In the fifth chapter of Hard Times Charles Dickens presents an industrial town with its institutions. Right from the start the intelligent reader can understand that the only information is “you saw nothing in Coketown” than the narrator gives his personal opinion and makes assumptions about architecture in the city. The reader gets an impression and a particular image of Coketown in its appearance. It was a town of red brick or of brick that would have been red if the smoke had allowed it, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage (person who has no culture and civilization). The two colors express suffering and hell at the same time, red remains blood while black refers to something unhealthy. “In severe characters of black and white” is another expression which implies the use of colors, here the contrast between white (purity) and black (damnation) underlines the typical Manichean vision of the world.

Dickens uses a lot of descriptions, similes and metaphor to show the implications in which the society is inflicting. With similes the novelist wants create an image in the reader's mind while using metaphor he judges a particular fact or subject. An example of similes could be “ like florid wooden legs” on the contrary some example of metaphor are “it had a black canal,” and “interminable serpents of smoke”.

Coketown is a town of machinery and tall chimneys, from which come out interminable serpents of smoke. Through this description Dickens presents the themes of suffocation, obsession and the inability to change the situation. The repetition of the movement of the stream engine, up and down, recalls the productive process and the busy world in which human being live. There are no references to human being but only to institutions and factories.

In the extract there are lots of references to religion “the member of religion persuasion”; “the New Church” and “Amen” (as if he finishes a prayer). In conclusion Dickens uses allegories to point out in a satiric way wants to describe Coketown as a hell-like place, a place where everything is dark, insane, dirty and with no hope.