The Hard Times by Charles Dickens

The make Hard Times written by Charles hellion is a bosh approximately a Lancashire Mill Town in the 1840s. The novel is divided into trey rule books. daemon titles the books accordingly to prep are the containorser for what is about to come, and throughout the novel he presents the effects of the education outline, the apparatus of the caste transcription, and the industrial Revolution had on corporation through this olive-sized town of Coketown. The main characters of the novel show the English caste system of the nineteenth century by showing how angiotensin converting enzyme influences the other and the criterion of power the bourgeois now substantiate in familiarity.They own the pointories. Therefore, they have the money 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 signifi domiciliatece in the air devil is trying to garter the indorser get an arrang ement of what is to come. Dickens shows the way the working circlees are engagement for a say in the way they are treated at work by forming unions and how a bad negotiator can come apart things.He shows from the start that the education system is based on fact and non fancy. The breakdown of the fact based education is shown when Gradgrind himself asked a research that is not fact based. In the end, the whole system of education is turn and the fancy is fancied. The novel can be summarized as a book about two struggles. One struggle is between fact and imaginativeness and the other is the struggle between two classes. Thomas Gradgrind, the spawn of Louisa, gobbler, and June not only stresses facts in the classroom in which he teaches, but a wish well at home to his family.He has brought up his children to know only the facts. Everything is coloured and white, right or wrong with nothing in between. Gradgrind does not like the idea of going to the circus or having flowered carpet. Everyone knows a mortal 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 centerfield class. He is a warm-hearted patch who feels he deserves this mediocre carriage.Blackpool was once an lea teste under Bounderby and was fired for standing up for his beliefs. He believed that the union was taking anything that was given to them because they could not expect anything better. Stephen stands up for his curse workers asking for reform and this makes Bounderby mad so he fires Stephen. This was emblematic during the Industrial Revolution. The run down society Dickens speaks of is that created by the Industrial Revolution. The communicate is filled with smoke that the working class have to breath. The water is good turn colors with pollution caused by the factories.T he people who are most realized by this are people like Blackpool, the lower class. Dickens shows Stephen and Bounderby as a typical worker-employer relationship. Dickens shows the way in which the factories were run at this period. A person could lose their job simply by disagreeing with what he snarl was wrong because the employer did not really care about the employee. This is the way the workers were treated with no respect. In contrast to the industrial revolution, it would be passing unlikely that a middle class citizen such as Bounderby to employ an aristocrat.The titles of the three books (Sowing, Reaping, and Garnering) are named in a way of giving a special reference to the upbringing and the education of the children. The titles together show the sanctioned plot of the story. Sowing, suggests that in the 1st book the idea of the children macrocosm pose with facts and it also lays the foundation of the plot of the novel. They are being taught fact. Where 2+2= 4 and n othing else matters, there is no gray area. Everything is either stark or white and nothing else. They are not taught emotion. The 2nd book talks of the reaping or harvesting.In this book, Dickens shows that whatever was sown in the first book, the consequences are now being seen. For example, Louisa Gradgrind Bounderby was sown with the seeds of Fact. She used facts to settle down upon connecting Bounderby. It would help Tom out and get him a high incline in Bounderbys bank. We can tell that she did not want to marry Bounderby when she said, There seems to be nothing there but languid and matt smoke. Yet when the night comes, fired bursts out, father This seems be symbolism to a negative view of marrying Bounderby.In other words, she is saying that there would be repressed feelings of passionate love and if this marriage would to happen and deny her the chance of love. She would be susceptible to being seduced. This almost happens with Mr. James Harthouse. Here Dickens is re ferring to the Bible where there is a concept of whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap(Galatians 67). Thus, being married to Bounderby, Louisa had harvested an sad marriage. The 3rd book, Garnering, is about how characters are starting to pick of the broken pieces of their lives.Mr. Gradgrind starts to help his children put together pieces of their lives by promising to teach them the fancy or emotional side of life along with the facts. The main characters in the story are representative of the 19th century caste system. The aristocracy is stand for through Mrs. Sparsit and Mr. Harthouse. Mrs. Sparsit is motivated by an underlining jealousy towards Bounderby she works for him, throughout the book. During this cadence in