MB UNIUD

THE KEY-NOTE
by Hard Times
Charles Dickens

The Key-note is an extract from Charles Dickens's Hard Times and the title is a metaphor taken from the semantic field of music, so it implies hearing and sound and its means is the most important note that we can consider like the most important concept.
In this extract images, colours, sound and smell are convey by the description of the town called Coketown.
Here, Messers Bounderby and Grandgrind are walking between factories and smoke and the only colours they can see are red and black that are present in a so unnatural way and in a  black canal so artificial.
This elements convey the idea of the production and alienation that characterizing the town and people who live there: a typical Victorian Industrial town.
Like saying before a bad connotation of them it is give up by the two predominant colours (red and black): red stand for blood and black for death. There are other semantic fields: one is made up of industrial terms (machinery, canal, chimneys, ...) that convey the cold and alienate atmosphere. It seems an unreal city where do not live human but automatons.
Another field is convey by the name of the town: Coketown. It spreads the main activity of the city and it makes the reader understand that the town is only connote for its concrete function and productivity. As a matter of fact Coketown a triumph of fact.  It rules the concept of utility, there is no creativity and emotions, only unnatural colours.
Moreover in this town everything seems to be produced in series: nothing is distinguish, even days and persons. People have loose their identity: there are all considered workers. Even time and space have another connotation: they become time and space of production.

Is it this the real human progress?