Critical Essay On Hard Times

[tags: Hard Times, Charles Dickens, Gradgrind, Family] - Hard Times Charles Dickens was known to be very controversial and outspoken in his books and Hard Times was no exception.

For an allegorical novel, Dickens' has a surprisingly complex character foundation.

The characters in Hard Times have both the simplistic characteristics of a character developed for allegorical purposes, as well as the intricate qualities of "real" people.

Through the epiphanies of many characters in this novel, Dickens shows their realization of this fact and how they plan to pursue their goals from there on.

These characters are used as mouthpieces to spread the theme to the reader.

These characters think and feel like we do and react to their situations in the same way that most of us would.

These attributes are what give the characters life and allow us to relate to their decisions....

has had its special admirers, particularly among those who see Dickens as a propagandist for their own political-economic ideology. He came away deeply sympathizing with the men but feeling doubtful about trade union organizers. So his Coketown is merely a horrible appearance, and in order to offer us a sharp contrast to Gradgrind and Bounderby, their outlook and style of life, he sketches a travelling circus to represent arts, skills, warm personal relationships.

We may join him in condemning an industrialized commercial society, its values, its economics, its education, its withering relationships, but this does not mean we have to pretend an unsatisfactory novel is a masterpiece, just because it favours our side. Because there was a big strike in Preston, he paid it a visit, but he found no drama there.

[tags: Dickens Hard Times Essays] - Charles Dickens' Hard Times Charles Dickens's Hard Times is one of the most important novels in the Victorian Age.

He presents an industrial society in nineteenth century in England. Dickens also presents bad social condition through his work and also shows lives of city people and industrial society in Coketown in England....