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HARD TIMES, here he brings up his two children, Louisa and Tom, in the…
HARD TIMES
SETTING
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a sort of brick jungle: the factories are like mad (impazziti) elephants, and their smoke looks like serpents
This place of ‘hard facts’ and ‘hard lives’ seems to be turned into some kind of magical but hellish land. All the buildings, which are covered with soot, are the same. However, the mill owners seems to be proud of the polluted air of Coketown (it may symbolise productivity and industry)
Mr Gradgrind (text)
The scene takes place in a classroom where the head master (preside) Mr Gradgrind, discuss with a group of young student that affirming to believe in “Facts”. He repeat this words many times.
symbolical language
GRAD = mark
GRIND = in the mill, to reduce
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Coketown (text)
description of the industrial centre of the town, not real but very realistic
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STRUCTURE
Hard Times is divided into three sections (books), and each book is divided into separate chapters.
1) ‘Sowing’, shows us the seeds planted by the Gradgrind/Bounderby education: Louisa, Tom and Stephen Blackpool.
2) ‘Reaping’, talk about Louisa’s unhappy marriage, Tom’s selfishness and criminal ways, Stephen’s rejection from Coketown.
3) ‘Garnering’, it’s symbolized by instability, related to the solid ‘ground’ upon which Mr Gradgrind’s system once stood.
CHARACTERS
We can see the philosophy of Utilitarianism in the actions of Mr Gradgrind and his follower Bounderby:
GRADGRIND
- educates the children of his family and his school through facts.
- believes that human nature can be quantified and governed only by reason. (his school tries to turn children into little machines that behave according to rules).
Dickens’s aim in Hard Times
→ is to illustrate the dangers (pericoli) of the teaching method called ‘object lesson’, originally considered as a method of education suited to the children’s stage of development, but distorted in English schools (in this form of lessons humans were actually dehumanised).
story focuses on the difference/gap between the rich and the poor at Dickens’s time, between factory owners and workers, who have to work for long hours and low pay, because these workers had few options for improving their terrible living and working conditions (education and job skills)
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BOUNDERBY
- treats (tratta) the workers in his factory as emotionless objects that are easily exploited (facilmente sfruttabili) for his own self- interest.
here he brings up his two children, Louisa and Tom, in the same way
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He marries his daughter to Josiah Bounderby, a rich banker of the city, 30 years older than she is. The girl consents since/because she wishes to help her brother, who is given a job in Bounderby’s bank, but the marriage proves to be unhappy
Tom, who is lazy (pigro) and selfish (egoista), robs his employer. At first he succeeds in throwing the suspicion on an honest workman, but he is finally discovered and obliged to leave the country. In the end Mr Gradgrind understands the damage (danno) he has caused to his children and gives up his narrow-minded, materialistic philosophy (filosofia ristretta e materialista)