CHARLES DICKENS: HARD TIMES 11(b) Select two episodes and show how far and in what ways they illustrate Dickens’s condemnation of Victorian England. In your answer you should: · Explore and explain your own views of Dickens’s presentation of human evils; · Look closely at the production of emotional propaganda; · Comment on the place of relevant issues such as the Industrial Revolution. Hard Times is essentially a didactic satire upon the Victorian social, industrial and …showed first 75 words of 2081 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2081 total…able to remove themselves from everyday life it proves impossible due to the constant, standardized reminders. In a world where even the smallest of outlets for enjoyment and escape are refused it strikes me that the reason for the ‘Hands’ to ‘get drunk’ and take ‘opium’ is a symptom (of removing pleasures such as Marx’s religious ‘opium’) and not a cause of their appalling conditions, which remain unaltered by their avaricious, rich, self-possessed employers.