COKETOWN - Charles Dickens

Analysis

Coketown is an extract from Hard Times written by Charles Dickens in 1854. In this extract Dickens describes an industrial town with its buildings. Dickens in order to explain the situation of the town, uses repetition, metaphor and similes. Besides he describes the town in an impersonal way.

In the first sequence Dickens focuses his attention on the red bricks of the buildings, which are covered by pollution. There is no human being, there is no nature. Everything is unnatural: the river is red, the canal is artificial. There is a sense of suffocation. The town is described with a metonymic language. The machinery is the typical reference to work. The factories have got chimneys, Dickens uses the simile of the serpent to indicate the smoke that comes out the chimneys. The serpent has a religious value: it represents evil. People in this town are a secondary part, while machinery is the first part.

The narrator refers to the piston of the steam engine in order to underline monotony. The similarity is with a mad elephant because he feels melancholy. There are no people underling the alienation.

The function of the second sequence is to describe public buildings, houses and institution. The first institution mentioned is the: church. In order to describe it Dickens uses a religious language " religious persuasion". In that town there are 18 chapels. Dickens uses the grotesque in order to make a parody because he doesn't like the buildings. All the buildings represent the same architectural style implying the idea of something boring. This creates alienation, monotony, nothing could appear different. The whole town is considered in terms of material.

Dickens uses the simile "birdcage" in order to make the reader understand he dislikes them: all the buildings seem to be cages which enclose people.

All the reference to space and time in the text leave no room to hope.

The repetition of the world "fact" implies the attachment to material aspect