Essay dell'estratto di Hard Times di Charles Dickens (Coketown), Prove d'esame di Inglese

Scarica Essay dell'estratto di Hard Times di Charles Dickens (Coketown) e più Prove d'esame in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! The extract from the “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens named “Coketown” narrates, using an unobtrusive third-person narrator, the radical change that the industrialization caused to the English working class in Coketown. It begins with a detailed description of the so called town. It contained several large streets as much as small streets. The red bricks buildings inhabited by any kind of people had become dark because of the smoke and ash. In fact, the industrial centre of Coketown was filled with machinery and chimneys out of which a considerable amount of smoke trailed itself. Dickens intensifies the description underlining the colours, which were mainly dark ones, and sounds with onomatopeias such as “rattling” and “trembling”. In this extract it is very relevant the use of word rhetorical speeches such as similes and metaphors. Furthermore Dickens clearly underlines the monotony of the workers’ lives with a vary of repetitions. This overview is in strong contrast with the concept of the following paragraph, where the products are associated with the words “comfort” and “elegancies”, clearly the opposite words that could be associated with Coketown’s attributes. Dickens even emphasizes the materialism claiming that the only things that are valuable are those that can be purchasable or sealable. As the town’s description continues it is interesting the use of the word “M’ Choakumchild”, an invented word that sounds like the phrase “choke a child” and it is evident the allusion to the smoke of the chimneys that don’t let people breathe. The extract is indeed centered on the people condition. The residents gathered in clubs every Sunday, listening and dancing to indecent songs. This is why the middle classes wanted to change their behavior. The Teetotal society showed that people where getting drunk everywhere and that it was quite impossible making them stop. Besides there where pharmacists and chemists that proved that when people were not drunk, they were taking opium. Dickens seems to agree with Mr. Grandgrind and Mr. Bounderly’s idea that the poor actually had good lives and they were ungrateful. But, by exaggerating his statement, he actually wants to claim the opposite.