Coketown is an extract, which is taken by Dickens’s Hard Times. In the novel Hard Times, set in one of the industrial towns of the North, the narrator emphasizes the dehumanizing aspects of the Industrial Revolution.

The title of the extract suggests Coketown is the town of coke.

At the beginning of the extract the narrator described the town with a metonymic style. The town is an agglomerate of red bricks. The town is made up on unnatural red. It is a dull, dirty and filthy place with polluted air and water, where people are lifeless because of their monotonous everyday is the same day life. As a result, the description of Coketown evokes a negative scary feeling and transport a depreciative atmosphere into the reader’s mind.

The town presents itself in red and black. The red colour comes from the red bricks most of the houses are built of. Instead the black colour evokes death.

The effect of production is smoke, which is compared with  a snake. The snake is the symbol of the evil in the biblical language. The streams of smoke that fill the skies above Coketown are the effects of industrialization. However, these smoke serpents also represent the moral blindness of factory.