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A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

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What is the significance of the title of Book the Third in A Tale of Two Cities?

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The title "The Track of the Storm" in Book the Third of A Tale of Two Cities symbolizes the unfolding chaos of the French Revolution, akin to a storm that threatens to engulf the characters, notably Charles Darnay and his family. This metaphor reflects the revolution's gradual build-up to violence. Additionally, it highlights Sydney Carton's internal and external struggles, culminating in his sacrificial act, which mirrors the broader societal upheaval and themes of redemption in the narrative.

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The title of the third book, "The Track of the Storm", is a metaphor where the "storm" which is referred to is the French Revolution that has "broken out" like a storm in Chapter 21 of Book 2, entitled "Echoing Footsteps". Thus the last book attempts to "track" this storm, noting how it develops and its course, and in particular how it threatens to engulf the main characters of the novel, in particular Charles Darnay and his family.

You are right in identifying that this storm imagery comes elsewhere. In fact, it comes in Chapter 21, just before the "outbreak" of this storm with the storming of the Bastille. Lucie is described in her married state as listening to the echoes of footsteps, both of her family and of people in the steet outside their house, but as this section of the Chapter comes to an end, Dickens relates:

But,...

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there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, about little Lucie´s sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising.

Note how this section introduces two important images that are continued throughout the rest of the book to describe the Revolution - firstly the storm, and secondly the sea, which is used in the latter half of Chapter 21 to describe the uprising of the "patriots" as they storm the Bastille and wreak their terrible revenge.

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What is the significance of "Book the Third" in A Tale of Two Cities?

The title refers to the French Revolution and the problems with the Manette family. 

Charles is arrested because of his family’s crimes, and because of this Sydney Carton, Jarvis Lorry, Dr. Manette, Lucie, and their daughter go to France to try to rescue him.  The storm was foreshadowed.  In Book II, Chapter 21, there was a warning.

But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, about little Lucie’s sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising. (21)

Dickens likes to use the metaphor of the storm to describe the revolution because it gathers slowly and then gets more and more forceful, and then becomes violent and destructive.  At first, the revolution was just a whisper, kind of like wind is when a storm is first getting started.  Then, as the revolution got more and more dangerous, it got louder and louder as the revolutionaries began to act and got bolder. 

The storm did not affect the Manettes right away, except at Darnay’s trial.  Then Lucie fell in love with Darnay, and Dr. Manette had to make a choice.  He decided that he would not say anything, and he would let his daughter be in love with the man whose family had imprisoned him.

In France, the Manette family faces utter destruction.  They are facing their own personal storm as well as the storm of the revolution.  Sydney Carton makes a choice of his own.  He decides that he must sacrifice his life for Lucie.  In a way, the storm for him is internal.  He will lay down his life for the woman he loves.  He knows he cannot have her, so he will make sure that she can be happy, even if it means that he is no longer with her.  He is helping her in the only way he can. 

To him, his miserable life is not worth anything.  Her life is all that matters.  Still, it cannot be easy for him.  He changes places with Darnay, taking advantage of their remarkable resemblance.  Darnay would not do this willingly because he is too noble.  Carton knows this.  He plans everything to the detail and succeeds.  In the end, the Manettes survive and the revolution rages on without them.

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What is the significance of "Book the Third" in A Tale of Two Cities?

With the religious theme of redemption and with Carton as a Christ-like figure, the number 3 plays a recurring role in Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities."  In Book the First, Sydney Carton is introduced to his dual, Charles Darnay, and by contrast to him, Sydney becomes more aware of his sin of dissipation (of drinking and of living to his potential). Then, in Book the Second, Carton awakens feelings in himself that he has believed suppressed; he pledges his love to Lucie and his friendship to Darnay.  Now, in Book the Third, in the storm of French Revolution and its blood lust, Carton fulfills his promises to the Darnay family and becomes the sacrificial lamb, who in his sacrifice, redeems himself.

The events of the third book are foreshadowed by the chapter "Hundreds of People" when Carton remarks to Lucie,

There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so...The footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us?

Later, in Chapter 21 "Echoing Footsteps," this approaching storm is again foreshadowed in Book the Second:

Among the echoes, then, there would arise the sound of footsteps at her own [Lucie's] early grave; and thoughts of the husband who would be left so desolate, and who would mourn so much for her so much, swelled to her eyes  and broke like waves.

Chapters 22 and 23 further this motif as in "The Sea Still Rises" the Vengeance emerges with men who "were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows."  The crowd captures Foulon, an aristocrat who has suggested that the peasants eat grass, and they hang the man as "the blood and hurry had not changed."

In the next chapter, "Fire Rises," "lay a ruined country, yielding nothing but desolation..."  The chateau of the Marquis d'Evremonde is set fire; other fires follow and

The altitude of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it, no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate successfully.

Thus, the storm of vengeance against the aristocrats in the French Revolution is sensed by Carton and Lucie, and it is later begun with single incidences that culminate in the fomented masses who guillotine aristocrats in the French Revolution, the "storm" of Book the Third.

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