The Book Club: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens with Allen Estrin | The Book Club
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- Опубликовано: 17 янв 2022
- “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Is history repeating itself? Set during the French Revolution, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities offers parallels to American Society today. PragerU’s Allen Estrin joins Michael Knowles on this episode of The Book Club to explore the novel’s stark contrasts of fate vs. free will, tyranny and excess, and life and death.
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![Charles Dickens: The Man That Asked for More [Full Movie]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YJgyNrMmrpo/mqdefault.jpg)
I read this novel all on my own and not because my High School Junior English Lit teacher assigned it. It teaches us two important things. 1 - Governmental Power is Absolute Power, and it always corrupts absolutely. Robespierre was WAY worse a tyrant than King louis XVI ever even dreamed of being. 2 - People who live and breathe hatred and consider themselves righteous for doing so (Ref: Madame Defarge) will wind up doing as much evil as they can just because they can.
So it's a propaganda piece for monarchism
@@monsterhunter445 No. It does not recommend that monarchy is best, but it expounds on the capability of evil to overcome the public's heart.
I don’t think it teaches your first point at all. All throughout the novel you get glimpses of the barbarity that human beings are capable of engaging in against one another. We see how savage the aristocracy was and we also see how beastly the common patriots become once in power.
That is quite far from arguing that a King was better than the revolution.
Stalin wasn’t a king?
@@flashgordon6670 No he wasn't. He just acted like one!
this is my second favorite novel by Charles Dickens the first is Oliver Twist. i remember read this on my own at the age of ten and i couldn't put it down and waked away from it with a new out look on life. what i took away from it was not to take your life for granted because it can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye
How should we take our lives then? Seeing as life has been granted to us.
When you were ten? How the standards have fallen😢
@@howdy2496 yup i was the smart kid that would spend any amount of free time in the library lol i used to win about 4 months worth of free personal pan pizzas from the local pizza hut because of the BOOK-IT Program. don't know if they still have that program around but it would be awesome to see if some how it could get put back into schools
Children should read the book, I red it when I've been 11 years old in socialist country as very rare book on black market
Which country?
I read this book, A Tale Of Two Cities, just a few months ago. I loved it so much that after I was finished... *I Read It Again!* The second time was even better! (Michael, how about doing Homer's, 'The Iliad & The Odyssey' next? I read both of those twice also. ;-))
Isn't that like origins of mythology or somethign
Oooo!! YESSS!!! When I was in 3rd Grade, I read The Odyssey but kinda simplified (cause I'm in 3rd Grade LOL) ofc lol but the only reason I put its down is because I had to focus on my studies and I wanted to go outside/habe more recess time cuz y'know: I'm a kid 💀😅😅 lol. But now I miss reading adventure books and the ocean storms and the action :))))
A Tale of Two Cities 1935 Film Adaptation does not disappoint in any realm. The movie really covers the whole story of the book, though obviously shorter, and the acting is the stuff Oscars were invented to reward. Just a great film for a great novel.
Never saw a better performance than Ronald Coleman’s portrayal of Sydney Carton or the actress performing as Madame Dafarge.
One of the best Victorian novels ever written. So many interesting parallels to today, which makes it so poignantly relevant. Wish you guys would have had time to closely look at the scenes pertaining to the storming of the bastille and then the violent progression to the endless executions via la guillotine. What began from real oppression and legitimate anger of the aristocracy progressed to a point of them beheading their own followers, and I think Dickens embodies the essence of that period so well-and this served as a warning and plea to England, for the aristocracy to not oppress the people and for the people to not be ruled by mindless mob anger.
"Real oppression", lmao. The French people weren't oppressed by anyone. A Tale of Two Cities is in the end nonsense fiction. The French Revolution in reality was an inordinate response to numerous unfortunate harvests and ill decisions, engendered by the radical thinkers this "oppressive" aristocracy failed to censor.
