The Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Everyone knows a person cannot have flowered carpet. He would trample all over them and they would end up dying. The second struggle is between the classes is illustrated between Stephen Blackpool and Bounderby. Blackpool represents the working class and Bounderby the bourgeois or middle class. He is a warm-hearted man who feels he deserves this mediocre life. Blackpool was once an employee under Bounderby and was fired for standing up for his beliefs. He believed that the union was taking anything that was given to them because they could not expect anything better. Stephen stands up for his fellow workers asking for reform and this makes Bounderby mad so he fires Stephen. This was typical during the Industrial Revolution. The run down society Dickens speaks of is that created by the Industrial Revolution. The air is filled with smoke that the working class have to breath. The water is turning colors with pollution caused by the factories. The people who are most effected by this are people like Blackpool, the lower class. Dickens shows Stephen and Bounderby as a typical worker-employer relationship. Dickens shows the way in which the factories were run at this period. A person could lose their job simply by disagreeing with what he felt was wrong because the employer did not really care about the employee. This is the way the workers were treated with no respect. In contrast to the industrial revolution, it would be highly unlikely that a middle class citizen such as Bounderby to employ an aristocrat.

             The titles of the three books ("Sowing", "Reaping", and "Garnering") are named in a way of giving a special reference to the upbringing and the education of the children. The titles together show the basic plot of the story. "Sowing," suggests that in the 1st book the idea of the children being sown with facts and it also lays the foundation of the plot of the novel.

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