how does Charles Dickens bring out the contrast between fact and fancy in the lesson Definition of Horse?
Answers
Chrales Dickens, in his novel Hard Times, contrasts fact and fancy through the portrayal of the characters of Sissy and Bitzer. Sissy stands for fanciful imagination and Bitzer symbolizes a dehumanized machine producing the facts. Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a circus performer, is used to fanciful thinking and struggles to adapt to the class room lessons. Mr. Gradgrind’s intellectual limitation disturbs her to such an extent that she fails to define a horse even to speak. On the other hand one of her class fellows Bitzer provides pseudo-scientific description of horse as “quadruped, graminivorous” and gets appreciation. Gradgrind is a typical Victorian teacher. To him students are the “little pitchers” to be filled with facts. He thinks that fancy and imagination are irrelevant to education and could slow the process of learning down.