HARD TIMES - Coketown

The present sequence has the function to describe the town. Right from the start of the extract the intelligent reader can understand the negative attitude of the narrator towards the appearance of the city.

In order to focus the reader attention on the architecture of the city the narrator uses similies. The language of sense impression is essential in order to create images in the mind of readers. The hyperbolic use of the language underlines the negative impression. The effect of repetition highlights the attention on all the objects he quotes: nothing has a precise identity. Through the use of exaggeration the narrator suggests his opinion about Coketown. He underlines different elements which appear to the reader as contradictory. For example the numerous church that are also used as stores to contain things. The narrator also criticize the architecture of Coketown, all the building have the same aspect and they do not look nice at all. The use of irony is particularly useful in order to focus the reader's attention on the different trend of thought that conditioned the life of Victorians. For example he suggested that Victorians can put a cage on the top of the pinnacles of the church in order to make it useful. As a consequence the intelligent reader understands that their way of thinking is closely related to a materialistic point of view. Coketown is not an attractive and pleasant city at all and the anaphoric use of the language increases such aspect.

It is also important to underline that the narrator is a 3^rd person omniscient and intrusive narrator  that guides the reader during all the extract. The reader is not free to interpret and the description offers a clear idea of the Victorian attitude to life, full of contradictions and compromises.