@@TheNabOwnzz perhaps real oppression might be the wrong word and I don’t disagree with you to an extent. But Dickens highlights the aristocracy’s act of turning a blind eye to the poor’s suffering/starvation, then being manipulated by the Defarges, and the aristocracy’s abuse of power. That’s not quite oppression per se and there is a sort of stirring up caused by radicals. That’s more to what I was trying to sum up in my previous comment. Historically it was the merchant class who led the poor (who were starving) to different uprisings because they thought they should have a say in politics…but the aristocracy was greatly mismanaging the country at the expense of the third class and, to an extent, so was the clergy…
@@ashleyanderson8465 Dickens's political views are quite clearly prejudiced by blind proletarian sympathies; i wouldn't consider his views very valid. This entire notion that the aristocracy was malignant and neglectful of the plight of the poor is pure propaganda. The fact is many ill decisions were made (such as France's participation in the Seven Years War and American Revolution) which drained the national exchequer. Couple this with the bad harvests leading up to the revolution, and the influence of malicious writers (Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot etc) and you have the French Revolution. Moreover, according to Jacques Necker's accounts just before the revolution, France's future prospects were not at all gloomy. The entire thing was just an utterly ludicrous response. The irony of Dickens writing in the end of this book when he says "i see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss," he would have done better to write "descend into the abyss".
@@TheNabOwnzz would you say that the aristocracy was compassionate to the poor who belonged to the third estate? Were they helping them or too busy spending lavishly and enjoying themselves in versailles? You find no fault with the actions and dealings of the aristocracy during the time that may have provoked the third estate to revolt? And I’m not asking that to excuse the revolutionaries. I agree that they were *erroneously* influenced by enlightenment and romantic thinkers such as Voltaire (who hated Christianity) and Rousseau (who was a romantic lunatic whose friends didn’t even like him), and eventually led by extremists such as Robespierre and co. through the Reign of Terror, but you think that Dickens is completely off base in critiquing the aristocrats’ treatment of the poor?
It’s also important to notes that even though he is using the French Revolution, the entire book is really a warning to England of the aristocracy’s treatment of the poor in his own country…he’s drawing parallels and perhaps oversimplifying history, but you can’t surely think that the aristocracy in either country treated the poor well. And I’m not suggesting all aristocrats were “evil” but the majority were certainly neglectful of the conditions of the poor. And Dickens does not make the revolutionaries out to be heroes or good in any sense. He even aligns with you in that the poor were in many ways misled, lapping up the bloodlust being spread by the defarges (aka revolutionary leaders / ideology). He just adds the necessity for individual responsibility and compassion for the poor (as he does in all most of his books).
@@ashleyanderson8465 Doubtless Dickens' intentions were as you say, but that doesn't change the fact that it is rather prejudiced to one side, and that it has a very prejudiced view of history. Defarge is villainized, sure, but according to Dickens she's the evil engendered by the aristocracy. You can tell by his closing lines that he believes an initial violent purging of the old order is necessary to instigate a stable and peaceful future. Oh, he will denounce the Reign of Terror, surely, but there was nobody after 1794 that didn't denounce it. But the truth is the defarges were all inherently evil, stirred up by revolutionary thinkers to come to violent action. And Darnay's uncle (forgot his name) really isn't a very subtle caricature of a 'corrupt aristocracy'. And again, the suffering of the poor had little to do with the miserliness of the aristocracy. A Tale of Two Cities is a good book mostly because of Carton's arc, but the sequences about the revolution itself and Dickens' ridiculous personal assertions are undoubtedly a weakness.
One of the greatest novels of all time.
Read the book and watch the movie with Ronald Colman. Madame Defarge may ultimately be responsible for evil and revenge, but you can't help but understand why she is that way.
This book was on our syllabus in school we had to read a smaller version of it in 7th grade, a part of our indian central board education system. No other rapid reader book ever has touched me like this book. This book even made me cry when I was just 12 years old and I would constantly read it and could think of nothing else
You should try reading the Bible, that’ll take your mind off it.
