The extract from Hard Times describes a unnatural city builted after the Industrial Revolution.

The first paragraph has an introuctory function: 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). So it's a city of suffering (conveied by he colour red) and of sin (conveied by the colour black). Another contrast between white (purity) and black (damnation) ("In severe characters of black and white") highlights the typical Manichean vision of the world. In addition right from the first lines repetitions in the language and in the setting described evidences alienation (lost of identity) and monotony in actions and buildings: all people repeat the same movements and also institutions porpouse the same structure, everything can be confused with someting else and nothing can appear different. Only the New Church seems to be something innovative in the town. However it is described using irony ("bell in a birdcage") and the grotesque ("like...legs") showing Dickens' negative approuch to institutions in Coketown.

The anaphorical structure ("Fact, fact, fact") underlines the importance of material. Moreover the absence of freedom and relax in Coketown is the result of the juxtapposition of two opposite poles (material-immaterial). In the city, everything is velued according to its utility and ist materiality: consequently, there is no imagination in school or town. It follows that the town seems to be artificial, in which only machine is present and every human body is removed from the description.