Coketown   by C.Dickens

Coketown is not a city, it's a big factory. The use of a name such as ‘'Coketown''  creates the idea of a city existing just for
its industry, without a name, an identity, an origin, were the population
exists exclusively in form of forcework.

Of corse there's
also another reason: since ‘'Hard Times'' is a romance that criticizes a face
of Industralization he couldn't say the true name of the city he was talking
about (Preston).
 

The primate of work
above all other possible activities  is
asserted by a central statement in the text: ‘' You saw nothing in
Coketown but what was severely workful''.

The text begins with the description of
Coketown's infernal atmosphere. But before that, Dickens presents Coketown as
‘' a triumph of fact'' and without any ‘'taint of fancy''. This refers
ironically (‘'triumph'') to the prevailing philosophy of Utilitarianism and the
absence of liberty connotated as fantasie or caprice (‘'fancy'').

Coketown's  description appeals to senses: the first thing
the reader can see are colors (grey, red, black and purple) then he can hear
the steady noise (‘' there was a RA-TT-l-ING 
and a TRE-mbol-ING all day long'') and smell the filthy air.

The next two paragraphs begin both with
‘'It was a town of'' and they show two important components of the city.

The first refers to the theme of
Hell/damnation (red, black, the serpent) and it also says ‘' it was a town of
unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage'' considering the
industrial progress and the human regression of the town.

 The second one develops the theme of
monotony/uniformity (later explained with people's activities) with the images
of interminable floating serpents of smoke, the grey of ashes and the grey of
an elephant ‘' in a state of melancholy madness'' moving his heavy head ‘'
monotonously up and down''.

The second theme is also created with a
repetitive construction and an anaphoric use of language such as:

‘' It was a town of red brick, or of
brick (...) red (...) it was a town of unnatural red (...)

It was a town of machinery and tall
chimneys (...) forever and ever, and never''.

In addition the first paragraph starts
with ‘'It was a town of red brick'' and the second with ‘'It was a town of
machinery and tall chimneys'' wich suggest 
that brick  and machinery are put
on the same level or better that Coketown's 
basic component (usually brick) are machines (metonymy for
industrialization).

Another main theme illustrating  the city is pollution, the black canal, the
purple river and the ill-smelling dye.

The only information  given to the reader about population  is  its
own monotony (supported by a repetitive use of language):

‘' It contained several large streets
all very like one another, and many small streets

still more like one another,
inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went

in and out at the same hours,
with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same

work, and to whom every day was the
same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the

counterpart of the last and the next.''

The inhabitants of Coketown are
introduced between the streets' description as if they were not human beings
but living part of the city.

The opening sentence about Coketown as a
‘'triumph of facts'' (‘'material aspect'') and no ‘'fancy'' (‘'immaterial
aspect'') is explained in this lines :

‘' Fact, fact, fact,

everywhere in the material aspect of the
town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial.

The M'Choakumchild school was all fact,
and the school of design was all fact, and the relations

between master and man were all fact,
and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital

and the cemetery''.

All was ‘'fact'' and there wasn't space
or time for people.

Ending the omniscient intrusive third
voice narrator  has a false objective
attitude, actually he gives a critic judgment about a city archetype of the new
industrialized cities.