COKETOWN:
Textual Analysis 

Coketown is an extract from Chapter 5, Hard Times by Charles Dickens. In the
extract the novelist introduces the invented city of Coketown, an
imaginary new industrial centre. Indeed in the Victorian Age there
are many problems linked to the overcrowed urban environment.Coketown
was a city born during the Industrial Revolution, as a consequence it
was organised to help production and not living conditions.

Coketown is described as “a triumph of fact”, indeed it is based on the
capitalist model where feelings, emotions and good looking are
forgiven. It goes without saying that the aim is to crezte something
that looks orderly, but in reality behind it there is poverty and
squalor. Indeed it “had no greater taint of fancy” because
fantasy is not what the victorian capitalist is looking for. 

Coketown is described has a town of red brick, but it is so dirty that the
bricks are almost black. Using the narrative strategy of the
grotesque he is able to criticise how terrible were living conditions
and how the atmosphere was polluted in Coketown. This
was also disastrous on people's health, especially on children that
were largely exploit in workhouses.

The image Dickens gives to the reader is something very dark and dusty,
which does not allow a person to live in a whealty way. The smoke is
described with a metaphor as a serpent, that with the repetition
“ever and ever” is showed as something with no end. Another
example of the use of the grotesque is how the reader is described:
it is “purple” as if it was so dirty that it became a completely
unnatural vision.

The next theme of the extract is the idea of no identity of masses in the
city: Dickens uses “monotonously” to describe the movement of the
engines. In addition there is the repetition of the expression “like
one another” reffering to the streets and even peolple.  On
the same level there is the anaforic use of the word “same”: the
wotk id monotous as well as workers who do it are without identity.

The paragraph after it is a criticise of utilitiarism, indeed in Coketown
comforts for all over the world are produced, while the workers who
do it are deprived of them. More over Coketown is described as
“severely workful” in constrast with utilitarism. 

The novelist to underline the cold-heartenless of the city uses an
anaforic use of the word “fact”. Indeed it gives a rhythm to the
criticise: “fact, fact, fact”. The paragraph is also using a
Puritan mentality with the expression “severe characters”. 

Coketown was not an easy place to live, this is a clear message conveyed by
Dickens. With a simile it is described “like gold that had stood in
fire” 

Peolple from Coketown are judged by “tabular statements”: there is no
humanity, but only fact. Indeed it is a sense of order typical of the
Vitiorian compromise, which allowed villains to live in an unmoral
way behind a rigid scheme.