Research On The Environmental Description In Hard Times

Hard times was an important work written by the master of English criticalrealism in the19th century Charles Dickens in his golden age. As a critical realismnovelist,who was extremely sensitive to social issues,Dickens realized that there wasa false prosperity under the capitalist industrial city.In hard times,Dickens created anabnormal space Coketown，gathering a distinct features of all the industrial cities，which was a microcosm of the British industrial development of capitalism at thattime.The billowing smoke over the town maked people not breathe. The river ranpurple with ill-smelling dye.Those red building was just like the painted face of asavage.Those evergreen trees were too dusty to show any vigour.The whole town waslike a piece of dark spots on the earth. While the capitalists in villas enjoying theluxury life of industrial civilization, workhands had to put up with the terrible workcondition and poignant accommodation.Various distortions of rules and regulations made people’s life very painful.Theimbalance of natural ecology resulted in the variation of social ecology.In the dualpressure of the appalling natural environment and the brutal social environment,therelationship between people became abnormally practical,which resulted in theunhealthy mental ecology.Through the research of this novel,this thesis colleted thedescriptions of the natural environment and the social environment,analyzed the wayDickens how to build the environment,discussed the important influence of externalenvironment on the characters and affirmed the value of environmental descriptions inthe novel.Based on the thorough observation of the British industrial status in the middleof the nineteenth Century and the profound thinking of human condition in thecapitalist society,this novel vividly described the reality of social life at that time,skillfully created a series of typical characters who were distinct,and vehementlyattacked the bourgeois utilitarianism and philosophy of fact.Dickens detailedlycharacterized the social environment, natural environment and complicatedinterpersonal relationship in Coketown, which conveyed extreme sadness and strongresentment against the pollution environment and the alienation of human naturecaused by the wanton expansion of the industrial civilization,disclosed the yearningfor the healthy social ecology, advocated the early ecological thought of the return tonature.