Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities
Those two cities being London and Paris. Their differences in character were put in stark contrast by the French Revolution; cool London and hot France could not be more different. Dickens’ characters find themselves in the middle of all kinds of duality. Not just Revolution and ancien regime, but rich and poor, young and old, and past and future all come into play. Dickens, while occasionally sappy, conventional, and a little too PG-rated to give a truly vivid picture of the times, still manages to convey good insight about the value of keeping a level head during turbulent times, even as his characters tend to be studies of contrast rather than nuance.
Inertia Wins! 