The Wine Shop Of War

In the 1859 classic A Tale of Two Cities, a simple wine cask breaking foreshadows the bloody French Revolution in the years to come. The Saint Antoine based chapter gives a good description of the state this Parisian suburb is in. The main facet in the scene is the broken wine jar in the street. In Dicken’s novel he states,”A large cask of wine had been  dropped and broken, in the street”(Dickens 20).  from this, we can see that a wine carrier broke and spilled. Though this seemingly insignificant detail to some, is actually a main facet in painting the scene. A secondary detail of the scene is that the wine was red wine as shown in the quote” the wine was red wine”(Dickens 21). though it is a minor detail, it helps foreshadow that red wine won’t be the only thing spilled in the future of France. Finally, pauper mothers used their handkerchiefs to feed their infants. Dickens writes,”Handkerchiefs from women’s heads were which were squeezed dry into infants’ mouths”(Dickens 21). The state that a suburb was in, let alone a city, was so dire that women used their sweat covered hankies to help give their children the most amount of nourishment they could with limited sources. No matter what, the most insignificant of details can show that large impact of the future.