chamo
19th January 2003, 22:12
The following is an extract from my english coursework, "Dickens criticising Gradgrind's school"
It is about the book hard times and highlights Dickens moral and social views of the industrial age. As it's and extract some of it may look out of place.
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We can see all through these first two chapters that Dickens is very socially aware and that the industrial revolution is in need for an unquestioning workforce, where people do not use their imaginations. He is outraged that the employers are in need for, and are therefore creating, a morbid and passive society of workers. He can see that the bourgeois are designing the proletariat as an unconscious workforce that will, without question, respect authority and work more efficiently for less wages. He can see that this is a disgusting display of exploitation and that people are brought up like this from the minute they start their education. This is a society where facts condition the thinking of the State; all things are reasoned by facts, that emotions and the imagination are an inferior form of thinking. Even personal and moral decisions are governed by statistics and facts and fantasy is useless.
Attention to the development of self is the moral focus of the novel. This is because the effect of any action can be calculated in terms of the personal advantage to be derived from it.
Dickens thinks that this kind of thinking, everything governed on facts, has a high risk on the health and moral attitude of humanity. If everything were to be governed by fact, then personalities could not flourish, no one could excel above the rest and people are only respected for their knowledge of facts and not their moral or personality attributes.
Utilitarianism, the theory that all actions are justified if they benefit the majority, created attitudes affecting the relationship between classes, employers and employees. Workers are only measured by the profit that they could make for the employees and were not seen as individuals, and that people inspired by love and imagination were regarded as useless and inferior, people like Charles Dickens himself.
Dickens did not make politics a direct object of his novel, he generalised it and was more concerned about society as a whole. Although he would not have put his trust into one political party of the time, we can see that he is primarily a socialist. This is because he thinks that the individual is more important than the financial condition of the State and he is concerned about the disadvantages of the industrial revolution, which it is creating a monotonous society where people go about their work indisputably.
The novel is as much, even more, to do with authoritarianism than the economic practices of the period. Dickens attacks Gradgrinds school because it is creating these drones needed for the faceless society of workers. The pupils come into their education with empty heads, which are filled with facts until they are near bursting, and then they go to work in factories and will never question authority.
It is about the book hard times and highlights Dickens moral and social views of the industrial age. As it's and extract some of it may look out of place.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
We can see all through these first two chapters that Dickens is very socially aware and that the industrial revolution is in need for an unquestioning workforce, where people do not use their imaginations. He is outraged that the employers are in need for, and are therefore creating, a morbid and passive society of workers. He can see that the bourgeois are designing the proletariat as an unconscious workforce that will, without question, respect authority and work more efficiently for less wages. He can see that this is a disgusting display of exploitation and that people are brought up like this from the minute they start their education. This is a society where facts condition the thinking of the State; all things are reasoned by facts, that emotions and the imagination are an inferior form of thinking. Even personal and moral decisions are governed by statistics and facts and fantasy is useless.
Attention to the development of self is the moral focus of the novel. This is because the effect of any action can be calculated in terms of the personal advantage to be derived from it.
Dickens thinks that this kind of thinking, everything governed on facts, has a high risk on the health and moral attitude of humanity. If everything were to be governed by fact, then personalities could not flourish, no one could excel above the rest and people are only respected for their knowledge of facts and not their moral or personality attributes.
Utilitarianism, the theory that all actions are justified if they benefit the majority, created attitudes affecting the relationship between classes, employers and employees. Workers are only measured by the profit that they could make for the employees and were not seen as individuals, and that people inspired by love and imagination were regarded as useless and inferior, people like Charles Dickens himself.
Dickens did not make politics a direct object of his novel, he generalised it and was more concerned about society as a whole. Although he would not have put his trust into one political party of the time, we can see that he is primarily a socialist. This is because he thinks that the individual is more important than the financial condition of the State and he is concerned about the disadvantages of the industrial revolution, which it is creating a monotonous society where people go about their work indisputably.
The novel is as much, even more, to do with authoritarianism than the economic practices of the period. Dickens attacks Gradgrinds school because it is creating these drones needed for the faceless society of workers. The pupils come into their education with empty heads, which are filled with facts until they are near bursting, and then they go to work in factories and will never question authority.