Tale Of Two Cities Rhetorical Analysis Essay

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In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens is able to lay out that the reason death is so painful is because it forces humans to realize they truly don’t know the people that surround them through the passage, Night Shadows. Charles Dickens is able to use literary techniques to explain why dying is such a threatening enigma. He begins the passage by stating that “ a wonderful fact to reflect upon, is that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to each other”. The diction he uses lends to make that line a very true statement. Instead of saying “an idea” or “it is a thought”, he says that it is a FACT (emphasis mine), forcing the readers to believe what he is saying is the truth. He additionally uses the saying “human creatures” suggesting …show more content…
Dickens starts off the passage by writing in a more broad way, “every human creature” then narrows down to the specifics passage, “the messenger . . . the King. . . the Minister”. The indicated idea is necessary to show how the theme can translate to the story. Dickens is very clever about how he structures that, making sure the reader is also aware of the question, and will continue thinking about through the entirety of the novel. The author continues to represent the theme by having the passage start with repeating ideas, and then expand to less similar words/ideas. He goes from “every house has a secret”, “every door has a secret”, “every heart has a secret”, “ the light is dead”, “My friend is dead”, to a nonconstant like “they were all mysteries to one another”. He does this so that at the beginning the reader has no questions, they know exactly what has a secret, who is dead, to a more frightening “they are all mysteries to one another”, just as in reality. The reader no longer believes they know what is going on, but also has to wait for the mystery to be
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