The period before and after the French Revolution was not only a time of change, but also a time of deception and suspicion in England and In France. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens painstakingly illustrates, using symbols, what each stage of the French Revolution looked like from the perspectives of revolutionaries, aristocrats, and spectators. The events that brought about the changes in France were acts of injustice towards the peasant class. However, when the Revolution began, the revolutionaries began to treat the aristocrats inhumanely. The bluebottles, the knitting, the shadow and the millstone are the symbols that best describe the theme of man's inhumanity towards his neighbor in A Tale of Two Cities. The bluebottles represent the hunger of the English people for the pain and death of Charles Darnay as they swarm and chatter. At the Old Bailey, when Charles Darnay is suspected of being a spy, he enters the court for a public trial, and "...a buzz rose up in the courthouse as if a cloud of great blue flies were swarming around the prisoner , in anticipation of what he would soon become” (Dickens 50). Ordinary English people are crowded into the courthouse, knowing that if the prisoner is found guilty, as Tellson's employees imply, he will be quartered, a gruesome death in which the subject will have his entrails removed and will show him the torn limbs. disabled. The movement and chatter of the crowd is like that of bluebottles swarming and buzzing around the carcass of a dead animal. In this way, people feed off Darnay's anticipated pain. During the trial, when Lucie is called to testify about Darnay, she states with emotion: "'I can't repay him by hurting him today.' The buzzing of bluebottles” (54). She... middle of paper... it spins, causes a change and is choked with unforgivable blood. The blood red hue of the millstone represents the inhumanity of killing innocents and the blood that cannot be revoked. Man's inhumanity to his fellow man is represented at every stage of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities through symbols such as bluebottles, knitting, the shadow, and the millstone. The blue flies show that the English are just as bloodthirsty as the French in the novel. Knitting and ombre are examples that represent the lack of heart of the French towards other men. The millstone shows that the ruthlessness of each individual affects the Earth by flooding it with blood. Charles Dickens uses symbols artfully to illustrate his theme of man's inhumanity to his fellow man in his novel A Tale of Two Cities..