This is the second novel written by Dickens that I meanly give only three stars. The Dickens chemistry, his verve, and his charisma are not here.

Don't get me wrong - all the characters are typically his, as well as his pathos, his satire, and his WORDSMITHERY. Despite his typical Dickens features, it was one of the most unlikable novel - the characters were all detached from the me, and their inner world eluded me all the time. Their heartbeats, their desires, and their hopes that his characters usually wear on their sleeves were mysteriously and unfavorably missing.

The novel was cold - some of his characters were unreachable and unrelatable even on the level of rejection. Sometimes one relates to characters by simply hating their guts, and in this novel, I felt absolutely nothing.

I can not even pinpoint the reason of this emotional failure - the language was inventive and the imagery is highly original, the zeitgeist of the small industrial town is perfectly captured, the social issues are burning and their exploration is truly visionary, but the chemistry between this novel and me is nonexistent.

Sorry, Maestro.

Up to a point, it was an expected slack after the powerful and masterful gem of Bleak House. It happens to the best of us :-)

I really enjoyed this. I think it was a great introduction to Charles Dickens as it was his first full-length novel I read. The language was witty and humorous, characters - interesting and well-developed. I also loved the idea of the novel which basically that our feelings and facies are an important part of us and should never be neglected.

My only criticism would be that I wanted the character of Sissi to be present on pages more and developed more and deeper. To me, she felt almost like a shadow next to all the other so well done characters and her figure in the book is actually very important and significant. But that would be my only problem.

All in all, I absolutely loved reading this book and would highly recommend it!

Nunca dejemos de leer a Dickens

the first half severely dragged but the next two parts made up for it

ربما تحمل بعض الروايات الأجنبية فكرة، حكمة ما؛
تضيق وتتسع بحسب أثرها على القاريء وما تلمسه من نبضات تكوينه .

لكن إبداع اللغة يتجلّى لي في الأدب العربيّ
من جمال أساليبها أحب أن أنهل، وفي روعة بلاغتها أشتاق للإبحار
لا مثيل للحرف العربي في إسعادي وإطرابي ..

“ إنّ الذي ملأ اللغات محاسناً .. جعل الجمال و سرّه في الضّاد ”
- أحمد شوقي

I never thought I'd enjoy a Charles Dickens novel so much...on to the next one.

I believe Coketown is based on Manchester. If it is, then it's interesting that the mills that inspired Dickens to write Hard Times might have been the same ones that influenced Friedrich Engels to write The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1845.

Written in 1854, Hard Times shows Dickens is concerned with the way in which industrialisation de-humanises people. Bounderby treats people as numbers and Gradgrind suffocates his children with a warped education. This book covers the Victorian period where there was a shift in power away from the aristocracy towards the hard-nosed industrialists who were making fortunes from people's misery.

The Good Samaritan was indeed a bad economist. Without becoming overly didactical, Dickens was able to explore in 'Hard Times' the contest between the oppositional conversations of Christian altruism (Louisa and Sissy) and market-driven, utilitarian self-interest (Bounderby and Bitzer). The novel takes its ethical position from the famous parable's narrative of redemptive love. You probably don't need to guess which side of this argument Dickens favors. The story was simple but deep. The characters were rich and dynamic. I was a tad let down by the soft ending, but still carried away by the full measure of Dickens' message of redemption, love and fancy.

