AARONDISNEY
07-02-2007, 08:39 PM
I just finished Hard Times last week. I thought it was an interesting lesson on using not only facts, figures and calculations, but to allow your heart also to guide you.
It's funny how Bounderby is so caught up in being forthright and factual (just like his friend Gradgrind) and yet his whole much repeated story of his upbringing is a lie. Louisa is the victim crushed under the boulder of anti-facyism taught her by her father......
This is a problem we can all have from time to time. We may try to analyze our situation based on nothing but what do the facts present to us, and never go with our dreams. It seems the book is all about being free to dream and wish and have fantacies of what will be.
I also loved Coketown. That city had as much character as any of the actual human characters in the town. It was a grim, grimy, no pleasure/all industry town. At one point you can feel the heat and dreariness of it when Dickens said that the whole town seemed to be frying in oil. And the snaking upwards of the smoke of the factories, the cookie cutter buildings with the red brick, the black door, the green shutters and white steps just gave this dead end town and unappealing yet unignorable character.
Not on my top 5 of Dickens' books, but an excellent biting attack on a misdirected fact only guided worldview.
It's funny how Bounderby is so caught up in being forthright and factual (just like his friend Gradgrind) and yet his whole much repeated story of his upbringing is a lie. Louisa is the victim crushed under the boulder of anti-facyism taught her by her father......
This is a problem we can all have from time to time. We may try to analyze our situation based on nothing but what do the facts present to us, and never go with our dreams. It seems the book is all about being free to dream and wish and have fantacies of what will be.
I also loved Coketown. That city had as much character as any of the actual human characters in the town. It was a grim, grimy, no pleasure/all industry town. At one point you can feel the heat and dreariness of it when Dickens said that the whole town seemed to be frying in oil. And the snaking upwards of the smoke of the factories, the cookie cutter buildings with the red brick, the black door, the green shutters and white steps just gave this dead end town and unappealing yet unignorable character.
Not on my top 5 of Dickens' books, but an excellent biting attack on a misdirected fact only guided worldview.