Thinking activity - For Whom the Bell Tolls

Yesha Bhatt, ma'am, has been given the task of this blog. I'm responding to one question. 

What is the attitude of Robert Jordan towards the war? 

Ernest Hemingway : 

Ernest Hemingway, in full Ernest Miller Hemingway, (born July 21, 1899, Cicero [now in Oak Park], Illinois, U.S.—died July 2, 1961, Ketchum, Idaho), American novelist and short-story writer, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. He was noted both for the intense masculinity of his writing and for his adventurous and widely publicized life. His succinct and lucid prose style exerted a powerful influence on American and British fiction in the 20th century.

Attitude of Robert Jordan the war:

When you look at him one way, Robert Jordan's the ideal Hemingway man. Once a country boy slash Spanish professor in Montana, he's come to Spain to fight for the country he loves and morph into a demolitionist. He's a very capable soldier with formidable self-control, no fear, and a strong sense of duty. He always prefers to "take it straight" and stare the hard truth in the face, not live with comforting superstition. He knows his way around firearms, explosives, Spain, the Spanish people, politics, and just about everything that comes his way. Unflappable.

Taken another way, he's a piece of cardboard . To some he just seems too unfazed by everything, too sure of himself. He doesn't seem to have strong feelings or passions , no powerful motivations or attachments, no glaring flaws, and, bottom line, no personality,Or humanity. He supposedly loves "Spain," but we can't really find any passion in it or explanation for it. As such, you could argue that he's just a bad protagonist – unbelievable and uninteresting. If you don't find the guy compelling, reading about his "great sacrifice" at the end has little emotional impact.

The two pictures actually go together – if you take Robert Jordan as just that all-mastering man, he's going to wind up looking like a particle board if you probe for anything deeper in his character. Robert Jordan does look a lot like that at the beginning of the book.

The thing is, we think that over the course of the book, he becomes something more. Although "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is the suspenseful narrative of a risky military mission, at its heart it's really the narrative of the transformative four-day education of Robert Jordan. It's the making of a real man, a real hero, somebody much more than the can-handle-anything, don't-care-about-dying tough guy we first meet. So when he sacrifices himself at the end, we do feel for the guy, and admire him.

Robert Jordan as a Square

No bones about it, in the beginning, Robert Jordan's pretty square. He doesn't really live for himself, or have much of a self to live for: all he cares about is doing his duty and serving the cause. Check out this revealing thought bubble he has in the third chapter:

And that is not the way to think, he told himself, and there is not you, and there are no people that things must not happen to. Neither you nor this old man is anything. You are instruments to do your duty. 

Or this snippet of dialogue with Pilar:

"And you have no fear?"

"Not to die," he said truly.

"But other fears?"

"Only of not doing my duty as I should." 

Besides his political/military cause, Robert Jordan doesn't have anything else to live for, nor does he have a genuine zest for life. This forms a contrast between him and his antagonist, Pablo.

Pablo's love of his horses, and, we would add, care for his friends, have made him unwilling to risk anything for the cause; he just wants to "enjoy life," as Anselmo says. Robert Jordan can't really relate to that: "I wonder what could make me feel the way those horses make Pablo feel". 

We might add that, given Robert Jordan's lack of feeling, we don't really get how he's so attached to Spain and the Republic. 

Robert Jordan the Former Fanatic

This position of Robert Jordan at the beginning of the book is actually a stage in an ongoing process of "education." Prior to the Robert Jordan we met, there was Robert Jordan the die-hard leftist revolutionary/zealot. Yep, zealot –Robert Jordan compares his early experience in the war with the Communists to religion:

You felt, in spite of all bureaucracy and inefficiency and party strife, something that was like the feeling you expected to have and did not have when you made your first communion. It was a feeling of consecration to a duty toward all the oppressed of the world which would be as difficult and embarrassing to speak about as religious experience and yet it was authentic. It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something that you had never known before but that you had experienced and you gave such importance to it and the reasons for it that your own death seemed of complete unimportance; only a thing to be avoided because it would interfere with the performance of your duty. But the best thing was that there was something you could do about this feeling and this necessity too. You could fight. 

