Book I Chapter 6 “The Shoemaker”

1. Book I Chapter 6 “The Shoemaker”

2. Plot Summary: • Manetteis making a lady’s shoe in the “present mode,” or fashion, even though he has never seen the present fashion. • When asked his name, he responds, “One Hundred and Five, North Tower.” • Lucie approaches. Noticing her radiant golden hair, Manette opens a knot of rag that he wears around his neck, in which he keeps a strand of similarly golden curls. • At first, Manette mistakes Lucie for his wife and recalls that, on the first day of his imprisonment, he begged to be allowed to keep these few stray hairs of his wife’s as a means of escaping his circumstances “in the spirit.” • Lucie delivers an impassioned speech, imploring her father to weep if her voice or her hair recalls a loved one whom he once knew. She hints to him of the home that awaits him and assures him that his “agony is over.” Manette collapses under a storm of emotion; Lucie urges that arrangements be made for his immediate departure for England. • Fearing for Manette’s health, Lorry protests, but Lucie insists that travel guarantees more safety than a continued stay in Paris. Defarge agrees and ushers the group into a coach

3. Literary Devices: Anaphora:The phrase “weep for it, weep for it” is repeated as a refrain in Lucie’s speech to her father: “…if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch, in touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service, I bring back the remembrance of a Home long desolate, while your poor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!”(46). Juxtaposition: Lightness overcoming darkness is a consistent pattern in this chapter, and it represents his daughter's role in his life from this point forward. The garret was described as extremely dark, but the entrance of the visitors now causes a "broad ray of light.” Dr. Manette'slead-colored (prison-colored) nails contrast with Miss Manette's "fair" and free visage “…so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed like a moving light, from him to her... The expression on her pretty, young face was so much like the one on his (though stronger on hers) that it looked as if it had been passed like a beam of light from his face to hers. Darkness had fatten on him in its place” (43).

4. Essential Quote "His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him“ (46).