In the second paragraph the words “plain, bare, monotonous” convey the depressing environment of a school room.
Dickens describes Mr. Gradgrind with features to also show his attitude and personality. For example, he describes parts of Gradgrind’s appearance as being square (square also being associated with mathematical precision).
“The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,” which indicates maths and facts. He also uses metaphorical language to create irony because you can’t just use words literally in real life “hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface.”
In chapter 2, “Murdering the Innocents” Dickens uses the title- a quotation from Matthew 2:16- ironically as it describes the attitude and actions of the school, “murdering” the children’s imagination and creativity.
The chapter starts with the speaker from chapter whose name is “Thomas Gradgrind.” He describes the character’s attitude with no verbs. This gives the impression to the reader the man is too business like to bother with verbs for the tone is serious, crisp and business like.
“With a rule and a pair of scales and the multiplication table always in his pocket, Sir, ready o weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case simple arithmetic,” is a quotation from the first paragraph where Dickens is being ironic, for he thinks human nature, isn’t simple enough to be measured scientifically because there is a needs for imagination and sympathy.
Soon afterwards, Dickens uses alliteration (“to be filled so full of facts,”) to suggest the children are like a sponge that just absorb the facts forced upon them.
He also shows Gradgrind calling a girl not by her name but “Girl twenty,” which suggests to the reader that a name characterizes a person as an individual, therefore what Gradgrind called her meant she was just another product in the long line of the industrial process, all the same result. He then asks for her name, to, which she replies “Sissy Jupe, Sir.” This shows her father’s affection for her, which Gradgrind can’t understand. He replies “Sissy is not a name,” “Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia,” because its not fact. In addition, he shows no sensitivity.
Dickens describes Mr. Gradgrind asking what her father does, to, which she answers “he belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, Sir”; this is a type of circus. He despises circuses because they are entertainment for the imagination. He just “waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.”
Later in the conversation Gradgrind asks her to define a horse, but giving no time to answer says “Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!” said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behaviour of all the little pitchers. “Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the of commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.” By this, he humiliates her implying that she knows nothing, but in fact, she probably knows more about horses than Bitzer, through living in a circus. He thinks facts is the answer, but he doesn’t know how to handle and deal with horses.
Near the end of this chapter the teacher in Gradgrind’s school mentioned, Mir M’Choakumchild. Dickens has used the same method as with Mr. Gradgrind of the name representing the characters personality and attitude. Mr. M’Choakumchild seems to the reader, to choke the imagination out of the children. Dickens suggests this by the repetition of the word “same” as in the opening paragraph in chapter 1 of “facts”, “had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory on the same principles,” when describing Mr. M’Choakumchild. The words “in the same factory,” also implying they are the same products and are not treated as individuals, “like so many pianoforte legs,” Dickens simile suggests the dry, “wooden” teaching in Gradgrind’s school. When he characterizes Mr. M’Choakumchild’s appearance he uses phrases like “his ten chilled fingers,” to also mean cold and unfeeling, furthermore, a phrase like “his stony way,” to indicate lack of moral warmth.
Dickens adds a dire authorial comment a paragraph later:- “ah, rather overdone, M’Choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less how infinitely better, he might have taught much more!” to convey the idea that if he had become a better human being than he would have been a better teacher.
References to Morgiana in the tale of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves when she pours boiling oil over the thieves in pot vessels, made in the next paragraph. Dickens uses this to then write some imaginative language, which ironically criticizes Gradgrind’s school. “when from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber fancy lurking within-or sometimes only maim him and distort him?” to betoken the killing of the child’s creativity.
Chapter five, “Keynote,” starts to describe the industrial town of “Coketown” where Mr. Gradgrind’s school is situated. Dickens links the attitude towards education to the terrible life in the factory towns- the same miserable, repetitive life for the children and for the people in the factories.
“It was a town of unnatural red and brick like the painted face of a savage,” suggests the barbarism madness of all the lives lost in the factory.
Dickens also uses a visual image of a snake to also suggest the poison of human sprits, evil, and pollution with “machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.”
Further, into the second paragraph Charles uses a simile of the motion f a piston to describe tending to machinery like mad, wild out of control beasts, “piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.” The repetition of the word “same” is used again as in chapter two, and Opening paragraph chapter 1 of “facts.” Charles has also repeated “like one another” for similar reason of stressing that everyone’s the same not individuals.
Later he says that everything is driven by greed and profit, and because of this people drink and take opium(a form of drug) to escape the misery of their existence in factories, “would induce them to forego their custom of getting drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, with other tabular statements, showing that when the didn’t get drunk, they took opium.
In the opening chapters of “Hard times,” therefore Dickens gives a harsh cord neglect ion of the ruthlessly practical philosophy of untilitasaism. We are sown how it results in misery for schoolchildren and factory workers. Dickens criticises the way people are treated as cogs in a machine, not human beings what need relaxation, entertainment and sympathy.