Hard Times
Thankfully there are no "hard times" for me, but it has come time for me to do a review of this work by Charles Dickens that recently I finished. Hard Times doesn't live up to the grand and ambitious complexity of other two of Dickens's novels which I have read. Nevertheless, it is very different in many ways. The characterizations are still impressive (names and all: M. Choakumchild, the teacher, and Thomas Gradgrind, the father and patron of the "Philosophy of Fact", etc.), but they are slightly less extreme and more cultured. Hard Times does not have a complex storyline with multiple disconnected threads that combine in a dramatic climax. No, it has little of these classic "Dickensian" elements. In his shortest work, there is a reletive straightforwardness to all its aspects.
Hard Times does however feel to be more of a blatant social commentary than other novels of his that I have read. The consistancy with which Thomas Gradgrind (even the name...) hammers out his "Philosophy of Fact" and emphasizes that every shred of entertainment and enjoyment in life is pure nonsense is telling. Also, the reletive ease with which Gradgrind's philosophy crumbles before him by the work of his daughter, shows the frailties of rigid logic when it opposes humanity and happiness.
In more unusual form, Dickens spends the final chapter (creatively entitled "Final") essentially expounding his beliefs that "politico-economic" systems erroneously look at the individual as a cog of the machine rather than as what they are: individuals. It comments deals with everything from divorce laws to the education system in a rather pessimistic view of society.
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