COKETOWN- Charles Dickens

Coketown is an extract of the novel Hard Times written by Charles Dickens. The novelist decided to set his work in an imaginary industrial town named Coketown. Such decision is not casual. Charles Dickens wanted to report the problem of industrialization which caused the alienation of human beings, economic and social issues among the classes and to conclude an high generalized crisis of values.

The name Coketown hints at the production of coal during the Industrial Revolution . Such product brought benefits to the entire transporting system although it created diseases in the factories and as for the environment.  The use of an impersonal subject hints at an alienation of the human beings which are substituted with machines. The narrator, which is a third person  intrusive type, tells about the way of constructing buildings which house public institutions. The buildings in Coketown look all the same. Their appearance is alike and so they create a sense of obsessions. Even though more than 18 persuasions have found space in Coketown, their appearance is just all the same. The unique turning point is the New Church. Its image, however, is described using the Victorian techniques of narration which are: pathos and the grotesque. It is compared to a building with four legs with a birdcage on its top. As a result its outline are deformed.

The use of the colors reflects the Manichean view of life. In Coketown the only colors used are black and white. The first one stands for sin and damnation whereas white is a metaphor for purity and salvation. There is no space for imagination, even in the schools. Such view of life recalls Utilitarianism and Materialism. The anaphoric phrase “Fact, fact, fact” underlines Coketown attitude to life according to which everything should be useful.