Hard Times, by Charles Dickens

Chapter 5: the description of Cocketown

Just considering the title,  the word "coke" makes the reader expect the text to be about the process of industrialization. Indeed coke is a kind of fuel, very useful in order to make the steam-engine work, one of the most important products of the Industrial Revolution. In addition to this,  the word "town" suggests to the reader the idea of an industrialized city, probably referring to Manchester or some nearby city. You know that the first industrialised cities grew up in the north of England, with Manchester acting as the leader of the group.

However, right from the first line Dickens introduces two characters,  Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind, who are walking across the town. It seems as if all the description of the city is made by the two people through their eyes. What's more, the narrator used a third person omniscient intrusive narrator, so it goes without saying that you will find a lot of intrusions  in the text.

The way language is organised  and used within the extract  allows the reader to carry out the narrator's point of view about Cocketown. For example,  there are a lot of symbols in the text that aim to enrich the description of the town. First of all,  the reader can notice the materialistic way of describing the city, in the sense of everything is described through the use of senses. Quoting some simple example: "the brick of innatural red and black", "the river that ran purple "; the expressions highlight very clearly  the atmosphere of pollution due to tall chimneys and machinery which both work "for ever and ever". What's more, the city seems to be very repetitive in colours and sounds and the monotony get inhabitants infected. Indeed people here have lost their personality and behaviour: they are equally like one another and look like robots. As a consequence, the idea of identity is now vanished and it seems as if the situation will never be turn into something good. So,  within these lines the reader is able to check out the narrator's negative point of view about life in Cocketown and he is probably underlining one of the worst effects brought by the Industrial Revolution.
Cocketown constitutes the archetype of the Victorian society: the idea of appearing well was the most important thing, therefore money was the engine of society.  So, Dickens conveys a double face of Cocketown: on one side you have got bricks and ashes,  on the other side wealth and money. It's a typical feature of capitalisms, which was seriously developing itself in that period.

Going on reading, in the context religion was well-known. The image of the church built up in the centre of the town seemed to be the centre of all Cocketown' s life, since the Protestant-Puritan ethic damned people who didn't progress in society, that is working as soon as possible. It goes without saying that everything in Cocketown is connected to work. No working meant no life.

Now, focusing on the writer's stylistic choices, the use of language is very important in the text because it conveys Dickens' vision about the town and therefore about industrialization. In particular, the contrast of details refers to Dickens' contradictory idea about industrialization. Therefore, it provides wealth for the urban mercantile class while it caused workers' wages to fall down day by day.  

To conclude, the device of accumulation( look at the last three lines of the extract) is a way to underline the multifaceted nature of this strange town.