Exercises pages 351-352

>> I expect it is a typical industrialised town of the beginning of the 19th century. It is full of factories. It is characterized by the total absence of nature. Nature is substituted by machinery and chimneys. People have to live in a town full of smoke and ashes.

Everybody lives the same life. There is no difference between one and another, no difference between the day before and the day after.

Each building is made by red dirty bricks.

>> The colours of the town are compared to the unnatural painted face of a savage.

The steam engine is compared to the head of a mad elephant.

The hospital has the same aspect of the jail.

>> In this text Dickens wants to inform the reader about the situation inside the town. He describes it in order to make the reader understand what the situation is and which are the nagative effects of Utilitarism on people.

Right from the strat Dickens names this town "Coketown": it implies it is a place of work, a factory town, where the red bricks are coloured with unnatural black of the smoke of the factories. The comparison between the town and the savage painted face suggests the reader an hostile image. The metaphor "serpent of smoke" implies the negative image of a snake; even the comparison of the steam engine to the head of a mad elephant underlines the negative aspects of this industrialized town.

Fom line 11 the repetition of the word "like" and the expression "the same" undeline monotony and repetition. From line 38 to line 42 the repetition of the word "fact" underlines the material aspect of the town.

Dickens uses names ("Coketown"), colours (black and red), images, repetitions as technical devices to underline his point of view against Utilitarism.