Here is another example describing children:-
“All backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.”
I think the mention of ‘warehouse room’ is a reference to industrialisation. This gives the reader a good mental picture of what the speaker’s head would look like. Multiple adjectives are used to emphasise points. Here is a quotation from the first chapter:
“The speakers mouth, which was wide, thin and hard set”
This extract is used to describe the speaker’s mouth; the adjectives are “wide”, “thin” and “hard”.
As ‘Hard Times’ was written in 1854 it contains quite a lot of language that is no longer in use today like “pugilist”, “peremptorily” and “quadruped”. There is also quite a lot of technical language that is not in common usage today e.g. “orthography” and “etymology”
Personification is not used very often in the opening two chapters because personification uses a lot of imagination and imagination has no place in the school. The only example of personification I could find in the chapters was:
“His very neck cloth trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp”
This refers to the speaker and how his tie looks like it is strangling and choking him, like he is doing to the children’s imaginations.
The name of each chapter and the first book come from extracts from different part of the bible. “Book the first. Sowing” refers to Galatians 6:7, the bible extract is:
“For what ever a man soweth, that he shall also reap”
This establishes a religious link. I think Dickens is implying that God is on the side of the romanticists not the empiricist. Chapter one is called “The one thing needful”. This comes from Luke 10:42 “but only one thing needed, Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her”. This reference underlines the important of listening to wisdom and that it is more important than leading an active life. Chapter two “murdering the innocents” comes from Matthew 2:16.
“When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to have all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity, who were two years old and under murdered, in accordance with what he had learnt from the Magi”
This extract from the Bible is about when King Herod the Great ordered that all boys under two be murdered therefore “Murdering the innocents”. This links into ‘Hard Times’ because the teachers are ‘murdering’ the children’s imagination.
The first two chapters of ‘Hard Times’ are set in a Victorian empiricist school. There is very little description of the classroom itself. Although it does tell you that the room has:
“…ray of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely whitewashed room”
This tells you that the room is very stark and plain and unimaginative. I think Dickens included this because the teacher’s frown upon imagination so it reflects what the teachers are creating them like, blank dull and unimaginative. This mirrors Dickens contempt for empiricism.
Characters
The main character in ‘Hard Times’ is Sissy Jupe. Sissy Jupe is the daughter of Signor Jupe, a member of the Circus. Sissy is like a child should be, full of imagination and life. In this book Sissy’s physical description is used in contrast to another character called Bitzer who is a student at the school.
“The girl was so dark eyed and dark haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun when it shone upon her.”
In this description Dickens is saying that Sissy looks healthy, tanned and she seems to absorb sunlight. I think Dickens has described Sissy like he has because Sissy is an example of a romanticist child, full of imagination and life, Dickens thinks that children should be like Sissy so he gave her a good healthy description. This is what Dickens had to say about Bitzer.
“The boy was so light eyed and light haired that the self same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed... His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in natural twinge that he looked as though, if he were cut he would bleed white.”
Dickens’s description of Bitzer is the complete opposite of his description of Sissy. Sissy is healthy and colourful where as Bitzer is pale and white looking. Dickens has created him like this because he Bitzer in an empiricist child and Dickens thinks that is wrong so he has given Bitzer an unhealthy description.
In the second chapter Mr Grabgrind refers to Sissy as “Girl number twenty”, thus maintaining an impersonal relationship between pupil and student. This also gives Sissy no identity. Identity comes with imagination and charisma is not what the school wants. When Sissy tells Mr Grabgrind her name he replies:
“Sissy is not a name. Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia”.
Sissy is not a very common name but just because it’s not normal she shouldn’t have to change it. Sissy is a shy self-conscious girl. You can tell this because Dickens uses these phrases when writing about her physical behaviour:
“Trembling voice” and “She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time.”
Both extracts come from the part where Mr Grabgrind asks Sissy for the definition of a horse and she is alarmed by this demand. She is unable to answer, so Mr Grabgrind asks Bitzer instead,
“Quadruped Gramnivorous. Forty teeth, namely, Twenty-four grinder, four eyeteeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.”
