Personification in A Tale of Two Cities

Through personification, Dickens writes that "Hunger" "ploughed into every furrow of age." This image demonstrates the peasants' suffering and foreshadows forthcoming misery and anger across the country.

Dickens personifies the city of Saint Antoine when he describes it as being in a “vinous feature” (i.e. that it, like a person, experiences the inebriating effects of drinking wine). Intoxication, in this context, symbolizes the revolutionary sentiment that would fuel the French Revolution.

The guillotine, as we have seen, is frequently personified throughout the novel—even to the extent that Dickens describes its victims as “red wine for La Guillotine.” Dickens’s portrayal of the insatiable La Guillotine suggests that this brutally violent machine is symbol of the republic itself.