Our take on this? Because Robert Jordan had nothing to live for as an individual, he really wanted to believe a cause could be completely just. That way, he could give himself to it utterly and lose all trace of his individuality. Hence his fanaticism or, as he calls it elsewhere, his "bigotry."

Unfortunately that comforting illusion of struggling for something absolutely right starts to disintegrate as he actually begins fighting and experiencing the reality of wartime violence. Then he discovers Gaylord's, a luxury hotel for the Communist higher-ups in Madrid where he begins to spend time. At Gaylord's he meets Karkov, "the most intelligent man he ever met" , and the man who really starts that education of his: Karkov says he wants him "to know some things."

Karkov works to break Robert Jordan's unbending idealism/naiveté/"bigotry" by exposing the reality of the Republican war effort, and the Communist Party – its lies, its brutalities, its realpolitik . Karkov is the teacher figure for Robert Jordan; even at the end of the book, after having made real best friends and met the love of his life, Robert Jordan thinks of Karkov: "I was learning fast there at the end. I'd like to talk to Karkov".

Robert Jordan the Real Human Being?

So, by the time we meet Robert Jordan, he's not quite the "Child of the Revolution" he once was, but not much has come to fill the void left by that either. In the wake of lost idealism, he just seems not to care for anything strongly. He can't quite live for the cause the way he did before, but there isn't exactly anything else to live for either. That very sense of duty he speaks of in the past tense in that flashback, as if it were gone, is still certainly there, as we saw.

As Robert Jordan's three-and-a-half days with the guerillas unfold, he begins to build relationships with them, which inject a new life into him. He comes to really care for them. Already by Chapter Three, we see indications of something besides that love of duty, brought on by Robert Jordan's admiration and growing attachment to Anselmo:

He resented Golz's orders, and the necessity for them. He resented them for what they could do to him and for what they could do to this old man. They were bad orders all right for those who would have to carry them out. 

He's quick to correct himself, though; that passage from Chapter Three above about being "only instruments" is what immediately follows this one.

But then he sleeps with Maria for the first time. By the next day, everything feels really different. He admits to Pilar that morning that he cares for Maria "suddenly, and very much," and is himself clearly surprised by that. He also says he cares for Pilar very much, so romantic love isn't the only thing that's opening him up; a powerful kind of friendly love is as well.

Maybe all of the above. What is clear is that, by the end, he's come to think of Anselmo, Pilar, Agustín, and Maria as the family he's never really had. This makes us wonder if the reason that Robert Jordan didn't really care for himself before is that he's always been deeply lonely: he certainly didn't have a good relationship with his father.

Near the end of the book, Robert Jordan thinks the following:

He knew he himself was nothing, and he knew death was nothing. He knew that truly, as truly as he knew anything. In the last few days he had learned that he himself, with another person, could be everything. 

Even here, he still doesn't fully understand himself. When death comes, while it won't be fearful, it won't be easy either, because he realizes how much there is for him to miss. He's grown much more attached to the world, and especially a few people in it, over the course of a few days. His chief comfort in dying doesn't turn out to be that his mission has succeeded. Rather, it's that he's helped his friends, and that they'll continue to live: "I don't mind this at all now they are away," he tells himself. His sacrifice means so much more than it would have before, since now, with Maria and the new family, he's really losing something by giving himself up.

So,maybe in the end, after his blitz "four day education," Robert Jordan turns out to be more than a piece of plastic. Maybe he turns out to be a real human being. But you've got to be the judge of that.

Words Count  - 1639

Images  - 07

Gifs - 04

Thinking Activity:On Being Asked for War poem,and The Second Coming by W.B.Yeats

 Introduction : 

William Butler Yeats is widely considered to one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

William Butler Yeats born on June 13,1865, Sandymount,Dublin,Ireland- died on January 28,1939, Roquebrune - cap - Martin,France. He was Irish poet, dramatist, and prose writer,One of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923.

