One does not
usually consider the evil, demonic, and twisted qualities of something as pure as
dance.
Charles
Dickens, however, uses this to his advantage. In A Tale of Two Cities, during chapter five of book three, The Wood Sawyer, readers are treated to
a curious metaphor. During this
chapter, Lucie stands outside the prison wall—a position of which Darnay can
see her but she cannot see him—and is constantly bothered and disturbed by a
man previously known as the mender of roads, and now the wood-sawyer.
However,
despite its namesake, the part of this chapter that I believe stood out the
most was not the mysteriously unnamed character, but Dicken’s description of
the Carmagnole, or dance of the revolution. We first witness the dance when
Lucie is once again waiting by the prison, and is “filled with fear” when the
dance approaches her.
The
paragraph describing the dance is long, but a passage of it reads:
“There could not have been fewer than
five hundred people, and they were dancing like five thousand demons…No fight
could have been half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen
sport—a something once innocent delivered over to all devilry—a healthy pastime
changed into a means of angering the blood, bewildering the senses, and
steeling the heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier,
showing how warped and perverted all things good by nature were become”(288-289).
The
Carmagnole is a perfect metaphor of the revolution itself. The revolution,
which started off with motives so pure and simple that it can only be compared to dance, has
distorted into something disgusting; something so frightening that it entrances
Lucie with fear at its mere passing. The war, at this point in the book,
carries barely a shadow of the original purposes it served--instead of being
driven by justice and a thirst for equality; it is now surrounded by
meaningless violence, distrust, and greed.
Five hundred
dancing demons. 25 million real demons.
While it is
described as graceful, the dance shows “how warped and perverted all things
good by nature were become.” This directly correlates France at this time. The
revolutionists, while killing hundreds of people every day, believe that their
murder is not only justified, but in fact bettering the country and its people.
The deadly grace of the war is the people’s minds—their “bewildered,” “warped,” and “perverted” minds.
An example
of their twisted heads comes through Dickens repeated us of the phrase “liberty,
equality, fraternity, or death.” When uttered, it is seen as a statement
proclaiming the wonders of France and the positive aspects of its people. They
have avenged their oppressive leaders. They have gained freedom. They have
saved countless lives.
However, as the Carmagnole is simply a ghost of a pastime filled with mirth and happiness, those words are simply vestiges of what once was true,
good intent. What once meant what it read, “liberty, equality, and fraternity”
are now used ironically and often spoken by extremely violent and power-hungry
people. Those who use that statement have
killed thousands of innocent people for not abiding by their definition of it. The revolutionists have essentially become
as evil as the aristocrats that caused them to rebel.
The motives
of the people of France have changed, and there is no changing back. Their
minds have shifted into twisted parodies of morals. I firmly believe that A Tale of Two Cities will continue to
get darker as we delve deeper into their contorted heads.
