Hard_Times

The Reading Report Of Hard Times Book: Hard Times Author: Charles Dickens The novel is set in the imaginary industrial town of Coketown, the soulless domain of the strict Gradgind and the heartless factory owner Bounderby. Human joy is seen as the open-hearted and affectionate people act as an antidote to the ruthless behavior. There are two lines develop in parallel and contrast. The first one is Louise and Tom, after carefully being educated by their father’s ‘reasonable’ system, end in pathetic results ---- Louise escape from her marriage and back to her father’s and Tom commits a bank robbery and dies in regret. The second one is the deserted, clumsy, ill-educated girl Sissy turns out to be happy and to become the last straw when the family runs into despair. The totally opposite outcomes conflict and satirize. In such hard times when ‘reason’ is worshipped as the rule of God, figures like Sissy lead a harsh life. They own fanciful mind. They tend to be considerate and helpful. They ponder and judge not only by mind, but by heart. However, they are despised and degraded. However, the ‘Sissy’ type person is the real, humane, ‘should-be’ person. Sissy is closer to and more familiar with us. Sissy is the reflection of the common ‘us’. Although Dickens does not spend much energy on Sissy, we will find it easy to have an inclination to her. In contrast, the most part of the book is about the brother and sister who follow the ‘reason’ system to decay. Tom, who develops into ‘that not unprecedented triumph of calculation which is usually at work on number one’, is a complete ‘whelp’, one using his sister’s proffered love for whatever advantages it can bring to him instead of cherishing and responding to it. The poor sister, devoted all her meaning of life to her single brother, marries a man who she has no care and finally collapses after realizing the void and inanity of her whole life. The hard time Dickens depicts has far been behind us, but this novel still stimulates us to ponder. Nowadays, in this rapidly developing society, are people turning out to be cooler or more business-like towards each other. With more skyscrapers built up, people lock themselves in the small match-boxes rather than to stroll around the neighborhood; with the emergence of countries crowned as ‘the country on the wheels’, people drive recklessly instead of walking and chatting leisurely; with computers striding into every family, people sit behind shining screening boasting with the unknown, substituting for visiting from one door to another. Does the development of industries have to sacrifice humanity? I believe this is the question everyone will deny. We all long for a harmonious world in which we live hand in hand, not a machine which stifles our emotions, fancies or imaginations.