I'm reading "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens and there's a passage that goes: Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapa

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Martin

I'm reading "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens and there's a passage that goes: Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away. Now my question is what does "incapable of their directed exercise" mean or refer to. The "their" part of it I would assume refers to "good abilities" and "good emotions". Regarding "directed exercise" I would think it means the ability for the aforementioned qualities (abilities and emotions) to manifest themselves¿ If anyone can shed some light on it I would really appreciate it :)

20 dec. 2023 00:03

Antwoorden · 3

I think you are on the right track. I assume "the man" is poor and so a victim of his circumstances and no matter how hard he tries or how good he is, he can't escape his circumstances. That seems to tie into the theme of the novel, although I don't know the immediate context of this section. In any case, I read it that the man, incapable of benefiting from his abilities and emotions, incapable of helping himself and incapable of being happy - all of this by virtue of his circumstance of being born into a poor family or whatever. I never really read the novel, so I am just guessing, but is that any help?

20 december 2023

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