Fancy Versus Fact: A Study of Two of Dicken’s Characters Essay

Charles Dickens novel Hard Times is a input on the shortcomings of the Mid-Nineteenth Century Englands Industrialization Era, which favored the development of serviceman beings into machines, without having any emotions or imagination. The characters in this novel have allegorical shades and represent two assorted types of people two different kinds of products of the industrial age. For instance, Thomas Gradgrind is the main character of the novel and represents facts. In contrast, Cecilia Jupe aka Sissys character stands for discover or imagination.Thus, both these characters represent two different philosophies or lifestyles. Through these characters, Dickens has tried to fountainhead how fact differs from fancy and why fancy and imagination form an important incite of ones personality and development as a human being. Gradgrind is an educationist and represents a faulty educational governing body comprising only factual knowledge and measurable information. As a member of the parliament of Coketown, he is development this educational system to mass produce slaves for the towns factories.The pursuit of facts served an ideal purpose to the human beings in the Utilitarian society of the Mid-Nineteenth Century England. Gradgrind sees Sissy as an unpromising and unfit pupil receivable to her inability to respond to factual knowledge and refers to her merely through her roll number. Although being a part of such an educational system, Sissy refuses to be defined or influenced by it. Her strong personality, imagination, and compassion put to work it possible for her to not only to rise above the system but to lead a substantive life and to reach out to others around her in their hour of need.For instance, she is able to help Louisa realize what is absent in her life all along she helps Tom too in his time of need and alike takes care of the other younger children of Gradgrind. Thus, her character has a pronounced redemptive, motherly quality, although she was abandoned as a child by her father. According to Leavis, Sissys character is the embodiment of fancy and has a peculiar(a) part to play in the fable and she is wholly convincing in the function Dickens assigns to her (235).In an age of industrialization, where schools are acting like factories and churning out pupil who are duplicates of one another(prenominal) and are no better than machines, Sissy represents a gentle but firm assertion of morals, values, and compassion. By the end of the novel, her happy and peaceful life in contrast to Gradgrinds own childrens depressing lives makes him realize how wrong he has been about her and everything else. He then abandons his pursuit and belief in facts and tries to look to solace in values like Faith, Hope, and Charity instead. The learned thus becomes the learner.