Notable Works : 

“A Vision” • “At the Hawk’s Well” • “Cathleen ni Houlihan” • “Easter 1916” • “Four Plays for Dancers” • “Last Poems and Two Plays” • “Leda and the Swan” • “Responsibilities: Poems and a Play” • “Sailing to Byzantium” • “The Celtic Twilight” • “The Countess Cathleen” • “The Green Helmet” • “The Herne’s Egg” • “The Second Coming” • “The Tower” • “The Wanderings of Oisin, and Other Poems” • “The Wild Swans at Coole” • “The Winding Stair”

Evaluate 'On Being Asked for a War Poem '

‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ is a poem by W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), written in 1915 and published the following year. It’s one of Yeats’s shortest well-known poems, comprising just six lines, and sets out why Yeats chooses not to write a ‘war poem’ for publication.

Original Poem : 

"On being asked for a War Poem" is a poem by William Butler Yeats written on February 6, 1915 in response to a request by Henry James that Yeats compose a political poem about World War I. Yeats changed the poem's title from "To a friend who has asked me to sign his manifesto to the neutral nations" to "A Reason for Keeping Silent" before sending it in a letter to James, which Yeats wrote at Coole Park on August 20, 1915. 

The poem was prefaced with a note stating: "It is the only thing I have written of the war or will write, so I hope it may not seem unfitting." The poem was first published in Edith Wharton's The Book of the Homeless in 1916 as "A Reason for Keeping Silent". When it was later reprinted in The Wild Swans at Coole, the title was changed to "On being asked for a War Poem".

About poem :

There is something of a contradiction to this poem; in a war poetry collection, it is a poem that refuses to speak about war. The poem says that it is not the place of a poet to write about politics, but that the poet instead should limit his interference in the world to pleasing his companions. The poem is written in iambic pentameter,rhymed abcabc.

The opening statement is forthright and conversational about “times like these”, or times of war- the enjambment, or running over the end of line, mimics everyday speech. When the poet writes of “a poet’s mouth” being silent, he is using a technique called metonymy. Like metaphor, metonymy substitutes one thing for another. Metaphor does this by contrasting different things (“He was an animal”) but in metonymy, something closely related to something else is substituted. For example: “the crown” may refer to the Queen or royalty, or “the press” may to refer to the newspapers. Both are closely connected. Here, the “poet’s mouth” represents (because it speaks) his poetry.

A statesman is a political leader. Here, it is asserted that poets have no “gift”, or ability, to tell statesman how they should make decisions. This seems to say that poetry has no place in intervening in politics, and the poet no role in making big statements about wars and what causes them. Note the semi-colon: this opening statement about the world in the macrocosm ends here.

Another word for interfering. This key word in the poem gives us a hint of the poet’s attitude to those who try and write activist or political poems: they are ‘meddlers’, troublesome interferers. The tone is obviously negative. “Meddling” in the lives of old men and young girls carries a lighter and happier tone however- a sense of play.

A quick change in imagery and reference point, from the macrocosm to the microcosm, from the world of politics to the world of intimate acquaintances. The new scene is lazy (“indolence”), relaxed, one of beauty (“youth”) and innocence.

This completes the scope of the poet’s influence. Does this mean that poetry is suited to everyday lessons and life? That the poet’s role is to appeal to beauty and wisdom, youth and age? These certainly seem narrower limits to the role of poetry than ‘setting statesmen right’. Yeats, however, would surely argue that poetry’s concerns are higher than political contingency.

“The Second Coming”

"The Second Coming" is a poem written by Irish poet W.B.Yeats in 1919,first printed in The Dial in November 1920,and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and second Coming to allegorically describe atmosphere of post-war Europe. It is considered a major work of modernist poetry and has been reprinted in several collections, including The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. 

Historical Context :

The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the first World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence that followed the Easter Rising at a time before the British Government decided to send in the Black and Tans to Ireland. Yeats used the phrase "the second birth "instead of "The Second Coming "in his first drafts.

