Analysis of Hard Times, Chapter V by C

ANALYSIS OF HARD TIMES, CHAPTER V BY C.DICKENS

The title of the extract is Coketown. The prefix “coke” immediately strikes the reader’s attention: coke is the most important fuel that allowed the development of the system of production during the Industrial Revolution. It follows that Coketown may be an industrialized city in the North of England. To tell the truth, it is a false name forged by the narrator to speak about Preston, a city near Manchester.

The first paragraph is introductive: it sets up a scene describing two people walking towards Coketown, while the following paragraphs describe different aspects of the city.

Right from the start, the reader comes into contact with a third person omniscient intrusive narrator: his description of the city is not neutral, it appeals to the language of sense impression and it is full with judgments.

In the first paragraph, as an example, the narrator expresses his personal idea about Coketown, saying it is a triumph of fact, that is, powerful, successful, material and, comparing it with Mrs. Gradgrind, rational, without imagination and fantasy. The exhortation at the end of the paragraph appeals to hearing (key-note, tune) and introduces the proper description of the city.

First of all, the narrator lists the colors of the city: red and black. Red is the color of brick as well as blood, black is the color of ashes and smoke but it also reminds to hell and death. What’s more, the narrator says they are “unnatural” colors, using the comparison with the savage’s face that emphasizes the dramatic atmosphere of the city. The causes of such a horrifying landscape are explained in the following paragraphs, regarding Coketown’s industrial system of production. The reader can note numerous terms belonging to the semantic field of industry (machinery, chimneys, piston, steam-engine, canal) combined with metaphors and similes appealing to the semantic field of animals. Each device underlines a peculiar aspect of industrialization: smoke produced by factories is a serpent, and according to Puritanism, the serpent is the symbol of sin and devil ; the movement of pistons inside factory is like that of a made, tired, dejected and melancholic elephant: endless and desperate. The description is really dramatic and it appeals not only to sight but also to smell (ill-smelling dye) and hearing (rattling, trembling): it gives a clear idea of the double-faced nature of an industrialized city: despite the progresses in the system of production, life in Coketown seems to be hard because of atmospheric, environmental and noise pollution.

A key-feature of Coketown is its monotony: on the semantic level it is underlined using the adverbs “all day long” and “monotonously”, on the semantic level it is conveyed , repeating the expressions “it was a city of…” “more/equally like one another”, “every day/year”, “the same work/hour”. As the reader can see, monotony regards not only the productive sector but the whole life-style of the inhabitants, because work and private life were not separated aspects and, as I previously said, fancy was rather removed from Coketown.

Pragmatism is another relevant aspect of Coketown: the narrator puts it into focus using various examples (they made it a pious warehouse, the jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail) and anaphor (fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial). Pragmatism affected not only architecture and landscape, so that buildings and streets looked like one another, had the same structure and may have had multiple functions, but it was the basis of the system of values and thoughts of the whole society: only measurable and saleable things existed. There was no space for relationships, creativity and individualism, only capitalism counted. The crucial idea sounds like a prayer, since it ends with the word “Amen”. Of course, the narrator is ironic and the device is used to put into relevance the importance and the indisputable value of that system of thought in Coketown, as if it were a religious dogma.

In the middle of the description, the narrator poses a crucial, rhetorical question that makes the reader reflect about what living there could mean. Even if it was advanced on the technological aspect, life was not automatically easy there.

Religiosity was one of the more contradictive aspects of Coketown and it carried an important weight on the social level too: even if there were eighteen different congregations, a very few people went to the church on Sunday morning. Moreover, it seems as if the narrator had a pessimistic idea about religion: believers seemedto be like a flock, since they were “called away” from their houses like sheeps and the jangling of bells was barbarous and annoying.

