Plot Summary

Book the First: Recalled to Life

The story begins in 1775, a time of social turmoil in both England and France. Mr. Jarvis Lorry, an elderly banker at Tellson’s Bank, travels from London to Dover on a mysterious mission. He carries a cryptic message: “Recalled to Life.” In Dover, he meets 17-year-old Lucie Manette, an orphan he brought to England as a child. He reveals to her that her father, Doctor Alexandre Manette, whom she believed to be dead, is alive. He has been secretly imprisoned in the Bastille for eighteen years and has just been released.

Lorry and Lucie travel to the Parisian suburb of Saint Antoine, a place simmering with poverty and discontent. They go to a wine-shop owned by Ernest Defarge, a former servant of Doctor Manette. Defarge leads them to a dark garret where they find the doctor, a broken man with a white beard and a vacant stare. His long confinement has destroyed his memory, and he spends his days compulsively making shoes, a skill he learned in prison. He identifies himself only by his cell number: “One Hundred and Five, North Tower.” Lucie’s compassion and her resemblance to her mother begin to stir the doctor’s dormant memories. With his daughter’s gentle care, he agrees to leave France, and they escape to England with Mr. Lorry, hoping to restore his mind and spirit.

Book the Second: The Golden Thread

Five years later, in 1780, Charles Darnay, a young French gentleman, is on trial for treason at the Old Bailey in London. Lucie and Doctor Manette, who met Darnay on their journey back from France, are called as witnesses against him. The case seems hopeless until Sydney Carton, a cynical and alcoholic barrister assisting the defense, points out his own uncanny resemblance to the prisoner. This resemblance shatters the credibility of a key witness, and Darnay is acquitted. This event links the lives of Darnay, the Manettes, and Carton. While Darnay is honorable and respected, Carton lives a dissolute life of wasted potential, serving as the brilliant but unambitious “jackal” to his blustering colleague, Mr. Stryver.

Meanwhile, in France, the oppression of the peasantry continues unabated. Charles Darnay’s uncle, the cruel Marquis St. Evrémonde, recklessly runs over and kills a child with his carriage in Saint Antoine. He shows no remorse, tossing a coin to the grieving father, Gaspard, and to Defarge, who tries to comfort him. That night, the Marquis is murdered in his bed, stabbed through the heart with a note that reads, “Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES.”

Back in London, Darnay has established himself as a French tutor and has fallen in love with Lucie Manette. He confesses his love to Doctor Manette, but respects the doctor’s own trauma by agreeing not to reveal his true identity as the nephew of the hated Marquis St. Evrémonde until the morning of his wedding. Sydney Carton also loves Lucie, but knows he is unworthy of her. In a moment of rare vulnerability, he confesses his wasted life to her and makes a solemn promise: he would do anything, even give his life, for her and for those she loves.

Lucie accepts Darnay’s proposal. On their wedding day, Darnay reveals his real name to Doctor Manette. The shock of learning his daughter is marrying into the family that imprisoned him causes the doctor to suffer a traumatic relapse, and for nine days, he reverts to his shoemaking. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, Lucie’s governess, manage to keep his condition a secret from the newlyweds until he recovers.

Years pass. Lucie and Charles have a daughter, also named Lucie. The echoes of footsteps in their quiet Soho home grow louder as the French Revolution erupts. In July 1789, the Defarges lead the storming of the Bastille. Once inside, Ernest Defarge searches his old master’s cell, 105 North Tower, and discovers a hidden document.

Book the Third: The Track of a Storm

By 1792, the French Revolution has descended into the bloody Reign of Terror. Charles Darnay receives a letter from Gabelle, an old family servant who has been imprisoned in Paris and charged with treason for acting on behalf of an emigrant aristocrat. Driven by a sense of duty, Darnay resolves to return to France to save him, underestimating the danger.

Upon his arrival, he is immediately arrested under a new decree that condemns all returning emigrants to death. He is imprisoned in La Force. When news reaches London, Lucie and Doctor Manette rush to Paris. The doctor, now a revered figure due to his status as a Bastille survivor, uses his influence to protect Charles. He becomes a physician to three prisons, including La Force, and is able to ensure Charles’s relative safety during the horrific September Massacres.

After a year and three months, Charles is finally brought to trial. With the Doctor’s powerful testimony in his favor, recalling Darnay’s sympathy for the people and his trial in England as an enemy of the British crown, he is triumphantly acquitted. The courtroom erupts in celebration, and a jubilant mob carries him home on their shoulders.

Their joy is short-lived. That very same evening, four soldiers appear and re-arrest Charles. He has been denounced by three people: Ernest Defarge, Thérèse Defarge, and Doctor Manette himself.

