Publisher's Synopsis
annotations This book is unique because it contains: -a literary criticism when analyzing and reading the entire book elaborated by Lina MedinaLiterary criticism of the book: Hard TimesToday I come with another great writer of the nineteenth century, this time of English literature: Charles Dickens. He is the author of such well-known works as Oliver Twist, Tale of Christmas or David Copperfield, among many others, as he was a very prolific writer. The one that I have come to review today, Difficult Times, is perhaps not the most famous, but it is without a doubt a reading in which I recommend getting involved. Therefore, just as I did in the review of Don Quixote de la Mancha, I will expose those issues that I consider most interesting and that, therefore, make the work worthy of reading.Hard Times is the tenth novel by Dickens and was published in 1854, when he was 42 years old. We are, therefore, before a novel that was written in the 19th century, located in a social context marked by the Industrial Revolution, with cities plagued by factories with tall chimneys that do not stop meandering smoke, important changes in the labor market - where the working class was the hardest hit - hard living conditions, inequalities, a scenario in which immense wealth coexists with the most absolute poverty ... in short: difficult times.The work has 447 pages - in the edition I read there was a prologue of 85 pages, so it would have to be subtracted, to be more exact - and it is divided into 3 books, which have, in turn, very suggestive titles: Book I: PlantingBook II: The harvestBook III: The storingThey are short chapters, which are easily read, and we find in them many descriptions that introduce us very well into the story.On the other hand, there is no single protagonist, but several main characters appear. We have, on the one hand, the figure of the entrepreneur, who is Mr. Bounderby, who is accompanied by other characters such as Luisa, Tom Gradgrind or Mrs. Sparsit; and on the other hand, we have the working class, where Esteban Blackpool is, who works in the textile industry under very difficult conditions. It should be borne in mind that it is at this time when the industrial looms of the large factories began to replace the artisan workforce, a fact that resulted in an increase in unemployment.They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I leave here an image of a textile factory in Worcestershire, in the mid-nineteenth century, more or less when the work was published.After this introduction, I will enumerate, as I said, the most interesting questions of the book, relating them sometimes with the social realities of the time and with particular aspects of Dickens' life, so that, in this way, we get closer to the essence of the work.Dickens was very clever when it came to choosing the names of his characters; It is very common to find in them ironic connotations that tell us something about their personality. For example, the last name of Josiah Bounderby - a banker who, to be honest, does not fall too well - is related to the word bounder, which at the time was used to refer to a person who is rude.We can find connotations of this type in most of the characters, but the one that has impressed me most has been Esteban Blackpool, which means black hole; and this is something that you will understand very well if you read the boo