Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Book I, Chapter 5 - Coketown

ANALYSIS

In 1854, the English writer Charles Dickens published his novel, with an industrial background, "Hard Times". In this text I will analyze an extract from his novel, more specifically from the chapter five of the first book, entitled "Coketown".

The intelligent reader, before reading the chapter, focuses his attention on the title "Coketown" that encloses the heart of the story: the word contained the term "coke". Indeed coke had decided the industrial turn of the 19th century, following which all urban centers had experienced a strong industrialization according to the utilitarian philosophy, previously advanced by Benjamin Bentham; this current of thought posed the production of utility and profits at the center of the new man-worker's life who, transferring himself in the products of his work, through alienation, became a mere automaton being part of the capitalist assembly line.

In the first paragraph Charles Dickens introduces two gentlemen, Mr. Bounderby and Gradgrind, who are walking through Coketown, in order to describe the main features of the town. For this purpose, he uses, from the first line, a metaphor ( "a triumph of fact") with which he immediately highlights the materialism and utilitarianism of which the city is made up. To emphasize this concept, he talks about the wife of Mr. Gradgrind, who has no "taint of fancy" and in this way the narrator extends the materialistic feature of the city also to its inhabitants.

In the following sentence there are two other key elements of the novel: through the "let us" expression, the reader may understand that Dickens appears as a narrator in third person omniscient and intrusive using the descriptive text and extends the novel according to the technique of telling; the second element concerns the sense that is called to the attention in this paragraph: hearing. In fact Coketown attributed the concept of dominant note of the story, as if it were a pain to the ears.telling; The second element concerns the direction that is called the attention in this paragraph: the hearing. In fact the concept of dominant note of the story is attributed to Coketown, as if it were a pain to the ears.

In the second section the protagonist sense is the sight: the city is described from a visual point of view, that is for how it looks in the observers' eyes. The buildings that fill the landscape are all equal, all built with red bricks and all become now more black or purple than red, because of the smoke and ash continuously entered into the atmosphere by the landmark buildings of the industrial city, the chimneys. As a result of this, the city is a continuous interweaving of monotony and pollution. Nothing in here is natural, but everything is artificial ("unnatural red and black") and the writer, in order to underline this aspect, compares the colour of the city, of its canal and its river, to the dirty face of a savage, that is, to an absolutely natural thing.

By using two elements of which he has already served in the previous lines, the simile and hearing appeal, the narrator, through the image of an elephant "in a state of melancholy madness", talks about the annoying noise of the pistons inside of the monotonous blocks of buildings full of windows, which go up and down all day long. In this step, the intelligent reader might read a clear reference to the purely utilitarian sexuality of that period.

The monotony, like materialism, not only affects the city and its streets but it also affects its inhabitants, all equal to each other: they all follow the same working hours, all walk in the same way, have the same work and live every day in a manner identical to the precent and to the next one, and so on every year.

Passing through the third paragraph the reader's attention moves from the blocks of buildings and monotony of the workers papulating them, to those “human” aspects of the town, to the strictly inner character of the inhabitants and how their mentality has adapted itself, during the process of industrialization, to the development of the town. Comforts and elegancies of life are the mainly characteristics of a fine lady who seemed to have nothing in common with the chimneys-town.

As in the previous paragraph the character of the inhabitants of Coketown is outlined, so in the fourth one the character of its buildings is defined: they are also supported by a strong monotony that becomes the conductive thread of the whole chapter.

A testimony of the closed nature of the inhabitants of the city there are as many as 18 religious persuasions which erect churches that do not have anything different compared to the other buildings (they are all nothing but the red brick blocks). In fact, except for the New Church, on which there is a bell tower topped with "four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs" overlooking the washed building, all the other buildings, from the jail to the infirmary and the cemetery, from the town-hall to schools, are all equal, all nothing but fact, fact and fact.

As an expression of capitalism, in Coketown there is nothing that can not be translated into numbers, nothing that you could not buy or sell with the sole purpose of earning. In this step Dickens mocks using a typical religious expression "world without end, Amen" with which he draws the deverted persuasions mentioned above.

The intrusive character of the narrator returns again when he enters a personal speech: "Dear me!". By using this interlayer, he expresses its deep opposition to the materialistic character of the industrial age that had adverse changed both the mentality of the citizens and the religious aspect of their lives, which are now consecrated to fact.

Right after this concept is emphasized by another simile: "Coketown did not come out of its furnaces, in all respects like gold that had stood the fire". Thus the next paragraph begins: here the contrasts between the inhabitants of Coketown are analyzed. Then the example of the religious persuasions is reported. Their members despise the workers who became alienated from themselves and from the products of their work, even becoming indifferent to the the sound of bells (hearing again) almost like they not more comply with that religiosity which was very much felt in previous centuries and which was part of the different cultures of different peoples. With capitalism it had lost his range and became only a background in the new industrialized workers' lives.

On the top floors felt the need for religiosity, therefore an organization asked an act of Parliament that forced them to be religious! Then there was another company, called "the Teetotal Society", which, through the typical tables and statistics of capitalism, showed how these people tended to get drunk and nothing could deter them from this vice, and then there were pharmacist and the chemist who, with more tables and statistics, showing that the same people, if they did not drink, took drugs!

So the city was fully controlled by numbers and fact, fact and numbers, and even the same gentlemen Gradgrind and Bounderby were no different: they, too, appreciated the convenience of tables and statistics with which they described everything they lived personally and in which there was no room for fate or for fantasy. This, however, caused unrest and unhappiness in them, two states of mind in contrast with their being two perfect gentlemen.

In the first and in the last lines the effect of industrialization is contained: the capitalists, for example two gentlemen such as the aforementioned, in this age become rich outside but poor inside. They enrich their lifestyle impoverishing their morality and, like it happens to the city, even their lives are polluted by dirt.