Five Years Later: Start of the Golden Thread (Book 2)

In the opening of Book 2 we witness Dickens both as storyteller and social commentator. He paints an unflattering portrait of Tellson's Bank in terms of its "ugliness" and "incommodiousness". His reference to the "Barmecide room" with a great dining table that is never used, comes from the term "Barmecide" used in the Arabian nights and refers to "something illusory or imaginary and therefore disappointing" (source: worldwidewords). We are introduced to Jerry, the odd-job man employed at Tellson's Bank. "They hanged at Tyburn in those days" writes Dickens; the spectre of capital punishment always lurking in the background of the novel. He refers to the punishment device known as a pillory (the Charing Cross pillory being a famous one, where onlookers would throw rotten food, cats and other objects at the victim), sardonically as a "wise old institution" and the whipping post as another "dear old institution". He attacks the custom of profiteering from people's problems as follows: "people then paid to see the play at the Old Bailey, just as they paid to see the play in Bedlam" (refers to Bethlem Royal Hospital). The trial we are party to is a trial for Treason committed by Charles Darnay, and the crowd's interest in it is described as "ogreish". Charles' demeanour is very composed, even in the knowledge he is being "mentally hanged, beheaded and quartered by everybody there".