Coketown

The function of the second paragraph of the extract from Hard Times is to describe and to express an opinion about buildings which houses institutions in a city influenced by the Industrial Revolution. In the extract Dickens mixes information and comments that guide the reader’s interpretation.

The name of the city is Coketown suggesting that the essential element is the coal.

The paragraph begins using an impersonal subject that implies the alienation of people living in Coketown. In addition right from the first lines the intelligent reader notices repetitions both in the language and in the setting described to convey alienation and monotony broken just by the “New Church”. Nevertheless the New Church is described using irony (“bell in a birdcage”) and the grotesque (“like…legs”) showing Dickens’ negative judgement towards institutions in Coketown where everything is built according to Utilitarian principles.

The anaphorical structure (“Fact, fact, fact”) is used by Dickens to underline the importance of utility. In addition there is no space for freedom in Coketown: everything shifts from two opposite poles (material-immaterial). Colours used in public inscriptions also convey the juxtaposition of poles following Manichean principle (black that stands for sin and white for purity). Coketown is conceived in form of utility: there is no imagination in school or town according to Utilitarism and Materialism therefore there is no possibility to be creative because it requires imagination that is banned.

To describe the city the narrator appeals to senses, in particular sight (main colours are red and dark colours that convey the idea of suffering and unhealthiness), and hearing thanks to the description of the steam engine using the image of an elephant that convey the idea of heaviness. The town seems to be artificial and is printed like a savage and every human body is removed from the description.