Hard Times :: essays research papers

The book Hard Times written by Charles Dickens is a story more or less a Lancashire Mill Town in the 1840s. The wise is divided into three books. Dickens titles the books accordingly to prepare the reader for what is closely to come, and throughout the novel he shows the effects of the education system, the setup of the class system, and the Industrial Revolution had on society through this small township of Coketown. The main characters of the novel show the English caste system of the nineteenth century by showing how one influences the new(prenominal) and the amount of advocate the mercenary now down in society. They own the factories. Therefore, they have the currency and, because of the changes coming from the revolution, have some power in society. The titles of the three books, Sowing, Reaping, and Garnering shows logical implication in the way Dickens is trying to help the reader occur an understanding of what is to come. Dickens shows the way the traveling class es are fighting for a say in the way they are treated at work by forming unions and how a bad negotiator can ruin things. He shows from the start that the education system is based on fact and non tenderness. The breakdown of the fact based education is shown when Gradgrind himself asked a question that is non fact based. In the end, the whole system of education is reversed and the fancy is fancied.The novel can be summarized as a book about two struggles. One struggle is between fact and imagination and the other is the struggle between two classes. Thomas Gradgrind, the father of Louisa, Tom, and June not solely stresses facts in the classroom in which he teaches, but also at home to his family. He has brought up his children to know only the facts. Everything is black and white, upright or wrong with nothing in between. Gradgrind does not like the root of going to the circus or having flowered carpet. Everyone knows a person cannot have flowered carpet. He would trample all over them and they would end up dying. The second struggle is between the classes is illustrated between Stephen Blackpool and Bounderby. Blackpool represents the working class and Bounderby the bourgeois or middle class. He is a warm-hearted man who feels he deserves this fair(a) life. Blackpool was once an employee under Bounderby and was fired for standing up for his beliefs.