What do You Make of the Broken Wine Cask Scene? [The Page Dwellers]
A Tale of Two Cities Week Two — Discussion Thread
This thread has spoilers up to the end of book one, chapter six. Do not post spoilers post that point.
This Week's Prompt for Discussion
From Sparknotes: “The scramble for the leaking wine that opens “The Wine-shop” remains one of the most remembered (and frequently referenced) passages in the novel. In it, Dickens prepares the sweeping historical backdrop against which the tale of Lucie and Doctor Manette plays out.” (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/twocities/section3.rhtml)
What do you make of this scene? The mad dash of the peasants to drink up wine straight from the broken cask is a startling event. It jolts you into an upright seated position. Why did Dickens include it here?
What to Read for Next Week
Next week’s discussion will extend to Book Two, Chapter 12: “A Companion Picture”.
Editor’s Note
We had a moderately successful first week. There was some discussion in the thread, notably a deep analysis of the text by @winstonalden which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Our goal this week is to kick it up a notch. I had some great conversation with @clevercreator about ways to improve our book club experience…
One conclusion was that we should have an account for this club. @thepagedwellers is now open for business. Give it a follow! We aren’t using it yet but will shift over there soon.
One other thing - the audiobook version of this that I linked in the previous thread has atrocious reviews - I recommend a different one that I’ve been using, it’s a bit more expensive but it is wonderful: https://www.audible.com/pd/Classics/A-Tale-of-Two-Cities-Tantor-Audiobook/B002V08IYW
Roll Call
Can we do a roll call? Just leave a comment if you are still following along with the club, even if you aren’t keeping up with August’s book yet.
Im still on board though struggling a bit. Im not used to this sort oftext and I am using the audio you initially recommended, which I can agree isnt the best! Ill try and up my game for next week as Im commuting several hours aday,soneed tofind something to kill the time.
Hey you, habla Español?
Hey @heymattsokol, still following along! Had some stressful days...
Oh yeah, I'm in especially when there's free booze:D
I understand what you mean. I'm glad we still have you following among :-)
Presently residing under a rock, but present.
I don't want to read the rest of this post until I catch up with reading the book, but I saw in the chat that you were using this as a roll call. I'm still in. Hopefully I won't go on another hiatus for a little while, haha.
Great!! New thread is coming today or tomorrow at the latest. I noticed you were gone from Steemit for a few days, glad to have you back.
Aw, thanks man, that makes me feel special, haha.
I've been on an island with my family, but I'm heading back this weekend and should be able to join the discussion soon!
I'm here. Thanks for the name drop and thanks again for getting this group together.
The wine cask scene - let's see. It was a moment of vivid, sudden action after all the previous exposition, which helps it to stand out. Having recently driven to New Bedford and wandered the cobblestone streets there, I was primed to imagine all that deep red wine running between the stones. (They are not easy to walk on and they certainly don't do any favors to car tires, and I can only imagine they made things worse for horses and wooden carriage wheels. But they do give the city a great deal of charm.)
Dickens laid on the foreshadowing of coming violence and blood running in the streets a little thick here.
Reading from the comfort of my sofa with me e-book, though, this scene was the first that really drove home how desperate and poor these people were. Scooping up the wine with bare fingers until they wore tracks into the mud, chomping on the wine-soaked barrel staves, all the cadaverous starving people who were probably more desperate for the calories the wine could provide than for its inebriating qualities - yeah, suddenly we can see the pressure the country is under.
Dickens only mentions the "muddy wine-lees," but lets not forget all the manure and offal that were running down those 18th century streets too. This is where the chamber-pots got emptied. That mud between the stones was probably 80% sewage.
The shoemaker chapter that followed was a lot of fun, too. It finally made sense of all the stuff Dickens dumped on us in the beginning. And the psychological portrait of the doctor imprisoned for all those years felt surprisingly modern.