Bitzer's answer is purely factual involving no imagination. Bitzer’s name gives you an insight into what he is like. He is full of bits of facts; I think this is where the name came from. Bitzer is an example of a model student at the school. He is unhealthy looking. I think Dickens is trying to say that this is not the way children should be. They should be more like Sissy.
Mr Grabgrind is a retired wholesale hardware merchant who owns the school in which Sissy is taught. He believes in fact and fact alone. Dickens keeps describing his “square forefinger”. This emphasises the square’s hard sharp unforgiving shape. He is described as a:
“Cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of children at one charge.”
This is describing how he is full of fact and how intent he is in filling children full of fact. It also is a reference to the military precision in which he runs his school. He tests the children about the use of fact in life, about why you would not have a carpet or wall paper with representation of something that you would not have on your wall or floor in real life.
There is a teacher in the school called Mr M’choakumchild. Mr M’choakumchild’s name gives an insight into what he is like with children. He chokes their imagination out of them. In the end of the second chapter he is described like “Morgiana”
“…in the forty thieves looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M’choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brimful 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!”
Morgiana is the slave girl in the Arabian knights tale of Ali Baba and the forty thieves who killed the thieves by pouring boiling oil into the jars in which they were hiding and choking them. He is compared to her because he chokes the imagination of children just like Morgiana choked the thieves. This also links in with his name, Mr M’choakumchild. He as a teacher is described being,
“Like so many pianoforte legs”
This extract is about the fact that so many new teachers are being turned out believing the same thing acting in the same way, it is like they are factory-made as are pianoforte legs. It also says that:
“…Mr M’choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less how infinitely better he might have taught”
I think this means that if he had known less fact he wouldn’t have thought he knew everything and therefore taught better.
Each of the characters in ‘Hard Times’ represents something. Sissy represents what Dickens thinks children should be like. Bitzer shows what an empiricist child is like Mr Grabgrind and Mr M’choakumchild are empiricists and Dickens portrays them as very evil, malicious men. Through the way Dickens describes the characters it gives you an insight into his views on empiricism and why he prefers romanticism.
‘The Star’ by Alasdair Gray
‘The Star’ is about a boy called Cameron who lives in industrial Glasgow. In ‘The Star’ Cameron sees what he thinks is a star through his window and it falls to the ground. He goes outside picks it up and becomes mesmerised by looking at it at every opportunity. A teacher catches him with it at school and to avoid it being confiscated he swallows it.
The Star was written by Alasdair Gray (1931-present) in 1951 it was published along with two more short stories called ‘The Spread of Ian Nicole’ and ‘The Cause of Some Recent Changes’.
Alasdair Gray was born on the 28th of December 1931 into a poor Glaswegian family. His father worked in a cardboard box factory after receiving an injury from World War One. Alasdair grew up in industrial East Glasgow.
It is set in industrial East Glasgow the same place where Gray grew up. The time in which it takes place is 1951 and rationing only stopped in 1952 so it is likely that Cameron’s family is still being affected by rationing. It mentions that he has an aunt in Canada. He shares a room with his brother that suggests that his family are poor, as they do not have enough space. When Cameron goes down to pick up the ‘star’ he says to his parents.
“A’m gawn out.”
And his mother replies.
“See you’re no’ long then”
She does not seem to care that he is going outside in the dark by himself; this shows you that his parents don’t care about him much. When he is watching the star out the window his parents are doing other things paying no attention to him or what he is doing. They miss seeing the star, he is by himself not joining in with them. He is quite isolated from the rest of his family. Cameron is similar to Alasdair Gray in many ways. They are both Scottish and grew up in eastern industrial Glasgow and they both come from poor families. I think Gray has based the boy Cameron on himself in earlier life and based Cameron’s upbringing on his own.
The school in the story is a primary school. The desks in the schoolroom are positioned in rows with each desk separated from the rest. Cameron sits by himself at the back. This is another piece of information that makes him seem isolated from his schoolmates as well, not just his family. The teacher in the school is very strict because he is going to take the star away from Cameron he is not described very much. This differs from Dickens, as ‘Hard Times’ has a lot of description in it. This is about the only information regarding his physical description:
“The mouth opening and sitting under a clipped moustache.”
