Coketown analysis 

Coketown is a fictional city. It is a product of Charles Dickens, who was a novelist of Victorian Age. Right from the name of the town novelist focus attention on coke ( fuel that allowed the system of production during Victorian age ). The description belongs to the novel "HARD TIMES" . The novel is a narrative renderling of the philosophy of Utilitarianism, by J.Bentham. It underlines the material approach to life adopted in the period. With an interesting use of language and syntax Charles Dickens returns to the reader an alienated vision of Coketown. Charles Dickens adopts a third person omniscient intrusive narrator. He privileges the technique of telling ( no dialogues, only narration ) and the first idea of the town the narrator provides the reader with is that Coketown was a "triumph of fact" implies there was no space for fancy (mechanical form imagination) so people where only interesting in commune reality because they were ready to make that. The alternative was starvation. The description given to the reader is highly metonymical (it was a town of red brick). The use of colours made by narrator is symbolical: red and black in there different shaves. Also the idea of pollution is expressed by frequent references to smoke and ashis. Talking about town's colour narrator use the adjective unnatural red, so in line with Alexis de Tocqueville , the narrator underlines highlights how human beings ( coketowns abhitans) are compared to live disregarding (unnatural - unspontaneous way of life). The architecture surrounding them does not show any creativity: every building is exactly like the other, having an unnatural character. To sum up the effect the narrator uses a simily: is says that Coketowns remind it " the painted face of a savage". Again the intelligent reader can see the artificial effect of man-made construction. The choice of the world savage focuses once more the attention on the absence of civilization. The simily used is meant for the reader to create a more detailed mind picture. In addition the narrator refers to the system of production( the industrialization process): the narrative speaks about machinery and chimneys and in order to describe the process of production he draws the attention of the reader to the smoke that symbolically has got the shape of "the painted face of a savage and interminable serpents". Both language use argument to convey a negative vision(judgment) of the town. In addition the choice of the serpent coming straightforward from the religious code underlines what Dickens thinks about the Victorian system of production. Instead of said the people are alienated he depries his description of the presence of any human being, so that he implicitly slice that personal identity is luxury that people in Coketown couldn't afford. The town significally becomes its uniform architetturing of machinery. Therefore ( thus) focusing reader the attention on the noise of the system of production. This is exactly what Alexis de Tocqueville had underline too. Readers are involved in the reading process by the use of the language of impressions ( the narrator makes you see, smell, heard ). The use of onomatopoeic words like " there was a retelling an the trammeling all day long". reinforce the idea of noising town, and again Charles Dickens narrator describes the emotion of the engine: the steam-engine, that is symbolically describes as a machine that " worked monotonously up and down" immediately followed is compared to the simily " like the head of an elephant" in a state of "melancholy madness". The Industrial Revolution can immediately understand that the alliterative use of language unveils the melancholy of the people who are compared to work shift hours monotony. Charles Dickens exploit a repetitive syntax to recreate the monotony of factory worked in a reader. There was nothing in Coketown he was not to indicate a tireless industriousness. If the followers of a religious sect decided to build a church - which had the followers of eighteen sects - he jumped out of a pious warehouse of red brick, topped at times (but only in the finest specimens), enclosed by a bell in a kind of cage birds. The only exception was the New Church: a building that plastered over the front door, had a square bell tower with four pinnacles at the top similar to sturdy wooden legs. In the city all the signs of public buildings were in the exact same characters austere blacks and whites.