Murdering the Innocents is an extract taken from the second chapter of Charles Dickens's Hard Times. The reader comes across the character's proper name, Thomas Gradgrind. the reader immediately know that Thomas is a teacher, a man of realities, fact and calculations. These terms returns to the reader the idea of a man who considerers only the materialistic point of view of life. His personality is rendered in a metaphorical language. All the semantic chooses belong to the mathematical semantic field.  Thomas is obsessed to demonstrate the truth. Vice versa the narrator is interested to guide the reader. Through accumulation effect Dickens wants the reader make know that Thomas is considered an important man in Coketown. In addiction he considerers everything that pupils must study are ridiculous, too easy.

In the first sequence Thomas call the girl number twenty. The intelligent reader understands that pupils have a number instead they proper names. Teacher want to deprive pupils of the name, and therefore of they identity. Thomas, when he talks, uses the deictic word "that", so he express a distance between  him and the students. Besides the uses imperative verbs that imply putting everything in his exact place.

When Thomas asks to Cecilia what his father's job (a person is what he does), the girl answers that her father belong to the horse-riding. Id doesn't conform to the idea of work that Thomas has, and he tells to the girl what she should think.

VOCABULARY

To ban: bandire

To banish: bandire

To Dismiss: prendere le distanze

To base sth on somebody: basare

To set: ambientare

To simplify: semplificare  

Claim: richiesta

Foundation: fondamento

Economy is a science I'm interested in