An Excess of Hunger and Rhetoric

"Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger 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...Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder..."

Charles Dickens is well known for his descriptions of poverty. Through the first chapters of The Tale of Two Cities that I have read, Dickens widely employs the use of imagery to make clear his poignant and direct statement about the poverty in Paris. However, in this paragraph from the 5th chapter of the first book, set in Paris, Dickens uses an even stronger rhetorical appeal to set the tone of the story. Along with imagery, this passage is full of anaphora and personification. By consistently repeating the word "hunger" at the beginning of more than 8 consecutive sentences, Dickens drives his description of poverty home. The anaphora serves to express how wide spread the hunger that Dickens describes reaches. This passage explains that the hunger permeates firewood, clothing, tall houses, and even the lack of fire in houses. In the sentence "hunger rattled its dry bones..." Dickens goes on to personify hunger, giving the prevailing malady a more sinister and intelligent tone, suggesting that the hunger is no mere lack of food; it is driven and out to claim every last person in Paris.

Though Dickens' purpose in this passage may seem apparent, Dickens has a more clandestine motive for stressing the prevalence of "hunger". A Tale of Two Cities takes place in 1775, in the tense buildup before the French Revolution. Though Paris was full of poverty during this era, the prevailing "hunger" that Dickens describes more accurately refers to the discontent and hunger for revolution that filled the people of France.