In the present text I am going to analyse an extract taken from chapter 5 of Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times.

Starting from the title, the reader understands the text has a musical trend since The Keynote usually refers to an expression used in musical language. The effect is probably created by the writer with an alliterative and repetitive use of language as the most suitable means to highlight the keywords in the text. Furthermore, the title gives the idea of ​​the relevance of the information Charles Dickens is about to give thanks to the article “the”, which is quite unusual in the English language.

Considering the layout, the extract is organized into 4 paragraphs, each one with a specific function.

The first paragraph is opened by a 3^rd person omniscient intrusive narrator, as the reader will soon realize in the phrase: “Let us strike the key-note, Coktown, before persuing our tune”. The omniscient narrator does not leave the reader the freedom of interpretation, limiting his vision to the facts told according to the writer’s point of view. Indeed, the text is arranged in sequences of telling, which give an univocal interpretation of the facts.

“Fact” is the keyword in the text, which is used to describe Coketown. Starting from the name, it is symbolic to indicate an industrialized city, where coal and fuel are used to make the machines work. More in details, the coke is a particular type of coal, which is automatically associated by the reader with smoking and pollution. The name of the city is invented since Coketown is a generic Northern English mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller.Coketown is described under the pretext of telling where Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrid were walking. Also their names are symbolical since they identify respectively: someone who cannot be trusted and somebody who educates children grinding their minds with facts.

The first piece of information about the city given by the writer is the impression of the newcomer, who defines it as a “triumph of fact”. The expression conveys the materiality and concreteness of the city, where there is no place for creativity, sentiments, feelings, and imagination. The atmosphere is reinforced by the phrase: “it had no greater taint of fancy”, which is functional to underline the city’s total lack of imagination.

Furthermore, in the first paragraph’s last phrase, the writer indirectly explains how he will describe the city, confirming the assumption made by analyzing the title: he will proceed using a musical language, made up of repetitions (in order to highlight the city’s monotony) and figures of sound.

The following paragraph opens with a metonymic description of Coketown, represented through chromatic details that render its global image. The dominant colors are: an unnatural red, mixed with the black of the smoke, which is the symbol of passion, blood and sufferance; grey, which recalls the act of suffocating due to the pollution or to the lack of imagination; black, which corresponds to sin and transmits the atmosphere of an environment where the sun cannot pass due to smog. Therefore, it is clear that the writer carries out a critique of the city, and consequently of bourgeois utilitarianism of which it is the symbol, from the beginning of the text.

The critic continues with the description of the “interminable serpents of smoke” coming out of the chimneys, which conveys the idea of a never ending production and of an unsuitable working rhythm. The snake is chosen as the most suitable means to represent the sinful production, which causes pollution. The foul-up can also be seen in the river whose water (a symbol of purity) has been contaminated by the ill-smelling purple dye. The writer's statement gives the reader more information on the typology of industries located in Coketown. They are textile industries, a developing sector during the Industrial Revolution. The large number of workers is represented by the building full of windows, where the piston of the stream engine works like ”the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness”. As for the snake, the elephant is a symbolical animal, which embodies greatness, strength and vigor. Nevertheless, it is trapped in meaningless repetitive activities. It is the symbol of the man, who is also capable of great things, but is condemned to a monotonous life, according to which his work would lead to the common welfare. The individual loses his identity and the control over his life. The prove is the depersonalized city, where everything is functional to production and to materialism. The city does not need for different roads, shops or separate houses. There are no jobs except that of the factory worker, so the city is made up only of industries. All that is imagination, like design or creativity, even personality, is eliminated.

The idea of the city and its inhabitants is reinforced in the third paragraph, where the narrator states that “the attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by the which it was sustained”. As an industrialized city, where all other work activities were banned, it exists for its production. Particularly relevant is the distinction between Coketown and other cities, where comforts and elegance of life dominate. The comparison is done by the writer with the aim to highlight the life of deprivation, monotony and lack of imagination and creativity of people who live in Coketown, in contrast with the better life conditions of people who live somewhere else. Indeed, the city is described as a place where the bourgeois would never step foot. The division between bourgeois and factory workers is functional to reproduce the class struggle typical of cities, where the inhabitants were divided between who owned the factories and who worked in there, with considerable differences in rights and economic possibilities.

Everything analysed above is emphasized in the fourth paragraph, where the writer gives information about the city’s buildings. Since in the monotonous Coketown there is no place for creativity, every building is made of the same mold and of the same smoky red bricks of the other. Workers appear disoriented, alienated, and depersonalized. Indeed, even their religious faith is not distinguished from that one of others, since places of worship look all the same. Even the "New Church" which is described as an exception, actually shows very little decoration. Everything is lost in the monotony, according to the perspective of materialism that imposes the supremacy of fact. As the narrator states the fact also dominates the immaterial, a hyperbole that indicates the triumph of materiality.

Imagination is precluded even to children, who are educated to renounce creativity. Indeed, the name of their school M’Choakumchild indicates a place where teachers suffocate children, specifically their imagination.

The writer's criticism is also extended to the health system of the time, unable to withstand the impact of the sick due to pollution and, therefore, not prepared to treat them. In this regard, the narrator refers to the cemetery to emphasize the unimaginable amount of deaths.

The text does not seem to leave hope for a better future (since it ends with a religious biblical formula used to symbolize an enlightened validity) unless the logic of Utilitarianism does not continue to be the dominant one. The test is a warning not only for the bourgeois, but also for the future readers, so that these events will not be repeated.