 The poem is also connected to the 1918-1919 flu pandemic; In the weeks preceding Yeats’s writing of the poem. His pregnant wife Georgie Hyde-Less caught the virus and was very close to death. The highest death rates of the pandemic were among pregnant women- in some areas, they had up to a 70 percent death rate. While his wife was convalescing, he wrote "The Second".

Click here for read Original Poem - The Second Coming

About poem : 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The speaker describes a nightmarish scene: the falcon, turning in a widening “gyre” (spiral), cannot hear the falconer; “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold”; anarchy is loosed upon the world; “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned.” The best people, the speaker says, lack all conviction, but the worst “are full of passionate intensity.”

Surely, the speaker asserts, the world is near a revelation; “Surely the Second Coming is at hand.” No sooner does he think of “the Second Coming,” then he is troubled by “a vast image of the Spiritus Mundi, or the collective spirit of mankind: somewhere in the desert, a giant sphinx (“A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun”) is moving, while the shadows of desert birds reel about it. 

The darkness drops again over the speaker’s sight, but he knows that the sphinx’s twenty centuries of “stony sleep” have been made a nightmare by the motions of “a rocking cradle.” And what “rough beast,” he wonders, “its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

Form : 

“The Second Coming” is written in a very rough iambic pentameter, but the meter is so loose, and the exceptions so frequent, that it actually seems closer to free verse with frequent heavy stresses. The rhymes are likewise haphazard; apart from the two couplets with which the poem opens, there are only coincidental rhymes in the poem, such as “man” and “sun.”

Examples :

Contagion

When Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns to Minnesota from a Hong Kong business trip, she attributes the malaise she feels to jet lag. However, two days later, Beth is dead, and doctors tell her shocked husband (Matt Damon) that they have no idea what killed her. Soon, many others start to exhibit the same symptoms, and a global pandemic explodes. Doctors try to contain the lethal microbe, but society begins to collapse as a blogger (Jude Law) fans the flames of paranoia.

Virus 

A real life account of the deadly Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala, and the courageous fight put on by several individuals which helped to contain the epidemic.

Based on real events during the 2018 NIPAH Virus outbreak in Kerala. The plot is set in Kozhikode and follows the various stages of the epidemic from identification to its total annihilation. It portrays heroic moments that helped in effectively controlling the Virus from spreading further. The film explores the collective paranoia created by the Virus outbreak and how it disrupted the life of individuals, both victims and health care professionals. The saga of a group of brave people who stood up in the face of adversity, risking their own lives, fighting with all their will.

Reading for Pandemic: Viral Modernismby Elizabeth Outka, 

COVID-19, like previous outbreaks of infectious disease at the turn of the twenty-first century,has reawakened interest in the 1918–1919 Spanish influenza pandemic. As we wrestle with theunknowns and strive to contain the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the1918–1919 influenza pandemic operates as a poignant benchmark; how do morbidity, mor-tality, and case fatality rates of COVID-19 and Spanish flu compare? What can the publichealth response to the flu—or lack thereof—teach us about social distancing measures in thepresent? Does the Spanish flu’s seasonal waves foretell similar, cyclical resurgences ofCOVID-19? When will it be safe to lift social distancing measures without seeing a resurgencelike that observed in flu cases in 1918–1919?

In Viral Modernism,Outka“flip the era’s centralmodernism is often characterized by fragmentation and experimentation: discon-certing, stream-of-consciousness narratives imbued with myth and mourning and cynicism. Itis typically understood as a response to the untold violence of World War I and rapidtechnological advances at the turn of the century—innovations which, in turn, enabled aruthlessly efficient model of industrial and scientific warfare. In short, WWI is conventionallyunderstood as the central trauma of the modernist era. But the tremendous loss of life andlingering aftereffects of the pandemic must have been formatively traumatic for the “LostGeneration”of artists and authors, as well, Outka insists. This is a deceptively simple assertionbecause,or switching our lens—it requires anew microscope.

