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Book One, Chapter Five. Oh, what a gruesome, demented scene awaits you when you read this
chapter. A cask of wine that breaks on the cobblestone street. Frantic peasants lapping
up the wine like dogs. Peasants stained with the wine—as though they're stained with
blood.
Like I said: Gruesome and demented. And ... symbolic? Oh yeah.
If you've watched some of the other recaps in this album, you know that Dickens had mixed
feelings about the French Revolution. On the one hand, he seemed to feel deeply for the
peasants. They were starving, poorly-treated, and desperate—and Dickens didn't want his
readers to forget that. On the other hand, Dickens was not a fan of the way the peasants
finally achieved their independence. He condemned the horrific violence that resulted when the
peasants joined together into bloodthirsty mobs.
The broken wine casket in Book One, Chapter Five represents both sides of the French Revolution
as Dickens represented it.
First, the broken casket (and the desperate rush to lap up the spilled wine) symbolize
the peasants' terrible, ravenous hunger. They are hungry for food and hungry for freedom.
So their thirst for the wine represents their physical hunger, while the red stains on their
lips and hands represent the blood that will be shed during the revolution.
Second, the broken casket symbolizes the mob mentality, which Dickens opposes. The peasants
lap up the blood-red wine in a kind of frenzy—a frenzy that results in the senseless spilling
of real blood as the novel (and the revolution) progress.