earticle

영어

In this paper Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities is analyzed in terms of its description of and dealing with its major characters’ traumatic experiences: Doctor Manette’s, Madame Defarge’s, and Sydney Carton’s. We argue that Dickens describes the individual traumatic experience not because he wants melodramatic effects, but because he attempts to delve into it in order to find the causes of French Revolution. Also, Dickens makes connection between individual experience of trauma and its social and political dimension. Through the analysis of Dickens’s attempt, we can acknowledge that the mega political event could be originated from severe individual traumas when they are not treated properly. We cannot find the effective way to prevent the revolutionary crash, but we can appreciate Sydney Carton’s vision of the community of “perennial mourning” as a possible treatment of individual and communal trauma.