How did Charles dickens debate the massive distruction in the process of construction of underground railway
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There is a massive irony in the way that Dickens describes the impact of the building of the railroad on the community. The railroad, which he says is part of moving England on "its mighty course of civilisation and improvement." However, if we examine the reality of the railroad and how it is being constructed, we see that the description Dickens gives us reveals there is nothing about civilisation or improvement in what is happening to this community:
There were a hundred thousand shapes and substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their places, upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering in the water, and unintelligible as any dream. Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the usual attendants upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of confusion to the scene. Boiling water hissed and heaved within dilapidated walls; whence, also, the glare and roar of flames came issuing forth; and mounds of ashes blocked up rights of way, and wholly changed the law and custom of the neighbourhood.
Note the use of such words as "incompleteness," "dilapidated walls" and the way that the building of the railroad "changed the law and custom of the neighbourhood." The scene is described in shocking, startling terms, that are not positive in any sense. Dickens was not alone in feeling a massive ambivalence about the railroad. On the one hand, it represented the best of the Industrial Age through its triumph of man's mechanical ability and reason. On the other hand, as this description makes clear, the way that the railroads changed life and society so profoundly made some very uneasy, and they felt that life was going to be changed irrevocably, and not necessarily for the better.
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Answer:
There is a massive irony in the way that Dickens describes the impact of the building of the railroad on the community. The railroad, which he says is part of moving England on "its mighty course of civilisation and improvement." However, if we examine the reality of the railroad and how it is being constructed, we see that the description Dickens gives us reveals there is nothing about civilisation or improvement in what is happening to this community:
There were a hundred thousand shapes and substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their places, upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering in the water, and unintelligible as any dream. Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the usual attendants upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of confusion to the scene. Boiling water hissed and heaved within dilapidated walls; whence, also, the glare and roar of flames came issuing forth; and mounds of ashes blocked up rights of way, and wholly changed the law and custom of the neighbourhood.
Note the use of such words as "incompleteness," "dilapidated walls" and the way that the building of the railroad "changed the law and custom of the neighbourhood." The scene is described in shocking, startling terms, that are not positive in any sense. Dickens was not alone in feeling a massive ambivalence about the railroad. On the one hand, it represented the best of the Industrial Age through its triumph of man's mechanical ability and reason. On the other hand, as this description makes clear, the way that the railroads changed life and society so profoundly made some very uneasy, and they felt that life was going to be changed irrevocably, and not necessarily for the better.
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Dombey and Son
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