Essay on The Importance of Sleary's Circus People in Hard Times

The Industrial Revolution generated the perception that applying solely logic to everyday activities could maximize productivity and efficiency. Charles Dickens explores the dangers of neglecting emotions and imagination in his novel Hard Times. Dickens separates Hard Times into three books: Sowing, Reaping and Garnering in order to reveal the negative consequences of industrialization and forsaking imagination for facts through the events, settings, and characters in the novel.

To see the world in this cold logistical way comes at a steep price, part of your own humanity. To Charles Dickens, open-mindedness is the gateway for empathy and to disallow creative thinking leads a stunted ability to feel compassion for thy fellow man. Charles Dickens wrote of the struggles the children faced. Through the use of figurative language, Dickens could criticize this social constipation in England as forward as he wanted in his novels because you can’t arrest someone for an opinion in a fictional story (Dutta, 2014, para. 14). He didn’t outright bite his thumb at the authorities by flat out stating they were doing an abysmal job, but he did write about the extremely poor treatment of children and how one should treat them with compassion (Dutta, 2014, para.

Connotation- Dickens tries to show how the lower class slaved along, usually working many days without pay.

During the 1800s, Charles Dickens was one of the most acclaimed writers of his time. He did not just write books but he was a journalist, and play write. Many of his experiences and people in his life influenced his books. Because of this he was known as not just a writer but a writer for “the people”. He wrote about the workhouse, poverty, disabilities, social class, and so much more that effected his era.

In Charles Dickens books you can often find the rich and powerful to be portrayed as cruel and greedy. In his books described the rich to be heartless. He had a great compassion for the poor. His compassion came from when he was a kid, and his family went into debt. (Charles) He was sent to a workhouse to pay off his family’s debts. (Charles) He wrote thirty-three books in his life time. Charles Dickens died before he could finish his last book The Mystery of Edwin Drood. (Dickens) The world of Charles Dickens is best understood through his own life, industrialized London, and scriptures concerning the poor.

Dickens portrayed his hope for society through the life and transformation of Scrooge. In the beginning, it is Scrooge’s monetary wealth that defines him. It is his thriftiness and refusal to donate to the poor that contribute to his wealth, and Scrooge does not see any problem with this. When Scrooge is asked if he would like to donate to charity, his reply is that the supports prisons and workhouses, which are all the charity the poor need. The idea that anyone who could not support himself or herself did not have a right to live is one which Scrooge and a majority of the wealthy Victorians agreed. It is through Scrooge’s behaviors and justifications for his treatment of the poor that Dickens conveys his criticism of the upper class

Dickens argues that a person should be defined by their own self, character, personality, actions, and other traits which are specifically not their clothing, which is their wealth, which is their social class. He includes several descriptions of the higher social classes, both as opposites to and comparisons with the dress of the poor, but also as examples of how such arbitrary, socially constructed class can hurt even the wealthy – that this is a universal issue that must be resolved, not just a ‘poor person’ problem.

Dickens described the aristocracy was being unfair to the people and treat them in uncharitable ways. Dickens’ wrote about a aristocracy killed a man’s child and hanged the child high above to prove the symbol of the aristocracy. The aristocracy gave a gold coin to the man as the compensation after he killed the man’s child. Dickens disliked the way that the aristocracy used, but he also disliked the way revolutionaries used. From Dickens’ view, there was no real revolution because the revolutionaries were fighting in a barbaric way and only violence, but the Revolution had to be carried out. "I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge… It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."(page 2932-293)In the last few paragraph, Dickens wrote down the importance of the French Revolution and the result that brought to the people.

The excerpt itself does fantastic work in the way of elaborating on the living conditions of this group of people and doesn’t put priority on a specific group. The Excerpt instead provides a detailed account as to the different people that inhabitant different parts of the workhouse specific to their age and health status. The detail in which Dickens goes into is remarkable and really provides a clear picture to variety of domains within this area. A bit of knowledge of this time period is truly needed in order to grasp the broader themes that are in the

Dickens’ view of society having evil morals and ethics is conveyed with the use of hunger and an unjust law system. The bad morals of the wealthy aristocrats and the unfair treatment in prisons help portray why society would be angry. The people use these problems in society to fuel their revenge against the aristocracy so they can be treated equally. The people, starting an uprising against the aristocracy, will finally have the revenge they

We see that Charles Dickens recognizes the poverty in the people. He describes the people as “… men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous

Working as a child in order to support his family while his father was in debtor’s prison, Charles Dickens had a firsthand experience with social injustice in the Victorian Era. Seventy years after the French Revolution began, Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities, which tied the injustice and oppression of the Revolution to his own time. Dickens believed in the novel as an important form of social commentary, and he used A Tale of Two Cities to shine a light on society’s problems. One of the themes of this novel, man’s inhumanity, shows how people can be incredibly cruel and heartless towards others. Dickens illustrates this theme of man’s inhumanity to his fellow men by using the symbols of blue-flies, scarecrows, and knitting.

Dickens develops inhumanity as something innately present in human beings, but that is only truly revealed when there is lack of consequence for revealing it. Society then shifts to accept man’s inhumanity and becomes a destructive force, brutally hurting everything in its path and breeding the inhumanity of revenge in the people it wrongs. This inhumanity developed by other inhumanities is why Madame Defarge so mercilessly hunts the Evrémonde family. It is why the peasants of the French Revolution are equally as inhumane to the aristocrats as the aristocrats had previously been to them. The brutally honest theme of man’s inhumanity toward his fellow man is part of what makes A Tale of Two Cities such a memorable book, as it serves as not only an entertaining piece of literature, but also a warning to generations to come.

In Hard Times, Dickens presents life philosophies of three men that directly contradict each other. James Harthouse sees one’s actions in life as meaningless since life is so short. Mr. Gradgrind emphasizes the importance of fact and discourages fantasy since life is exactly as it was designed to be. Mr. Slearly exhibits that “all work and no play” will make very dull people out of all of us. He also proclaims that one should never look back on one’s life and regret past actions. Dickens is certainly advocating Sleary’s life philosophy because the subjects of the other two philosophies led depressing and unhappy lives. This is made clear when Louisa realises her childhood of fact without fancy has ruined her, when Tom’s life falls apart after leaving his father’s home in rejection of his strict parenting, and when Mr. Gradgrind himself realises the faults in his own philosophy and devotes the rest of his life to virtue and charity.

Dickens through his books wanted people to realise that children have needs, they need loving homes, not to be hit, gets a education and be allowed to think for themselves. He thought that if he wrote about poor children’s problems then maybe wealthy readers will do something about it.