English Coursework
Hard Times
Through close analysis of the first two chapters of Hard Times, explore Dickens’ attitude towards education.
In the first chapter, Dickens introduces us with a glimpse of the story, with a descriptive insight into the school and its policies. We are not revealed the names of the characters in the opening chapter, but it introduces the schoolmaster by mere description of character and appearance. This, rather than introducing us by name, gives us a close and detailed description of one of the main characters, the schoolmaster, his views and manifestation of the school itself. This will help us understand the schoolmaster, Mr Gradgrind, and brings us to a clear understanding of his most important policy, a constant motif throughout the chapters, ‘Facts’. We are also unaware of the setting but, again introduced by appearance. This is all significant to the story itself, as this is all a factual description, underlining the schools factual education.
‘Now what I want is, Facts’, this is our first insight into the school’s basic principal, Fact. The first indication we get, to the importance of facts is that it is given a capital letter, ‘Fact’, this gives it emphasis, signifying its value to the school’s manifesto. ‘Plant nothing else, and root out everything else…..nothing else will ever be of any service to them’ this exemplifies the school’s education policy in just a few words. Gradgrind bases knowledge and understanding on mere fact, obliterating any other idea of perception. ‘A plain, bare monotonous vault of a schoolroom’, this epitomizes the school on a whole, its lifeless and dull. As we see later on everything, the school is lacking of colour, pupils look pale, colour drained from their face, a reflection on the school itself, boring and tedious. The passage establishes Gradgrind as a ‘square’ character ‘and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations’, ‘The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead. This is a geometrical description of the schoolmaster, portraying him as a square character, and again factual, even his appearance is mathematical. The passage continues with a graphic, factual description of the schoolmaster, using his features for emphasis of his character. ‘The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial’, again we are introduced to Gradgrind’s dry, dull character, but commanding and ‘dictatorial’. As the paragraph continues to assess Gradgrind we realise that everything about Gradgrind is factual, form the way he looks, to the way he dresses. ‘Trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,-all helped by emphasis’, referring to his neckcloth, he force-feeds the pupils obstinately with facts.
