Differences and Similiraties Between Dickens and Hardy

Dickens was born in Portsea, in 12. His father, John Dickens, was a kind and likeable man, but incompetent with money, and due to his financial difficulties they moved to Camden when Dickens was nine. When Charles was twelve his father was arrested and taken to the debtors’ prison in Southwark. He started working at Warren’s blacking-warehouse and its strenuous working conditions made an impression on him, later influencing his fiction. He became interested in writing (and acting) and, after having learnt shorthand in his spare time, he began working as a freelance reporter at the Parliament and the Old Bailey. Under the nom de plume Boz he published the eponymous Sketches (36), a collection of short pieces concerning London scenes and†¦show more content†¦He succeeds not only in making his readers sympathize with the children, but also in proposing them as models of the correct way people should behave to one another. His aim lies in teaching a moral lesson t o the reader. To accomplish this he uses the most effective language, i.e. a careful selection of adjectives, lexical and syntactical repetitions, juxtapositions of images and ideas and hyperbolic and ironic comments, thus achieving the most vivid depictions of life and character ever attempted by any novelist. In Coketown, a fictitious industrial town, Thomas Gradgrind, an educator firmly believing in facts and figures, has founded a school based on the suppression of imagination and feelings, the same theories by which he raises his children Louisa and Tom. His daughter is compelled to marry Josiah Bounderby, a wealthy banker thrice her age, and she accepts so that her brother can be apprenticed at Bounderby’s bank, yet the marriage proves to be unhappy. Tom, grown up to be dissipated and self-interested, robs his employer, initially managing to make everyone suspect an honest laborer, Stephen Blackpool , then discovered and snuck out of the country by his sister. Hard Times is composed of three books of three chapters each: Sowing, about the seeds planted by means of