How is Coketown described in Hard Times?

How is Coketown described in Hard Times?

Coketown is described as being “inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next” (27-28).

Where is Coketown in Hard Times?

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) published this 'Condition of England' novel in 1854. His setting was a mythical place called Coketown, partly inspired by a visit to the Northern industrial town of Preston where he had observed a strike.

Who are the hands of Coketown in Hard Times?

The “Hands” refers to the great majority of Coketown's population, those who work in its factories. 2. Blackpool's face looks intelligent, but he is not one of those workers who, “piecing together their broken intervals of leisure through many years, had mastered difficult sciences.”

What does Coketown mean?

Coketown – an Industrial Mill Town The fictional city of Coketown is a stand-in for real life industrial mill towns. Coketown was inspired by places like Preston, a town Dickens visited right before writing the novel.

Is Coketown real?

Coketown, the fictional city in Hard Times, the Charles Dickens novel based on Preston, Lancashire during the industrial revolution. ...

Why is the town called Coketown?

To add to Coketown's overall grimness, its blocky uniform buildings are covered with soot. This comes from the coal that is burned to power the factories. ... Maybe, that's why they call the place Coketown – "coke" is coal distilled into its fuel form.

What is the effect of the use of color imagery to describe Coketown?

The usage of the colours red and black helps add to an underlying sinister quality to the town, as red is the colour of blood and sacrifice, and black usually represents death and depression.

What is Coketown like?

Coketown is a town of red bricks but blackened by smoke and ashes, because there are a lot of machineries and tall chimneys emitting smoke constantly. It has a black canal and a purple river because of pollution.

What is the theme of Coketown in hard times?

• Quotations on the theme of Coketown in Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Quotations on the theme of the fictional town of Coketown, from the Charles Dickens novel Hard Times. No temperature made the melancholy mad elephants more mad or more sane.

What is the weather like in Coketown?

• Quotations on the theme of the fictional town of Coketown, from the Charles Dickens novel Hard Times. No temperature made the melancholy mad elephants more mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and down at the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather and dry, fair weather and foul.

What happened to Coketown?

• The production of coke generates considerable air pollution, and in the absence of any clean-air legislation at that time in Victorian Britain, one can only imagine just how polluted the air must have been for the people of Coketown. The fact that the town is named after its main industry suggests that this is all the town has going for it.

Where is Coketown in the first book?

• We are introduced properly to Coketown, the major setting of this excellent Dickensian novel, in Chapter 5 of Book the First. It is described in a way that forces us to see the link between Mr. Gradgrind's educational and utilitarian philosophy and Bounderby's approach to work, as it is a "triumph of fact":