Dickens uses the funeral procession to demonstrate how easily a rowdy crowd can become a destructive mob. The actions of the crowd turn a solemn occasion — a funeral — into a festive one, with many of the crowd members not even aware of the cause of the uproar. The momentum of the mob has swept them up, and they follow whatever spontaneous commands they hear. In this way, rational, thinking individuals become mindless members of a violent entity. For Dickens, mobs are unstoppable forces, frightening in their inhumanity.
Within the funeral mob, however, one man pursues his own private agenda. Jerry Cruncher, the reader discovers, is a resurrection man — a grave robber — and views Cly's funeral as a business opportunity. Cruncher's work as a resurrection man parodies the resurrection theme that runs through A Tale of Two Cities. Whereas people such as Doctor Manette or the French peasants metaphorically return from their living graves through love or revolution, Cruncher literally digs fresh corpses from their graves to sell to surgeons or medical students.
