Wine-Game: A Paradoxical Consequence of Turmoil in A Tales of Two Cities

Chaotic times of mass peril have historically translated into periods of heightened productivity, social comradery, and collective action. A notorious example of this phenomenon occurred during WWII when the German military subjected multiple cities to highly coordinated and merciless attacks. The objective of the Blitzkrieg strategy was to ensure a certain victory, in effect avoiding a long war. Authour and historian Rutger Bregman comments on the effect of the Blitz on the city of London in his book Humankind (2019). Although the city suffered catastrophic physical damage, the morale of Londoners struggled less so. Germany assumed the attacks— the infamous “Black Saturday” kicked off a wave that lasted 57 days in succession—would devastate the morale of the citizens and force their capitulation. Unfortunately for Gustave Le Bon and his magnum opus titled Psychologie des foules (1895), Hitler’s theory was incorrect. Instead of descending down the ladder of civilization, the city prospered.

This is the phenomenon Charles Dickens details in the chapters of A Tale of Two Cities. It is true that Dickens overlooked aspects of the French Revolution. However, it would be fair to say that Chapter 5 “The Wine-Shop” tastefully encompasses what the people of London experienced under two centuries later. The city doesn’t wait when a cask of wine hit the roads of Saint Antoine, Paris. The wine, now moving through “the rough, irregular stones of the street” and forming into “little pools,” enchants the people. They “kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined,” “squeezed [wine soaked] handkerchiefs into infants’ mouths,” and “devoted themselves to licking…wine-rotten fragments with eager relish.” It is fair to say that this event is at once alluring and repulsive. I too read the opening sequence of “The Wine-Shop” with a face that couldn’t make up its mind—a smile and wince in concurrence.

But what makes the wine such a puzzling confrontation with reality? For starters, it would most certainly stem from Dicken’s attempt to juxtapose the primal instinct for food and water (best described by Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) with the dehumanizing implications of Dicken’s disturbing metaphors, describing the people as pest-like scavengers who ‘lick up’ the streets. Yet readers cannot trust that this assumption, which paints a binary of primality versus inhumanity, as comprehensive. The people are gladdened by the wine, not disturbed! The sight of wine boosts their spirits. Evidently, Dicken’s paints not a saddened, decrepit people, but a happy, joyous celebration. The townsfolk treat the cask of wine as an opportunity to “suspend their business” and roll in its bliss—an acquaintance with wine was believed “a miraculous presence.”

The wine-game ends quickly, but the red-blood stains of the wine do not disappear. Some “acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth.” Others “left red marks on the billets” and stained “the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby.” Wine, or the colour of Satan’s Hell, of the Prohibition and of God’s judgement; the shade of Christ’s blood, our blood, and human life. Yet red is also the colour of war, revolution, and the guillotine. That is the paradox of human suffering. The “one tall joker” writes “BLOOD” with a wine-soaked finger on the walls: “The time was to come, when that wine too would be spiller” (my emphasis). Some are left with no choice but treat the blood as a nourishing gift. Although the French Revolution will be noted as a moment of devastation in the histories, authors like Dickens remind us of humanity’s urge to discover glee, even in the most devastating of times.