Coketown was full with associations complaining about the passive attitude of people towards religion and their addiction to drugs, alcohol and sects. As a consequence, petitions, tabular statements, sessions in the House of Commons were really popular in Coketown. The members of the Teetotal Society, the chaplain, everyone, as the anaphor of “then came” clearly suggests, could furnish examples of the corruption affecting the inhabitants of Coketown; their portrait occupies the last lines of the text and the reader immediately notes the contrast between them (bad, never thankful, restless, capricious) and the “gentlemen” , that is, the addressees of the text. The last lines unveil a further aspect of life in Coketown: if in the first lines citizens seemed to be poor victims of the industrial system, without any choice, now they seem to be proud, dissatisfied and despicable people.

Summing up, the double-faced nature of industrialization seems to have a compensation on people who live industrialization: they were poor, worked hard and were “equally like one another”, but at the same time they got drunk, didn’t go to church and took drugs.

What interests me most for my project is exactly the multi-faced portrait of the Victorian society that comes out from the text. It will be useful to write a one-act play in which different characters, belonging to the industrialized society, will represent different stands about the I.R.

ANALYSIS OF MANCHESTER (1835) BY A.TOCQUEVILLE

The title of the text is quite explicit: it consists of space and time references, so that the reader immediately understands the text will describe Manchesterat the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The description is told by a third person intrusive narrator and consists of six paragraphs with different length.

The first paragraph describes the setting, the appearance of the city, starting from the natural landscape, that is, landform (undulating plain, hills, uneven ground) and hydrographs (narrow river, Irish Sea, streams, watery damp land). The narrator conveys an idea of peace and balance using adjectives like slowly, lazy, tranquil and the present tense (flows, unit). The idyllic image is soon destructed, quoting the artificial devices that modified the landscape (scattered palaces and hovels). Right from the start, the narrator unveils his pessimistic point of view about human impact on nature(scattered means something done without armory and order, quite different from the perfect beauty of nature) and, generally speaking, about the whole human society, using the device of contrast: palaces appeal to richness, splendor, greatness, while hovels are associated with poorness and misery; “everything attests the individual power of man, nothing the directing power of society” puts into focus the extreme gap between individual and society on the social level, which is the translation of a system of liberalism and free competition on the economic level. Moreover, the expression “exterior appearance of the city” immediately strikes the attention of the reader on form, appearance and it is a crucial point of the mentality of an industrialized society. The last line of the paragraph consists of narrator’s judgments: “capricious creative force” suggests the greatness but also the irrationality of human force, reinforced trough the alliteration of sound c; the second judgment is a criticism towards the fickleness of the government, whose action seems to be impulsive and instinctive instead of continuous and moderate.

The second paragraph puts into focus the artificial landscape of Manchester, starting from the symbol of industrialization, that is, factory. Factories are numerous and the reader understands their importance thanks to their position (on the top of the hills), size (six stories that “tower up”) and last but not least, thanks to the contrast the narrator creates between them and the “wretched dwellings of the poor”, whose location underlines the dependence of men who lived there from factories. In the paragraph land is described again, but it is no more the damp natural land, instead the bare land exploited by man to favor industry. The idea of exploitation and uprooting is conveyed on the phonological level using harsh sounds: wretched, stretches, scratched.

There is a short portrait about the mentality of people there: their only aim in life is collecting gold and they are so worried to reach the objective that they don’t even care about the simple beauties of life.

The narrator goes on providing a very detailed description of the streets in Manchester, using the devices of accumulation (bumpy pitted surfaces, heaps of dung, rubble from buildings, putrid stagnant pools) and metaphor (streets are like a labyrinth). It seems to the reader as if he could walk the streets and smell the fetid atmosphere. The metaphor of a medieval city with marvels in it is really interesting: it puts into relevance the contradictions of Manchester, where you can find poor shacks as well as structures on the cutting edge. Speaking about poorness, the narrator provides the example of the miserable cellars of common people, that remind the reader to the Roman catacombs. Speaking about technological advance, the narrator describes the palaces of industry, mainly appealing to hearing (the incessant and annoying noise of engine) and sight, in order to underline the bad impact of industry on the environment (the whistle of steam produces fog, the artificial colors of industry pollute water). Again, in the last lines of the third paragraph the narrator creates numerous contrasts between poor and rich, wealth and misery and judges the society saying it would be less fragile and helpless in a wild area. It follows that, according to the idea of the narrator, man seems to have weakened himself with his own hands.

