Coketown
This is an extract of "Hard Times", by Charles Dickens.
By the title the intelligent reader can suddently focus his attenction on the word "coke" , which was the fuel that allowed the system of production during Victorian age.
Coketown is the classic stereotype of a city which reflects the period of the Industrial Revolution: it appears monotonous not only in the colours but also in the sounds, in the noises, in the buildings ,in the streets. The idea of noising town is reinforced by the use of onomatopoeic words like " there was a retelling an the trammeling all day long".
People have lost their individuality,and therefore they seem robots.
By the use of metephors, and the grotesque Dickens wanted to condemn the critical conditions of the Victorian town: pollution of the atmosphere,The alienation due to the repetitive life in Coketown
One importan stylistic choise is the use of the third person omniscient intrusive narrator, which provides to the reader his world's perspective. Further there are no dialogues, only narration.
The fact that :Coketown was a "triumph of fact" implies that the city was the product of the same logic of school education criticized by Deckens in "A Definition Of A Horse", according to which the only important things were facts.
Deckens comdemned the mechanical attitude towords life, and he represents the spokesman of the imagination as a right and a need of human nature.