Coketown. analysis

If I want to talk about Coketown, I should start with saying that "coke", means coal, carbon; yes, the same coal that covers the bricks of the city's houses, that gives color to windows, to streets, to everything, the same coal that gets the city dirty, corrupted.

The town seems unnatural: canals are black, rivers are purple, and it all stinks, it smells as death.

Atmosphere is banal: machines rule over Coketown, with their monotonous operating; the landscape is linear: streets are all the same, as the pavements, as the rumors, as the same people living there. The city is impersonal.

It is told to be "inseparable" to work, to its funciton, that ironically is being functional; everything is done for or even meant to the concept of work.

The example that underlines this city's extreme situation, is religion: what should be the most personal and one of the most important aspects of a person's life (at least, in the period when Charles Dickens lived), is reduced. Churches become as miserable and naked as prisons, that are the same of schools, of hospitals, of houses (again, what normally should seem as good doesn't, so that the writer can disappoint the reader, and make him think; what is strange is that even what should seem bad doesn't: everything is so linear, that it flows into boredom)

This, obviously, reminds the reader to both Utilitarism and Puritanism, two of the three ways of thought that forged English mentality of progress. Mr. Dickens' representation is an exaggeration, that marks his displeasure out of this aspect. The same language is repetitive, in order to express the same laziness, same sense of boredom that a society only based on work releases.

The repetition of the word "fact" in the end of the text is significant: everything had to be useful, or it didn't have even to be (and here, the Calvinism at the base of Puritan mentality is evident).

This way of thinking is so strong that can recall some sort of "religious fundamentalism": the fact that churces are transformed into functional places, can also convey the idea that Coketown's religion, actually, is work. The final phrase, that ends with the pious formula of "Amen", reinforces all these ideas. This can even sounds in some ways sarcastic: the gravity of the text ends here in a very funny consideration; the amen lets the reader understand the ridiculous situation described by Charles Dickens.