In the second chapter of Hard Times, Murdering the Innocents, Charles Dickens sets the story in one of the industrial towns, the setting characterizes the aspects of the Industrial Revolution and calls into question the influential philosophy of Utilitarianism which relied heavily on statics, rules and regulations and not at all highly value: industrialism and imagination. The character portrayed is Mr. Gradgrind, “a man of realities”. Right from the start the novelist underlines name and surname of the teacher as if he was a very important person. There is the telling technique which doesn't allowed any freedom to the reader who can adopt two different ways of thinking: accept or the total refuse to the point of view of Mr. Gradgrind.

The teacher is a mixture of rules and seems to need those elements as if they are useful to survive. Ironically Dickens tens the reader that definitely there is no space for any other perspective but the functional and mathematical one. The tone used is highly ironical, based on repetition, anaphoric sentence; some things are expressed by the use of climax and said with different language. At the end of the first section there is the exclamation “no, sir!” that underlines the emotional inducement of the narrator (seems a God that direct the fictional world). The second section is told through the showing technique using the dialogue so the reader can hear and understand the real world of people used in fiction. During his lesson Mr. Gradgrind identifies a student who calls “Girl number twenty”. The girl replies that her name is Sissy but the teacher immediately corrects her saying “Sissy is not a name... Call yourself Cecilia” and advises her to refer to her father as a “farrier” or perhaps a “veterinary surgeon”. Mr. Gradgrind doesn't accept the way of conceive the world of Sissy, she comes from a distant content, a different context compared to her teacher. The lesson continues with Gradgrind's command: "Give me your definition of a horse." Sissy knows what a horse is but she is unable to define it. Another child in the class, a boy called Bitzer easily defines the animal by means of biological classifications “Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive..”. Bitzer is described as “so light-eyed and light-haired” and very pale however when Bitzer speaks he defines the horse like he is reading a dictionary. He gives the exact definition that his teacher has required and for this reason Bitzer seems Mr. Gradgrind's pupil.

Dickens accuses Mr. Gradgrind to kill the imagination of the students: he calls them with number, he doesn't seem to know them and he doesn't listen to what they have to say. He only gives rules and says what is right and what wrong. His life is based on regulation and mathematical frame of Utilitarianism.