Book 3 Chapter 6: Triumph By definition, a triumph is a great victory or achievement. This chapter is titled Triumph because in court, Darnay was freed, and not sentenced to death. This represents a triumph because Darnay was one of the few people who was set free. Many people were sentenced to death for unfair accusations.

Summary Darnay awaits his turn in front of the Tribunal. When he is called for his trial, he notices that the men in the courtroom are armed with weapons, while the women wear knives and are knitting. Darnay feels as though everything is reversed, that the guilty are trying the non-guilty. Darnay notices Defarge and his wife. Darnay was accused by the public prosecutor as an emigrant, but he argued this saying that he wasn’t an emigrant because he had given up his position as a marquis by choice. The President had reminded Darnay that he had gotten married in England, which Darnay responds by saying that he married a women who was French at birth. The President ask for her name and family and Darnay says that she is the daughter of Doctor Manette. When he says this, the whole crowd changed their view of Darnay and immediately began feeling sympathetic towards Darnay because they appreciate all the work that the Doctor has done. With sympathy from the crowd, Dr. Manette’s testimony, and Gabelle’s letter as evidence, Darnay was released and the crowd was so excited for him that they carried him home. On his way home, Darnay searches for the Defarges, but he can’t find them. He feels nervous about what is happening and imagines himself being carried to the guillotine, but this feeling passes soon. When he arrives home, he hugs everyone and Lucie prays thankfully. He thanks Dr. Manette for all his help.

Literary Devices Metaphor: “Similarly, though with a subtle difference, a species of fervour or intoxication, known, without doubt, to have led some persons to brave the guillotine unnecessarily, and to die by it, was not mere boastfulness, but a wild infection of the wildly shaken public mind. In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease−a terrible passing inclination to die of it,” (287). This compares the opinion and mind set of the public mind to a mind of a person infected with a disease. Symbol: “In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they met and pointing him out, they carried him on. Reddening the snowy streets with the prevailing Republican colour, in winding and tramping through them, as they had reddened them below the snow with a deeper dye, they carried him thus into the court-yard of the building where she lived,” (291). The “prevailing Republican colour” is red. So all though they are celebrating Darnay’s victory, as they walk they are coloring the snow red, which also represents blood. This statement can be seen as contradicting itself. Repetition: “After grasping the Doctor’s hand, as he stood victorious and proud before him; after grasping the hand of Mr. Lorry, who came panting in breathless from his struggle against the waterspout of the Carmagnole; after kissing little Lucie, who was the ever zealous and faithful Pross who lifted her; he took his wife in his arms, and carried her up to their rooms,” (292). This is the repetition of the word after. After is mostly used in transitions. Here it shows the order in which Darnay thanked and embraced each person before he thanked his wife. By using it at the beginning of each statement, it allows for a nice flow and pattern to it.

Essential Quote “No sooner was the acquittal pronounced, than tears were shed as freely as blood at another time, and such fraternal embraces were bestowed upon the prisoner by as many of both sexes as could rush at him, that after his long and unwholesome confinement he was in danger of fainting from exhaustion; none the less because he knew very well, that the very same people, carried by another current, would have rushed at him with the very same intensity, to rend him to pieces and strew him over the streets,” (291).