In the late eighteenth century, a movement of terror revealed its mask. After the impulsive investment of France to profit a fruitless battle of the failed attempt to colonize North America, France had sunk into an ocean of deep debt. Despite the knowledge of the financial catastrophe. The French aristocrats continued their luxurious and extravagant living. Sparing nothing but poverty for their people. As the peasants realized the corruption in their government, oppression became the trigger to the series of bloody and violent acts for justice against the aristocrats all the French Revolution.
As one can tell, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” (Dickens 1). Written and published in the year of 1859, the novel A Tale of Two Cities, authored by Charles Dickens, described the lives of a few fictional characters involved in the French Revolution and their interlocking fate with one another. Directed by Bille August, the movie Les Misrables (1998), an adaptation of the novel Les Miserables written by Victor Hugo, also sets itself around the era of the French Revolution, presenting the audience with the inescapable destiny of the characters. Defined as the quality of being fair and reasonableȧ by the Oxford Dictionary, justice is a very broad term and tends to be determined by the vision of the spectator. During this period of chaotic social turmoil, the novel and the movie both present to the audience a nebulous definition of justice due to the significantly different moral value of the period of the French Revolution.
The movie and the novel strongly express the flaws of the justice system during the French Revolution. This is conveyed through the two protagonists as they are being penalized and hunted down for their past rather than their present, due to the paranoia of their designated time. Charles Damay, the protagonist of A Tale of Two Cities, is being held responsible for the cruelty his uncle, a brutal French aristocrat named Marquis Evrmonde, had performed upon the French peasant, even though Damay has denounced his last name as Evrmond due to his resentment and disapproval of the unethical behaviour by his uncle.
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The oppression was so great that people could not forgive the Evrmondes or even the innocent Darnay. Jean Valjean, the protagonist of Les Misrables (1998), is imprisoned for the stealing a loaf of bread because of hunger then released back to freedom after serving nine years of his life. In spite of Valjeanams decision to live the rest of his life clean, as he declared, in the morning, la be a new mana to the bishop whom Valjean held ardent respect for, he was still being chased down by Inspector Javert for he was a former criminal. The two men are discriminated against for the deeds performed in the past and are both not provided a chance to be judged by their present selves. In this time full of instability, the two protagonists suffer from the hidden ambiguous justice.
Antagonists are characters designed for helping the protagonist to gain pathos from the audience; consequently making them the albad guysam. In most stories, antagonists interfere with the so- called justice; by doing the bad thingså. However, if one stood from their point of view and told the story through their spectacle, justice could be determined as otherwise. Mme. Defarge, the antagonist of A Tale of Two Cities is often introduced often as a vengeful character. Nevertheless, something faulty had to be done causing oneself to seek revenge, in order to make one vengeful.
