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150 multiple-choice questions and 45 flashcards, written to the AP English Literature blueprint. Every question carries a full rationale.
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AP English Literature, Common Core ELA 9-12 reading literature, IB English A: Literature, US/world history cross-link
CoStudy's A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) bank holds 195 items. Every multiple-choice question carries a written rationale explaining why the correct answer is correct and why each distractor is tempting but wrong.
A sample of 12 multiple-choice questions from the bank, with the full rationale shown.
The guillotine in the novel is figured as:
Answer: B — A 'sharp female' national figure receiving daily sacrifice, undercutting Enlightenment self-image
B is right: the personification critique. A, C, and D miss Dickens's satire.
The Reign of Terror in the novel's setting is roughly:
Answer: D — Late 1793 into 1794, with the novel's climax aligned to this period
D is right: the Terror window. A, C, and B misdate.
Carton's hidden honor as a theme rebukes which reading?
Answer: D — That his arc proves drunkenness alone defines him
D is right: the misreading the novel actively dismantles. A, C, and B are themes the novel affirms.
The Bastille letter ends with Manette's curse on:
Answer: D — The Evrémondes and all their descendants 'to the last of their race'
D is right: the curse becomes the conviction. A and C invert; B is wrong.
John Barsad's true identity is:
Answer: D — Solomon Pross, Miss Pross's long-lost brother, working as a spy for whichever side pays
D is right: the reveal enables Carton's plan. A, C, and B are wrong.
What occupation does Dr. Manette continue compulsively after release?
Answer: D — Shoemaking, learned in prison and revived under stress
D is right: shoemaking is his trauma anchor. A, C, and B are plausible-sounding but wrong.
The Marquis is killed because:
Answer: B — His carriage runs over a child + the father (Gaspard) stabs him in his bed
A/C/D) Wrong proximate cause. B) Correct — the killing crystallizes the indictment of aristocratic cruelty; Gaspard is later hanged.
The Vengeance is best characterized as:
Answer: B — A female companion who personifies revolutionary blood-thirst at Madame Defarge's side
B is right: her nickname personifies the mood. A is a fan misreading; C and D are wrong.
In Saint Antoine, the broken wine cask in the street is met with:
Answer: C — People kneeling to lap or scoop the wine, and one man scrawling 'BLOOD' on a wall
B is right: a key foreshadowing image. A misses the desperate poverty; C and D ignore the symbolic resonance.
While imprisoned, Dr. Manette compulsively:
Answer: A — Made shoes
B/C/D) Wrong. A) Correct — shoemaking is his trauma response. Lucie helps him relinquish the tools over years.
Jerry Cruncher's secret night occupation is:
Answer: C — 'Resurrection Man' (grave-robber)
A/B/D) Wrong. C) Correct — Jerry sells corpses to anatomists; this gives him useful information at the climax that ironizes the novel's resurrection theme.
The novel is set primarily in:
Answer: A — London and Paris
A) Correct — the two cities of the title. B/C/D) Wrong.
6 sample cards from the 45 in the bank.
Why does Dickens use third-person omniscient?
It lets him move between London + Paris, into characters' inner lives + history's broad currents — essential for the historical novel's scope.
Famous opening?
'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times' — a sentence-long catalog of opposites that frames the novel's doubling structure.
Who is Madame Defarge (Thérèse)?
Wine-shop keeper in Saint Antoine, Paris. Knits a registry of victims to be executed. Daughter of a peasant family destroyed by the Evrémondes.
How is Dr. Manette 'recalled to life'?
Mr. Lorry escorts Lucie to Paris, where they find her father living above the Defarges' wine shop. He has been making shoes obsessively. They bring him to England.
Madame Defarge's death?
She comes to the Manette home to denounce Lucie + the child. Miss Pross stops her. They struggle; Madame Defarge's own pistol discharges + kills her.
Who is the Marquis St. Evrémonde?
Charles Darnay's cruel aristocrat uncle. Embodies the callous Ancien Régime — runs over a child + tosses a coin as compensation.
These samples are a small slice. The full bank runs flashcards, multiple choice and timed mock exams with per-chapter progress tracking, on the web and in the iOS app.
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The A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) bank holds 195 items: 150 multiple-choice questions, 45 flashcards. 18 of them are on this page to read free, with no signup.
Yes. Every multiple-choice item carries a written rationale that states the controlling principle behind the correct answer and then addresses each wrong option in turn — why it tempts and precisely where it fails. Knowing why the plausible answer was wrong is worth more than knowing which letter was right.
The samples on this page are free to read in full, rationales included, with no account. The complete 195-item bank, the timed mock exams and per-chapter progress tracking are part of CoStudy on the web and in the iOS app.
Last reviewed 2026-08-22. Banks are written against the certifying body's published exam outline and re-checked when that outline changes — exams get renumbered, retired and reweighted, and a bank written to a superseded outline teaches the wrong proportions. Figures that are re-indexed annually are deliberately not asserted as rules; the questions test the governing principle instead.