What does the broken wine cask symbolize NU The broken wine cask is one of the most powerful symbols in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens It appears in Book I Chapter V in the streets of Saint Antoine Paris A large wine cask falls and breaks outside Defarge s wine shop The poor people rush to the street to drink the spilled wine Injustice and Inequality This scene shows the huge difference between the rich and the poor The nobles live in luxury while the poor are so hungry that they drink wine mixed with mud Dickens writes The wine was red wine and had stained the ground of the narrow street Book One Chapter V Desperation and Dehumanization The people act like starving animals They re scraping the ground to get every drop Dickens describes some of them as being like a tigerish smear about the