Dickens - Hard Times

An English Mill Town.
Source:  princes-foundation.org

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An American Mill Town.









Source:  levinemuseumofthenewsouth.blogspot.com

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I.  Activating Prior Knowledge

Charles Dickens was a writer during the Industrial Revolution. As a young man, Dickens was forced to leave school  and take a job in a factory when his father was thrown into debtor’s prison.  Many of his works served as social commentary on the state of England and English laws during this period of time. 

His characters and their stories reflected the struggle between the wealthy and the industrial poor striving to make a living in the harsh, unforgiving conditions.
Whether it was a miserly business man who comes to see the error of his ways
(A Christmas Carol), a young boy living a miserable existence forced into a life of crime (Oliver Twist), or a young man forced by an abusive  step-father to work in a factory (David Copperfield), we see the impact  that a significant and rapid change from an agricultural existence to an  industrial existence had on the people of the era.
 
While the writings are fictitious, their narrative about the state of man at this critical juncture speaks of frightening truths and harsh realities with the
added element of satire and humor to make the living bearable.

II. Setting A Purpose for Reading
Coketown cannot be found on a map and only existed in the imagination of Charles  Dickens. However, the images of life in industrialized England create a collage  that becomes Coketown. As you read the excerpt from Dickens’ Hard Times,  look carefully at how he describes the features of Coketown. Create a mental  picture of what you think Coketown would look like and ask yourself, “Would I  like to go there? Would I like to live there?”

III. Reading the Text (Read, Re-read, and Read Again)

HARD TIMES
Charles  Dickens

Excerpt Describing Coketown, from 
 
Chapter 5: THE KEY-NOTE 

... Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our  tune. 

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. It was a town of  machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed  themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in  it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of  building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day  long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. 
 
Stop! Can you answer these questions? If not, go back and re-read the passage.
From  the reading, give an example of imagery (use of words to produce mental
images of specific sensory experiences.)

It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound  upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the
next.

Stop! Can you answer these questions? If not, go back and re-read the passage.
How  would you describe Dickens’ opinion of Coketown based on the tone
of the passage?

These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from  the work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off, comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life which  made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these. 

Stop!  Can you answer these questions? If not, go back and re-read the passage.  In your opinion, did  the wealthy elite live in Coketown?

You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If  the members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there - as the members of eighteen religious persuasions had done - they made it a pious warehouse of red  brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamental examples) a bell in  a birdcage on the top of it. The solitary exception was the New Church; a  stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the door, terminating in four short  pinnacles like florid wooden legs. 

Stop!  Can you answer these questions? If not, go back and re-read the passage.  What did Dickens mean when he wrote, “You saw nothing in Coketown but what was  severely workful.”

All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The jail might have been the infirmary,  the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or  both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces  of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of  the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The M'Choakumchild  school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations  between master and man were ll fact, and everything was fact between the  lying-in (birth) hospital and the cemetery (death), and what you couldn't state in figures, or show to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in  the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end,  Amen

Stop!  Can you answer these questions? If not, go back and re-read the passage.  How would you describe the mood Dickens  was trying to create in this excerpt?

Source:  http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/coketown.html

IV. Personal Reflection - Respond  to the following questions in your blog. Be sure to include quotes from the text  to support your response.

Part 1 Response – Based on  your reading of this passage, how would you describe life in Dickens’ Coketown? Since this piece was in part a social commentary on life in England during the  Industrial Revolution, what can conclusions can you draw about what a real-life experience might be like in an English mill town?

Part 2 Response – You have been given to images of life in a mill town. Compare and contrast the  English mill town with an American mill town. What generalization(s) can you  draw about life in a mill town based on Dickens’ writing and the images?
 
V. Peer Reflection – Read one classmates’ reflections and  respond to what they have written. You may choose to agree or disagree with  their response. However, you must give sufficient and supported reasons for  your opinion.