Foreshadowing is a very good literary tool to use in a story. Charles Dickens uses foreshadowing excellently by hinting, here and there, events that would unfold in his book, A Tale of Two Cities. He uses people as well as imagery as ways of foreshadowing. Examples of foreshadowing in A Tale of Two Cities are Dr. Manette's reaction to meeting Charles Darnay, the symbol of echoing footstepes that Lucie listens to, and Carton saying that he would do "anything" for Lucie.
One example of foreshadowing in the story's rising action is Dr. Manette's reaction to Darnay meeting with him and taking about Lucie. Darnay had become a successful man in England, and he had fallen in love with Lucy. So he went to see Dr. Manette to discuss if it would be alright with him if he was in a relationship with Lucie. The Doctor felt very uneasy about the subject. He gets even more uneasy when Darnay wants to tell him his real name and why he is in England. " 'Stop!' For an instant he had his two hands at his ears, for another instant, even had his two hands laid on Darnay's lips." Darnay then agrees to not tell Manette his real name until his and Lucie's wedding day. That evening, Lucy heard her father hammering on his old shoemaker's bench, but later that night, he stopped, and all was as usual. This event foreshadows Dr. Manette's relapse into psychosis on Lucy and Darnay's wedding day. .
Another example of foreshadowing, leading up to the climax are the echoing footsteps of years to come that Lucie listens to. But one night the echoes come from a distance and sounded threatening. "But, there were other echoes, from a distance, the rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time, and it was now, about little Lucie's sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising." Very soon after that, the French rebels storm the Bastille.
