Coketown is an extract taken from Charles Dickens' Hard Times - Chapter V (1854). The extract is the description of Coketown, the town symbol of the rising conception of city. The city is the center of industries and capitalism conception. The description focuses its attention on senses: the reader has the sensation to be present into the scenary described. Dickens provides colours, smells and sounds of Coketown: the grey pollution, the smell and the noise of steam machines, the noise of industries and heavy machineries, ... Right from the title "Coketown" elicits the idea of carbon "coke", that particular kind of carbon adopted to melt the steel. The image of Coketown results negative all things considered. Dickens adopts the narrative technique of pathos and grotesque: the description is very detailed and obsessive. For instance, the very beginning of the extract describes in a very detailed way bricks and smoking chimneys (Dickens compares the serpent of smoke with the Biblic image of snake he who tempted Adamo and Eva). The black canal becomes symbol of the human perspective: the unstoppable production of goods and the spreading industrialization. The unstoppable rythm of Coketown becomes melanchonic madness caused by the sound of pistons all day long. Besides, the description criticizes the previous idea of city as a cultural center. Dickens reserves the final part of the extract to the description of the New Church (with towers covered by paintings), the old chapel (a warehouse made of red bricks with a bell on the top) and other buildings (jail, school).  Figures of speech are large used, especially concerning to senses.  Last lines seems a praise underlined by the final word "Amen".
Concluding, I found this text very difficult to understand even if the reading was fluent. Dickens had rendered very well the description of Coketown.