References :

https://interestingliterature.com/2020/06/wb-yeats-being-asked-war-poem-analysis/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_being_asked_for_a_War_Poem

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/william-butler-yeats/the-second-coming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)

Words Count - 1716

Thinking activity of 20th century From Modern Times to the era of Great Dictator

Study of Frames in Charles Chaplin's "Modern Times" and "The Great Dictator"

Here we shall ponder upon some of the frames of two movies, Modern Times and The Great Dictator. Charlie Chaplin was considered as polymath in the earliest years of film industry. While studying modernist literature, one can certainly go through these two films. Because some works of art are timeless. Because they fit in almost every arena of time and scenario. 

Frames from "Modern Times"

The significance of clock and it's hands. The second hand moves faster, which represents working class of society. Minutes hand can be seen as middle class society. And hour hand moves slower, so it can be said that rich class, aristocrats tend to have moving slowly with arrogance, engaging in leisure activities such as hunting animals and organizing kitty parties. Because of richness, they govern many areas of society and they can create new norms and regulations which restrict the other lower class of people.

Factories and mills were being equipped with new inventions of technology and machines were occupying the human jobs. Due to this unemployment, many people were roaming like sheep without direction. One term is used for one such generation: Lost generation. A word can be used for those people: Sheeple. 

Gigantic machines and littleness of humans. In a way, this frame is depicting the dangerousness and domination of machines and submissiveness of human capacity.

As mentioned above, mill and factory owners, land owners had nothing to do with much of the hardworking jobs. So they indulge in such leisure activities such as solving jigsaw puzzle and reading newspaper. One more thing can be seen here which is education. Educated people use the resources around them and make more money from brain power. The factory owner is playing puzzle game which is a mindful activity just like playing chess. This difference of mental activity done by rich class aristocrats and physical activity and hardwork done by lower class or poor people makes big social gap between the two classes.

We can consider this frame by looking at the sentence, "Big Brother is Watching You." This sentence from the novel 1984 by George Orwell is evident in today's highly pressurized surveillance of today's bureaucracy. This surveillance system can be seen as dictatorial ruling in society. Half naked, muscled man recieving orders from suited and booted official. This scene makes one think that mind power is greater than muscles power. Moreover, one can say that money power is more greater. But from liberal view point one can always question that by risking privacy, how one can work freely ?

This is a representation of leisure activity done by working class people. Because of lack of food, they turn to the toxic addiction such as smoking and they feel relaxed for a while from work. But Big Brother is Watching the layman.

Humans are lubricant oil for machines. This is one of the significant frame in the film. Industrialization and machinations of factories left humans as nut and bolts of machine. For technology, humans are nothing but spare parts. Monotonous job of fitting the bolts on assembly line suggest the mundanity of humans.

Frames from "The Great Dictator"

Big sized weapons, which are still relevant to the modern times. The more weapons a nation has, the more powerful it becomes. The greatness of a country is nowadays measured by it's powerful weapons. 

The power structure flows from upwards to downwards. This is how the orders are passed from high power authority to lowest of the servants. The "obedient" which has nothing to do but accepting the order and servitude. The current political power also works the same way. In government bodies, different circulars are conveyed and the working offices have to abide by the new rules.

In order to gain favors and acceptance, politicians tend to touch the soft corners of public which is children. Such political stunts are still relevant in today's time. Politicians knows the mass psychology and also know how to win people's heart. In order to collect vote majority they follow such practices. The face of Hynkel shows the hypocrisy of politics.

The value of other officials is very low in the eye higher authority. Any agitation or protest may result in permanent detaining or transfer. In current time we can see that honest officials don't stay at one headquarter for long time, because they don't accept bribes and favors but they work honestly. One honest officer is not liked by the group of corrupt officials. One good mango cannot survive longer in the group of other waste mangoes. Either the good mango has to be put on other basket or it has to get wasted among other mangoes.

Dictators are majorly in self-love. They give orders to prepare statues and portraits of themselves so that their identity remains recorded in the history. People come under the influence of the gigantic lifestyle of power people and start making temples of them instead of questioning them.

People in power enjoy the leisure activities and make their schedule as busy as possible so that they can create an impact on the public and make public think that our leader is doing many activities at a time and still has some time to think about us - public.

