For many decades, many have tried to obtain a perfect mixture of a healthy state of mind in relation to a healthy body. In order to do this, people exercise their bodies along with their minds. However, overly exercising can lead to consequences. As a result, a balance needs to be met. When displaying too many hard core views, the mixture of a healthy mind and a healthy body disappears. Therefore, it is very important to obtain a balance with strict rules along with some imagination. When looking at facts, it is always one sided, but when using an imagination, the possibilities become endless and can be looked upon as positive. In the novel Hard Times, there are characters that display a strict view on facts rather than imagination. The reader starts to understand that without the right balance, characters start to hurt themselves. In Charles Dicken’s novel, Hard Times, it is obvious that without a life mixed with fiction, imagination cannot be learned. So, the lack of social interaction can dangerously result with complications in a child’s upbringing and a perfect balance of fact versus fiction must be compromised. Thus, with the use of many different foil characters, the reader can notice the differences in the way each child was raised and how they can relate to fact, imagination, communication, utilitarianism, individualism, and conformity.
Thomas Gradgrind is a strict teacher in the town of Coketown that only believes in reasoning and refuses to teach anything that is not a fact. He sees no other answers and can only use facts to solve his problems. This is truly determined by his first line in the novel, “teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plan nothing else and root out everything...
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...d thoughts. Conformed and utilitarianism views do not allow individuals to be able to free think and socially interact with other people. As a result, imaginative free thinkers are able to be successful.
Through the analysis of the character and settings that Charles Dickens discusses in his novel Hard Times, readers can understand that having a balance between factual knowledge and imagination is crucial to proper growth in a child’s mental state of mind. Not only that, the environment in which a person is placed into can also have the affects of individualism or conformity. These actions can also play a variable in how a person can communicate with others within their surroundings. Consequently, characters who were raised with an uneven balance of fantasy and facts ended up with unfortunate ending and characters raised balanced closed the book off successfully.
Charles Dickens' literary works are comparable to one another in many ways; plot, setting, and even experiences. His novels remain captivating to his audiences and he draws them in to teach the readers lessons of life. Although each work exists separate from all of the rest, many similarities remain. Throughout the novels, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, the process of growing up, described by the author, includes the themes of the character's ability to alienate themselves, charity given to the characters and what the money does to their lives, and the differences of good and evil individuals and the effects of their influences.
Understanding the experiences of one’s past may inspire the decisions that will lead the course of one’s life. Charles Dickens’s childhood was overwhelming and had many difficult phases. It is truly impressive for a young boy to support his family, mostly on his own, and be able to maintain a suitable education. These hardship episodes may have been difficult for him, but it made him who he had always wanted to be. Eventually, he had been known as one of the most significant writers since Shakespeare.
Charles Dickens utilizes his life for inspiration for the protagonist Pip in his novel Great Expectations. They both struggle with their social standing. Dickens loved plays and theatre and therefore incorporated them into Pip’s life. Dickens died happy in the middle class and Pip died happy in the middle class. The connection Dickens makes with his life to Pip’s life is undeniable. If readers understand Dickens and his upbringing then readers can understand how and why he created Pip’s upbringing. Charles Dickens’ life, full of highs and lows, mirrors that of Pip’s life. Their lives began the same and ended the same. To understand the difficulty of Dickens’ childhood is to understand why his writing focuses on the English social structure. Dickens’ life revolved around social standing. He was born in the lower class but wasn’t miserable. After his father fell into tremendous debt he was forced into work at a young age. He had to work his way to a higher social standing. Because of Dicken’s constant fighting of class the English social structure is buried beneath the surface in nearly all of his writings. In Great Expectations Pip’s life mirrors Dickens’ in the start of low class and the rise to a comfortable life. Fortunately for Dickens, he does not fall again as Pip does. However, Pip and Dickens both end up in a stable social standing.
12. Oldham, R. (2000) Charles Dickens’ Hard Times: Romantic Tragedy of Proletariat Propaganda [Online]. Available: http://www.pillowrock.com [Accessed: 25th April 2005].
Understanding the relationship between environment and morality--indifference and depravity--Dickens evaluated what the system does to a person, how it classifies, how it deforms. Fagin manages the underworld, connoting corruption as an entertaining, enjoyable, and artful game not only because of his intrinsic craftiness, but also because it is the only way he knows to survive. Exploiting his audience's attitudes, Dickens shaped a character with religious stereotypes to ensure that his readers could recognize the absolute evil it had bore through its ignorance and apathy--poverty is a product of a societal environment.
