Reflection Of Hard Times Novel

“Hard Times”, as a novel of 21 century

“Hard Times”, is a work of Victorian Literature, written by Charles Dickens. The whole novel analyses the society at the time, from its educational aspects to the whole dehumanization of people-with their struggles and failures throughout life. The book openly criticises the fault of industrialization where turning people into “machines”, who do not have any ability to feel compassion towards anyone, by first giving a fault of educational system and later the fault of what people have become.

The novel itself is not usual to examine it from the 21. century point of view, but as thinking more of it all the things happening in 21 century can be portrayed also in the novel at the Victorian Ages, and to realise that not much has changed. While our environment is somehow central idea of the ideal modern life, the industrialization is ruining everything in the real world as it is in the novel, and not much is changed in both aspects.

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The city of Coketown is represented as dark and full of smoke from the factories, and what is important to the higher class people is to have material value of people and money in their life, and the same thing can be happening in 21 century where no one really cares about global warming and climate changes. But another this Dickens really likes to have this criticism towards is the industrialization itself. While today young people are the future of the world, and a central core of modern society, Louisa and Sissy Jupe are a great representation of the teenagers in the novel.

The education is highly connected to the industrialization in the novel. Where education is portrayed as Utilitarianism theory of education, where all the teenagers are learning facts and to do things in the most logical way it actually turns them all in machines that cannot feel love and compassion towards other people. Where the work in factories has the same point of view, where workers are turned into machines who cannot ever question their leaders, just like a “machine” does. In the opening chapters of the “Hard Times”, the education is portrayed to be dehumanising where all hope and all imagination cannot be given free rein. It is not centred on children, but on facts. But what is the question of modern times education is: Are the students just another human “vessel”, that need to learn to feel things as they are and not as they all should be? In our contemporary times the teachers are ones who want to be inspirational for their students. So that the student can give it all to be the best at it, the harsh reality of the curriculum comes in place, and teachers dreams are not so much important. With that and what is portrayed in the novel is that not a lot has changed from the times of Victorian Age o point of education.

To conclude, having read “Hard Times”, it is realised that not much things have changed, and more they change the more they stay the same. The world of contemporary life still resolves around industrialization and money, and hardly ever around the important things in life, everyone should be concerned with. It is really believed that imagination and emotions is not really a relational thing to have, and that it can all set a train of tragic circumstances from which there is not much escape but just to go with them.