Book 2 Chapter 13; The Fellow of No Delicacy

1. Book 2 Chapter 13; The Fellow of No Delicacy The title of this chapter is a form of verbal irony, because it is referring to Sydney Carton as “the Fellow of No Delicacy,” because he claims he does not care for Lucie Manette when he actually does, referring himself as an actual man with delicacy.

2. Plot Summary: • Sydney Carton frequently started to visit the Manette house. After Mr. Stryver tells Carton that he is no longer going to propose, Carton visits Lucie because he wants to talk to her. • Earlier, Carton used to make insults of Lucie, now he claims they were just an act. After he visits the Manette house, it is clear that he loves Lucie for her kindness and compassion. • Lucie is astonished when Carton visits and starts crying about his life. She asks if she can help him, and she tries to persuade him to live life in a better way. Carton says that his life was over long ago, but Lucie responds that she believes he can live a better life, and that she can try to help him. • Carton’s past is very interesting. As well as Dr. Manette, Carton has been imprisoned in his own depression since some trauma in his youth. Even he does not see the life he is capable of, but Lucie claims she does. • Carton tells Lucie that he loves her, but that if she loved him back, he would probably only just cause her unhappiness. Carton asks Lucie for one thing: for Lucie to admit that there is still something in him to sympathize for. Lucie admits, and Carton tells Lucie he would do anything, even risk his own life, for her and her family.

3. Literary Devices: Metaphor; Carton compares himself to a heap of ashes to show how he feels about Lucie and falling in love with her. “And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into a fire..” P.153 2. Personification; Carton’s feet were referred to as becoming animated by an intention, showing how he made a subconscious decision to visit Lucie. “From being irresolute and purposeless, his feet became animated by an intention, and, in the working out of that intention, they took him to the Doctor’s door.” P. 151 3.Irony; It is ironic how Carton is known as a sort of emotionless man, yet he proclaims his love to Lucie. “He had been there often, during the whole year, and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.” P.150

4. Essential Quote “If you will hear me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me is done. I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me.” P.152