Book The First Of Hard Times Essay

In book the first of Hard Times, Dickens introduces many different philosophical ideas that many believed in, in the time of Dickens’ life in England. Towns were developing around coalmines and the blast furnaces took over farming as the main employer of labour. Roads and canals were built to connect industrial areas with cities. One of these industrial areas is, in the book, Coketown. As more public buildings developed, living conditions in towns and cities decreased. Most were cramped, damp, and poorly heated and much malnutrition and disease started to spread all over the country. Dickens used his writing to show his readers what was behind the gleaming concealment of Victorian society. Behind these forces was Utilitarianism, a philosophy that emphasised the practical usefulness of things. This meant that art, imagination, play and entertainment were not valued because they had no practical use. Dickens believed that all these things that made human beings diverse, interesting, free creative, happy and warm hearted were being driven out by the values of a factory system geared only to productivity and profit. Dickens satirised abuses of the utilitarian theory. In book the first, facts and figures are introduced right at the beginning. An authoritative voice is laying down the law. ‘Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts’ The speaker’s appearance is described as his voice is ‘inflexible, dry and dictatorial’; his hair is ‘bristled’. These descriptions give us emphasis to the importance this person places on facts. The children resemble rows of: ‘†¦ and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim. ‘ The speaker stresses facts, but the narrator is fanciful, turning factual details into metaphors. ‘The square forehead is a wall’ ‘Eyes are curves’ ‘His hair is a plantation of firs’ These suggest that Dickens try’s to make the speaker’s appearance fanciful when the speaker’s whole life is based around facts and figures. There is much repetition that seems to mock the idea of sticking to facts in a lively way. ‘†¦ Square coat, square legs, square soldiers. ‘ Dickens is trying to suggest that his appearance as well as his personality is factual and he has no fancy in him. Much of the plot arises from the speaker’s (later we find out his name is Mr Gradgrind) determination to teach his own children according to his ‘system’ of facts and no feeling or imagination. ‘This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. ‘ When he boasts about it on the first page he is ironically unaware of how much sorrow is to be reaped and garnered from this teaching. This factual life stands for a whole view of life, which the novel will condemn.