify. Where did Mr. Lorry, Miss Manette, and Dr. Manette first meet Charles Darnay? What testimony must Lucie give that could both hurt and help Darnay?
5. What did the wigged gentleman who was looking at the ceiling point out on the piece of paper that he threw to the counsel, Mr. Stryver?
6. What does Mr. Stryver say about Mr. Basard and Mr. Cly?
7. What happens in the courtroom to prove that Mr. Carton is much more observant than his manner lets on?
8. What personal service does Carton do for Charles Darnay? What do you think this action hints at for the future?
9. What is the verdict? How does the phrase “Recalled to life” once again have significance?
10. What is your impression of Sydney Carton so far?
Vocab
Ferret
Sublime
Auspicious
Infamy
Immolate
Contagious
Immaculate
Unimpeachable
Disparagement
Disposition
Pernicious
Asseveration
Insinuation
Procured
Timorous
Counterfeit
Beguile
Antipathies
Interposed
Demeanour (demeanor)
Commiseration
Insolent
Cordial
Vehemence
Literary Discussion
1. There is an allusion to some American historical figure in this chapter. Who is it and how is it significant? In regards to this allusion, how might the phrase, “One man’s hero is another man’s traitor,” be significant?
2. We have discussed the narration a couple of times already. What indications are given in the chapter as to who the narrator is?
3. Since the opening lines of the book, Dickens has made use of opposites and paradoxes. He does this again at the end of this chapter when referring to Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. What are the opposites – the similarities and the differences between the two?
4. What metaphor does the narrator use several times for the people in the courtroom, and what might be the significance of this metaphor?
BOOK 2, CHAPTER 4 - CONGRATULATORY
1. What is the scene at the beginning of this chapter? Who is present, where are they, and what has just happened?
2. How is Dr. Manette since we met him in book one? How has he changed? What problems does he still have?
3. As the group leaves, who approaches? What is it he wants from Charles Darnay?
4. We get a closer understanding of Sydney Carton in this chapter. In what ways does your opinion of him change in this chapter? How does Darnay feel about him? How do you feel about Carton?
5. What is it that Sydney Carton secretly wishes for himself? What do you think Carton’s and Darnay’s toast foreshadows?
6. What is Sydney Carton’s opinion of himself? What is his opinion of Darnay? Why do you think Sydney Carton has these feelings about Charles Darnay? Describe the final scene in the chapter. What might this last scene foreshadow?
Vocab
Cadence
Abstraction
Impediments
Terrestrial
Ruing
Laconic
Rejoinder
Offices
Disconcerted
Defiance
Confound
Consolation
Literary Discussion
1. “She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond his misery; and the sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial influence with him almost always.” Who is the “she”? Who is the “him”? Why are Past and Present capitalized? What is the metaphor here? What kind of imagery is here?
2. Research the word “office.” How many definitions are there? Which ONE definition seems most appropriate to its use in this chapter?
3. What is a soliloquy? Where and how is one used in this chapter? What is the purpose of this soliloquy?
4. What is foreshadowing? What is ironic about this term? What possible lines in the soliloquy at the end of this chapter might contain foreshadowing?
BOOK 2, CHAPTER 5 – THE JACKAL
1. What is a jackal? Who is described as the jackal in this chapter? Why?
2. How does the narrator describe these times in London?
3. What do we learn about Mr. Stryver? What kind of man is he? What comparisons are made?
4. What is Sydney Carton’s job? How do he and Stryver get along? Who do you think is the real brains behind this team of attorneys?
5. Describe his working routine. Include when, where, and how.
6. What do Carton and Stryver discuss? What do you think are the reasons for Sydney Carton’s failure in life?