The opening social occasion in the novel Hard Times is the main catalyst of the story which develops the main character, the society they live in, and the focus of the book. It all takes place during a day of school in the quaint little town with a visitor quizzing hte pupils. In this brief scene the reader is introduced to a variety of characters and provided with insight into thier lives as well as that of the town overall. The first to be met is Mr. Gradgrind. Immediately it becomes apparent that this man is one whose chiep priority in the learning lives of the children is the memorization of facts. He values and esteems very highly the factual atmosphere by which he is surrounded and is determined to spread it to all else. Another character to which we are introduced is a small white faced boy who prided himself in his extensive knowledge of memorized terms. Appearing to be a dictionary, spouting information, the boy added to the list of factual believers. As the social setting continued it became very apparent that all members were of the same opinion, both teachers and students. From this analysis, it became apparent that the scene was explaining more that just the value of its immediate characters but those of the whole town. It was not only the teachers and Mr. Gradgrind that found fact to be the seeds of knowledge but also the parents of the children that were sent there and everyone else in the town, yielding the gereral overall public opinion. This remained a constant in all cases of the scene but one. A student named Sissy was the oddball who was the daughter of an illiterate circus performer. Instead of bringing factual reference to class she brought love, kindness, and feeling. Her values were very different from the rest of the towns, as were those of te circus she represented. All of this was revealed to the reader in the very first social scene of the novel.
There was also another level to the scene referred to above. Charles Dickens also revealed the main theme, purpose, or moral to his whole book. He was critisizing society for its lack of feeling and emotion in its life. Dickens felt that, like Gradgrind, the children, and the twon, that society was only looking at things on the outside but, unlike Sissy, were not grasping the full meaning of what things were on the inside. A horse may be a grazing mammal used to work on a farm, but it is also an animal that needs love and attention. The mere complexion of the children in the scene revealed this. That of the little boy was pale and white for he did not know the meaning of love. Where as Sissy had bright pink cheeks, symbols of the childhood she lived in the comforting love of the many performers in the circus. From what Dickens witnessed in his own society he wrote this book, in an attemp to wake people to their own shortcomings by representing them in this and other social scenes. Throughj this social scene in the classroom, Dickens not only gave way to the values of all the major characters, but also foreshadowed the main theme of his entire book. |