Hard Times
Hard Times by Charles Dickens was published in 1854. Dickens vividly depicts the various social issues of his time, and his critical view is reflected in the story. Unlike the majority of the children at that time, Dickens was fortunate enough to attend private school. He wrote this story to voice sympathy for children who had to follow the biased education system that emphasizes facts and concrete logical thinking. Dickens shows his dislike of the system through use of language, setting, and character development over abstract ideas, and creativity imagination.
Each book of Hard Times using farming terms: Sowing, Reaping, and Garnering. These names reflect steps of the education system in Coketown. They sow facts and figures into children to make them into good specimens, then reap and garner the perfect form of those grown up children filled with facts. In chapter 1, Book 1, titled,” One thing needful” which says what is most necessary in Coketown: and his colleagues. A quote from chapter1 (Book 1, pg.11, line1~8) suggests, teaching children only facts is the principle he strongly believes in. “Plant nothing else and root out everything else.” In this manner, he can exterminate their imagination completely. Some of the characters in this book have names that further reflect Dickens’ views. For example, Gradgrind, of Mr. Gradgrind means to reduce something to fine particle. It is his wish to reduce children’s imaginations and to make them into robotic carbon copies or clones. Choakumchild of Mr. McChoakumchild means to choke children to torture and to kill their imagination. Dickens invents these silly names to mitigate the sad and serious part of this book.
Coketown in Victorian industrial society has th...
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... beings into machines by interrupting the development of emotions and imaginations. These suggestions are quite apparent from the fall of Bounderby and Gradgrind, who were so caught up in being forthright and analytical. Louisa and Tom are the victims crushed under the anti-fascism education taught by their father.
On the other hand, Sissy who grew up in the circus constantly treated in the fancy world forbidden to Louisa and Thom. She spends happier life, lovingly raising her children. It is obvious that love and warmth enriched her personalities. But at the same time, we should not forget that if Gradgrind had not adopted her, Sissy would have no guidance and discipline. Her life could have been different. As a conclusion, the one thing needful is that both fact and dream are important for a balanced life.
Charles Dickens is a famous novelist who was born on February 7TH 1812, Portsmouth England. His novel ‘Oliver Twist’ had been serialized and to also show Dickens purposes, which was to show the powerful links between poverty and crime. The novel is based on a young boy called Oliver Twist; the plot is about how the underprivileged misunderstood orphan, Oliver the son of Edwin Leeford and Agnes Fleming, he is generally quiet and shy rather than being aggressive, after his parents past away he is forced to work in a workhouse and then forced to work with criminals. The novel reveals a lot of different aspects of poverty, crime and cruelty which Dickens had experienced himself as a young boy in his disturbing and unsupportive childhood, due to his parents sent to prison so therefore Charles, who was already filled with misery, melancholy and deprivation had started working at the age of twelve at a factory to repay their debt.
Another man - we are not told who the man is or why he is present, are
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.
On February 7, 1812, a popular author named Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England during the Victorian Era and the French Revolution. He had a father named John Dickens and a mother named Elizabeth Dickens; they had a total of eight children. In Charles’s childhood, he lived a nomadic lifestyle due to his father 's debt and multiple changes of jobs. Despite these obstacles, Charles continued to have big dreams of becoming rich and famous in the future. His father continued to be in and out of prison, which forced him, and his siblings to live in lodging houses with other unwanted children. During this period of depression, Charles went to numerous schools and worked for a boot cleaning company. This caused him
12. Oldham, R. (2000) Charles Dickens’ Hard Times: Romantic Tragedy of Proletariat Propaganda [Online]. Available: http://www.pillowrock.com [Accessed: 25th April 2005].
King, in introducing the little convent girl to the reader, goes to great lengths to present her as a dreary and uninteresting creature. She wore dark clothing, sat rigidly upright, secluded herself in her room, and displayed little zest for life. Therefor, when King uses the work "blac...
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. Ed. Fred Kaplan and Sylvere Monod. A Norton Critical Edition. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2001. 5-222
In his novel, Hard Times, Charles Dickens used his characters to describe the caste system that had been shaped by industrial England. By looking at three main characters, Stephen Blackpool, Mr. Josiah Bounderby, and Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, one can see the different classes that were industrial England.
Dickens knew how hard-pressed life was for thousands of English families in mid-ninteenth century England, and he knew the legal side of such desperation--a jungle of suspicion and fear and hate. He was especially attentive [if] . . . hungry, jobless men, women, children with few if any prospects became reduced to a fate not only marginal with respect to its "socioeconomic" character but also with respect to its very humanity. (575)
The death of God for many in the Victorian era due to scientific discoveries carried with it the implication that life is nothing more than a kind of utilitarian existence that should be lived according to logic and facts, not intuition or feeling – that without God to impose meaning on life, life is meaningless. Charles Dickens, in Hard Times, parodies this way of thought by pushing its ideologies and implications to the extreme in his depiction of the McChoakumchild School.
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.
Charles Dickens uses satire in his novel Hard Times as he attempts to bring to light social issues such as class division, education, and industrialization in nineteen-century English society. Hard Times was originally published in weekly segments in Dickens’ magazine, Household Words, from April 1854 to August 1854 (Cody 1). In order to better fit into the Libraries at the time, Charles Dickens divided Hard Times into three books: Sowing, Reaping, and Garnering. Each book with its own theme, guides us through the lives of the characters living in the fictional city Dickens calls, “Coketown.”
love does not exist in this world then the people who live on it will
In the novel Hard Times, Charles Dickens connives a theme of utilitarianism, along with education and industrialization. Utilitarianism is the belief that something is morally right if it helps a majority of people. It is a principle involving nothing but facts and leaves no room for creativity or imagination. Dickens provides symbolic examples of this utilitarianism in Hard Times by using Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, one of the main characters in the book, who has a hard belief in utilitarianism. Thomas Gradgrind is so into his philosophy of rationality and facts that he has forced this belief into his children’s and as well as his young students. Mr. Josiah Bounderby, Thomas Gradgrind’s best friend, also studies utilitarianism, but he was more interested in power and money than in facts. Dickens uses Cecelia Jupe, daughter of a circus clown, who is the complete opposite of Thomas Gradgrind to provide a great contrast of a utilitarian belief.