The following paragraphs are about Manchester and the life-style of its inhabitants: Manchester seems to be quite different from the other cities: the atmosphere is so dark because of smoke that you cannot even see the rays of the sun in the sky and its sounds are peculiar. You will never hear hoofs, shouts of people laughing or singing on the streets but the sound of busy footsteps, rumble of carts and the beat of machinery.

The image the narrator provides about crowd is appalling: people seem to be like dull spectres, unaware of the world all around thembut at the same time restless ants yearning for accumulating goods.

The last paragraph insists on the contradictions of Manchester: it is a drain that fertilizes the world, that is, a single miser entity on which the wealth of the whole reality stands, a magic machine that turns muddy water into gold; people there are in the vanguard from a technological point of view, but they are like savage on the human point of view.

The description of Manchester is really impressive: repetition, metaphor and accumulation are the devices that interested me most in order to make up a clear idea about what living in Manchester in the early 19th century could mean. It will be a fundamental background for my project.

ACTIVITY ONE

BUILDINGS / LAND / WATER
A. de Tocqueville / scattered palaces and hovels,
thirty or forty six storied factories producing steam and fog,
roads: full of puddles and ruts,
narrow and twisting
immense workshops,
cellars: damp, repulsive / collection of little hills,
uneven ground,
damp land,
uncultivated land round dwellings / Irwell: narrow river,
Meddlock – Irk: streams with numerous bends,
fetid, muddy, stained with colours by industries
C. Dickens / machinery and tall chimneys ejecting serpents of smoke,
piles of buildings full windows,
large and small streets very like another,
chapels: warehouses of red brick,
buildings like one another (jail, infirmary…), / black canal,
purple river, because of ill-smelling dye

ACTIVITY TWO

Examples of accumulation:

Heaps of dung, rubble from buildings, putrid, stagnant pools are found here and there among the houses and over the bumpy, pitted surfaces of the public places; the accumulation of details puts into focus the inadequate hygienic conditions of the city

The fetid, muddy waters, stained with a thousand colours by the factories they pass  the accumulation of adjectives underlines the bad impact of industrialization on the natural landscape and makes the reader think about current problems (pollution, importance of natural sources…)

Examples of contrast:

Everything in the exterior appearance of the city attests the individual powers of man; nothing the directing power of society  the contrast makes the reader think about the connection between industrialization and individualisms: it seems as if everybody just thought about himself and did not care about the others’ problems. It follows that, as an example, you could find enormous palaces as well as wretched dwellings in Manchester.

It might be a medieval town with the marvels of the nineteenth century in the middle of it  the contrast marks the unbalanced distribution of wealth between the inhabitants of the city using a historical metaphor: as I previously said, richness (marvels, a precious material) and poorness (medieval town, small and scrubby) coexisted in Manchester.

Here is the slave, there the master; there is the wealth of some, here the poverty of most  the contrast is marked using the demonstrative adverbs here and there: if on one side there is richness and prosperity, on the other side a lot of people are poor and miserable

From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish; here civilization makes its miracles, and civilised man is turned back almost into a savage  the last sentence is full with contrasts, emphasizing again the double-faced nature of Manchester: it is a sewer producing gold, it is the crib of technological innovation and human advantage but men there are like savages

DRAWING MY PERSONAL CONCLUSIONS…

Even if the texts referred to different cities, I found their contents really similar. It means that even if industrialization was a complex process, it developed trough quite common steps everywhere.

Both descriptions were catchy and full with interesting points of reflection for the reader.

Both the writers put into relevance not only the industrial structures of the city but also their relationship with the natural landscape and the other structures of the city (houses, roads, jail, church…), so that the reader could perfectly understand how many implications the I.R. had on every aspect of life. Moreover, the image of society that emerged from the text was in both cases really complex: it didn’t focus on men as workers but their contradictions, thoughts and life-style were deeply analyzed.

I liked most Tocqueville’s description: I found it clearer and more effective than Dickens’ one, maybe because of the use of simple and easy to guess devices like accumulation, metaphor and last but not least repetition.