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I have to admit that I wasn't a big fan of this book most of the way through. I mean,
I know it's supposed to be epic and this huge masterpiece and all that blah-di-blah stuff
that English teachers say (even if they secretly hate the book, too).
But like I said: A Tale of Two Cities just wasn't doing it for me.
Maybe you can relate?
So what bugged me so much about this book? Mostly, it was all the characters' dramatic
and absurd connections.
Why is Madame Defarge the long lost sister of the girl *** by the twin brother of Charles
Darnay's father? Why?
Then, finally, I had an insight.
Dickens' characters are connected in crazy ways sometimes, but that might be a good thing.
It might be a reminder that everything we do causes ripples that affect other people.
It might be a wake-up call that even one tiny obnoxious post on, say, someone's Facebook
profile, can touch way more people than we might initially imagine.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Those crazy connections are a good thing, too. Because
the best part about this book, the thing that made me love it in the end, was the moment
when I realized that this tangled web of humanity means that hurt reaches farther than we might
think, but that love and random acts of kindness do, too. In fact, love spreads farther than
hurt, because as Dickens himself reminds us, "the vigorous tenacity of love [is] always
so much stronger than hate."