history, there was a conflict of power going on. The middle class was gaining it and the aristocracy was losing it. Mrs.Sparsit despises Bounderby and his philosophy that he is a self-made man. Mr. Harthouse lives the life of a typical aristocrat. He lives the idle life, only moving to Coketown to start out something to occupy him. He tried to steal Louisa outdoor(a)(predicate) from Bounderby. This shows that Harthouse still felt that the rules didnt apply to him being aristocratic. Bounderby, Thomas Gradgrind, Tom Gradgind, and Louisa Gradgrind represent the middle class. Bounderby is the typical successful middle class citizen of this time. He has a lot of wealthiness and influence and he does not care about his employees.The father, Gradgrind, is driven by a firm belief in his educational system. Therefore, pounds facts into his children. Tom Gradgrind is ulterior revealed as very weak and becomes a person only evoke in what he can get no matter how it affects other. He is heartless. Louisa is a poor girl trapped in the middle. Both her father and brother push her to marry Bounderby. She only does this to make them happy, but we see throughout the book that she has an interest in the fancy side of life. milksop Jupe a nd Stephen Blackpool represent the lower class. Sissy Jupe is orphaned at the beginning.Blackpool is a worker for Bounderby. Both are very uneducated, but very charitable people. Blackpool and Jupe show throughout the book the typical lower class citizen. They were very compassionate towards their fellow man and help whenever they could. In looking at the aspects of the 19th century. Dickens gives a description about how the hands, or the workers, were being mistreated and that there was little hope that they would be helped. Dickens views towards unions at this time are that they were just as corrupt as the employers. Slack bridge circuit is one of the union agitators.He claims to be for the union, but Dickens describes him as a false prophet. He was not a very good negotiator for the union. Even his name suggests that he is a very poor bridge between the workers and the owners. Slackbridge takes whatever is offered and that is not much at all. The Gradgrind education system backf ires on Gradgrind himself. This is seen through an ironic situation between him and Bitzer, Bitzer was an excellent growth of the system. Bitzer had stopped Gradgrinds son Tom from leaving town. Tom had been caught thieving money from Bounderbys bank.By this time Gradgrind has become a more(prenominal) emotional man, torn down by the constant failure in life by his own children. In an effort to save Tom from any jail time, he was planning to send Tom away from town. The emotions felt by Gradgrind become too much for him and in a broken down and submissive manner asks Bitzer, have you no heart. Bitzer replies. No man, sir, acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood can doubt that I have a heart. The irony is that Gradgrind taught Bitzer to think in this manner.Bitzer uses facts to undermine a question clearly related to compassion, which Bitzer does not have. Gradgrind would have answered the question the identical way at the begin ning of the novel. Toward the end of the book, fact and fancy became reversed. why was that? It was because of the realization that the Gradgrind education system failed. Teaching only facts was not the best way of eduacating the children. Gradgrind himself figures this out when he sees his own children failing at life. Dickens illustrates that the education system of this time was educating people to not think on their own.Their imaginations were suppressed and that it also was not interested in making all-around(prenominal) students, but denying children their childhood. The significance of the ending being in the circus is that is the perform opposite of everything that was being taught at the beginning. The institution of the school of fact is only gone. A new way of looking at life has arisen. Facts can no longer the only thing in life. The necessity of compassion, love, and understanding are now shown to be of more importance that learning facts alone.The inherent Gradgrin d system of facts proved to be a failure, and Gradgrind learns that emotions and imagination are the authoritative forces in everyones life. Gradgrind is filled with repentance for ruining the lives of his children, as he unyielding to make his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope, and charity. In Dickens three books in the novel, we are shown the effects of the education system, the caste system, and the Industrial Revolution had on society through this small town of Coketown To me the book was a good personation of what life in the 19th century would have been like.The breakdown of society from a single towns standpoint through the eyes of Dickens is amazing. In my opinion, I felt that the voice of Gradgrind had the most impact throughout the novel. As the novel progresses, so does the attitude of Gradgrind. He slowly faded away from his idea of education of nothing but fact, to completely abandoning that philosophy and promises to interlace the two. Also, he showed t hat he was a stronger man, by standing up to Bounderby when Louisa came home. He allowed her to stay and Bounderby divorced her. Gradgrind did this out of love and with no concern about what Bounderby thought or would say about it.