BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSSet in London and Paris in 1775, A Tale of Two Cities opens with Jarvis Lorry, a banker for Tellson's, traveling to France on a secret mission he calls being 'recalled to life.' He escorts Lucie Manette, a young woman who has grown up believing her father was dead, to Paris, where she discovers that Dr. Alexandre Manette has been locked away in the Bastille for eighteen years and has lost his mind to shoemaking. Lucie and Mr. Lorry bring the shattered doctor back to London, where Lucie's love slowly restores him. A few years later, a French emigrant named Charles Darnay stands trial at the Old Bailey on treason charges, his fate nearly sealed until a hard-drinking lawyer named Sydney Carton notices that he and Darnay look strikingly alike, an observation that saves Darnay's life. Both men fall in love with Lucie, but only Darnay wins her, and as France moves toward revolution, this circle of friends in their quiet London home cannot escape the violence gathering across the Channel.
Free Battle of the Books questions for A Tale of Two Cities
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about A Tale of Two Cities. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book do starving people scoop up red wine from cobblestone gutters after a cask shatters in the street?
✓ Answer
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
A wine cask breaks outside a Paris wine-shop and the hungry people of Saint Antoine drink it from puddles, soak it from rags, and lick the staves. It foreshadows the blood that will later run in the same streets.
- First half
In what book does a Parisian aristocrat scoff at the people as rats come out of their holes?
✓ Answer
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Marquis surveys the crowd at the fountain with contempt after his carriage kills a child. His comparison of the poor to vermin underscores the dehumanization that drives the revolution.
- First half
In what book does a knitting woman keep a coded register of enemies in her own stitches and symbols?
✓ Answer
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Madame Defarge knits the names of those marked for death into her work. Her register is the revolutionary death list, and no one outside her circle of revolutionaries can decipher it.
- Second half
In what book does a happy mother in Soho hear menacing footsteps echoing in her corner?
✓ Answer
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Lucie Darnay listens to echoes from her home in Soho as her family grows around her. The peaceful sounds give way to ominous footsteps from France, signaling the coming storm of Revolution.
- Second half
In what book do four shaggy figures set a chateau on fire in the dark?
✓ Answer
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Four wayfaring revolutionaries set the Evrémonde chateau ablaze. The mender of roads and his fellow villagers refuse to help fight the fire, and the village rings the church bell for joy.
- Near the end
In what book does a doctor write a secret narrative using soot, charcoal, and his own blood?
✓ Answer
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Doctor Manette writes his denunciation in 1767 with a rusty iron point dipped in scrapings from the chimney mixed with his own blood. He hides it in his cell, where Defarge discovers it years later.
