link essays

link essays A Tale of Two Cities and Things Fall Apart are both novels of social protest. Both novels are focused largely on class struggle. The broad theme of class struggle is important, but it is also important to note how Madame and Monsieur Defarge react to the unjust monarchy in revolutionary France compared with Okonkwos reactions to the class struggles in the Ibo tribe. This comparison is important because these characters actions set the tone of the respective novels. Class struggle motivates Okonkwos aspirations and the Defarges retaliations. The privileges that come with being a higher classed member of society roused Okonkwo to strive for higher social standing. These same privileges inflamed Madame Defarge to plot the downfall of the wealthy. Class struggle was the cause for Okonkwos inner turmoil as well as the French Revolution. In A Tale of Two Cities Dickens writes about how in late 18Th century France, peasant "scarecrows" starved while nobility and royalty treated themselves to every indulgence. "For the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that region should have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their condition. But, the time was not come yet; and every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather, took no warning" (Dickens, 27). Because of the suffering and hunger that faced them, the peasant harbored great hatred and resentment towards nobility. This struggle between social classes was a prominent theme in not only Dickens's work, but in Chinua Achebe's as well. "Among these people, a man was judged according to his worth" (Achebe, 8). In Things Fall Apart, Achebe shows the Ibo as having definite boundaries between social classes. Men were judged based o...