RESPONSE PAPER I

Belma Sarajlic

Charles Dickens is one of the most famous and most fruitful English writers, certainly the best from the Victorian period. He himself lived the life that was at the time common in England- he was a child labourer, he was evicted from home, went hungry and barefoot and lived in cluttered and filthy English cities. His works are part of realistic approach to life and literature. And his works truly are realistic, mainly because that was how the world looked like at the time Dickens was writing (muddy, smelly streets, filthy clothes, people in raggs, children working in factories and not going to school, etc.), but also because he himself lived though those horrors as a child, but aslo as an adult. In his novel Hard Times, Dickens captures vividly on paper many instances from everyday life of common English people, living in common industrial-driven cities across England, but mostly in the north. Coketown, although not real, is a typical example of such a city, and it was created by Dickens. Dickens also created many characters of the novel who were actualy inhabitatants of the city, and they were also depicted fastidiously and realisticly. The best example are the poor children of Coketown, who do not go to school, but instead work in factories and have to do that in order to survive. Their parents, if they're lucky to have any, also work in those factories, side by side, and are happy that they do not go hungry and barefoot in cold north England's winters. These poor creatures are commonly referred as only the Hands, because neither the authorities, nor wealthier people of Coketown care much about them. They only care that Hands fulfil their quota and do their jobs dilligently. People in this period were reduced to nothing more than diligent and industrial hands, because in fact, their lives were not worth anything more. It was a very sad time for England, but also prosperous, because roads and railroads and factories were being built, but the cost were human dignities and human lives.