Tale of Two Cities First Entry

So, the book I chose and started to read is the Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The basic background of the story is the French Revolution, so we can guess this book is placed around the 1775-era in England and France - the two cities. Right now I have currently read up to Chapters 1~4 thoroughly so the focus on this entry will be upon those.

In the beginning of the book, we are given the famous one sentence paragraph beginning with, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." which actually works finely in describing the background that we know about the book. There is not much to extract out of this chapter in my opinion besides giving us a more exquisite way of describing the period of time that he (Charles Dickens) is going to tell us the story. In the second chapter, we are suddenly put into a mail coach heading its way to Dover (some place). There doesn't seem to be much in this chapter here, after all it is barely stepping into the exposition part of the plot. We can see that the coach has three passengers and the coach is going through a difficult area of its path as the passengers are even told to walk next to the carriage because of a hill being too steep. As they press forward, a man on horseback comes and gives a message to Jarvis Lorry which Lorry replies to with the message, "Recalled to Life."In chapter three, the story becomes slightly difficult to follow as we see - in some context - in what we can call Lorry's point of view. He talks to someone about being "recalled to life" after being buried for eighteen years, and continually talks to himself and has a redundant conservation. Finally, in chapter four, we can see that Mr. Lorry has reached his destination and is a refined gentlemen/businessman of the bank. We also can find out Mr. Lorry's objective of going to Dover. It turns out to be that Jarvis had come to meet up with Lucie Manette who is told that her long lost father is alive and that both Jarvis and she will go to Paris to check that it is truly him.

When I was reading these Chapters, I found it very difficult to understand exactly what they were doing the first time I went through it. I got most of what they were trying to say the second time around and completely got it at the third time. Especially in chapter three when Jarvis Lorry begins to talk to himself. When I was reading this the first time around, I thought someone was actually recalled to life and was one of the passengers on the carriage and people were talking to the recalled man. As it turns out, I found out that he was just talking/thinking to himself the second time I read through it. I also found that some of the things we learned in class can be applied to what I have read so far, even though I am barely gone through the beginning of the book. In chapter one, the first sentence/paragraph we can see the basic outline of how the mood is going to be throughout the story. Something that is pretty gloomy or neutral but will be bright soemtimes. Although I didn't really think about irony when I was reading the book, I suppose that there were some, but I didn't think enough to actually catch it. So this concludes my first entry on this book and hopefully I will have read 5~8 by next time.