At the trial the next day, the public prosecutor produces the document Defarge found in the Bastille: a letter written by Doctor Manette during his imprisonment. The letter details the horrific crime that led to his incarceration. He was called to treat two peasants: a young woman raped by the Evrémonde brothers (Darnay’s father and uncle) and her brother, who was fatally wounded defending her honor. To silence him, the brothers had him thrown into the Bastille. The letter ends with the doctor denouncing the entire Evrémonde family, “them and their descendants, to the last of their race.” This evidence is damning. The jury unanimously condemns Charles Darnay to the guillotine, to be executed within twenty-four hours. Doctor Manette, horrified that his own long-buried words have condemned his son-in-law, collapses in a state of mental anguish, his old trauma returning with full force.

As all hope seems lost, Sydney Carton devises a plan. Having overheard Madame Defarge plotting to denounce Lucie and her child next, he acts with sudden purpose. He uses his knowledge that the spy John Barsad is secretly Miss Pross’s long-lost brother, Solomon, to blackmail him into gaining access to Darnay’s cell. He instructs Mr. Lorry to have a carriage ready to flee Paris with Lucie, her child, and her father.

Carton visits Darnay in prison. He dictates a letter, and as Darnay writes, Carton uses a chemical to render him unconscious. He then swaps clothes with the prisoner, and Barsad carries the unconscious Darnay out to the waiting carriage. The family, along with Mr. Lorry, escapes Paris just as Madame Defarge arrives at their apartment to ensnare them. She is confronted by the fiercely loyal Miss Pross. In the ensuing struggle, Madame Defarge is killed by a shot from her own pistol. The blast leaves Miss Pross permanently deaf.

Sydney Carton, now posing as Charles Darnay, is taken to the guillotine. He comforts a frightened young seamstress, who recognizes he is not Darnay. As he ascends the scaffold, his mind is clear and calm. His final thoughts envision a beautiful future for the family he has saved and the city rising from its ashes. The novel closes with his iconic reflection:

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Characters

Sydney Carton

A brilliant but deeply cynical and self-loathing lawyer, Carton is introduced as an alcoholic wastrel who has squandered his immense potential. He works as the legal mind behind the successful but oafish barrister, Stryver, whom he refers to as the “lion” to his own “jackal.” His life is a study in apathy and despair until he meets Lucie Manette. His unrequited love for her awakens a long-dormant capacity for feeling and purpose. Though he knows he is unworthy of her, he is transformed by this love, culminating in the ultimate act of sacrifice where he gives his life to save her husband, Charles Darnay. His journey from nihilism to redemption is the novel’s most powerful character arc.

Charles Darnay

The protagonist, Charles Darnay is a French nobleman by birth, the Marquis St. Evrémonde. Horrified by the cruelty and injustice of his family and the French aristocracy, he renounces his title and property and moves to England to live a simple life as a tutor. Darnay is a man of honor, integrity, and courage, but his goodness cannot erase the sins of his ancestors. He is repeatedly drawn back into the vortex of the Revolution, becoming a symbol of how the new regime’s thirst for vengeance makes no distinction between the guilty and the innocent members of the hated upper class.

Lucie Manette

The emotional center of the novel, Lucie is the “golden thread” that connects the other characters. She is gentle, compassionate, and unwavering in her devotion. Having grown up believing she was an orphan, her life becomes dedicated to caring for her father after he is “recalled to life.” Her love has a restorative power, healing her father’s traumatized mind and inspiring Sydney Carton to find meaning in his wasted life. Lucie represents the power of love and compassion to endure and bring light to even the darkest of times.

Doctor Alexandre Manette

Lucie’s father, a gifted physician who was unjustly imprisoned in the Bastille for eighteen years by the Evrémonde family. When he is first released, he is a broken, almost catatonic figure, identified only by his cell number and his compulsive shoemaking. Through Lucie’s love, his mind and dignity are gradually restored. However, the trauma of his imprisonment remains just below the surface, and he suffers a relapse when confronted with the truth of Darnay’s identity. His personal suffering makes him a powerful and respected symbol among the revolutionaries, an influence he uses to try and save his son-in-law.

Ernest and Thérèse Defarge

Husband and wife revolutionaries from the working-class district of Saint Antoine. Ernest Defarge was once Doctor Manette’s servant and feels a lingering loyalty to him, which creates an internal conflict. He is a committed leader of the rebellion but is often more measured than his wife. Madame Defarge is the novel’s most formidable antagonist. Her entire family was wiped out by the Evrémonde brothers, and she is driven by a cold, absolute, and implacable thirst for revenge against their entire class. She famously knits a coded register of all those condemned to die, becoming a human embodiment of inescapable, revolutionary fate.

