Discussion question 3

James Harthouse is described as the "kindling to fires" whereas Louisa watches fires.  Compare and contrast these two metaphors and how each character is affected by them.

Outside Source #2

This is an NPR interview with Sir Ken Robinson, whose TED talks discuss the extent to which organized education inhibits creativity. It's interesting to see this idea of "fact-based," "rigid" learning as seen in Hard Times talked about in a more modern, non fiction setting.

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/22/155225161/how-do-schools-suffocate-creativity

Outside Text 1

Most of us have read Fahrenheit 451 and are familiar with its plot. In this novel, fire is also used as a symbol, representing both destruction and progress. Similar to Hard Times, fire has a different affect on each character. (If you have not read the book, or don't remember it, here is a link to a short summary: http://www.shmoop.com/fahrenheit-451/summary.html)

Discussion Question 2

Certain characters, mainly Louisa, seem to be more affected by fire than others. How does fire add to the characterization of each of these characters?

Analysis of Coketown and Fire Imagery

The descriptions of Coketown evolve as the story moves from Book 1 to Book 2, signifying a change in the town’s way of thinking. In Book 1, Coketown is described as a very industrial town, that “It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled… Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects like gold that had stood the fire.” (p. 27-28) Images of smoke, furnaces and fire create a dense and suffocating atmosphere, emphasizing the dry and machine-like aspects of the town. Significantly, the smoke never uncoils showing the towns insistence on staying the same, never evolving. However, in Book 2, Coketown is contrasted as a more bewildered town than it used to be: “A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, not that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter.” (p. 111) The fact that the soot and smoke now changes its path so often is a direct contrast to the “serpents of smoke” from earlier that never got uncoiled. The smoke symbolically shows Coketown’s change from a rigid town, to a town that is a softer version of its old self.

Additionally in Book 2, Dickens introduces a new image, an image of “frying in oil”, when he is describing Coketown: “The whole town seemed to be frying in oil. There was a stifling smell of hot oil everywhere. The steam-engines shone with it, the dresses of the Hands were soiled with it, the mills throughout their many storeys oozed and trickled it. The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the breath of the simoom; and their inhabitants, wasting with the heat, toiled languidly in the desert.” (112) This new imagery intensifies that notion of dry suffocation, describing the town as a “simoom” and “desert.” The imagery of fire is still present here, but Coketown has become a hotter, burning place where its citizens “waste with the heat.” In Book 1, there was ash, soot and smoke—all aftermaths of fire. Yet now, the town seems to be caught right in the middle of the blazing flames that bring about change and reform. Even the Hands of time, who seemed to be the all-knowing guide of Coketown, were “soiled with it” as it no longer had control of its own town. 

Discussion Question 1

Fire is used both as a symbol of destruction and as a source of new life. In Hard Times, is fire more frequently portrayed as destructive or as enlightening?

Great Quotes

“Yet it is an indubitable fact, within the cognizance of this history, that five minutes after he (Bounderby) had left the house in the self same hat, the same descendant of the Scadgers and connexion by matrimony of the Powlers, shook her right hand mitten at his portrait, made a contemptuous grimace at that work of art, and said ‘Serve you right, you Noodle, and I am glad of it!’” (191).

 

“Not until the light porter announced that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs.Sparsit arouse herself from her reverie…’O, you Fool!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, when she was alone at her supper. Whom she meant, she did not say; but she could scarcely have meant the sweetbread” (123). 

“’Put that clock aboard a ship an pack it off to Norfolk Island, an the time will go on just the same. So ‘tis wi’ Slackbridge every bit’” (149).

 

“’You see this place; you know what sort of a place it is; you are aware that there’s not a completer place of its size in this kingdom or elsewhere- I don’t care where- and here, got into the middle of it, like a maggot into a nut, is Josiah Bounderby’” (165).