A Tale of Two Cities: Summary #1

Book One: Recalled to Life

Chapter 1~5 (p.g. 4 - 48)

The narrator begins the story in the year 1775 with the sentence, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and it conclude that what is going to happen in this story.

The year is 1775 and settings are London and Paris, two lands are ruled by monarchs. England is on the brink of the American Revolution. The French Revolution seems unavoidable, and the spirit of rebellion silently infecting the countryside. Similar problems are common across England, with increase of highway robberies and thievery were reaching all the way into high society.

Mr. Jarvis Lorry, a confidential clerk at Tellson's Bank of London, is on his way to Dover in a mail coach. The coachman and his passengers fears about highway robberies. Jerry Cruncher, odd-job-man who work for Tellson's Bank, stops the Dover mail coach with an urgent message for Mr. Lorry, giving him a paper message and tell him to wait at Dover for young woman, Mam'selle, and Lorry responds with the mysterious words, "recalled to life."

Mr. Lorry was taking nap in the coach, imagining the comforting environment of Tellson's Bank. He dream about a man who has been buried for eighteen years and has dug his way out, and that man has been buried for eighteen years.

When Mr. Lorry arrive in Dover, he checks into a hotel and went to have breakfast. He ask employee for the room for a woman who is coming to meet him.While he's having a dinner, the waiter came to tell him that Ms. Lucie Manette, which is Mam'selle, has arrive here and willing to meet him. She tells Mr. Lorry that he have to escort her to Paris because of her father's death. But her father was alive.

The setting change Dover, England to Saint Antoine, a poor suburb of Paris. One of a wine cask falls to the street and everyone rushed to drink it, but there was one man dips his finger into muddy wine-less and scrawls the word BLOOD on a wall. Mr. Lorry was displease by Dr. Manette is locked in.