Essay --

Set in the ever changing world of the Industrial Revolution, Charles two novelHard Timesbegins with a description of a utilitarian paradise, a world that follows a prescribed set of logically laid-out facts, created by the historied and eminently practical Mr. Gradgrind. However, one soon realizes that Gradgrinds utopia is only a simulacrum, belied by the devastation of lives devoid of elements that feed the heart and soul, as well as the mind. As the years fly by, the weaknesses of Gradgrinds carefully constructed system become painfully apparent, especially in the lives of his children Louisa and Tom, as well as in the poor workers employed by one Mr. Josiah Bounderby, a wealthy factory owner and a subscriber to Gradgrinds system. Dickens, through the shattering of Gradgrinds utilitarian world, tells us that no methods, not even eternal oppression and abuse, can defeat and overcome two basic needs of humans, our fundamental needs for emotion and imagination. Louisa, Mr. Gradgrind s favorite child, the paragon of his factual regime, leads a low-down and embittered life which ends in a showdown between the ideologies of facts and fancy. She is a prime example of a child filled to the brim with knowledge by her fathers strictly scientific education. Confused by her coldhearted upbringing, Louisa feels disconnected from her emotions and alienated from others, yet she yearns to experience more than the hard scientific facts she has absorbed all her life. While she mistily recognizes that her fathers system of education has deprived her childhood of all joy, she cannot avoid being coldly rational and emotionally blunted, unable to actively produce her emotions. She would have been a curious, passionate person who ... ...olution he believed in internal parity and the growth of the mind and the spirit. He demonstrated that the system that grinds down, but neer building up, will ultimately result in chaos and woe for all those subjected to it. Through Hard Times , Dickens argues that all humans have an unbeatable need for imagination, emotion, and love. He tells us that this need cannot be altered or thwarted by any method of education or economic oppression, no matter how strict and black it might be. Hard Times illustrates Dickens belief that it does not matter whether one is born in a nurturing or an abusive and neglectful surroundings. What matters is how an individuals true nature responds, changes, asserts itself and molds his or her environment. In the end, whether one remains thwarted or strives to fulfill and complete their lives determines who each person becomes.