Charles Dickens – “Hard Times” – Chapter Five – “Coketown” – Analysis.

The extract is from the fifth chapter of the novel "Hard Times" written by Charles Dickens. The central purpose of the text is to introduce and describe the setting in which take place the various scenes of the novel: a town called Coketown.

The name of the city, highlighted by the key position of the whole text (the first word of the first paragraph) is an indicator for its key features: an industrial city characterized by the presence of coal and its processing. The name of the city in this way creates curiosity and expectations in the reader who begins to hypothesize a possible location near a mine.

The opening scene sees the two men so far introduced into the narrative (Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby) walk around the city and it provides a second wave of information to the reader. If two people with the same characteristics are walking in a particular city means that it suits their tastes (will be devoid of feelings, devoted to appearances and to fixed information). These assumptions made by the player are always confirmed in the first paragraph: was a triumph of fact, it was an accumulation of facts. The only note of fancy, of imagination outside of reason is represented by Mrs. Gradgrind, who however is stifled and submitted to the two men and then seems to disappear, it might be say.

The city is one of the keys to understanding the novel, which is why she is devoted a descriptive passage so large. The narrative is defined tone (melody); the novel is then compared to a music and storytelling at its hinge carrier. This could be a clue about the narrative techniques then used to describe it; it could refer in particular to the technique of the grotesque, present so much in literature as in music. This hypothesis of the reader, as well as that concerning the position of the city and its characteristic feature (coal), can be verified only by continuing the reading.

In the same paragraph begins the description itself that will continue in the next. This description begins with a simile, meant to describe the key feature of the city: its colors. The two colors characterize Coketown are red of bricks and black of coal and smoke: it is therefore a poor city (manufactured homes regardless of the aesthetic effect but only to their functionality), and based on industry. Due to the similarity that binds it to the painted face of a savage, the reader can grasp the primitive state in which the locals live: the work will probably be inhuman and so will also be life conditions. The distinctive feature of the setting is for the moment its primitivism.

Subsequently the description focuses on emphasize the presence of large buildings and factories: the initial hypothesis by the reader about its purely industrial feature is therefore confirmed. Immediately after this economic aspect it continues with the description of the purely objective visual characteristics of the city. Its division into streets and the habits of the people who live there are presented as serial and repetitive (the streets are great all the same and so are smaller roads; in the same way all people make every day the same actions at the same times).This fundamental aspect of the city is described with the aid of exaggeration; which leads to the creation of the effect of the grotesque that involves a reaction of upsetting and laughter from the reader. The repetitiveness of infrastructure and actions of the inhabitants procure pathos to the reader by creating an unnatural situation and abnormal, bad, living conditions.The same technique was used previously in the moment of approach between the city and the face of the wild: the two opposites are analogously united by their characteristic colors and this causes the reader astonishment and contempt for the city itself, which in its progress is comparable to lower figure of the savage. In this way the reader moves away from the people who live there and feels repulsed by their lifestyle that makes him sad.

Such exaggeration refers to the only purpose of the inhabitants of the city and the city itself: the performance of the work. This element confirms previous assumptions on the part of the reader and it is explained in the sentence locking this part of the description: You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful, the opening sentence of the next paragraph. This element is the exaggerated distortion, is the exaggerated characteristics of basic industrial cities in the Victorian era: addressed only to work and progress, not the life of the individual.

In the new paragraph just introduced, the description continues with a list of buildings followed by their construction and functions as witness (as an argument) of the arguments in the previous paragraph. The second part of this concluding section emphasizes the initial thesis (the city of Coketown was a triumph of fact) thanks to triple repetition of the noun fact, place at the plural form, in parallelism to introduce two successive parts of that same sentence. The part directly following claims that the city we always refers only to facts (even life or death are simple terms an episodes) there are no moral or psychological implications.

Also this final part of the description shows the technique of the grotesque, effect obtained thanks again to exaggeration, and in this second case, also thanks to repetition. It brings back to a reduction of the city to the level of caricature and gets a reaction of pathos in the reader. This reaction is made even more immediate and spontaneous by the period of closure of the extract: Amen.The cynicism and materialism, the facts of which the city itself is a symbol are presented as if they were included in a prayer, as if they were the will of a superior being and their characteristics were those that every city should have. In this way, the description is made even more extreme and less credible by the reader that is far from it while understanding that in the end it is a reference to any hyperbolic industrial city of the Victorian era.