Ture dickens

Charles Dickens had an unhappy childhood because his father was imprisoned for

debt and he was put to work in a factory. When the debt was payed his father was

released and he want sent to a school in London. He worked as an office boy at a

lawyer’s and studied shorthand and he became a shorthand reporter of

parliamentary debates and began to work as a reporter for a newspaper. In the

1836 he adopted the pen name “Boz”, publishing Sketches by “Boz” describing

London’s people and scenes, then he wrote The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick

Club, a humoristic and satirical novel. After the success of The Pickwick Papers,

Dickens started a full-time career as a novelist. Oliver Twist was published monthly

sent to a children's home. At the age of nine, he began his first job, receiving only a

bowl of soup three times a day. His second job was in a shop. After an argument

with Noah, Oliver was beaten by the owner, Mr. Sowerberry, and ran away the next

morning. He arrived in London very hungry, met here a boy called “The Artful

Dodger” who promised to help him. Dodger took him to the house of a man, Fagin.

Here there were many other boys to whom Fagin gave food and water. The next

morning, Fagin trained the boys to remove fine handkerchiefs from the girls'

pockets. In fact, Oliver, Dodger and another boy went out, Dodger and the boy tried

to steal the bag from a man, Mr. Brownlow in front of a bookstore. Oliver realized

that this was all wrong and that the boys were thieves, so he ran away, but was

accused of theft. But the owner of the bookshop said Oliver was innocent, so Mr.

Brownlow took Oliver with him to his beautiful home.

HARD TIMES

Plot

Hard times is set in an imaginary industrial town named Coketown. Mr. Gradgrind

an educator who believes in facts and statistics, has founded a school where his

theories are taught. He has two sons Louisa and Tom, who raised them alike but

repressed their imaginations and feelings. Gradgrind marries her daughter to a rich

man, Bounderby, who was 30 years older than she. They get married because Louisa

tries to help her brother, but it's an unhappy marriage. Tom is forced to leave the

country after robs his employer. Finally, Mr. Gradgrind realizes the mistake and
damage caused to his children, so he decides to abandon his obtuse and

materialistic philosophy.

Setting

Coketown stand for a real industrial mill town in mid-19-century Victorian England.

All the buildings are covered with the coal. To same the mill owners, the black

residue that wraps the town may symbolise productivity and industry. To others, it

may just be depressing.

COKETOWN

Coketown is a town of red brick or blackened by smoke and ash. There are a lot of

machinery and tall chimneys emitting smoke constantly. It has a black canal and a

purple river (because of the discharge and pollution). In this town there was

monotony, it was all the same: houses, streets and people were doing the same jobs

nand the same things. But against all this (who were very important in Coketown)

there were comforts and the luxuries of the "fine lady" who endured the noise and

was not interested in anything. The narrator contracts life in the industrial city with

the goods produced in the factories and their eventual destination, and the contrast

is that the goods produced in Coketown are destined for the homes of the rich who

don't want to known where they come from (example: the Fine Lady).

WORK AND ALIENATION

The building of the first factories changed the landscape in the interaction between

the individual and his work. People moved from the country to the town, and

London, Liverpool and Manchester became overcrowded centres where people

lived on the brink of starvation, disease and alienation. The development of the

railway changed the tempo. The main by-product was smoke. Descriptions of the

industrial landscape range from the impressionistic to the photographic and the

symbolic. Hard Times was neither Romantic nor photographic but satirical. The

literary works of the period were influenced by Comte and Karl Marx. Comte was a

representatives of Positivism, he thought that society of a man should be studied

with the same scientific approach as the world of nature. Positivism believed in

reason and science, there was foundations of new disciplines, such us biology and

psychology and Darwin’s theory. The environment caused much of the hardship and

feelings of alienation among the working classes that formed 80% of the population.
Factory work was regulated by machinery and the employer’s determination to keep

the machines working.