Poetry: Oh Captain! My Captain!

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.


O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.


My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Walt Whitman

HT: Connection

Connection #2
The idea of "sowing" facts into kids' brains and then "reaping" the results can be seen in the book Angela's Ashes as well.  In the book, Frank's teachers at school are always very fact-based; everything is black and white to them.  On the first day of fourth grade, Frank's teacher Mr. O'Neill tells the class that "anyone who doesn't understand the theorems of Euclid is an idiot" (McCourt 151).  Kids are punished for getting answers wrong, and imagination and creativity are discouraged.  This harsh treatment of the kids results in their rebellious behavior outside of the classroom.  Frank and his friends are constantly getting into trouble around town, and their teachers and parents are forced to deal with their constant trouble-making.

HT: Connection

Connection #1:

      “We shall overcome because the Bible is right, ‘You shall reap what you sow.’”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=130J-FdZDtY
Martin Luther King Jr's speech "We Shall Overcome" from June 17, 1966

Martin Luther King Jr’s speech “We Shall Overcome” relates to the titles of Books One through Three in Hard Times of agricultural processes. The titles “Sowing” and “Reaping” directly relate to the information that was planted into the minds of the people in book one and how that information affects the people later in life just how Martin Luther King Jr. indicates as true exactly what the book is trying to say “You shall reap what you sow”, which is a quote directly from the Bible.

HT: Language

Beautiful Language #5:

“'I had proved my — my system to myself, and I have rigidly administered it; and I must bear the responsibility of its failures. I only entreat you to believe, my favourite child, that I have meant to do right.' He said it earnestly, and to do him justice he had. In gauging fathomless deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering over the universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do great things. Within the limits of his short tether he had tumbled about, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater singleness of purpose than many of the blatant personages whose company he kept” (216-217).

HT: Language

Beautiful Language #4:

    “But, less inexorable than iron, steel, and brass, it brought its varying seasons even into that wilderness of smoke and brick, and made the only stand that ever was made in the place against its direful uniformity” (90).
The changing of seasons that relates to the different stages of agricultural processes is what takes the monotony out of the town and provides it with a sense of individuality.

HT: Language

Beautiful Language #3:

    Dickens’s language shone when Louisa approached her father to confront him about her lifeless upbringing. Rather than simply saying her father was unable to read Louisa’s distressed expression due to a lack of intuition, Dickens folded image upon image together into a complex metaphor. Speaking to Mr. Gradgrind’s emotional inexpertise, Dickens wrote, “But, to see it [Louisa’s desire to pour out her soul out to him], he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle essences of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck” (99). This quote is incredible for twisting both physical and abstract images together and blurring the lines between them in such a way that all are given new meaning, and all are able to work together despite their complete surface-level dissimilarity.

HT: Language

Beautiful Language #2:

    “Then the wretched boy looked cautiously up and found her gone, crept out of bed, fastened his door, and threw himself upon his pillow again: tearing his hair, morosely crying, grudgingly loving her, hatefully but impenitently spurning himself, and no less hatefully and unprofitably spurning all the good in the world” (186).
Dickens artfully describes Tom’s internal struggles as well as the physical pain that his guilt of robbing the bank is causing. This passionate mixture of sadness and anger is demonstrated by his simultaneous love for his sister and hate for himself and the rest of the world.

HT: Language

Beautiful Language #1:

   “Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only knew the town was there because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness—Coketown in the distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen” (111).
By saying that Coketown is “shrouded in a haze of its own”, Dickens creates an image of Coketown existing in its own little world. The sun is “impervious” to the town, and time moves at its own pace.

HT: Question

Question #3:

   Analyze the connection between the name of Book 3—“Garnering”—and Mr. Gradgrind’s willingness to take Louisa back into his home after her failed marriage.

HT: Question

Question #2:

How do the solely agriculture related book titles relate to the primarily industrial focus of the book?

HT: Question

Question #1:

We see the entire book get wrapped up in the last chapter of the text. How does the way in which the characters act in Hard Times relates to what ends up happening to them? In other words, how does the way in which a character acts (i.e. personality, decisions, actions etc.) decide their fate at the end of the book? How does this relate to the word "Garnering"?

HT: Analysis

Analysis #5:

               Among a string of other questions in the final chapter of Book 3, Dickens addressed the future of Gradgrind by pondering whether the man could envision his future, in which he would be “making his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope, and Charity; and no longer trying to grind that Heavenly trio in his dusty little mills?” (286). As previously established, the facts were sowed in Book 1, the evil stalks that grew from them were cut down and dealt with in Book 2, and now in Book 3, Dickens indicates that Gradgrind picked up (“garnered”) the remnants of that past life to try to make something good of them. His change of ways is clear by the reversal of the deification of fact, to the deification of virtue. The capitalization of Faith, Hope and Charity, and their characterization as “Heavenly” makes these qualities seem god-like and powerful, whereas the previously almighty Fact is diminished as “subservient,” and its slave—factories—are described as nothing but “dusty little mills.” Like the products of a harvest being collected to provide food and warmth for a family, the evil occurrences that resulted from his philosophy of fact were collected, recognized, and made the best of, to provide sustenance for the future goodness Gradgrind would work to bring.

