COKETOWN
Charles dickens, Hard Times

Coketown is an extract taken from C. Dickens' Hard Times. It is about a typical Victorian city that is an industrial, monotonous, artificial and material one. In the Victorian Age the town became important because that was the favourite place for people to live in consequence of the industrial revolution, this is a new reality that is investigated in the novels of the time. In Hard Times Dickens describes an industrial town: Coketown, expression of the capitalistic system. Dickens' description of Coketown is interesting and highly significant. First of all the name of the town evokes fuel.
Dickens uses senses to describe the symbolisms of Coketown. red of brick is unnatural, it is caused by the smoke and ashes; it is a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage, this two colors dominates the description of Coketown, in particular black paint even the channel and river's water. From this water then come a terrible stink that is caused by industrial refuses. This ideal town is full of machinery and chimneys noise, in the form of rattling and trembling dominates. The metaphor of the head of an elephant in a sort of madness reproduces the movement of the piston of a steam engine, mad is the machine, mad is the consequence of industrial revolution.
In the last part of the extract C. Dickens clearly reveals materialism, which afflict the city and its inhabitants. So in Coketown there is no place for imagination, for something that couldn't be useful or for something irrational because "what you couldn't state in figures [...] was not and never should be”. Dickens introduces an idea of alienation: man is identified with the product and even with the machine that produces this; the machine causes a lack of identity. Dickens shows how the system determines the life of people and criticizes the alienation caused by mass production.
Therefore, after having considered these aspects, it is possible to say that the description of the city contributes to give an idea of Victorian culture and people's thought, which was based on the theory of Utilitarianism, the system of thought which states that the best action or decision in a particular situation is the one which brings most advantages to the most people.