Charles Dickens: Hard Times
Hard Times is a powerful use of satire. The satire is aimed at the
Victorian school system and some values of the Victorian period. The
novel presents us a fictional town called ‘Coketown’. It introduces us
to a man called Thomas Gradgrind, a satirical character with the basis
of a Victorian school master. Dickens wrote this novel to attack the
Victorian school system because he did not believe that it was right.
He uses satire a great deal in the novel to emphasise how it does not
work and why it should change. The satire is directed ‘The Gradgrind
Philosophy’, Thomas Gradgrind’s belief system.
Gradgrind greatly believes in his ‘philosophy’ even saying ‘‘this is
the principle on which I bring up my own children’’ emphasising his
believes in it. The Gradgrind philosophy is shown to be authoritarian,
bullying and fanatical. He puts forwards these beliefs in an utterly
rigid upfront and violent way. This philosophy reduces the children to
products, practically de-humanising them. It destroys the
children’s imaginations, their innocence and their individuality. The
system is only interested in measuring and is an exaggerated version
on utilitarianism. Utilitarianism originated with the economist Adam
Smith and then Jeremy Bentham built on it. Dickens attacks this
because he believes that individuality and emotions are deeply
important.
Dickens presents us with the character Thomas Gradgrind in this novel.
We are given a very vivid description of him and Dickens uses a number
of devices to do this. His first device is the name ‘Gradgrind’. If
the name is split up you get ‘Grad’ and ‘grind’. The ‘Grad’...
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...ce to show that his system is
incorrect and emotions are necessary but that Gradgrind cannot yet see
this.
In conclusion, I have gathered the impression that utilitarianism was
a great part of Victorian society but that does not make it right. It
was a corrupt schooling system and was perverted. Dickens uses a
variety of devices to share the folly in the novel, but I think that
the juxtaposition between Sissy and Bitzer was important and the
metaphors and similes emphasised the inadequacies of the system. I
think that the Gradgrind Philosophy and utilitarianism had a lot of
effect on the next generation because it did not continue it just
emphasised the mistake that was made by Jeremy Bentham. If Dickens had
not written this novel then we might have still lived in a corrupt
environment with clones and no emotion.
One form of satire that particularly stands out is his use of diction. Both speakers are so focused on oppresing on the other group that they allow emotions to invade their arguments. For example in
Satire is thrown into CC early and often, so much that it seems almost unfairly easy to extract examples, but it is such an integral component of the novel that it requires at least a look-see.
The French Revolution, which occurred in the late 1700’s was a period in history marked by violence and cruelty among classes. In the novel, A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens powerfully depicts the cruelty of French society during this time of struggle. Throughout the novel, Dickens illustrates the theme of cruelty and inhumanity of men to their fellow countryman in France. This theme grows with each chapter and each brutal event in the novel. Dickens effectively develops the theme of man’s inhumanity toward his fellow man in A Tale of Two Cities by showing various acts of cruelty including, the horrific murder of Old Foulon by the villagers, the extremes that the Revolutionaries take in killing innocent nobles, and the noble Evrémonde family’s careless and harmful treatment of a peasant family.
The French Revolution can best be described by Dickens in the opening phrase of his novel A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” (Dickens 1). A Tale of Two Cities, written by Charles Dickens in 1859, takes place in London and Paris during the French Revolution. The book tells the story of a circle of people living and fighting during this dangerous time. These characters include Dr. Manette, a doctor and prisoner of the Bastille for eighteen years who is just reunited with his lovable daughter, Lucie, for the first time since his imprisonment. Mr. Lorry is a banker and family friend of the Manette’s and Charles Darnay is a kind, generous man with a corrupt, noble family who marries Lucie. The Defarges are a married couple who lead the peasants’ revolt in the Revolution, and Sydney Carton is a lawyer’s assistant with a seemingly wasted life, but finds his life’s worth in the end. From these characters and this story, the theme of sacrifice is well displayed, especially the sacrifice for loved ones. The book shows us that love overcomes evil every time through the sacrifices of Miss Pross, Dr. Manette, and Sydney Carton.
The French Revolution, beginning in 1789, served as a force for exposing man’s inhumanity to man because of the unjust actions that arose in all aspects of human existence during this time period. Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities examines the extent to which man will travel to achieve what he believes is essential to life. A look into every aspect of this epoch in both France and England reveals the faults that enable man to overlook the value of another individual’s life. Throughout the novel, Dickens analyzes the concept of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man as a force motivated by inordinate greed, destructive power, and conspicuous injustice.
The novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens offers a glimpse into the life and times during the industrial revolution in England during the nineteenth century. Dickens offers a wide range of characters from the upper class factory owner to the lowest class factory workers. He creates characters in this range of social classes and crafts this story that intertwines each person and their transformations throughout the novel. Almost every character in this story is complex and has characteristics that run deeper than their place in society, and this is what makes the novel so very important and intense. While there are many complexities linked to these characters, some do not appear to be as complex but in actuality they are. A strong example would be Josiah Bounderby, the wealthiest character in the novel.
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
In Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, Mr. Vholes is Richard Carstone’s legal advisor. Introduced to Richard by Mr. Skimpole, Vholes encourages and assists Richard as he attempts to unravel the mysteries of the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case in Chancery. Vholes, however, may not have the best intentions. Through descriptions of his gloomy physical appearance, suspicious actions, and unfortunate connections to English law, Dickens paints a vivid image of Mr. Vholes—a man who cannot be trusted. Vholes, therefore, is made up of multiple layers; as each layer peels away, the reader understands a little bit more of this secretive man. Surprisingly, Mr. Vholes is seen as more and more evil as readers journey to the center of his being.
Hard times is set in the 1840’s in the North of England. It’s set at a
In society today, all people determine their lifestyle, personality and overall character by both positive and negative traits that they hold. Sydney Carton in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities was a drunken lawyer who had an extremely low self-esteem. He possessed many negative characteristics which he used in a positive way. Carton drastically changed his life and became a new man. Sydney is not the man he first appeared to be.
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.
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.
love does not exist in this world then the people who live on it will
"I must entreat you to pause for an instant, and go back to what you know of my childish days, and to ask yourself whether it is natural that something of the character formed in me then" - Charles Dickens
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.