Exercise 1:

In the two pictures you can see the air pollution, caused by factories, the poverty of many Victorians and the dirt in the slums.

Exercise 3:

Coketown as Dickens wrote is  a triumph of fact, because it hadn’t of fancy, it was only based on fact, it was very concrete. It is connected to capitalistic vision of the world, in which all is concrete and rational. The town is characterized by smoke and ashes, in fact Dickens says “... that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it”. So in cause of this the colour of city is a mix between red and black, which is connected to the colour of Hell. Another elements which the city contains are machinery and tall chimneys, in fact it is an industrial city. The river which crosses the town is black and polluted, too. There are many buildings, with many windows and there are several large streets and many small ones, too. People who lived in Coketown, had a similar life, that is a monotonous, terrible one.

Exercise 4:

Public buildings: warehouse, Church, the jail, infirmary, school, hospital, market.   

They are all characterized by the concreteness. Differently from the hospital, market, the jail and the others, the Church is a secrete place.

Exercise 5:

1. Members of the organization wanted to make all people religious by main force.
2. Teetotal Society shows in tabular statements that these people did get drunk and it proved that nothing and no one (human or divine) could induce them to forego their bad custom.
3. Through tabular statements chemists and druggists showed that when thes people didn’t get drunk, they took opium.
4. The aim of the jail chaplain was to show that the same people met themselves in hidden places and they heard low singing and dancing.
5. Mr Gradgrid and Mr Bounderby wanted to prove that these same people were gentlemen.

Exercise 6:

The narrator is a third person omniscient one.

Exercise 7:

I think the key word of this passage is “black”, because this colour is connected to all negative situations and this town is like the hell.

Exercise 8:

Similes: like the painted face of a savage, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness, like one another.

Metaphors: a town of unnatural red and black, interminable serpents of smoke, run purple.

Both metaphors and similes strongly criticised the process of industrialisation, in fact Dickens through them highlights the bad aspect of this process. The place described is like the hell.

Exercise 9:

Repetitions: like one another, the same.

Aspect underlined: monotony.

Exercise 10:

Dickens denounces the development of factories, that pollutes the towns and damages the citizens. Indeed highlights the reaction of the Victorians to the terrible conditions of work, in fact they used to drink a lot and they also took opium. Dickens shows the monotony of Victorians’ life in the industrial world. Finally he denounces the excessive tension to the concreteness.