Book the First: Chapter 5-6, SQUID

"The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sign, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hinger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and stared up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomies in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil." Book 1, Chapter 5, Pages 32-33

Dickens paints a masterful picture of an awful time as he shares the strife and hardship of pre-revolutionary France. He describes the effects of hunger found in everything from the weathered young to the lifeless stoves (smokeless chimneys). Even the once considered inedible parts of livestock (offal) ordinarily found on the streets along with the other trash was no where to be found. Dickens shows the lifeless streets and the awful food to emphasize the coming winds of change, as no one would subject themselves these terrible conditions as it is our nature to always want more.

Book the First: Chapter 2-4, SQUID

"But he has been -been found. He is alive. Greatly changed, it is too probable; almost a wreck, it is possible; though we will hope the best, Still, alive. Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and we are going there: I, to identify him, if I can: you to restore him to life, love, duty, comfort."..."I am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost - not him!" Book 1, Chapter 4, Page 28

This quote introduces a new revelation in the plot involving our odd banker, Mr. Lorry and this new mysterious young woman, Miss Manette. The events leading up to this quote reveal that Mr Manette was wrongfully imprisoned and that young Miss Manette had long thought her father was dead. From this quote we also learn that Miss Manette discovers that her once thought dead father is alive, but possibly in a degraded sense. Although one might be overjoyed to learn of a living relative when one is a orphan, Miss Manette response is one of fear and anxiety. She fears that seeing her father now as a broken man will ruin her memory of him. These revelations soon cause Miss Manette to faint and leave us wondering how the tragic story of Mr Manette and his daughter will end.

Book the First: Chapter 1, SQUID

"France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when the sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and knife in it, terrible in history." Book 1, Chapter 1, Paragraph 4.

This quote works to further introduce the setting and the Gothic nature of this opening chapter by showing us the state of affairs in France. The quote starts by saying how most people in France seem to be spiritually inferior compared to the sister of the shield and trident which is referring to England's roman name of Brittannia. Dickens also talks about France's rapid decline as France is growing in considerable debt from the various military investments in hopes to rival England as a international power. He moves on to talk of the corruption of the French government by the Church or the Christian pastors by showing us the wrongful torture and death of Chevalier Francois de la Barre. Dickens expands on these dark times in France when he mentions the guillotine from which many met their wrongful end.