Performer Culture and Literature 1+2
exercises pp. 291,292,293.

WARM UP.
1)
1. Picture 1 displays a little street surrounded by buildings made up by dirty bricks. The two women, one on the foreground and one on the background, are both wearing very similar clothes and have a strict expression.
2. In picture 2 an industrial landscape is presented: there is a vast area of buildings, with a filth and polluted sky.

2)"It was a town of red brick, or of red brick that would have been red if the smoke and the ashes had allowed it." references to picture 1;
"It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled." references to picture 2;
"Vast pulsa of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long." references to picture 1.

COMPREHENSION
3)Coketown is an industrial city, describes as a "triumph of fact". All the buildings are similar. They are made up by red bricks that make the town look "like the painted face of a savage" because of the black smoke. Furthermore, the city is full of machinery and tall chimneys that produce "interminable serpents of smoke". There are also a canal and a river, both of unnatural colors (black and purple) because of the pollution. The atmosphere is terrifying and monotonous. All the streets, small and big, look like one another and even the physical appearance of the inhabitants and their daily routine are very similar.
4)1. Chapels;
2. The New Church;
3. The jail;
4. The infirmary;
5. The town-hall;
6. The M'Choakumchild school;
7. The lying-in hospital;
8. The cemetery.
9. Every building looks like the other ones: "the jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction."

5).
5.1) A native organization of Coketown wanted to make people religious "by main force".
5.2) The Teetotal society proved that the inhabitants of Coketown got drunk and that "no inducement, human or Divine, would induce them to forget their custom of getting drunk."
5.3) The chemist and druggist provided that, when people didn't get drunk, they took opium using other tabular statements.
5.4) The jail chaplain wanted to prove that people met is some hidden places to her sole low singing and to watch some low dancing, maybe aldo taking part in it.
5.5) The two "gentlemen" wanted to impose their practical view of life trough more tabular statements derived from their own personal experience.

ANALYSIS
6)The narrator is a third person omniscient one.
7)Fact: the city is built according to the principles of the utilitarian philosophy and with a materialistic view of life.
8)Smilies: "like the painted face of savage", "like the head of and elephant in a state of melancholy madness", "like gold that had stood the fire";
Metaphors: "interminable serpents of smoke", "Pious warehouses of red brick" (referred to chapels)
The images used by Dickens to paint the picture of the typical Industrialized town create a dark atmosphere that reinforces the negative idea of the world that he wants to communicate to the reader.
9)The description gradually moves to a personal point of view, focusing from the streets to people (line 13-18). The mechanical repetition of words and phrases and of the syntax express the main psychological mood of Coketown's inhabitants.
9.1) Red x 3 (lines 4,5), Brick x 2 (line 4), Like on another x 3 (lines 13-14-15), Same x 5 (lines 15-16-17), Infirmary x 2 (line 31), Jail x 2 (lines 31-32), Fact x 9 (lines 1-33-35-36-40), Tabular statements x 5 (lines 53-55-57-58-70), Gentlemen x 4 (lines 68-72-73-74),
9.2) Monotony, Amusement,Alienation,Creativity.

YOUR TURN
10)The extract under analysis deals with many aspects of the Victorian age, such as industrialization and its main principles based on facts. Indeed, the writer gives the reader a quite detailed picture of how life was like in a typical industrialized city, which is represented by Coketown, the town of tall chimneys, machinery and pollution. In this village, people live in a situation of slavery and monotony: every day is exactly like the day before and all forms of creativity are denied ("What you couldn't state in figures was not and never should be, world without end, Amen"). Everything is based on "tabular statements", numbers and facts. In this way, Dickens probably wants to criticize the lack of every form of human positive feelings in the utilitarian mentality that characterized the philosophy of that time.

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
The present text is an extract from "Hard Times", a novel written by Charles Dickens and published in 1854. In this passage the author describes Coketown, which could be considered as the typical industrialized city of the XIX century.
The first paragraph has the function to introduce the description of the city and of its inhabitants' lifestyle. Two characters, Mr Gradgring and Messrs Bounderby, are walking through the town, which is "a triumph of fact". The word "fact" is used many times by the novelist in the following paragraphs and perfectly sums up the materialistic mentality of that town.
In the second part of the text the city is described through two colors: red and black ("an unnatural red and black, like the painted face of savage"). Right from the beginning, the writer does not give to the reader a positive imagine of the place. Furthermore, everything is sorrounded by ashes and dirt, tall chimneys produce long serpents of smoke and the canal and the river are painted of unnatural colors because of pollution. The rhetorical figure of similitude is used in the following lines, referring to the steam engines of factories: the atmosphere of monotony and alienation of the workers is perfectly represented by the image of an elephant who shakes his head "in a stage of melancholy madness". This aspect is again underlined by the follow description of the city, in which the rhetorical figure of repetition highlights the total lack of creativity in its structure: "It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the san hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the lash and the next".
The third paragraph introduces the fourth one, where other features of the city (those that are not related to the working environment) are introduced. Indeed, the fourth section of the text deals with the description of the public buildings of the town.
As the streets and the inhabitants' lifestyle, also the church, the hospitals, the cemetery and the town hall look exactly like one another. The chapels are built like "pious warehouses" and this comparison anticipates the expression in the following paragraph according to which the town was "sacred to fact". Indeed, even religious places are built following the utilitarian standards:"Fact,fact,fact". Also, this ironic use of a typical religious expression underlines the distort vision of the world and of religion of Coketown's inhabitants. Moreover, all the buildings look like one another: the jail might have been the infirmary, the lying-in hospital might have been the cemetery and so on. Every relationship between workman and master, between student and teacher is based on fact; there are no authentic human feelings and even the relation between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery is based on a practical principles.
The following paragraph focuses the reader's attention in the expression "tabular statements". Indeed, every discussion is supported by concrete and scientific causes. In particular, the objects of the most important debates in the city are alcoholism, drugs and the jail-chaplain's indignation.
At the end of the text the narration goes back to Mr Gradgring and Mr Bounderby, who are described as "the two gentlemen of the town".
In conclusion, the city of Coketown and the characters of Mr Gradgrind and Me Bounderby are a clear example of how the Industrial Revolution produced wealth without producing well-being: the technical improvements have changed Coketown in a city totally based on facts, where alienation and monotony characterized every day the Industrial progress.