The barber shop is also considered as the discussion corner of various political events. Barbers also take keen interest in discussing politics with their customers.

Some officials are so close to the power people that they encourage them to make some decisions which are harmful to the society and world. In this frame, Garbage is provoking Hynkel to have more wars and pacts with other nations and encourages Hynkel to become a great dictator of the world.

The dream sequence begins after Garbage's dialogue. Hynkel's hunger for power is highlighted in this frame. He plays with the balloon which is printed as world map. He dreams to be the great dictator of the world.

When one plays too much with fragile things, they get destroyed. The balloon of world map is burst which is a significant symbol that excessive hunger for power leads towards the destruction of the world.

The reading of the word Liberty is ironically highlighted in this frame, the replacement of Hynkel with barber fits aptly into this scene as barber is climbing the stairs instead of Hynkel. In the dictatorial government, only laymen and working class people can best explain the value of liberty.

The double role of Charlie Chaplin makes significant mark in the film. People think that Hynkel is making a speech but it is barber who is giving a remarkable note on liberty and equality. All have equal rights to live peaceful life and earn good wages. No discrimination should take place where all humans are treated equally. Overuse of technology and machines can lead a nations to war and destruction. Humans become a small spare part of machines and become senseless and robotic. This can dehumanize the entire society and then entire world.

Such is the timelessness of Charlie Chaplin's work. It is still relevant to the current time and applicable in many aspects of life.

Words Count  - 1198

Images - 21

Gif - 1

Assignment writing: Paper no. 104(Literature Of Victorians)

 Assignment writing: Paper no. 104(Literature Of Victorians)

This blog is Assignment writing on paper 104 (Literature Of Victorians) assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Name: Archana Dave

Paper: Victorian literature

Roll no: 03

Enrollment no: 4069206420220008

Email ID: archanadave1212@gmail.com

Batch: 2022- 24( M.A. Sem - 1)

Submitted to: Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Thematic Study Of 'Hard Times'

Introduction 

Hard Times, novel by Charles Dickens, published in serial form (as Hard Times: For These Times) in the periodical Household Words from April to August 1854 and in book form later the same year. The novel is a bitter indictment of industrialization, with its dehumanizing effects on workers and communities in mid-19th-century England.

Louisa and Tom Gradgrind have been harshly raised by their father, an educator, to know nothing but the most factual, pragmatic information. Their lives are devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination, and the two have little or no empathy for others. Louisa marries Josiah Bounderby, a vulgar banker and mill owner. She eventually leaves her husband and returns to her father’s house. Tom, unscrupulous and vacuous, robs his brother-in-law’s bank. Only after these and other crises does their father realize that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

Major Themes 

Fact vs. Fancy

Dickens depicts a terrifying system of education where facts, facts, and nothing but facts are pounded into the schoolchildren all day, and where memorization of information is valued over art, imagination, or anything creative. This results in some very warped human beings. Mr. Thomas Gradgrind believes completely in this system, and as a superintendent of schools and a father, he makes sure that all the children at the schools he is responsible for and especially his own children are brought up knowing nothing but data and "-ologies".

As a result, things go very badly for his children, Tom Gradgrind and Louisa Gradgrind. Since they, as children, were always treated as if they had minds and not hearts, their adulthoods are warped, as they have no way to access their feelings or connect with others. Tom is a sulky good-for-nothing and gets involved in a crime in an effort to pay off gambling debts. Louisa is unhappy when she follows her mind, not her heart, and marries Mr. Bounderby, her father's friend. As a result of her unhappy marriage, she is later swept off her feet by a young gentleman, Mr. James "Jem" Harthouse, who comes to stay with them and who seems to understand and love her. Louisa nearly comes to ruin by running off with Harthouse.

Cecilia (Sissy) Jupe was encouraged when she was little to dream and imagine and loved her father dearly, and therefore she is in touch with her heart and feelings, and has empathy and emotional strength the other children lack. Sissy, adopted by the Gradgrinds when her father abandons her, ultimately is the savior of the family in the end.

