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Essay about Hard Times/Charles Dickens

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The novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens offers a glimpse into the life and times during the industrial revolution in England during the nineteenth century. Dickens offers a wide range of characters from the upper class factory owner to the lowest class factory workers. He creates characters in this range of social classes and crafts this story that intertwines each person and their transformations throughout the novel. Almost every character in this story is complex and has characteristics that run deeper than their place in society, and this is what makes the novel so very important and intense. While there are many complexities linked to these characters, some do not appear to be as complex but in actuality …show more content…

For example, Bounderby seems to want others to think that he came from nothing, as did the industrial revolution. The revolution came after a time when technological ways of life were not considered to ever dominate society the way they eventually did. Bounderby seems to want others to believe that he was never thought to dominate “society” and came out of something to be the head of this minor empire in Coketown. Another comparison that can be made was how insensitive the industrial revolution was. Factories treated their workers appallingly and even children were forced to work extremely long days just to create this product. In the end all that mattered was the products made and the conditions of the workers were not even taken into consideration. The mindset of the factory owners was the profit and not the treatment of the people who actually allowed all of this profit to come in. Bounderby was also a very insensitive character in many aspects. In respect to others his insensitivity showed towards many people. His wife Louisa was an object of this tactlessness more than once. When they were first married, their honeymoon was a trip for Bounderby to watch over other factories, clearly more interested in the progress his factories were making than actually spending time with his new wife. When Louisa and Bounderby eventually split up, Bounderby was not willing to respond to the fact that Louisa was trying to gain emotional feelings

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