Hard Times Another Brick In The Wall Analysis

Noah St.Onge
Professor Scrivener
ENG 2210
12/16/2015
Hard Times: Another Brick in the Wall
During the late 1700's and early 1800's England experiences a technological and economic boom. This time period is known as the Industrial Revolution and it brought wealth and power to the population. New industries were born and with that came even further advancement in machinery and process. Goods were more widely available and were produced in better quality. This golden age had many adverse effects, however. Pollution, overcrowding, sickness, and lifestyle changes rippled though the landscape and population of England. Factory workers spent more time working and earned less money. Daily routines shaped into three steps with no variation; work,

Houses were constructed in confined areas with no space for ventilation, houses had no system to maneuver waste away from the drinking water or living spaces. The destitute flocked to "poorhouses" set up by the government, however, even those were designed to force the poor back out on the street. The lack of sanitation and overcrowding allowed for widespread disease. "Cholera, tubercluosis, typhus, typhoid, and influenze ravaged through new industial towns, especially in poor working-class neighborhoods." ("Introduction to the Industrial Revolution"). During the time Dickens wrote Hard Times all of these harsh realities he would have seen first hand. Watching the poor workers live in anguish and suffering must have grown his disdain for the Industrial Revolution. Hard Times would have been inspired by real world events that he personally witnessed on a day-to-day

Each day bells sound to signal the arrival of the workers to their humdrum duty in the factories. Each individual's responsibility was the same day in day out. Monotony bleeds from each aspect of the physical and social parts of the city. The streets are the same, the buildings look the same, the workers continue the same tasks at the same time and stick to the same routine. The emphasis of the sameness of everything including the workers works to show how the humans and machines blend together. The tedious and repetitive style of the work contributes to the image Dickens paints of Coketown; work in the factories are turning the humans into the machines they service. "The spiritual sphere is completely neglected in this type of society. People have, therefore, undergone a process of alienation: they have been transformed into machines...They have been deprived of their human warmth and lost their emotions and sentiments." ("Dickens and Popular Entertainment" 10). Drawing a parallel between the monotony of machines and the mechanization of the workers shows Dickens' view of the industrial revolution in a compelling light. The residents of Coketown are also portrayed as the same as one another. Individuality is not a characteristic that is valued by the city nor the residents of