Industrialism and Its Evils

Hand in hand with the glorification of data and numbers and facts in the schoolhouse is the treatment of the workers in the factories of Coketown as nothing more than machines, which produce so much per day and are not thought of as having feelings or families or dreams. Dickens depicts this situation as a result of the industrialization of England; now that towns like Coketown are focused on producing more and more, more dirty factories are built, more smoke pollutes the air and water, and the factory owners only see their workers as part of the machines that bring them profit. In fact, the workers are only called "Hands", an indication of how objectified they are by the owners. Similarly, Mr. Gradgrind's children were brought up to be "minds". None of them are people or "hearts".

As the book progresses, it portrays how industrialism creates conditions in which owners treat workers as machines and workers respond by unionizing to resist and fight back against the owners. In the meantime, those in Parliament (like Mr. Gradgrind, who winds up elected to office) work for the benefit of the country but not its people. In short, industrialization creates an environment in which people cease to treat either others or themselves as people. Even the unions, the groups of factory workers who fight against the injustices of the factory owners, are not shown in a good light. Stephen Blackpool, a poor worker at Bounderby's factory, is rejected by his fellow workers for his refusal to join the union because of a promise made to the sweet, good woman he loves, Rachael. His factory union then treats him as an outcast.

The remedy to industrialism and its evils in the novel is found in Sissy Jupe, the little girl who was brought up among circus performers and fairy tales. Letting loose the imagination of children lets loose their hearts as well, and, as Sissy does, they can combat and undo what a Gradgrind education produces.

Unhappy Marriages 

There are many unhappy marriages in Hard Times and none of them are resolved happily by the end. Mr. Gradgrind's marriage to his feeble, complaining wife is not exactly a source of misery for either of them, but neither are they or their children happy. The Gradgrind family is not a loving or affectionate one. The main unhappy marriage showcased by the novel is between Louisa Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. Louisa marries him not out of love but out of a sense of duty to her brother, Tom, the only person in the world she loves and who wheedles her into saying "yes" because he works for Bounderby and wants to improve his chances at rising in the world. Bounderby's intentions regarding Louisa seem a bit creepy at first, but he turns out to mean no harm to her (except that he deprives her of any marital affection). The only solution to this bad marriage, once Louisa has escaped the hands of Jem Harthouse, is for Louisa to live at home the rest of her days. She will never be happy with another man or have the joy of children, though Dickens hints she will find joy in playing with Sissy's future children.

Stephen Blackpool, too, is damned to unhappiness in this life as a result of his marriage. The girl who seemed so sweet when he married her many years ago becomes, by a gradual process, a depraved drunk who is the misery of his life. She periodically returns to Coketown to haunt Stephen and is, as he sees it, the sole barrier to the happiness he might have had in marrying Rachael. Mrs. Sparsit (an elderly lady who lives with Mr. Bounderby for some time) was also unhappily married, which is how she came to be Mr. Bounderby's companion before he marries Louisa.

Femininity

The best, most good characters of Hard Times are women. Stephen Blackpool is a good man, but his love, Rachael, is an "Angel". Sissy Jupe can overcome even the worst intentions of Jem Harthouse with her firm and powerfully pure gaze. Louisa, as disadvantaged as she is by her terrible upbringing, manages to get out of her crisis at the last minute by fleeing home to her father for shelter, in contrast to her brother, Tom, who chooses to commit a life-changing crime in his moment of crisis. Through these examples, the novel suggests that the kindness and compassion of the female heart can improve what an education of "facts" and the industrialization has done to children and to the working middle class.

Still, not all the women in the novel are paragons of goodness. Far from it. Mrs. Sparsit is a comic example of femininity gone wrong. She cannot stand being replaced by Louisa when Bounderby marries, and watches the progression of the affair between Louisa and Jem Harthouse with glee. As she attempts to catch them in the act of eloping (and ultimately fails), she is portrayed as a cruel, ridiculous figure. Stephen Blackpool's wife, meanwhile, is bleakly portrayed as a hideous drunken prostitute.

