Hard Times by Charles Dickens - How he mocked the educational system in the 1900's.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens - How he mocked the educational system in the 1900’s

TASK: What literary techniques does Charles Dickens employ in order to satirise the educational system of Victorian England in the opening chapters of ‘Hard Times’

The main literary techniques used by Charles Dickens is his use of exaggeration throughout the extract. Dickens exaggerates the names of the characters and the description of the characters to the point of ridiculousness. In doing this Dickens makes the opening of the novel stupidly hilarious getting the reader hooked into the novel making them read on for example “the speakers hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from it’s shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie”. Dickens is trying to make the point that the educational system in the victorian time is wrong and dangerous for example “this is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle I bring up these children. “Stick to facts,” The teacher Mr. Gradgrind is hooked on facts and he believes that everything evolves around facts and only facts. He even believes that to fancy something is a fact and to have taste is a fact. ! “We hope to have , before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force people to be a people o fact, and nothing but fact. You must discard the word fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it . You are not to have, in any object of ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact..... This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste” You can see how this statement alone is barmy,pathetic and stupid and you can see how this can be dangerous to children because the teachers are getting paid more for teaching the children more facts which makes the children have no life or personality. Dickens is mocking the educational system to the point of absurdity to prove the system wrong and dangerous!

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Dickens exaggerates his characters from there names to what they look like. He uses names for the characters in the form of puns. This is where the names refer to the personality, for example “Mr. Gradrind.” refers to him grinding the children down and “Mr. M’Choakumchild” which refers to him chocking the children with facts. Dickens also exaggerates the way the teachers look “square coat, square legs, square shoulders” this makes the teacher boring because he looks square therefor he is a square! Dickens describes Mr. Gradgrind as having a “ square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves.” Which is both very exaggerated and hilariously stupid. Also Dickens uses titles to exaggerate the novel for example “murdering the innocents” which really means murdering the children. They aren't really going to murder the children but I think that Dickens is trying to get across the point that the teachers are destroying them into lifeless children. All in all Dickens uses all these ridiculous, absurd and over the top exaggerations of descriptions and behaviors of the teachers to satirise and mock the education system of Victorian England

Another literary technique that Dickens uses is the use of metaphors and uses it throughout the extract, “he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them out of the regions of childhood at one discharge”. I think this is a great metaphor because it’s really imaginative, you can almost imagine the teacher firing facts into the children destroying there lives”. Another great metaphor is the comparison of the children to a pitcher. This is very clever because the children are like a jug and the teachers have to fill the jug right up to the top with facts. Dickens also uses the technique of allusion in the metaphor of the Arabian Nights story of the the forty thieves. In this story of the Arabian nights stories the thieves were put in a big urn and then the urn was filled will boiling oil and the thieves would be killed, or almost killed. You can see how this relates closely to the thought that the children have been put in a “vessel” and then the vessel is filled right to the top with facts and what was in the vessel was destroyed or nearly destroyed

Dickens also uses a lot of irony, particularly the part relating to Sissy and the subject of horses. All Mr. Gradgrid wants is facts, somehow when Sissy tells Mr. Gradgrind that her farther is a horse keeper, Mr. Gradgrind turns it round so Sissy’s farther job is completely something else .

Mr. Gradgrind: “very well then describe your farther as a horse beaker. He doctors sick horses,I dare say?”

Sissy “Oh yes, sir.”

Mr. Gradgrind “Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier and a horse breaker”

Sissy could never explain to Mr. Gradgrind that her farther looked after horses because according to Mr. Gradgrind that is not a fact therefor is not a occupation. You can see how Dickens has made this Ironic because he is trying to say that you cannot have a job if the job is not a fact! Dickens also makes clever descriptions of Sissy and Bitzer and how different they are. Dickens refers to Sissy as ”dark-eyed and dark hair, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun when it shone upon her”. Because Sissy is a new girl she has colour in her and has a life, she hasn't been educated-yet. Unlike Bitzer however is described as being “ lighet-eyed and light-haired that the selfsame rays of light appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed”. Bitzer is described like this to emphasizes that he has no colour or life because he is “educated”. Dickens has put this in to be very ironic because what he is trying to get across is the fact that if you have been educated in Victorian time you would have no life or personality

At the end of chapter two, Dickens finishes it off with his own comment “If he had learnt a little less,how infinitely better he might have taught much more” This statement rounds up most of the points he tying to get across to the reader that If you get this child and you fill it up to the top with facts you will destroy all other feelings and personality. They’ll never be the same after they have been educated, and that if this kind of teaching continues it will be damaging for society because the schools are getting paid to teach more facts which is not only wrong, it is criminally wrong!