Charles Dickens’ novels criticize the injustices of his time, especially the brutal treatment of the poor in a society sharply divided by differences of wealth. He lived through that world at an early age; he saw the bitter side of the social class system and had wanted it to be exposed, so people could see the exploitation that the system rests on. But he presents these criticisms through the lives of characters, Pip and Magwitch.
Charles Dickens’ (1812-1970) father had great financial difficulties. The boy had a rather miserable childhood, and the lad spent much of his time in poorhouses and workhouses. Did poverty overwhelm Charles Dickens? Was his negative environment to blame for an unproductive and fruitless life? No it wasn’t. Dickens retreated into his imaginary world and incisively wrote about the need for social reform in what later became such literary classics such as Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.
When considering representation, the ways in which the authors choose to portray their characters can have a great impact on their accessibility. A firm character basis is the foundation for any believable novel. It is arguable that for an allegorical novel - in which Hard Times takes its structure, Dickens uses an unusually complex character basis. The characters in Hard Times combine both the simplistic characteristics of a character developed for allegorical purposes, as well as the concise qualities of ‘real’ people (McLucas, 1995). These characters are portrayed to think and feel like we as readers do and react to their situations in the same way that most of us would. Such attributes are what give the characters life and allow us to relate to their decisions.
Our Mutual Friend, Dickens' last novel, exposes the reality Dickens is surrounded by in his life in Victorian England. The novel heavily displays the corruption of society through multiple examples. These examples, that are planted within the novel, relate to both the society in Dickens' writing and his reality. In order to properly portray the fraud taking place within his novels, Dickens' uses morality in his universe to compare to the reality of society. He repetitively references to the change of mind and soul for both the better and the worst. He speaks of the change of heart when poisoned by wealth, and he connects this disease to the balance of the rich and the poor. This is another major factor to novel, where the plot is surrounded by a social hierarchy that condemns the poor to a life of misery, and yet, condones any action that would normally be seen as immoral when it occurs in the aristocracy. It expands on the idea that only an education and inheritance will bring success in society, with few exceptions. Lastly, Dickens expands his opinions of society through his mockery of ...
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. Ed. Fred Kaplan and Sylvere Monod. A Norton Critical Edition. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2001. 5-222
It can be seen through Dickens’s highly successful novel Great Expectations, that his early life events are reflected into the novel. Firstly the reader can relate to Dickens’s early experiences, as the novel’s protagonist Pip, lives in the marsh country, and hates his job. Pip also considers himself, to be too good for his ...
Charles Dickens is well known for his distinctive writing style. Few authors before or since are as adept at bringing a character to life for the reader as he was. His novels are populated with characters who seem real to his readers, perhaps even reminding them of someone they know. What readers may not know, however, is that Dickens often based some of his most famous characters, those both beloved or reviled, on people in his own life. It is possible to see the important people, places, and events of Dickens' life thinly disguised in his fiction. Stylistically, evidence of this can be seen in Great Expectations. For instance, semblances of his mother, father, past loves, and even Dickens himself are visible in the novel. However, Dickens' past influenced not only character and plot devices in Great Expectations, but also the very syntax he used to create his fiction. Parallels can be seen between his musings on his personal life and his portrayal of people and places in Great Expectations.
Louisa, Mr. Gradgrind's favorite child, the paragon of his factual regime, leads a broken and embittered life which ends in a showdown between the ideologies of facts and fancy. She is a prime example of a child "filled to the brim" with knowledge by her father's strictly scientific education. Confused by her coldhearted upbringing, Louisa feels disconnected from her emotions and alienated from others, yet she yearns to experience more than the hard scientific facts she has absorbed all her life. While she vaguely recognizes that her father’s system of education has deprived her childhood of all joy, she cannot avoid being coldly rational and emotionally blunted, unable to actively invoke her emotions. She would have been a curious, passionate person who ...
In this novel Dickens Shows how Thomas Gradgrind uses a utilitarian mindset to force facts in the minds of young children. “Stick to Facts” (1) Thomas Gradgrind says. Dickens use Thomas Gradgrind Teachings to show how facts alone are not enough. Dickens connives that you need other factors to consider when creating the perfect human. You need imagination, life adventure and facts alone are not enough.
However, the strong, yet subtle implications that Charles Dickens introduces to his novels, particularly “Great Expectations”, has made a strong impression during his time and even in the modern day. Dickens explores the wide gap among the “most wretched criminals (Magwitch), the poor (Joe and Biddy), the middle class (Pumblechook), and the very rich (Miss Havisham)” (Gupta, 18), a social hierarchy resulting from the Post-Industrial Revolution. “Great Expectations” demonstrates the role of social class in the society by emphasizing that social class does not define the character of the individual, the relationship with in the characters, and the value of the characters.