I read Dickens years ago. Lately I have been thinking of reading his works again. This video may have sealed the deal for me. Dickens is so skilled at character development. As an author I appreciate anyone who can give voice to a character you hate to say goodbye to.
I never understood the idea or the symbolism of Miss Pross being deaf her whole life after the sound of the gun shot.
It isn't probably, except that some things have consequences, just makes the book more realistic
I think that detail emphasizes just how close Miss Pross came to getting her head blown off!
You guys need to do Count of Monte Cristo
YES
Possibly my favorite book. Ronald Coleman did a great job as Sidney.
That movie really nails the whole book though it is much shorter obviously. The entire cast of the movie just tears it up. What a great film for such a great novel.
I hear it's a pretty good book.
Thnx for this review. My son recently gave me a copy he picked up at a yard sale. I'm intrigued and looking forward to it this weekend 😉
Simon Bolivar and his fellow Venezuelans were in France and when the French were celebrating Napolean, Simon Bolivar shut all the doors and windows in disgust for the French celebrating a tyrant.
I love the story, but I've always had difficulty with the pace and the sentence structure. I loved Great Expectations--couldn't put it down--and Oliver Twist, but something about the pacing was hard for me. And I've read lengthy books before--had no problem finishing War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I finally got through it by listening to it.
But it's a fantastic story that brings tears to my eyes--that last line from Sidney Carton!
Wonderful discussion!
That's normal. Tolstoy is easier to read than Dickens.
@@TheNabOwnzz 100% agree
One of my favorite books
Michael, "Connecticut Yankee" by Mark Twain would be a great one to discuss. Great series of talks!
Not bad Michael - something about you and the discussion in this book club reminds me of another time.
Great Job!
Excellent!
Thank you so so very much for such an indepth, insightful, captivating and yet, exciting criticism of Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities". I have left you subscription from South Africa.
I have read all of Dickens' novels, and many of them more than once, and A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite of all.
It’s a great, strange and complex novel that reveals more with every reading. In parts it’s so ambiguous that interpretation of it depends on the interest or mood of the reader.
I loved this discussion. I finished reading the book first and then watched this discussion. Very well done. I am curious if Michael has made a recommended list of novels everyone should read. It would be interesting to see.
Thanks lads 👍 Book added to my reading list
He wasn’t “paid” for this one in the traditional sense. He and his writer buddy Wilkie Collins had started their own literary magazine. Tale of Two Cities was the first novel they serialized, and Collins’ Woman in White was the second - also a fantastic example of Vic Lit.
Great post , thank you.
For your dedication to the good work, your commitment to your moral principles, Than you. 🙏
Oh I remember this. It was intense. The ending was so noble.
I should read again. Thank you.
This was so good, i love the book club! I hope you'll do The Chosen by Chaim Potok.
Thank you for this marvelous and thoughtful installment. One minor quibble--and many people make this mistake: Carton does NOT look EXACTLY like Charles Darnay. They are similar, though, and could be mistaken for each other. This is why Carton doesn't let the guards in La Force get a good look at himself on the way into the prison, or at Darnay on the way out. (Also if the the two WERE look-alikes, the reader would suspect early on exactly where the plot is heading, which for me would spoil the impact of the finale.)
I've always been impressed with Dicken's villains. Madame Defarge has a line that I thought they would mention when he said "extermination." It gave me chills the first time I read it in The context of the bloody French revolution: "Then tell the wind and the fire when to stop, but don't tell me."
A Tale of Two Cities is one of my least favorite novels by Dickens. Bleak House, Great Expectations, and David Copperfield are my favorites. But I really enjoyed listening to your talk -- Dickens is superb.
sounds like a great book
The bible should get credit as well, we can notice the inspiration it the book, as many great works.
