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"?