“‘As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls. They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and covered with dust, but he cannot touch it; thereupon, they laugh again.’” (175)
This quote comes from Chapter 15 when the mender of roads is telling the three men called Jacques about Gaspard’s unfortunate fate. Up to this point in the novel, nearly all of Dickens’s references to blood and/or wine had been to symbolize and foreshadow the spilt blood of the French aristocrats. In this passage, and the mender of roads’ whole story, Dickens shows us the other side of the story, the reason that the peasants want to revolt. As the soldiers take Gaspard through the town and to his gallows, they seem to make a point of ridiculing him and showing him to the people, as if to make an example out of him. They seem to be saying to the people to stay in line of they will end up like poor Gaspard. After reading through this passage a second time, it reminded me of the crucifixion of Jesus, the way the Roman soldiers spat on, crowned, stripped, and then laughed at Jesus, and then led him through the crowds of people in Jerusalem.
2 comments:
I also journaled on this, and i completely agree with the connection. In my mind, it is very easy to imagine Gaspard walking with his head down as he is entering his own imprisonment. Meanwhile the guards are laughing at him and showing how little they care. The discussion between the Jacques' occured in the Wine Shop, which is a place where all the characters lives seem to connect to each other in one way or another.
Whoa, that was a really go connection between Jesus and Gaspard. I think that by parading Gaspard through town, bloody and a mess, they were (along with using him as an example) fueling the fire of the revolution, by angering all of the Jaques.
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