A Tale of Two Cities Study Guide

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was a seminal English novelist and social critic, widely considered one of the greatest writers of the Victorian era. Born in Portsmouth, England, Dickens experienced a tumultuous childhood marked by his father's imprisonment for debt, which heavily influenced his later works. Dickens began his literary career as a journalist, adopting the pseudonym "Boz" for his early works. His first novel, "The Pickwick Papers" (1836-37), garnered immediate success, and he went on to write classics such as "Oliver Twist," "David Copperfield," "Great Expectations," and "A Christmas Carol." His works often highlighted social injustices and the struggles of the poor, employing vivid characters and intricate plots to critique the societal norms of his time.

"A Tale of Two Cities," published in 1859, is one of Dickens's most famous works. Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, the novel explores themes of resurrection, sacrifice, and the duality of human nature. The story oscillates between London and Paris, portraying the stark contrasts and similarities between the two cities during this tumultuous period.

The historical context of the novel is crucial for understanding its depth. The French Revolution (1789-1799) was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France that dramatically altered the course of European history. It began with the financial crisis and widespread discontent among the French populace, leading to the fall of the monarchy, the rise of radical political factions, and the Reign of Terror. Dickens was deeply influenced by Thomas Carlyle's "The French Revolution: A History," which he studied extensively while writing his novel.

Literarily, "A Tale of Two Cities" stands out for its use of historical fiction to draw parallels between the past and the present. Dickens's vivid portrayal of the Revolution's brutality and its impact on individuals and families serves as a powerful commentary on the potential consequences of social injustice and class disparities. The novel's famous opening line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," encapsulates the contradictions and dualities that Dickens explores throughout the narrative.

In sum, Charles Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities" is both a gripping historical novel and a profound social critique, reflecting the author's deep concern with the human condition and the societal issues of his time.

Want to generate unlimited academic essays?

Unlock endless possibilities for your academic writing!
Our tool helps you craft high-quality, original essays in no time. Whether you're tackling complex topics or need help structuring your thoughts, we've got you covered. Start creating with ease and elevate your academic performance today!

About Rephrasely

Getting your wording just right

Paraphrasing is a natural part of the writing process as it helps you clarify your thinking and suit your words to your audience. Using a Rephrasely helps structure and streamline this work, and our paraphrase tool offers 20 modes, many of them free, for accomplishing just this. The 20 modes we offer are diverse, including a summarize tool, a free grammar checker, a mode to simplify text, and a sentence shortener. There are sentence rephrasers and paraphrase rephrase tools, and we pride ourselves on having both, since our reword generator accounts for context at both the sentence and paragraph levels.

When you google paraphrase you will get a variety of results, from a free Rephrasely, to an article spinner, to a general phrase tool, and it can be hard to determine which of these rephrase tools will best help you complete your work. If you simply need to get a word rephrase, that is, reword only small elements within the sentence, many tools will suffice, but there is the risk that you end up with a tool that does not consider context and produces very awkward and ungrammatical sentences. Rephrasing is very much an art, and we’ve built our paraphrase bot to produce the most correct results in 20 modes in over 100 languages, making it the best paraphrasing tool at an exceptionally low cost. So whether you need to paraphrase deutsch, paraphrase greek, or paraphrase bahasa melayu, the next time you think, I need something to paraphrase this for me, you’ll know where to turn.

From keywords to paragraphs

Generating paragraphs with unique ideas can be challenging, and too often writers get stuck at this stage of the writing process. With our paragraph tool, you can enter keywords and let our AI generate paragraphs for you, so that you can have something to work with, refine the output, and become more engaged in your writing.

A paragraph generator creates links between your ideas, such that the output is sensible, unique, and stimulating, very close to what you would expect a thoughtful human paragraph writer to produce.

Paragraph makers are nice, but what about a short story generator? Because our AI is generalized, it serves a story generator, an essay generator, a poem generator, and much more. To generate compelling stories, you should provide the story generator with useful keywords from which it can develop plot elements, including characters, setting details, and any situational information. To generate reasonably good essays, you should likewise provide the essay maker with details around argumentative positions and any other pertinent ideas. If you more specifically want an introduction paragraph generator or conclusion paragraph generator, you can provide starter text and keywords that will best enable our essay creator to produce them.

You may well ask, “is this essay generator free?” Everything on this site is free within a 3-day trial, so you can test and develop confidence in our products. You may also be wondering where this is an essay automatic writer or if it will take a while to get results. All results appear within a matter of seconds, so you can move through your work as quickly as possible.

You may have professional needs for creating paragraphs as well, such as those needed for cover letter. Most of the time a cover letter template includes information that is not relevant to you; by using your own keywords, we can produce cover letter examples that are relevant to your use case and often require very little editing. By using this service, you can also learn how to write a cover letter and achieve the cover letter format you need.

Plagiarism checker free

Like everything else on our site, you can check plagiarism free within a trial, which is a great opportunity for those who want to check a paper for plagiarism without committing to paying before they see results. This free plagiarism checker is great for students and clearly indicates how to check for plagiarism by highlighting areas of similarity between the two texts. Just to be sure you are not accidentally plagiarizing, be sure to check all of your paraphrases as well.