A Tale of Two Cities .... again? Social Criticism?

Question

What issues are Charles Dickens trying to criticize and how? Did the book change society?

Answer 1

Dickens and Thomas Carlye did not see eye to eye.

   What silly people call optimism. sensible people call high spirits.

  Black bloody gullotines are high sprits, the killing of the Bastilles shows a onesided satisfaction.

  Dickens knew that an outbreak is seldom a tragedy ;generally this is the avoidance of a tragedy. The real tragedies are silent.

Men fight each other with civalry and unchangable sense of botherhood.

But trees fight each other in utter stillness because they fight each other cruely and without quarter.

The gullotine is not the solution but rather the solution of the calamity.

  The sin of Sydney Carton is sin of habit , not of revolution.

His gloom is the gloom of London not the gloom of Paris.

  

  Carlye a Scotsman believed the French revolution to be a tragedy.

Dickens believed that mere revolution , mere human nature.

Carlyle believed the revolution wa a mere tragedy.

  Dickens wanted to write a love story.

  Carlye was a romance writer.

  "It is far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done : it is a far,far  better rest that I go to than I have ever known".

   He takes his friend's place and goes to the gullotine, a very brave act.

He dies for his friend, saves the other one from the gullotine.

That is at the end of story.

Answer 2

It is a very long time since I read A Tale of Two Cities, but it is a powerful novel.  I cannot remember a great deal about it now, but these links should help you with it.