The Woodman symbolizes the tumbrils (the carts that take the victims of the Revolution to the guillotine), as he chops down the wood to make the carts. The trees are cut down for the sake of people who will also be cut down. The tumbrils are then delivered to the Farmer (Death), who harvests the people for the guillotine. The tool of a woodman is an axe, which symbolizes the act of cutting. The tool of Death is traditionally a scythe, as he harvests them from the earth to be presented to the grave. Though both a woodman and a farmer are usually shown to be people whose deeds improve people’s lives, in the paradox (as shown in the first paragraph of the novel) they are the means of destruction. The people will find themselves, as the peasant woman tells the Monseigneur, under “little heaps of grass.”
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