ANALYSIS OF MANCHESTER (1835) BY ALEXIS TOCQUEVILLE

First of all I have to consider the title in order to make predictions about the possible content of the text. The title is Manchester (1835), so the writer uses a space and a time reference in order to make the reader understand that he will explain the situation of Manchester in 1835, during the Industrial Revolution. Indeed an intelligent reader knows that Manchester is considered the first industrial city, it is in the North of England and during the Industrial Revolution lots of people went in the North of England in search of work because there, there were a lot of mines and factories.

Considering the layout you can notice that the text consists o of six paragraphs with different length and function but all connected by the same purpose: to illustrate the condition of Manchester and its inhabitants during the Industrial Revolution.

The first paragraph describes the landscape of Manchester, that is an undulating plain, or rather a collection of little hills and it has got a narrow river, the Irwell, and two streams, the Meddlock and the Irk. It seems as if the narrator wants to convey the idea of a natural and peaceful landscape thanks also to the use of adjectives like slowly, tranquil, and lazy. But the peaceful image of the landscape is suddenly broken when he quotes artificial buildings built within the nature by men: palaces and hovels. An intelligent reader can notice that the reader wants to express an opinion, he wants to convey the idea that the artificial devices are not good things for the nature thanks of the use of the word scattered. Indeed scattered reminds the idea of confusion and mess. Moreover he conveys the idea of the double faced nature of Manchester thanks to the contraposition of two terms: palaces and hovels; the advice reminds the idea of the Industrial Revolution and of Capitalism which produced prosperity as well as destruction. The double faced nature of Manchester is also confirmed by a judgment of the narrator at the end of the first paragraph when he states: ...Everything in the exterior appearance of the city attests the individual powers of man; nothing the directing power of society...

The second paragraph has the function to continue the previous contraposition between the natural and the artificial landscape, focusing the attention on the second one. The narrator starts speaking about factories which were one of the most important things of the Industrial Revolution. Afterwards he speaks about the terrible condition of workers which depended on factories and which lived within wretched dwellings scattered haphazard around them(factories). Besides considering the rhetorical level the reader can notice that the narrator uses different devices such as the device of accumulation when he describes Manchester: heaps of dung, rubble from buildings, putrid, stagnant pools and the metaphor of Manchester as a medieval town of the nineteenth century in the middle of it.

The fourth paragraph is about Manchester; he states that Manchester is different from the other city because it is dark, a damp labyrinth and here you cannot listen the typical sounds of a city. The last concept is developed in the fifth paragraph; in Manchester you cannot listen for example the gay shouts of people amusing themselves or music heralding a holiday but only the footsteps of a busy crowd, the crunching wheels of machinery, the shriek of steam from boilers, the regular beat of the looms and the heavy rumble of carts. From the description it seems as if people are robots and they cannot have fun here.

The last paragraph has the function to synthesize the double faced nature of Manchester; Manchester has a lot of shapes because here humanity attains its most complete development but at the same time its more brutish.