A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens wrote a Tale of Two Cities in 1859.  Since then it has become a widely considered classic.  Once I started reading it, it was not hard to tell why.  The imagery Dickens using is amazing.  You can picture the setting, the feelings, the atmosphere, all beautifully.  The first part delves into the time period, starting with the classic lines "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...". You get a really good sense of the time period from these passages, the highs the lows.  This is a great way to start the novel because it gives context to the rest of the story.  The second chapter of the first book is where the plot of the story actually begins.  It was in this section that I really got a sense of the amazing writing abilities of Charles Dickens.  When he describes the efforts of the stagecoach and its passengers traveling through the night, I really felt the cold and the dampness.  Here is an example of that:

There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.  Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, from anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two companions.

I feel like that is what really shows the effectiveness of a writer: their ability to help the audience feel the story around them.  Effective writers use language to pull the audience in such way that it captivates them and draws them in.  The story expertly weaves a small cast of characters, each with their own stories, into the much larger story of the political climates in these two cities.  It reaches it's most intense point with the French Revolution.  Again the writing is so effective in helping you feel the tragedy and death around you.  You feel the pains of these people living in a high-strung, frustrated, and paranoid time period.  I was impressed that Dickens's ending of A Tale of Two Cities included some happiness with its tragedy, it could have easily been an "everything-goes-wrong" type ending.  Because that is how real life is.  There are ups and there are downs.  And that, at its core, is why I feel this novel really is a classic.