Lorry to bring Doctor Manette back to England.
Our narrator offers up a foreboding reference to the Woodsman (Fate) and the Farmer (Death) who will be reaping and sowing their harvest very, very soon.Five years have passed since Tellson's Bank sent Mr.That about sums up the state of affairs.In other words, things may be going along just as always-but that sure doesn’t mean that they’re going along smoothly.Just about everyone gets brutally punished, regardless of whether their crime was severe or trifling. Back in England, lots of crimes occur on a regular basis.Our narrator predicts that trees growing in the fields of France will soon be cut and shaped into scaffolds and guillotines.In case you’re thinking that England is a much, much nicer place to be, though, we should warn you: Catholics didn’t fare so well in England, either.Protestants are being persecuted (the French royalty, you see, is Catholic).In France, things aren’t going so well.We’re sticking to the other side of the pond in this novel.) (For those of you who’d like a refresher course on the American Revolution, check out our Shmoop history notes on the subject.To get back to our story, though: our narrator gives us a bird’s-eye view of events in England.Anyone who’s seen movies about high school friends going to college and growing apart knows that. Anytime anyone says that things are going to stay the same, there’s a good chance that things are going to change. That’s our first hint that things are going wrong.In fact, everything is so dang normal that folks are pretty convinced that things will stay the same forever.According to our helpful narrator, things in both countries are going along just as they’ve always gone.What we do get, however, is a breakdown of the important places in the novel: France and England.We don’t really meet any characters (but don’t you worry, they’ll be here soon enough).If you’re a backpacker, you could think of it as the Lonely Planet for the eighteenth century.This chapter, the greatest of all openings, is a sort of guidebook to the time.Your friendly Shmoop team is here to help. As our narrator points out, these opposites are also rather…similar.There are lots of opposites at work in the good ol’ eighteenth century. The sentence goes on for awhile, but you get the general picture."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.
After all, it’s one of the most well-known opening lines in English literature. Okay, we know that this is a summary and all, but we just have to quote this opening for you.
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