Hard Times: Industrial Setting of Coketown and the Circus
In sharp contrast to the bleak and gray industrial setting of Coketown, the circus in Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times is full of life, color, and character. In Hard Times, the circus therefore symbolizes the opposite of everything Coketown and the Industrial Revolution represent. For instance, the circus workers are fanciful and free; the factory workers, on the other hand, are drones who drudge through each day. Similarly, the performers demonstrate a cooperative, communal, and compassionate attitude, whereas the industrialists denote rampant individualism, greed, and self-centeredness. The circus represents a diversion from the mundane, a realm of pure imagination, whereas the factories of Coketown are nothing but mundane and are entirely lacking in imagination. To specific characters in Hard Times, Sleary's circus symbolizes several different and often conflicting ideas. For Tom and Louisa, and eventually for Gradgrind, Sleary's circus is a bastion of hope and a means of salvation in a cruel and oppressive world. Although Sleary's circus initially represents everything Gradgrind eschews: irrationality and fancy, eventually he comes to appreciate and embrace the nontraditional and nonconformist circus lifestyle and philosophy.
Although the circus threatens the modernist mentality, it cannot but seduce the minds and hearts of young people like Tom and Louisa. Eventually, even Gradgrind softens up to the circus mentality. In Hard Times, The circus often represents hope: hope of salvation from the everyday grind of thankless factory work; hope that there is more to life than uninspired drudgery. Gradgrind, thoroughly convinced that industrialization, individualism, and reason trump imagination, demand that his children neglect their innate playfulness and creativity. As a result, Tom and Louisa suffer from emotional and psychological despair. For them, the circus and people like Sissy who are associated with it, represent hope in humanity. Sissy's loving and innocent nature is an ideal counterbalance for the cold, harsh, emotionless nature of men like Gradgrind. When the circus performers eventually come to his son's aid, however, Gradgrind realizes that there is more to life than petty drudgery and industrial progress. Therefore, by helping Tom escape, the circus ironically comes to symbolize actual pragmatic hope as well as philosophical hope. Therefore, Sleary's circus serves an important role juxtaposing industrialism and romanticism in Hard Times, representing social and political philosophies that a
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Approximate Word count = 869
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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