Sydney Carton dies on the guillotine to spare Charles Darnay. How

you interpret Carton's sacrifice- positively or negatively- will

affect your judgment of his character, and of Dickens' entire work.

Some readers take the positive view that Carton's act is a triumph

of individual love over the mob hatred of the Revolution. Carton and

the seamstress he comforts meet their deaths with great dignity. In

fulfilling his old promise to Lucie, Carton attains peace; those

watching see "the peacefullest man's face ever beheld" at the

guillotine. In a prophetic vision, the former "jackal" glimpses a

better world rising out of the ashes of revolution, and long life

for Lucie and her family- made possible by his sacrifice.

This argument also links Carton's death with Christian sacrifice and

love. When Carton makes his decision to die, the New Testament verse

beginning "I am the Resurrection and the Life" nearly becomes his

theme song. The words are repeated a last time at the moment Carton

dies. In what sense may we see Carton's dying in Darnay's place as

Christ-like? It wipes away his sin, just as Christ's death washed

clean man's accumulated sins.

For readers who choose the negative view, Carton's death seems an

act of giving up. These readers point out that Stryver's jackal has

little to lose. Never useful or happy, Carton has already succumbed to

the depression eating away at him. In the midst of a promising

youth, Carton had "followed his father to the grave"- that is, he's

already dead in spirit. For such a man, physical death would seem no

sacrifice, but a welcome relief.

Some readers even go so far as to claim that Carton's happy vision

of the future at the novel's close is out of place with his overall

gloominess. According to this interpretation, the bright prophecies of

better times ahead are basically Dickens' way of copping out, of

pleasing his audience with a hopeful ending.

If Sydney Carton's motives seem complicated to you, try stepping

back and viewing him as a man, rather than an influence on the

story. He's a complex, realistic character. We see him so clearly,

working early morning hours on Stryver's business, padding between

table and punch bowl in his headdress of sopping towels, that we're

able to feel for him. Have you ever known someone who's thrown away

his talent or potential, yet retains a spark of achievement, as well

as people's sympathy? That's one way of looking at Sydney Carton.

Dickens adds an extra dimension to Carton's portrait by giving him a

"double," Charles Darnay. For some readers, Carton is the more

memorable half of the Carton/Darnay pair. They argue that Dickens

found it easier to create a sympathetic bad character than an

interesting good one. Carton's own feelings toward his look-alike

waver between admiration and hostility. But see this for yourself,

by noticing Carton's rudeness to Darnay after the Old Bailey trial.

When Darnay has gone, Carton studies his image in a mirror,

realizing that the young Frenchman is everything he might have been-

and therefore a worthy object of hatred.

It's interesting that both Carton and Darnay can function in two

cultures, English and French. Darnay, miserable in France, becomes a

happy French teacher in England. In a kind of reversal, Carton, a

lowly jackal in London, immortalizes himself in Paris.

Carton and Darnay have one further similarity- the doubles may

represent separate aspects of Dickens. If we see Darnay as Dickens'

light side, then Carton corresponds to an inner darkness. The

unhappy lawyer is a man of prodigious intelligence gone to waste, a

man who fears he'll never find happiness. These concerns mirror

Dickens' own worries about the direction his career was taking in

the late 1850s, and about his disintegrating marriage. It's been

suggested that Dickens, though a spectacularly successful writer,

had no set place in the rigid English class system. Regarded from this

perspective, Dickens, like Carton, was a social outsider.