This extract is taken from Hard Times. The novel was set in an industrial town, in which the writer could present the mentality of that time based on Utilitarism philosophy. Utilitarism confined imagination and individualism, for this reason the writer disappointed the trends of thought of that time. The narrator was third person omniscient that with the technique of tellin the story doesn’t permit any freedom to reader, that can adopt two points of view: accept or refuse the view of narrator.

In the introductory section there are repetitions, anaphoric uses, climax and irony that makes Thomas Gradgrind a caricature. The words used in the description are mathematical and arithmetical to underline there aren’t definitive perspective.

In the second section there is a dialogue between Mr. Grandgrind and Sissy Jupe a student. The master considered his students as numbers, without identity that characterized the person. For this reason he called Sissy with the name “number 20” and when the girl underlines her real name, the master refused to accept that name, because for him Sissy wasn’t a name but a surname. The writer defined the master “squared” because he didn’t accept what didn’t conform to normal. In this section there is another character Bitzer, the pupil of the master because was always ready to give a correct answer with specific definitions.

In this novel there is contrast between what is really true and what can suppose to exist, because the writer gave a hyperbolic rendering.

Dickens would express his disappointment with the model of the education in his time and the identity of children wasn’t respected.