So while the novel holds women up as potentially able to overcome the dehumanizing effects of industrialization and fact-based education, those women in the novel who do not fill this role, who have slipped from the purity embodied by Sissy and Rachael beyond even the empty-heartedness of Louisa, are presented as both pathetically comic and almost demonic. Women in the novel seem like a potential cure to the perils of industrialization, but also the most at peril from its corruption.

Surveillance and Knowledge

One of Dickens's major themes centers on the idea of surveillance and knowledge. As is the case in other novels by the author, there are characters who spend time keeping secrets and hiding their history and there is another set of characters who devote themselves to researching, analyzing and listening in on the lives of others. Mrs. Sparsit and Mr. Gradgrind are both masters of surveillance but Sparsit is more gossipy while Gradgrind is more scientific. Another operator to consider is James Harthouse who devotes himself to the task of understanding and "knowing" Louisa. From all three of these characters we get the idea that knowledge of another person is a form of mastery and power over them. Besides Louisa, Josiah Bounderby is another victim of surveillance. Without knowing what she has done, Mrs. Sparsit manages to uncover the secret of Bounderby's upbringing and his foul lies about being a self-made man.

Fidelity

The theme of fidelity touches upon the conflicts of personal interest, honesty and loyalty that occur throughout the novel. Certainly, characters like Josiah Bounderby and James Harthouse seem to be regularly dishonest while Louisa Gradgrind and Sissy Jupe hold fast to their obligations and beliefs. In Louisa's case, her fidelity is exemplified in her refusal to violate her marital vows despite her displeasure with her husband. Sissy's exemplifies fidelity in her devotion to the Gradgrind family and perhaps even more remarkably, in her steadfast belief that her father is going to return for her seeking "the nine oils" that she has preserved for him.

Escape

The theme of escape really underscores the difference between the lives of the wealthy and the lives of the poor. In Stephen Blackpool, we find a decent man who seeks to escape from his failed marriage but he cannot even escape into his dreams for peace. On the other hand, we find Tom Gradgrind who indulges in gambling, alcohol and smoking as "escapes" from his humdrum existence. And after he commits a crime, his father helps him to escape through Liverpool. Again, Louisa Gradgrind desires a similar escape from the grind of the Gradgrind system, though she resorts to imagined pictures in the fire rather than a life of petty crime. Finally, "Jem" Harthouse rounds out the options available to the nobility. With all of his life dedicated to leisure, even his work assignment is a sort of past-time from which he easily escapes when the situation has lost its luster.

Conclusion 

To conclude, Dickens’ novel discusses the social impact of the Industrial Revolution and the dehumanization of workers by machines. Much like the repetitive actions involved in working in factories dull the lives of the workers, the teachings of fact prevent characters from reaching their full potential. Louisa’s inability to express herself prevents her from stopping Tom’s exploitation of her love for him. Similarly, Louisa needs Sissy Jupe to send James Harthouse away from Coketown, as her cold upbringing has limited her ability to interact with others. Stephen Blackpool is the best example of an individual who has been dehumanized by the stress and working conditions of being a ‘hand’ during the Industrial Revolution. Only with the help of his so-called angel, Rachel, is he able to maintain his morality and strong values. Finally, Sissy Jupe is arguably the most important character in the novel. Her impact on the Gradgrind family is extreme, as she allows Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind to recognize that imagination is the key to happiness, not fact. While the relationships throughout the novel are often one-sided, the influence that each character has over others is essential in the demise of fact and the rise of critical thinking.

Words Count - 2109

References:

Burton, John. "Hard Times Themes". GradeSaver, 9 September 2001 Web. 5 November 2022.

Barnes, Christopher. “‘Hard Times’: Fancy as Practice.” Dickens Studies Annual, vol. 34, 2004, pp. 233–58. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44372096. Accessed 17 Oct. 2022.

Qasm, Dler. “The Conflict between Fact and Fancy in Hard Times.” Academia.edu, 11 June 2016, www.academia.edu/26054870/The_Conflict_between_Fact_and_Fancy_in_HARD_TIMES.