This description of his clipped moustache makes him seem very neat almost military. In the classroom there is very little positive communication between pupils and teacher, just like in ‘Hard Times’.
In ‘The Star’ there are two illustrations. The first illustration shows Cameron sitting down on a windowsill next to a sink, looking out at the iron factory that is near his flat. He looks like he has quite scruffy clothes, another indication of his family’s poverty.
In the second illustration, Cameron’s face is in a star surrounded by other stars and in some of the other stars there are more faces. I think this picture is of heaven and Cameron choked on the ‘star’ and died. I think this because at the end of the story it says that:
“The teachers face moved further into the distance, teacher classroom, world receded like a rocket into warm, easy blackness leaving behind a trail of glorious stars, and he was one of them.”
This extract is what people generally think it would be like dying, everything goes black and then they die. The last part of the extract
“…and he was one of them.”
Is saying that he had gone and became a star. I do not think the ending is supposed to be understood, and I don’t think that it should be taken too seriously as though it could happen because the title of the book you find it in is ‘Unlikely Stories, Mostly’
Gray goes into very intricate detail when describing the things he sees in the star. However in ‘Hard Times' the characters are described more than the objects.
This is how Gray described the star:
“Shone white and blue…space around him like a cave in an iceberg…pattern of a snow flake...crystal lattice into an ocean glittering blue black waves under a sky full of huge galaxies…”
This is a very imaginative description of the star and that’s what I think the star represents, imagination, because when he looks into it he sees different things. It contains a snow flake (as described in the extract above) a flower, moon landscape or:
“It contained an aloof eye with a cool green pupil which dimmed and trembled as if seen through water.”
When he is at school he is forced to hide his star (imagination) to prevent the teacher from getting it. This is similar to ‘Hard Times’ because of the way the children would have had to hide their imagination from their teachers as well. It gives him comfort when he feels insulted or neglected.
Everything in Cameron’s life seems very bleak except for ‘the star’, for Cameron it is something out of the ordinary. It helps him escape his dull life and enter this imaginary world.
Here are some examples of the bleak physical description used to describe things in Cameron’s life:-
“He found it midden on a decayed cabbage leaf.”
This contrasts the decaying cabbage leaf of Cameron’s normal world to the magnificence of the incredible star.
“The stairs were solid and coldly lit at each landing by a weak electric bulb.”
If you picture the extract with the dim bulb barely lighting the cold stairs it gives you a very dark and bleak impression.
In ‘Hard Times’ there was quite a lot of archaic language used. However in ‘The Star’ there is none of this because ‘The Star’ was written in 1951 ninety six years after ‘Hard Times’ and in a century a lot of change happened to the English language.
In ‘The Star’ there is no use of personification or extended metaphors whereas in ‘Hard Times’ there is one example of personification and several extended metaphors. Similes are very rare in ‘The Star’. The only one I could find was
“The star shone white and blue, making the space around him like a cave in an iceberg.”
There is no real use of repetition in ‘The Star’ or multiple adjectives unlike ‘Hard Times’.
I think Gray believes that childhood should be an imaginative time, free from responsibility and the cares that come with adulthood. Dickens believes the same.
Comparing the two stories
There are many similarities in ‘Hard Times’ by Charles Dickens and ‘The Star’ by Alasdair Gray despite them being written ninety six years apart.
Gray and Dickens share the views that imagination is very important in a childs life and this comes across in their writing.
Education plays a key role in both stories. It seems to play the enemy in both stories. The importance of childhood is also a key topic.
Out of the two I think I prefer ‘The Star’ because it stirs the imagination more because of the ending and it makes you think about what it means and I like that in a story.
I think that ‘The Star’ is more poetic than 'Hard Times' because of the detailed description of the star and the mystical ending.
I think that although there are differences, ‘The Star’ and ‘Hard Times’ are two closely linked stories.