Haha we just started reading this for school!
When will see the greatest English poem: "Paradise Lost" by Milton? Prof. Anthony Esolen would be a great guest for this.
Already watched on Prager U - came here to "LIKE"
You should do a Martin Cruz Smith novel.
Michael rules
i've always intended to read this book and finally have. some of the old english style is difficult to follow what has been said but other than that, a great read.
“I am an English woman!” Love it.
I’m actually reading right now.
Great Review of a great classic! Now do the Satyricon before a take a flamethrower to this place!... Pweeze?
Hmm, I’ve never reas anything by Charles Dickens before, but now I’m kinda interested.
Can you guys review The Bros Karamazov It’s not really clicking and the ending is frustrating. 🧐
The Brothers Karamazov is difficult but it, along with this, are my favorite novels. Both are themed on resurrection. Take your time with it and the more you think about it and see how Dostoevsky deals with the concepts within you’ll appreciate it more. I’ve read it four times and it hits me harder with each read
So what is the next book this book club will review? I want to get the book from the library.
right? they need to tell us a month in advance so we can prepare.
💜
Michael, put some socks on. A gentleman never shows his legs when wearing pants!
I have no idea how to make book club chats more exciting and not SNL Dan Akroyd parody level boring and neither does PragerU. I watch only because it's like eating your vegetables, but wouldn't it be nice if they could make them like desert? Maybe do some Man on the Street inserts or fake movie trailers for the books covered. Honestly that would be spicy.
Have you done *_White Fang_* yet?
do a dostoesky book review with jordan Peterson
When he said 'we believe in some pretty crazy stuff' you'd think he'd pick from a myriad of destructive human thinking not anything politically polarizing which 'we' clearly don't all believe. Hoping no one mistakes this for scholarly analysis. Whenever there's too much neat consensus about the book's meanings it's a dead giveaway that a literary discussion's not up to snuff
OK, but who were the 2 noblemen who so bedeviled the peasant family?
Hume became rich from writing during his lifetime - sure it was philosophy, but still. Shakespeare probably had an above average life as well.
So I should skip the middle?
#benshapiro
⬆️ 🆙
Maybe, too short for such a book.
Did he say climate change is unreasonable?
There’s no way I’ve got the patience to read, or even put myself through listening to, or watching a film that’s set in the late 18th century during the French Revolution.
No doubt I did see one of the films as a boy, about 30 odd years ago, I have some small vague memory of being told to stop asking questions and watch by my father.
If I had to guess what Tale of two cities is about, from my extremely limited knowledge of it, I’d say it’s probably about two civilisations that are quite different and yet somehow the same and how humans are humans, people are people wherever you go, despite their cultures, ideologies and countries. It’s about looking at enemies and aliens and seeing glimmers of your own reflection in them. It’s about Lilliput and that other place in Gulliver’s travels with giants in, how they’re so different and yet so alike and everything is relative and affected by other things. If I see a dwarf, I become a giant, if I see a giant, I become a dwarf.
We become what we believe we ought to be, in view of what we see about us.
This is the very simplest expression of our interactions with the variety of personalities and Spirits whom we encounter in our travels. How we develop and grow as people and how our personalities and attributes are expressed and formed.
For example, hypothetically, I could think of myself as a most excellent guitarist, until I met someone even better, and so I became a drummer or bass player.
We grow into the niches that are available and have need and want of us. This is fate, the myriad of permutations in the rivers of life in which we swim. The controlling factors and currents, some weak and some some too strong for us to go against.
But ultimately, we all have certain human common denominators, no matter which way we swim and what stations in life we’re in.
It’s about Progress, Evolution and Self Determination and how these forces interplay, coordinate, cooperate and counter act with each other.
And on a Spiritual level, it’s about our plight to have control over our lives and environments and striving for the unattainable, like a cat chasing its tail and a mouse in a wheel.
