Analysis

A Tale of Two Cities is a moral novel strongly concerned with themes of resurrection, guilt, shame, redemption and patriotism. The narrative is extraordinarily dependent upon correspondence as a medium for ensuring the flow of events, and it is immediately apparent that the flow of letters forms a driving center to much of the narrative development. The novel covers a period between 1775 and 1793, up to the middle period of the French Revolution.

The twists and turns in the work are sinuous. Originally written as a serial novel for publication in newspapers, its chapters open and close with great drama and mystery. Dickens' take on the French Revolution is balanced — he describes the horrors and atrocities committed by both sides.

The two cities referred to in the title are London and Paris. Throughout the novel, pairs of people, places, etc. are compared and contrasted.

The opening sentence, beginning with the line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," is one of the most famous in all literature. The final lines are almost as well-known, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American Jazz Age author of novels and short stories. He is regarded as one of the greatest twentieth century writers. Fitzgerald was of the self-styled "Lost Generation," Americans born in the 1890s who came of age during World War I. He finished four novels, left a fifth unfinished, and wrote dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth, despair, and age.

The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, the story is set in New York City and Long Island during the summer of 1922.

The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and encouraged organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamour of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and lack of morality that went with it.

The Great Gatsby was not popular upon initial printing and sold fewer than 25,000 copies during the remaining fifteen years of Fitzgerald's life.

Although it was adapted into both a Broadway play and a Hollywood film within a year of publication, it was largely forgotten during the Great Depression and World War II. After it was republished in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership, and is now often regarded as the Great American Novel. It is now a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world.

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