Jarvis Lorry

A senior clerk at Tellson’s Bank, Mr. Lorry is a model of British pragmatism and loyalty. He insists he is a mere “man of business” with no room for sentiment, yet his actions consistently reveal a deeply compassionate and fatherly nature. He is the steadfast guardian of the Manette family, managing their affairs, protecting them from harm, and providing a source of stability and common sense throughout their ordeal.

Miss Pross

Lucie’s fiercely devoted and formidable governess. She is eccentric, outspoken, and possesses an unshakeable English patriotism. Her love for her “Ladybird” (Lucie) is absolute and selfless. Despite her comical and abrasive exterior, she demonstrates immense courage. Her final confrontation with Madame Defarge, in which her unwavering love triumphs over implacable hatred, is one of the novel’s most dramatic and symbolic moments.

Core Themes

Resurrection and Sacrifice

This is the novel’s central and most pervasive theme. It is introduced with the message “Recalled to Life,” signifying Doctor Manette’s rescue from the living death of the Bastille. Charles Darnay is saved from a death sentence twice, each time a form of resurrection. The term is also used ironically with Jerry Cruncher, the “Resurrection-Man” who digs up bodies for a living. The theme culminates in Sydney Carton’s ultimate sacrifice. By dying in Darnay’s place, he gives his own life but achieves a spiritual resurrection, finding a profound purpose and peace that had eluded him in his wasted existence. His final words, “I am the resurrection and the life,” explicitly link his sacrifice to this powerful Christian theme.

The Inevitability of Revolution

Dickens portrays the French Revolution not as a spontaneous outbreak of chaos, but as the inevitable and terrifying result of centuries of aristocratic oppression. The novel vividly illustrates the “sowing” of injustice by the nobility—symbolized by the Marquis St. Evrémonde’s heartless cruelty—and the bloody “reaping” of the harvest by the vengeful revolutionaries. The metaphor of a rising sea is used to depict the unstoppable force of the people’s rage. While Dickens sympathizes with the suffering of the poor, he does not shy away from depicting the horror of their revenge, embodied by the insatiable Guillotine and the pitiless Madame Defarge. The novel serves as a powerful warning that institutionalized cruelty will ultimately breed a more terrible and indiscriminate violence in return.

Duality and Doubles

The theme of duality is woven throughout the fabric of the story, beginning with its title. The “Two Cities,” London and Paris, stand in stark contrast as symbols of relative stability and revolutionary chaos. The most significant double is the physical likeness between Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. They represent two sides of the same coin: Darnay is the man Carton could have been—honorable, loved, and purposeful—while Carton embodies a darker, more self-destructive path. This physical similarity is the crucial plot device that allows for Carton’s redemptive sacrifice. Other doubles include the cruel Evrémonde twin brothers, who represent the singular evil of their class, and the thematic opposition between Lucie Manette (love, forgiveness) and Madame Defarge (hate, vengeance).

Plot devices

Foreshadowing

Dickens masterfully employs foreshadowing to build suspense and thematic resonance. In the opening chapters, a cask of wine shatters in the streets of Saint Antoine, and the peasants rush to lap it up, staining their hands and faces red. One man scrawls the word “BLOOD” on a wall with the dregs. This scene serves as a powerful and chilling prophecy of the bloodshed that will soon drench the streets of Paris. Similarly, the “echoing footsteps” Lucie hears in her peaceful Soho home are a recurring motif that foreshadows the approach of the revolutionary mob that will shatter her family’s life. Carton’s early, seemingly drunken remarks about his life having no value and his promise to Lucie to “embrace any sacrifice” for her lay the groundwork for his heroic end.

Symbolism

  • The Guillotine: Personified as a “sharp female,” the “National Razor,” and “Sainte Guillotine,” the execution device symbolizes the dehumanizing, mechanical, and relentless nature of the Terror. It becomes an object of morbid worship, replacing the Cross as a symbol of salvation and regeneration for the most fervent revolutionaries.
  • Knitting: Madame Defarge’s constant knitting is one of the novel’s most potent symbols. It represents the cold, methodical, and inescapable nature of revolutionary vengeance. As she knits the names of the aristocracy into her secret register, she is like one of the Fates from classical mythology, weaving the destiny of death from which there is no escape.
  • The Marquis St. Evrémonde: The character of the Marquis is less an individual and more a symbol of the entire ancien régime. His callous disregard for human life, his belief in his own inherent superiority, and his utter lack of compassion represent the systemic corruption and cruelty of the French aristocracy that made the Revolution inevitable.
  • The “Golden Thread”: This phrase is used to describe Lucie Manette and specifically her golden hair. It symbolizes her role as the force of love, compassion, and purity that binds the central characters together. It is the thread that pulls her father back from the abyss of his trauma, ties her to Charles Darnay, and ultimately inspires Sydney Carton’s redemption.