A Tale of Two Cities

Madame Defarge’s accidental death is an example of situational irony. At the beginning of the novel, Madame Defarge believes that she is an agent of fate. Speaking to her husband about the revolution, she says, “although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming […] Nothing that we do is done in vain."

Jerry Cruncher spends so many years doing odd jobs for Tellson’s Bank that he becomes a de facto employee of the respectable institution. However, the scrupulous Mr. Lorry of Tellson’s spends almost the entirety of the novel unaware of Cruncher’s secret moonlight occupation as a “resurrection man,” or in other words, a graverobber.

Dickens uses verbal irony when he describes the prominent place that the guillotine holds in the people’s imagination:

It was the sign of regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.

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Manette’s unintentional condemnation of Darnay is an example of situational irony. The words Manette wrote about Darnay’s ancestors while he was in prison are read to the court:

I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and that they have no part in His mercies. And them and their descendants, to the last of their race, I Alexander Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this last night of the year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to the times when all these things shall be answered for. I denounce them to Heaven and to earth.

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Darnay’s ignorance of Carton’s plan to sacrifice himself in Darnay’s place is an instance of dramatic irony. In the prison cell, when Carton asks Darnay to switch clothes with him, the unsuspecting Darnay is as compliant as “a young child in his hands.” Though Darnay writes his wife a long parting letter explaining why he kept his noble birth a secret, Carton forces him to write a new letter, the substance of which Darnay does not understand. The letter contains Carton’s last words to Lucie, and it reads:

If you remember […] the words that passed between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it. You do remember them, I know. It is not in your nature to forget them.

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