Hard Times by Charles Dickens, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Hard Times by Charles Dickens e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! CHAPTER 2 1. Sissi Jupe knows what a horse is. She was born in an environment where horses lived with her. She probably knows better than anyone in the class what a horse is. She doesn’t know what a horse is according to Encyclopedia, she doesn’t know the theoretical definition of a horse. This is an example of Dicken’s criticism against school system. Theoretical knowledge has to go with practical knowledge and personalization. We have an example of how theoretical education was like. The school system is based on theory only, it is not students centered, but it is teacher centered. The teacher pours knowledge into the mind of students. Students are like vessels to be filled with knowledge. This episode shows us how Dickens exaggerates reality: it was part of Dickens style and his literary belief: if I exaggerate reality, then people will look at it with more attention. In order to attract the reader’s attention and the attention of those who count in society he creates exaggerated characters and situations. Talking about how reality is widened by Dickens in order to make something happen in reality is correct. 2. We have realistic description of some characters. Bitzer, Sissi’s classmate, provides a typically scientific description. There’s a sort of opposition between Sissi Jupe and Bitzer: this is a stylistic device created to anticipate how positive connotated Sissi is, and how negative connotated Bitzer will be. Thanks to the description of the characters, he directs the reader’s opinion. He describes Bitzer’s eyes as almost nonexistent: eyes mirror the soul. He’s got very short, light hair. He’s almost as light as a ghost. Whereas Sissi is made of flash and blood, she’s passionate, she may not conform to Mr. Gradgrind System, but she’s a real living being. CHAPTER 4 1. At the end of the novel Dickens will tell us with a twist of the plot that Mr. Bounderby had tell a lot of lies: he didn’t have a hard life, he wasn’t an orphan, he sent his mother away in order to look as an orphan, he was well loved in his family, he has never been abandoned, he never slept in ditches. He built up this character because he wants to attract people and pitiful attention at him, he wants to appear a self-made man, he wants to appear as someone who is not. This is an artificial self-made man. He’s a quite good merchant, he’s rich and wealthy. He belongs to high classes, but he’s not a self-made man, he’s not strong enough to be one and he’s not solid enough to be a real self-made man. He was made by life circumstances but he was not the kind of man he wants the readers to perceive at first. Hypocrisy is an aspect of Victorian Society, which Dickens condemns. Victorian society is a society, whose appearance changes according to the perspectives. Hypocrisy concerned marriage, church, education, charitable attitude of rich people. A sad truth of Victorian society was for example the exploitation of workers, children still had to work in factories to help their families, and people could not divorce because that would not look nice in society, but living terrible life inside the family. 2. Mrs. Grandgrind she’s the opposite of her husband, she’s a victim, she couldn’t be anyone else. She’s not considered a living and thinking being. She lives under a risky health condition. She was overwhelmed by Mr. Grandgrind love for facts. Mr. Grandgrind made her situation even worse: she could not express her opinion, she had no influence in the bringing up of her children, she had to follow Mr. Grandgrind and stick to his ideas of education. Mrs. Grandgrind is an exaggerated character: she has no soul, no strength, no opinion, it is as if she was invisible, her opinion counts nothing. She can’t rebel, she’s not strong enough, she can’t leave Mr. Grandgrind, that’s not proper. She has been drained of her life essence, it is as if she lost her soul, individuality, personality and rationality. CHAPTER 5 1. The description of Coketown: it is a fictional city. Its name it’s a compound word. Coke is a type of coal. Thanks to coke, a raw material, the Industrial Revolution began in Britain. In this town coke is the fuel that allow the city to live and produce wealth. The reader realizes that the town is the architectural counterparts of the characters living in it: Coketown is characterized by fact and squareness in its architecture. 2. The town is dirty with soot from factories chimneys. We find the first comparison in the description of the town. On one side we have the industrial description, on the other we have an attempt to natural life, which becomes negatively connotated. The skyline was constituted by factories. Smoke is depicted as if it was a snake. All waste materials from factories would get into rivers: it is a reference made to dye factories. There was no life in this river and it had an artificial color: purple. The movement of the city reflects the movement of manufactural activities: the steam engine goes up and down and it is compared to a natural element, negatively connotated: the head of an elephant. In order to give the reader the idea how nature is absent from this industrial city we have architectural elements compared to natural elements, but negatively connotated. Nature can’t find place in here, it is as if it had been banned from Coketown. The natural elements are in opposition to architectural elements created by men. The references are not positive, as if peace could not be found in the natural world. 3. Individuality no longer exists in Coketown, the human being does not exist in Coketown: workers are described as people absolutely like one another, living life in the same way, having the same working time and leisure time, going at the pub to forget their lives. They live in buildings, which are all the same, they live in streets, which are all the same. There is no possibility for a factory worker to have his real, individual, original life. Coketown was and industrial city, it was thanks to workers that Coketown could exist. Coketown is a symbol of all industrial towns in England: workers lived anonymous, sad, dangerous life from the point of view of health (the town was polluted and people lived this pollution). The name of Coketown would be heard with disgust by the upper classes, because it was an industrial city, it was a bad city, it was not a touristic spot, it was not a nice place to live in. People tend to forget that it is thanks to towns like Coketown that they can have rich furniture, luxury, accessories. CONVERSATION BETWEEN LUOISA AND TOM Hard Times is a view over Victorian society. Dickens was born and lived in it, he worked in factory and then he became a novelist, he became richer and he had a more comfortable social position. The most important characters in the novel belongs to middle and lower classes. There’s another teacher figure: Mr. M’Choackumchild. His name gives the idea that his job is chocking the children metaphorically. Louisa is the eldest children, Tom is the second boy. They belong to middle classes, being the children of Mr. Gradgrind. In this part of the book they are young and they are talking about the way they are feeling. A very sad episode is the description of the circus arriving in town. The circus is all but facts, so it was forbidden to Tom and Louisa to go and enjoy a show, to go and see what a circus was like, it was forbidden to have fun. Being children, they were very curious, so curious that they peeped into the tends of circus. They were caught peeping and they were shouted at by their father. They are both reflecting upon their life and both of them came up with the conclusion they are both leading unhappy life. We can perceive their personalities. Sissi is now living with them, she will never be considered a member of the family but she will live with them for the rest of her life. 1. Tom is extremely sad. He has no self-confidence and he likes to think of himself as a victim of the family and he calls himself a donkey. He has developed the idea of his family as a jail.