Exercises pages 348-349-350

>>Thomas Gradgring is authoritative director of a school. He founds the school sistem of Coketown. He represent the strictness and harshness of rules.

>> I expect he adopts a strict kind of teaching based on firm regulations.

>> I think the innocentes are the children. They might be murdered by killing their innocence. Children are forced to act following strict rules behaving as adults expect.

>> Mr Gradgring choses Bitzer casually following the same ray of sunlight which irradiates Sissy.

>> I think he will suit a very precise definition of a horse; maybe the one we can find on a vocabulary.

>> They are described by their contrasting aspects (Sissy is dark haired and dark eyed while Bitzer is paile and light-eyed and light-haired) and by their different capacity to please Mr Gradgring.

>> The narrator is in third person and he is omniscient.

>>The repetition "A man of" underlines in an ironical way Gradgring qualities. The reader can evidence some forseable aspects of sir Gradgring by the listing of different names (George- Auguste etc) which ironically underline what he is not. The expression "Girl number twenty" underlines the aim of the director to "murder" the personality of the children in general and of Cecilia (Sissy) in particular.

>> The tone is heavy and strict.

>> He is described as a pounctilious person: he always carries a rule, a pair of scales and a multiplication table, in his pocket.

>> I think Dickens wants to focus our attention on the difference between them. He evidences in an ironical way the difference expected between white and black, light and dark, good and bad.

>> I don't think Dickens approves Mr Gradgring because he educated children following the principles of Utilitarism. Dickens criticizes this kind of education which dismisses moral sense, love and right.

>> Sissy is supposed to know a perfect definition of a horse because her father works with horses. But he is not a veterinary as Mr Gradgring wants Sissy to say. He is involved in a horse-riding circus. As a consequence Sissy is unable to give a definition of a horse. She doesn't learn anything about a horse. But she learns how to answere to Mr Gradgring.