Question

Describe the dark face of industrialization as highlighted by Charles Dickens in his novels Hard Times and Oliver Twist.

Answer 1

Charles Dickens wrote about the serious effects of industrialisation on the people's lives and characters. For instance in his novel HARD TIMES he describes a fictitious industrial town where workers are presented as 'hands',as if they had no identity other than operators of machines .
In another novel OLIVER TWIST(1838) Dickens focused on the terrible conditions of urban life under industrial capitalism.

Answer 2

(i) Charles Dickens wrote about the industrial labourers in big cities in his novel 'Hard Times'.

(ii) His novels discussed the terrible effects of industrialization on people's lives and character in the fictitious town of Coketown.

(iii) The town was full of machinery, smoking chimneys, polluted rivers and workers known as 'hands'.

(iv) He criticized the greed of profit which had reduced humans into instruments who were used for production.

(v) His novel 'Oliver Twist' focussed on the terrible conditions of life under capitalism. Oliver lived in the world of petty criminals and beggars and was brought up in a cruel workhouse.