| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系 === 87 === Abstract
Every human life is a revelation of a series of deaths and
rebirths, and every novel represents a certain spiritual journey
of death and rebirth in the hero's life. In A Tale of Two
Cities, the author chooses a transitional epoch for the
historical background of the novel, which makes the theme of
death and rebirth even more intensified and remarkable.
Skillfully combining the organic lives of the society and the
individual, Dickens parallels the violent change of the social
ideologies with the individual spiritual metamorphosis.
Like all other revolutions, the French Revolution stemmed from
an ideal--to replace the old decayed system with a new one more
beneficial to the people. In other words, in a sense it
symbolized the regeneration of the French society. However, as
seen in A Tale of Two Cities, it seems that Dickens was
pessimistic as to the effects brought about by such a social
revolt. A far more profound, far more effectual power to reform
the society in the essential sense, he believed, really comes
from the individual. A virtually ideal human world can be
realized only through the individual inner revolution, as
Dickens suggests in his novel with his transformed characters. It is the psychological revolution revealed in the individual characters in A Tale of Two Cities that this thesis has its focus on.
The inner revolution refers to the death-and-rebirth
process of human psyche. Discussion of this motif in this
thesis is primarily based on the ideas of "the rites of passage"
and "initiation rites" in human culture studies. The death-and-
rebirth experiences of the characters will be explored and
analyzed in the light of the initiation ceremony. In addition,
this thesis likewise makes a point of the moral transcendence
expected from the individual spiritual mutation.
This thesis opens with the Introduction, in which a brief
presentation about the author and the novel, along with its
general evaluation, will be given. Meanwhile, the motive and
the approach of this study will be clearly explained.
The main body is composed of four chapters. Chapter One,
"Lorry's Regeneration," focuses on the initiatory process of
Lorry's transmutation. Chapter Two, "Manette's Rebirth," deals
with Manette's spiritual journey of death and rebirth. In this
chapter, the quality of universal sympathy revealed in his moral
career after his rebirth will be particularly observed. In the
third chapter, "Darnay's and Carton's Resurrection," I will give
a thorough examination of the psychic pilgrimage of initiation,
which the two characters cooperate to complete. Nevertheless,
the emphasis of the discussion in this chapter falls on Sydney
Carton. He is not just the key figure in the novel; more
important, his transformation suggests the potentiality of a
higher level of regeneration in a man's life -- that is, being
reborn to a transcendental form of existence through mortal
death. The fourth chapter is the Conclusion. In this final
chapter, I make an attempt to induce the moral message of the
novel that the author, as it were, tried to convey in writing
the novel: his disappointment and distrust at the political
revolution of the nation and his expectation of the spiritual
reform of the individual as the only possible way to build
better human destiny.
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