In A Tale of Two Cities, the character Sydney Carton is seen as a depressed individual who has failed in having a purpose in life. Sydney is constantly being degraded by Mr. Stryver and is spending his time drinking his pain away. Sydney hoping for the love of his life, Lucie Manette, to want to marry him. At the end of the novel Sydney decides to give his own life for Charles Darnay, but was the act really for Darnay? Sydney lives a miserable life and with reasoning I concluded that his sacrifice was for self-interest, not a self-less act.
Sydney was depressed because of the inconsequential life he is living. He goes to the bar constantly to drink because that’s what people usually do to get stuff off their mind and get rid of harmful feelings, which they are feeling. Mr. Stryver, a lawyer who got himself to where he is today because of Sydney’s help, is telling Syndey that his life is not the life he should be living because of its insignificance. He gives Sydney a backhanded compliment by saying that with all the intelligence he had he should have made something more out of himself. Sydney is in love with Lucie Manette but knows he has no chance of marrying her. He even goes to Lucie’s house just to…show more content… He wants to get rid of the feeling of being worthless and the way he went to go about it is giving his life for someone else’s. He found comfort in doing something extreme like replacing Darnay in being sent to the guillotine, which he is doing to make his life mean something. He finds that if people see his act as selfless then he will mean something which, through deduction, means that he was doing it for the feeling of having a purpose. This was his way of escaping the world that he had no purpose in while leaving something behind for the others to remember, this gives him comfort for the time he is