Charles Dickens (1812-1870))_ Hard Times: CokeTown

Charles Dickens is one of the industrialism’s authors; the period of industrialism was described by Eric Hobsbawm as “the most fundamental transformation of human life in the history of the world” (P1818). Cotton industry was the first wave of the Industrial Revolution; the wealth in Britain was not shared with any poor. Considering this pollution and suffering Dickens wrote about Manchester, which he called the CokeTown. “It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but, as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.” Here Dickens was telling us about the change in color of the bricks houses due to the industrial pollution (caused by the machinery and tall chimneys). “It contained several large streets all very like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another…. all went in and out around the same hours, with the same pavement, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow” Dickens described the street of Manchester, a town inhabited by the people who worked there, who are the poor. They all did the same work, which was an everyday routine. “The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, and the town hall might have either or both.” (P 1829) Here Dickens left this interpretation to readers, he let us imagine what a jail and infirmary looked like and asked us switch them; imagine an infirmary becoming a jail.... He told us that there were facts and facts about the industrialism everywhere eyes were laid. “…Who belonged to the eighteen denominations… the labouring people did not. It was very strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning, and note how few of them…driving the sick and nervous mad” (P1829) Dickens emphasized on the suffering of the working class, they worked far from where they lived; only few of them were seen on the streets on Sunday driving their boss to church because that day was not a working day. I believe he referred to the rich man as a nervous and mad person. I agree with the author because rich people must have been mean and mad to make other human being go through life that way; they were nervous because they must have been waiting to be taken over by the poor at any minute of the life because those rich people still knew of the excessive inequality. “In short it was only in the case, that these same people were bad lot altogether, gentlemen; that do what you would do for them they were never thankful for it, gentlemen that were restless…that never knew what they wanted; that live upon the best…yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable.” (P1830) Dickens denounced the rich; he said they are all bad and unkind; all ungrateful and restless. No matter how hard the poor worked for them they were never satisfied, that made the poor worked to death without satisfying the bosses.