COKETOWN

Analysis

The name of the city is Coketown and it suggests that the principal element is the coal. It is an industrial city where everything is built according to Utilitarian principles and where the Gradfrinds live.

The function of the second paragraph of the extract is to describe and to express an opinion (mixes information and comments that guide the reader’s interpretation) about buildings which are influenced by the Industrial Revolution.

The paragraph begins using an impersonal subject “you saw nothing” that implies the alienation of people living in Coketown. There are a lot of repetitions in the language and in the setting described to convey alienation and monotony broken just by the “New Church”. The New Church is described using irony (“bell in a birdcage”) and the grotesque (“like…legs”) showing Dickens’ negative judgement towards institutions.

The anaphorical structure (“Fact, fact, fact”) underlines the importance of utility.

There is no space for freedom in Coketown: everything shifts from two opposite poles (material-immaterial). Colors 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 colors are red and dark colors 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.