The Pursuit of Happiness. Good film with Will Smith btw, I would much rather sit through that tyvm.
Am I right?
I would however be very interested to learn about Charles Dickens himself, his writing and inspirations, but that’s another story.
Thanks very much.
24th
Sounds similar to Julian Assange being imprisoned by the Elites for revealing someone else's crimes.
Back to the future. 1776
Prager should review "They thought they were free" by Milton Mayer.
A lot like the Trumpers in America today.
I find Dickens difficult to read. His prose does not flow easily
😅😅 Yah but he is a master in introductions.
He’s a dramatic writer. It flows extremely well. It reads aloud well.
Saying the French Revolution was bad and contrasting it with the succesful revolution in America makes you come of very arrogant. Yes, a lot of people died in the terror but the societal changes did a lot of good for people around the world. Also many loyalist were massacred by the Patriots.
I think the whole partisan Conservative historical takes on the the American and French revolutions are very near-sighted. One, the States were an ex-colony that were able to cut all ties from the political order they were under. Had the States’ fate been entirely intertwined with that of the United Kingdom itself, involving having another regicide, there is no way the American Revolution would have been nearly as smooth. And it’s not like the Revolution in America was THAT smooth to begin with. Keep in mind that less than 1% of the populace of the new country voted in the first election. Keep in mind there were, not one, but two revolts that had to be quelled by the government. Overall, I think the idea of “American Revolution good, French Revolution bad” is a bit fatuous, even if there is much critical discussion to be had about the immediate and long-term legacy of both.
@@keatsiannightingale2025 exactly lol they said the french revolution and American revolution were different but in reality they were both bourgeoisie revolutions and the reasons you give for the difference was merely in execution. So yeah Prager u is kind of attacking liberalism in a weird way but that's conservatives.
@@monsterhunter445 Hahaha too true
A lot of it was based on Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, which they mention. RRF is, of course, a mindless rant written from a position of almost total ignorance about the actual conditions in France in 1790, the year of its publication. If certain passages appear to prefigure the excesses of the Terror, then the blind hatred of popular politics that it embodies, and actually helped to stoke, contributed to that eruption as much as anything (and ofc it's filled with anti-Semitic insults).
As for A Tale of Two Cities, to be fair to Dickens, he does acknowledge that the Third Estate had legitimate grievances against the Ancien Regime. This puts him ahead of most English depictions of the Revolution at the time, which were overwhelmingly sympathetic to the monarchy and portrayed the revolutionaries as nothing but violent psychopaths.
However, Dickens's portrayal is very much still coloured by his perspective as a Victorian Englishman. His depiction of the entire period as little more than crowd madness, base mob violence, and the Reign of Terror (which itself is not given its proper context as a series of emergency laws to save France from civil war and invasion), and failing to give the Revolution any credit for its positive achievements is a case in point. Dickens was largely inspired by his reading of Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution, which did much to colour English-language coverage of the period, but is now very dated.
Yes, who cares now about that lot of people who died, especially the innocent ones?
This was good till he said we believe that men can be women
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Let’s go Brandon
I don’t know what I expected from prager u but I should have quit when the guy gets the title of the book wrong within the first three minutes. Then a completely ridiculous political comment on the current transgender debate and climate change!? So dumb.
The sequel:
A Tale of Two Sh*tties: New York @ San Francisco
is better IMHO.
The woke lgbtqrstd+supreme cancel blob is literally spawning hobos and votes of liberals who went to hell because they HATE AMERICA from the underworld
oh boy I can't wait for prageru to twist the meaning of the novel written by one of the most prolific advocates for social justice among the poor and completely miss the core point.
Oh boy can't wait for you to get your 2k comments on PragerU while your account is still 1 yr old.
Wut
Why are you even watching if you have such disdain for Prager U? Surely, you have other ways to spend your time. 🙂
Special Feelings Sharing Day?
LOL As if anyone will buy you are somehow enlightened....