Aftermath of Prison

     In Chapter 6 of book the 2nd, we are introduced to Doctor Manettes actions which is most likely coming from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD is a a type of anxiety disorder which can occur after you've seen or experienced a traumatic event. This can range anywhere from witnessing death in war, near death experience, or in Doctor Manettes case, experiencing extremely long amounts of time confined in prison. When I hear of PTSD, the thing that first comes to mind is experiences in war. This made this passage stick out to me because I have never heard of this disorder arising from time in Prison. It made me question what Doctor Manette really had to experience throughout his 18 years of imprisonment.

     

     On page 102, Miss Pross explains the process of Doctor Manettes activity at night. "Sometimes, he gets up in the dead of the night, and will be heard, by us overhead there, walking up and down, walking up and down, in his room. Ladybird has learnt to know then, that his mind is walking up and down, walking up and down, in his old prison...But he never says a word of the true reason of his reslessness to her, and she finds it best not to hint at it to him" (102). 

     Dickens does a great job illustrating just how severe Doctor Manettes case of PTSD is. Throughout the book Dickens has always made his text challenging, in order for the reader to question the meaning of a particular passage. He does this very well in this passage because he leaves the reader wanting to find out exactly what happened in Manettes time in prison? Often times I hear of cases of PTSD being treated within a matter of a couple months, or years. Doctor Manette has been out of prison for many many years now, so my question is: Why does this man still have to face the symptoms of this anxiety disorder at this point of his life? Like the author has before, I am sure Dickens will answer this question in some text in the future.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=post-traumatic-stress-trap

     Voices        

          In Chapter 6 of A Tale of Two Cities, we are finally introduced to Doctor Manette, the father of Lucy. At this point of time in the book, the reader is told that Lucies father had been hidden for about 18 years and we find out that he has been hiding in the DeFarge's wine shop. Dickens does a great job portraying Doctor Manette's character as being very dreadful and hopeless by using powerful language. The description of Doctor Manette's character is shown in its own paragraph, strictly talking about his voice. Here is the paragraph describing the voice of the shoemaker:

       "The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die" (42).

                            

      This passage is very powerful because it describes the character by just mentioning the tone of his voice. This description is also placed in its own paragraph which emphasizes its importance. It is very unusual to find this lengthy of a paragraph strictly describing a characters voice and Dickens does a great job grabbing both the readers attention and sympathy by uniquely describing Doctor Manettes voice. Dickens uses words such as: dreadful, faintness, sunken, poor, weak, and hopeless to depict the emotions of this character. 




Picture: http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/barnard/ttc/5.html