C. Dickens, Hard Times

The definition of a horse – analysis
 
The topic of the extract is the dialogue between a professor, Thomas Gradgrind, and two of his students. In the first sequence the novelist introduce the main character, Gardgrind, with a sense of irony that emphasizes his strict and schematic way of thinking. In the second part of the extract, Gargrind asked to one of his students to define an horse. The poor girl doesn’t know, so the answer is given by another unnatural student.
The characterization of Thomas Gradgrind is rendered thanks to the semantic field of maths and calculation, underlined by the anaphora of his name. Indeed, in the first lines the anaphora off the expression “A man” connects a climax that defines Gradgrind firstly as a person extremely realist, than as a man excessively practical, finally as a person exceedingly rational and logical. Moreover, the novelist underlines that Gradgrind is able to measure everything he can see with few mathematical tools, like a rule and a multiplication table. Last but not least, he is presented as a galvanizing apparatus and a grim mechanical substitute. The novelist gives to the reader an image of Thomas Gradgrind certainly with irony, but the intelligent reader also understands that the professor, excessively rational and practical, is used as a stereotype for the common think of the time.  
In the second part of the extract there is the dialogue between Gradgrind and a girl, Sissy Jupe, who is one of his students. The dialogue allows the reader to have a more complete idea of Gradgrind’s thought. Indeed, he asks the girl to define an horse. The poor student isn’t able to give a definition of an horse: her father is a horse breaker, so she knows very well horses and their behavior, but he has that knowledge inside herself and he doesn’t know the exactly and the biological definition of an horse. What the reader understands better of Gradgrind by the dialogue is that he need facts and he bases his knowledge only on tangible and scientific definition. In other words, he refuse any type of imaginative or sentimental experience. Sure enough he is very satisfied by the definition of his another student, Bitzer. 
The difference by the girl and the boy is very evident: firstly by the two children’s color, that makes the boy anonymous in respect to the girl, and secondly by the behavior, in that the boy repeats the definition as though he is a book or a dictionary, while the girl is more interested in speaking about his life and his family in her personal manner. It is clear that Bitzer is the student Gradgrind wants to have, while Sissy Jupe represents an example of what is wrong in perceiving the world.
Starting from the extract the reader can make some considerations about what the novelist wants to communicate with the figure of Thomas Gradgrind. It is evident that he uses irony in introducing the character, emphasizing his exceedingly rationality that makes him unnatural. Moreover, by the dialogue the reader understand that Gradgrind bases his knowledge only on real facts, only on tangible things. So the reader understands that the novelist is criticizing utilitarism, a very common thought at the time, based on real facts and calculations with the aim to consider only what could generate welfare for humans. Indeed, Bitzer, who follows Gradgrind’s teaching, seems to be unable to imagine. The novelist is criticizing the fact that utilitarism reduces world only to a mere combination of tangible things and calculations.