Additionally, this final chapter of the book, in which the fates of each character are revealed, is written largely through a series of questions. This furthers the idea of “reaping” because it suggests that each of the characters have been left in some predicament—and now they have control over their own lives as to what will they do from there. Their futures are open-ended like questions, suggesting that their destinies are in their own hands, just like the products garnered by a harvest may be used for whatever purpose the harvester choses.

HT: Analysis

Analysis #4:

           Hard times book the Third is called Garnering, which refers to storing and collecting after a harvest. Taking this into account one can see what was collected through the rigorous system of facts. Gradgrind seems to undergo a transformation after realizing that a fact based learning system is a failure. His entire view of the world changes from “gauging fathomless deeps with his little mean exercise-rod” to a more wholesome view. He sees that when he tried to force fact upon Louisa, he instead ended up “annihilating the flowers of existence” suggesting that the fact based learning system that he had developed causes more harm than good. Dickens also seems to comment on how this system contrast that of nature. Through the rigid use of tools like the “little mean exercise-rod” and the “rusty stiff-legged compass” we notice a clear distinction between the way the tools are described against the way nature is described with its “fathomless depths” and the “universe.” One can infer that the contrast between the divine nature and the rigid science tells the reader that learning only facts limits one’s ability to connect to the natural order of life and will therefore be forced to live a life of regret and sadness.

HT: Analysis

Analysis #3:
            In chapter 12 of book 2, Louisa has a breakdown to her father about how she is unhappy and about how the way that she has been raised is useless to her. Right before she started breaking down Louisa asks her father “What have you done, O father, what have you done, with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here”? The garden that she mentions can relate to the facts that have planted into the minds of the children starting from book one. The garden of plants that were thought to be all-important in the development of a successful individual. By this point in the book it is obvious that the consequences of the “sowing” of these facts in book 1, are ready to be reaped but the consequences are not positive, like they were meant to be. Louisa states, “All I know is, your teaching a philosophy will not save me” (Dickens 211). The fact that marrying Bounderby would give Louisa everything she needs, that Gradgrind has planted in Louisa’s head in the first book, has resulted in her becoming unhappy and having negative results that will be “reaped”.

HT: Analysis

Analysis #2:
           The subtitle of "The Reaping" of Book 2 refers to a verse from the Bible, reading, "For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." In the stages of the harvest, reaping is collecting the crops that have been planted. This concept can be seen in the development of Tom in Hard Times. Tom is constantly told as a child that facts are all that matters. His father always tells him what he needs to know and what he doesn't need to know. The "sowing" of these ideas leads to Tom being referred to as a "whelp" in chapter 3 (131). A whelp is a word for an immature child; this implies that Tom, because of his strict upbringing, is childish and incapable of supporting himself. The effects of this upbringing (the reaping) on Tom are shown in book 2 when he resorts to stealing money from Bounderby's bank. Although he doesn't verbally admit to it at first, the fact that he begins "tearing his hair" and "morosely crying" (186) after Louisa confronts him about it is enough to prove his guilt to the reader. Tom is "reaping" the "harvest" of his fact-based childhood; he can't support himself because strictly knowing facts doesn't help him in his job at the bank, so he must resort to stealing money in order to make a living.

HT: Analysis

Analysis #1:

The title of Book 1, “Sowing,” has an agricultural connotation that would imply a natural, earthy fostering of knowledge, yet the Book opens with a harsh contrast to this image. Dickens took this contrast so far as to describe the children as items on an assembly line, like an “inclined plane of little vessels, then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of fact poured into them until they were full to the brim” (9). Ironically, fact is “poured” into the minds of the youth as if they were inhuman factory products, like “vessels.” This is very much unlike seeds being planted tenderly in soil, and the irony of this mechanized process’s label being an agricultural term emphasises how unnatural and impersonal Gradgrind’s philosophy of fact truly was. But, whether by gentle planting or by mechanical implantation into the minds of youth, the seeds of fact were physically implanted—and the stage was thus set for them to “grow” throughout the rest of the book, as would seeds sowed into soil.

HT: Overview

The section title for the three books are "Sowing", "Reaping", and "Garnering," which are all harvesting terms.  Find, trace, and analyze any metaphors or thematic elements that connect to the appropriate book title and explicitly explain how they work together to create meaning. 

This is the main topic of our blog.