empi difficili sono quelli vissuti dagli operai delle nascenti industrie tessili e minerarie inglesi intorno alla metà del 1800, in cui uomini, donne e bambini trascorrono l’esistenza nelle fabbriche, scandita dal suono di campane che annunciano l’inizio e la fine del lavoro: i lavoratori escono alla stessa ora, percorrono gli stessi marciapiedi, fanno le stesse cose come automi, niente altro che “forza lavoro”, semplici numeri che fanno statistica, senza una luce di speranza che illumini le loro esistenze destinate al lavoro e alla povertà.
Tempi difficili sono quelli vissuti dalle nuove generazioni nate nelle squallide cittadine industriali soffocate dalla polvere delle miniere, che si trovano a vivere in un’epoca di bieco materialismo, basato sul mito del profitto, della produttività e della statistica, educati nelle scuole in cui i criteri didattici si fondano esclusivamente sui Fatti, dove la creatività e l’immaginazione sono bandite perché nocive alla formazione del carattere dell’”uomo moderno”.
Dickens ci presenta un vivido affresco della società a lui contemporanea, schiavizzata dalla Rivoluzione Industriale, che vive solo di benessere materiale e di accumulazione di ricchezza, ed alleva generazioni di uomini e donne aridi nel cuore, poveri di umanità e di sentimenti; lo scrittore, con un fondo di pungente ironia, tratteggia una serie di personaggi che non si salvano nelle loro esistenze dallo squallore, sia da quello esteriore che li circonda, che da quello interiore che li consuma. Su tutti emerge Sissy, una giovane nata e cresciuta in una comunità di circensi, allevata con affetto da suo padre, il quale sarà costretto poi dalle difficoltà della vita ad abbandonarla: lei, alla fine, rimane l’unica figura“vincente”, l’unica persona che dispensa grazia e bontà verso il prossimo, la sola ancora in grado di sognare, di immaginare al di là della meccanica realtà dei Fatti.
L’evidente intento didascalico di Dickens non scalfisce la gradevolezza del romanzo, espressione di critica sociale che emerge, seppure edulcorata, in ogni pagina.

The influence of Thomas Carlyle and other critics of the Industrial Revolution can be felt throughout this work - a sober fable of the effects of dehumanisation and material values of the Victorian merchant classes, and didactically lampooned in the characters of Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby. Their victims - Gradgrind's family, Stephen Blackpool, Rachel and the foppish Jem Harthouse, provide a supporting cast of typical Dickens characters and allow the author to alert his readers to the dangers of embracing a world in which imagination and wonder are crushed beneath mechanisation and the relentless march of progress.

أظن إنى ارتكبت جريمة فى حقى وفى حق الرواية بسبب قرائتها بنسخة مختصرة ومبسطة ل١٨٠ صفحة يعنى مختصرة لأكتر من نصف الرواية الأصلية تقريبا فكانت مشكلتى الأولى والأخيرة إنى أجد صعوبة فى تحديد ما الهدف الكامل الذى يسعى إليه المؤلف وماهى الأوقات العصيبة؟!!

Hard Times is a satire which takes place in an industrial but fictional English town. Mr. Gradgrind raises his two children, Tom and Louisa, to care only for facts, while displaying no empathy or emotion. There is a complicated story which follows them and others through to the point where at least Louisa is able in the end to acknowledge feelings.

This novel has Dickens’ characteristic naming of people to sound like their personality — like Gradgrind’s friend, Bounderby —so you know from the start not to trust him. These names always amuse me.

My own take on the novel is that it doesn’t live up to Great Expectations, or any other of his really wonderful stories. This may be the case because he was trying very hard to comment on the social snd economic conditions of the times. Nevertheless, Dickens does know how to tell an engaging tale. 4 stars.

Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here?

My friend Levi Stahl once noted how reading Henry James utilized the higher gears of his brain. I have always relished that sentiment, though I fear Henry James is above my pay grade. It is a different kettle with Dickens, my maudlin thoughts drift to Cassavetes on Capra, a reworking of my already repurposed grace. Get behind me, social realism.

Hard Times is an interesting collection of set pieces collected in a smelting town with a set of characters which honestly can be seen in Turgenev. The novel doesn't afford an arc much as a series of consequences. It is here where the other (evil) Scott Walker from Wisconsin finds his nocturnal emission: organized labor chokes the life out of people. It couldn't be inhaling coal dust or toiling every day bereft of Vitamin C, no, it is collective bargaining and an improper educational system. I should note that the Governor isn't a character in this novel. Only his peculiar sentiment.

Siblings are raised in a Spartan pedagogic environment, one which worships facts and retention as opposed to creativity. The daughter then marries a self made Scott Pruitt, while the wayward son fancies gambling and living above his station. There is no mention of an ostrich jacket. There is an honest worker. He can't abide by the union and, before Bob's your uncle, he is fingered for a robbery. Life can only aspire to transcend self-interest. It remains but an aspiration.