Textual analysis of Coketown

Coketown is an extract from the Victorian novel Hard Times. The town is a criticism to the Industrial Revolution and its effects. Indeed the term “coke” refers to the coal used as fuel for the steam engine, symbol of the industrialization.

The text is formed by three sequences:

1.    Presentation of Coketown

2.    Coketown and the rest of the world

3.    The buildings

In the first sequence Coketown is described by means of sensations: the idea of an industrial city is given by the red colours of the bricks which turned out black due to pollution, by a black canal and the river turned out purple and smelling of dye. Also the rattling of the steam machine and the coiling smoke contributes in giving the idea of an industrial city. All these elements recall also to an artificial environment and the dark colours and the simile of the serpent gives the idea of blood and evil. The narrator gives also information about how the city is organized: every street looks the same to the others, characterization in common with those who work in Coketown. Also days and years look all the same. All these elements alludes to the social condition of workers: they had to repeat the same actions everyday during their work and provoking in them a state of alienation. All the information given by the narrator do not leave space to any other idea because of the repetition of the expression “it was”. So the idea of the city is negative and unpleasant.

In the second sequence the narrator informs the reader that all the attributes are inseparable from the work of the industries. In that the city cannot exist without industries nor change itself. At this point Coketown is put in contrast with the rest of the world where comforts and wellness were able to find a way to spread. The purpose of the sequence is to enlighten the difference between an industrial city where workers had to live in terrible conditions sufficient to survive and bigger cities where the middle class could live a comfortable life. Another information given by Charles Dickens is the effect on the bourgeois who listen to the description of the town: bourgeois would not bear to hear about. Charles Dickens used here the grotesque in order not to make the readers identify with the bourgeois of the novel.

In the last sequence the narrator focuses again on Coketown and talks about its buildings. Like all the streets looks the same, also the signs and the buildings looks all the same. The narrator then informs the reader that everything in the town was “fact, fact, fact”, material or immaterial. The repetition of the term “fact” alludes to the absence of any emotional aspect: more important are facts, industrial production. Everything, also religion has become functional to Utilitarianism (chapels were built like warehouses of red bricks) and it will always be. The final sequence is a criticism to Utilitarianism which caused everything to become economically useful to the bourgeois society and to remove the emotional aspects from society.