COKETOWN, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune.

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.

Coketown is an extract taken from Charles Dickens’ Hard Time, one of the most important novel of 19^th century. It embodies the philosophy of utilitarism standing at the basis of the Industrial Revolution and it represents the utilitarist mentality adopted mainly by the middle class, protagonist of the industrial progress.

The setting of the story is Coketown a name that immediately unveils the most peculiar feature of a place where all activities are connected to the production of coke,  the most important fuel for the industry.

While the two characters walk through the town, the narrator describes the contest. Description is the technique exploited by the narrator to create a mental picture in the reader’s mind. There is a third person omniscient intrusive narrator who is inside the story.

First of all, the narrator defines the town “a triumph of facts”, that recalls the concrete, materialistic reality the Victorians looked for. Nothing in the town refers to emotions, nothing was attractive for human senses, therefore the town can be compared t a woman totally unattractive. In addition, in order to describe the town the narrator exploits metonymies: “red bricks”, “smoke” and “ashes” become symbols for the whole city.

Even if the narrator appeals to the senses, mostly to sight, the colors he quoted are unnatural, and they underline the artificiality of the town in an indirect way. Artificiality, un-naturalism and lack of civilization turn out to be the key features of Coketown.

Industrial production needs machinery and tall chimneys out of which interminable serpents of smoke ascend in the sky, becoming metaphor for the incessant activity of the factory. Coketown is dominated by the monotonous rhythm of the factory that covers everything and everyone. The anaphora of the expressions “like on another” and “the same” characterizing the end of the first paragraph, highlights the homologation overwhelming both objects and subjects: people are as grey as the city surrounding them, there are no more differences between things and human beings.

Coketown shows the effects of industrialization both on the city and on the people working in the factory, who seem to be absorbed by the monstrous machinery of Industry working incessantly and rhythmically.