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Lorry is above all a man of business, and tries to reduce everything to
business terms. When the young lady arrives, Lorry goes to see her. She is Lucie
Manette, a seventeen-year-old orphan. Lucie believes that she must go to Paris
with Lorry because Tellson's Bank has discovered something regarding her dead
father's small bit of property. However, Lorry nervously tells her the truth:
Her father was a well known scientist in France, whom Lorry knew while working
at Tellson's French office. Lucie vaguely recognizes Lorry because he brought
her to London many years ago when she was orphaned and Tellson's Bank was put in
charge of her. Lucie is shocked when she learns that Tellson's has found her
father alive in Paris.
He was imprisoned in the Bastille (a famous French
prison) for eighteen years, but no one knows why. Lorry calls in the servants,
and a strong, brusque woman (who we later discover is Lucie's servant and who
essentially raised her) comes in to take care of the young lady. Commentary The
two cities are very important to the development of this novel. Both are violent
cities rife with injustice. The characters travel between them throughout the
novel. The cities provide two distinct settings, each with its own secrets and
perils. The major themes of this novel are resurrection and revolution. The
first of the two themes is introduced in this section. Resurrection is the
literal action of bringing the dead back to life. However, Dickens uses it
metaphorically. Lorry likens his mission to digging up a man who has been buried
for eighteen years, in short, recalling him to life. Resurrection in this novel
appears as many things: a second chance at life, an escape of a death sentence,
release from imprisonment, the digging up of graves, and memories of the dead.
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