Charles Dickens’ Hard Times portrays Gradgrind in an intriguing way. He works his way up in life, starting as a hardware trader, later starting a school and eventually becoming a member of Parliament. He is strict in forcing facts and figures on his family and his students because he wants them to succeed; his flaw with this is that his philosophy seemed to work for him, but in reality it doesn’t work for anyone (including him). This connects and contrasts with two characters in the story, Josiah Bounderby, the owner of the local factory, who is successful through lying and poor treatment of others, as well as James Harthouse, who causes damage in people’s lives just out of boredom. Despite how Gradgrind is a driving force in the symmetrically …show more content…
This behavior goes from forcing facts to accepting creativity as well. The change is important for seeing how Gradgrind represents the utilitarian society, as well as seeing the effects Gradgrind’s fact-based philosophy has on himself and his society. Gradgrind was always compassionate, despite the way he viewed himself. It was out of compassion that he started his school, even though it didn’t turn out as positively as he had hoped. It was also out of compassion that he took in Sissy Jupe, despite the fact that the reason he went to visit Sissy was to kick her out of the school. However, Gradgrind’s compassion verses his teachings are epitomized in his talk with Bitzer (who was a student of his). When Bitzer tries to bring Gradgrind’s son to justice, Gradgrind pleads with him and asks him “Is [Bitzer’s heart] accessible...to any compassionate influence” (214). This demonstrates the conflict of his compassion and his teachings because Gradgrind didn’t teach compassion, and didn’t consciously find it important. This is regardless of the fact that compassion motivates him throughout the book. Eventually though, with that compassion comes a new change of behavior as …show more content…
This society is one based on monetary worth and seemingly based on fact (despite how Bounderby succeeds through lying). However, although from Gradgrind’s point of view it could be seen as effective at the beginning, it has its negative aspects as well. Gradgrind spends time and energy in trying to prepare his kids for this society to try to make sure that he won’t have to worry about his kids not succeeding. Gradgrind knows that the hands that work for Bounderby and the members of the circus lead a more difficult life and he wants to prevent that, thus showing his compassion in a society that doesn’t reward it. This doesn’t work though as it leaves Louisa emotionally drained when she comes home; the teachings also lead to his son becoming a bank robber. The fact that they ended up this way demonstrates that in this utilitarian society, compassion is punished.
Later on in Hard Times, Charles Dickens shows an insight on the situation when the narrator mentions why Gradgrind taught the way he did and the effects it has in the following passage:
[He] had meant to do great things. Within the limits of his short
In life, we ask ourselves the question what we are? In addition, we also ask ourselves how our perspectives allow us to see this world? These questions are an opening idea’s, which requires the person answering it, to be fully aware of his or her life, and then have the ability to judge it without any personal bias. This is why, in the book that was and is in a sense is still talked about in class, The Great Gatsby, which is a book that follows a plethora of charters all being narrated by, Nick Caraway, a character of the book The Great Gatsby. Nick Caraway is the character in the book which judges and describes his and other character’s actions and virtues. Now we speak of a character whose name is Jay Gatsby or other whys known as James Gatz, which is one of the characters that Mr. Caraway, seems to be infatuated with from the start of the book. This character Jay Gatsby develops a perspective, which in his view seems to justify his actions by the way that he saw the world that he was living in. In this essay, I will explain why the ambitions of a person, can lead them to do things that are beyond there normal character.
Another man - we are not told who the man is or why he is present, are
"Now what I want is facts… Facts alone are wanted in life… This is the
Hard times is set in the 1840’s in the North of England. It’s set at a
Dickens' Attitude Toward Education in Hard Times Dickens wrote Hard Times in 1854, when the industrial revolution was active. The symposia are not active. This influenced the way the book was written. In the first two chapters of Hard Times, Dickens' attitudes to education are presented. He uses two characters, Gradgrind and M'Choakumchild to show the bad.
Social Classes of Industrial England in Charles Dickens' Hard Times 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. Stephen Blackpool represented the most abundant and least represented caste in industrial England, the lower class (also called the hands) in Charles Dickens' novel. Stephen was an honest, hard-working man who came to much trouble in the novel, often because of his class.
In Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times, he uses the characters to present the reader with many messages. One of these messages presented is that the Gradgrind system of education is faulty. Dickens is critical of an education system that only regards things that can be weighed or measured as being worthy. Thus, intangibles like imagination, emotion, and compassion are not considered worthy. The Gradgrind system of education can be seen as flawed through the examples of Sissy Jupe. The lack of individuality and creativity can be proven to be detrimental to those who ascribe to the Gradgrind system, which denies anything that isn't factual. Sissy's caring; thoughts of fancy, and individualism have kept her from long-term sorrow, pity and loneliness. The Gradgrind system is also proven as flawed through Sissy in that her caring and ingenuity helps the other characters potentially realize how they have let the system flaw them. Also, Sissy's ability to ward of the system's teachings will prove useful and helping others escape the system, be it short term.
Charles Dickens' Exploration of the Victorian Society's Awful Treatment Of The Children Of The Poor
“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else” (Dickens 5). So says Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, the proponent of a Utilitarian educational philosophy in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. Cold, hard facts are what Mr. Thomas Gradgrind’s philosophy consists of, and cold hard facts are exactly what Tom and Louisa Gradgrind are raised on. They are taught by their father and by society to live their lives based on these facts. They are instructed to conduct themselves in accordance to them and nothing else. As stated by Taylor Stoehr, “Tom and Louisa Gradgrind are products of the Gradgrindian system, raised in Stone Lodge, taught in the school of hard facts, model grindings off the parent stone” (Stoehr 171). As a result of being raised in the loveless atmosphere of Stone Lodge and in accordance with the strictly enforced rules of the Gradgrindian system, Tom and Louisa are deprived of opportunities to cultivate imagination, emotions, and “fancy” (Dickens 5). The children are themselves fragmented and insufficient fragments who have been formed by a hard system of hard facts. By blocking every available outlet for the interplay of fantasy and emotion, Mr. Gradgrind unintentionally generates two extreme outcomes for his children. Even though the Gradgrind philosophy has completely different effects on Tom and Louisa Gradgrind, it ultimately deprives them both of the happiness that only a balance between the wisdom of the Head and the wisdom of the Heart can create.
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.
In Victorian England, people are assigned to a class, depending on their education, social status, or income. In his novels, Charles Dickens comments about the abuses in Victorian England, such as economics and social class. “Throughout the life of Pip, he is constantly exposed to characters that vary greatly in both characters and social class.” (Zhou). Joe Gargery is a member of a working class, having no education and works as a blacksmith. Joe Gargery had pride being in the working class. Joe Gargery is the idea of the working class. Uncle Pumblechook represents the worst in middle class. Uncle Pumblechook is opinionated and hypocritical in Great ...
Mr. Gradgrind was a prominent school head that believed in “realities, facts, and calculations.” He is described as a cold-hearted man that strictly forbids the fostering of imagination and emotion, especially in his two children: Tom and Louisa (Dickens 5). Mr. Gradgrind raises his children in Coketown, a Capitalistic industrial town that Dickens calls, a waste-yard with “litter of barrels and old iron, the shining heaps of coals, the ashes everywhere, shrouded in a veil of mist and rain” (128). In this town that seems to be impenetrable to the sun’s rays, his children grow up lacking social connections, mor...
hungry, jobless men, women, children with few if any prospects reduced to a fate not only marginal with respect to its "socioeconomic" character but also with respect to its very humanity. 575. The 'Standard' is a 'Standard'. As a result, an ideological dichotomy is created within Dickens that reveals a more liberal stance towards crime in his fiction, than in his non-fiction writing. If there is one common thread between his fictional and non-fictional writing, it is a deep obsession with crime and law.
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.
Dickens uses Thomas Gradgrind to demonstrate exactly how a basic philosophy of rationality self-interest. Thomas Gradgrind has faith that human nature can be restrained, calculated, and ruled completely by facts. Certainly, his schooling attempts to turn young children into tiny machines. Dickens’s main goal in Hard Times was to exemplify the risks of letting humans become nothing but machines, signifying that the lack of kindness and imagination in life would be intolerable. Louisa balms her father for only teaching her lessons on facts and nothing on life, she feels that that’s the reason she is unhappy in her marriage. “All that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me. How, father,...