know the end from the beginning
foreshadowing
Maybe it’s because I’m slow, or maybe it’s because it really does take several readings to pick up on all the foreshadowing in a book that hints at the end from the very beginning. Four or five readings is a lot to ask of most books (or people), but this is what sets classics apart – they’re worth the time to reread, because they give and give every single time.
So let’s talk about A Tale of Two Cities, which we’re officially finishing this week.
If Dickens had written this book in modern times, its release would be fraught with podcast interviews and pop magazine articles asking questions like, “How much of the story did you plan in advance? Did you know the details ahead of time, or did you make it up as you went?” But we don’t have the benefit of interviews. We just have the book, and that’s probably better if the lame, repetitive articles all over the internet are any indication of what we would get.
But first, let’s say something that none of those articles do: Spoilers ahead. If you haven’t finished A Tale of Two Cities, stop here, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, go back and finish the book first.
(Don’t you just love it when you go online to learn a little more about the book you’re going to read, but the article gives away the entire plot, climax, and big reveal in the first two sentences? Well, thanks SO much, now you’ve ruined the book. Bonehead.)
There’s a difference between spoilers and foreshadowing, but we have to give away the one to hash out the others. A Tale of Two Cities is one of those books that tells the ending throughout the entire book because it’s saturated with foreshadowing. What was obvious to me this time around doesn’t change the fact that twenty years ago when I read it for the first time, I sat on the couch in our old house in Anchorage, ugly crying in astounded grief at what Sydney had been planning all along to do. Because he knew the end from the beginning, too.
But really, how much of the detail and foreshadowing was really intentional by Dickens? How much did he just stumble upon as he continued to flesh out the story?
Some of the details seem obviously planned. The foreshadowing of Jerry’s other, ahem, occupation is so saturated throughout the beginning chapters that it looks like Dickens knew who he was, and he was trying to help us know, too, with all the references to his rusty fingers and such:
“Recalled to life! That’s a blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn’t do for you, Jerry!…You’d be in a blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!”
– end of chapter 2, book 1
“He had eyes…much too near together—as if they were afraid of being found out in something, singly, if they kept too far apart.”
– beginning of chapter 3, book 1
A couple pages later, Mr. Lorry reflects on “digging out” Dr. Manette from the dead as he is recalled to life, and he makes an interesting contrast to what we know now of Jerry’s grave digging:
“…the passenger of his fancy would dig, and dig, dig—now with a spade, now with a great key, now with his hands—to dig this wretched creature out.”
And then at the end of chapter 6 of book 2, there’s this exchange:
“What a night it has been! Almost a night, Jerry,” said Mr. Lorry, “to bring the dead out of their graves.”
“I never see the night myself, master—nor yet I don’t expect to—what would do that,” answered Jerry.
Which is a great example of the gravedigger doth protest too much, but we’ll get to Shakespeare and Hamlet some other day.
Rust being a constant symbol of the grave also brings perspective to this foreshadowing about Sydney in chapter 5 of book 2, when he says “I had no chance in my life but rust and repose.”
But even before that, we see the end from the beginning as early as page 35 in my copy:
“The worst will be over in a moment; it is but passing the room door, and the worst is over. Then, all the good you bring to him, all the relief, all the happiness you bring to him, begins.”
It sounds like it’s describing the resolute sacrifice at the end, but it’s actually Mr. Lorry encouraging Lucie as they go into the room at the top of the stairs to rescue her father.
At the end of chapter 15 book 2, we see the mender of roads in conversation with Madame DeFarge, and it doesn’t mean much until you realize later that this is the same man who later becomes a sawyer who agrees to testify against Lucie to have her and her child put to death. In this early conversation, Madame DeFarge tests his willingness for cruelty:
“If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?”
“Truly yes, madame.”
‘Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers: would you not?”
“It is true, madame.”
“You have seen both dolls and birds today.”
I’m sorry to say that it took me five readings of this book before I realized that this points directly at Lucie, who is described as both a bird1 and a doll2 by those who love her.
We see the end from the beginning again in chapter 4 of book 2, when Charles is acquitted in his first trial for life and Sydney Carton brings his characteristic light mockery to a grave situation:
“That’s a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for by! How does it feel? Is it worth being tried for one’s life to be the object of such sympathy and compassion, Mr. Darnay?”
Sydney gives away the ending not long after (in chapter 6 of book 2) when Lucie fancies she hears the premonition of footsteps around their home on the corner, and she tries to explain it to the others. Charles asks:
“Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Darnay; I told you it was a foolish fancy, but you asked for it. When I have yielded myself to it, I have been alone, and then I have imagined them the footsteps of the people who are to come into my life, and my father’s.”
“I take them into mine!” said Carton. “I ask no questions and make no stipulations.”
Maybe Dickens knew where the story was going all along. But the presence of the Holy Spirit was clearly nudging him throughout, saying, “Hey, add this, you’ll thank Me later.”
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning.– Isaiah 46:9b-10a
P.S. If you’re up for a short Christmas read through this busy month, we start The Cricket on the Hearth next week — yes, more Dickens — and it’ll just be 25 pages a week for 3 weeks. Then we jump right into Lilith by George MacDonald in the new year. Join us for discussion in our Telegram group, and if you’d like to brush up on your writing, you can sign up for that by clicking the blue button below to upgrade. Details here.
"It really is doubly and trebly hard to have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after him…to take Ladybird’s affections away from me.” (Miss Pross, chapter 6, book 2)
"Did you know, I rather thought at the time, that you sympathized with the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired doll?” (Stryver to Carton, chapter 5, book 2)