Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens’ works on “Dombey and Son” and “Hard Times” gives you a sense of reality concerning the Industrial Revolution. Both these pieces portrayed a point on moving out of the old and going into the new. The question is who did the “new” benefit?

In Dombey and Son, I liked the way Dickens gave a visual picture of what had happened. On page 496, “The first shock of a great earthquake….Houses were knocked down; streets broken through…enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up….buildings that were undermined and shaking,” I know this is concerning an earthquake but after reading these first few lines, I thought about Hurricane Katrina. I thought about how the visual aftermath of Hurricane Katrina affected me. It was sad and depressing. Yet in the turmoil of mess, the city continued on with the progress of their own agenda, building railroads. During Hurricane Katrina, some were quick to come to the aid of the people in need. Others and part of our government were a little slow in the aid of the people affected by the hurricane. In Dombey and Son, the builders of the tavern and eating shops were going to prosper regardless of the mess that the earthquake had created.

In Hard Times, Dickens used a similar effect of visuals to me. He provided a lot of details that gave you a true sense of what was really going on in those cities. On page 497, he wrote about the red brick being black, “…as matter stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.” In contrast to the red brick, Coketown had a main attraction just like the railroads in Dombey and Son; it was the New Church. The New Church was an exception to Coketown’s blackness. Also, you had your prosperous individuals just as you did in Dombey and Son. In Hard Times, it mentioned two individuals by the names of Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. Both these individuals only desired to have the best. On page 498 it emphasized their elite standings, “…they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter, and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat,” Well let me just say, they were much like the individuals that built the tavern and eating shops in Dombey and Son.

In closing, I enjoyed both readings. Once again the lower class was knocked out of the running. This was the Industrial period and the lower class was able to work factory jobs but they still suffered. Even in our society today, you still see the same difference. The lower class suffers more than the upper class. And people are still prospering from the new inventions that keep the world running.