COKETOWN
Coketown is described in negative terms as a town of
red bricks and dirt, smoky, polluted and noisy where alienated faceless workers
produce commodities and elegancies for hypocritical people who enjoy the
products but despise the place they are made. Therefore Coketown is the
opposite of elegant and comfortable.
The middle class residents of Coketown want to change
the behaviour of the workers, making them attend church and avoid drinking and
getting drugs, as well as rest and enjoyment.
In the last lines Dickens apparently support
Gradgrind’s view that the poor had good lives and were ungrateful, though his
exaggerations shows it to be untrue, their diet being weak tea, bread, no
butter or meat, and rarely fresh products.
