When the citizen of St. Antoine writes the word "Blood" on the wall with his finger dipped in the muddy wine of the street, his is a symbolic act. The wine symbolizes the bloodshed and foreshadows the violence to soon take place during the French Revolution.
In addition, there is foreshadowing of the forthcoming rebellion with the symbolic imagery of the wine/"blood" flowing everywhere in the street. Then, too, the desperate soaking of cloths and whatever the citizens could find with the symbolically flowing wine in order to obtain a few drops of this drink, followed by a mother's squeezing of the "lee-dye cloth," the wine-soaked cloth, in the desperate hope that her starving baby would obtain some nourishment from the drops of wine suggests the terrible conditions of the generations of starving people, symbolically shown conditions that are ripe for revolution.
That this flow of blood/wine takes place in St. Antoine is also significant for symbolism and foreshadowing since the wine-shop is owned by Monsieur and Madame Defarge, revolutionaries themselves who meet with others--all called "Jacques"--and who shelter an old prisoner of the Bastille.
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