Hard Times -- Classics of Foreign Literature

Author: Charles Dickens (English)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: In the industrial town of Coketown, people are confined and enslaved, lacking personal freedom. The so-called "educator" Gradgrind advocates a suffocatingly inhuman educational method, which ultimately stifles the natural inclinations of his own children. Meanwhile, the wealthy Pondereev of Coketown, in his effort to maintain the false image of "self-made success," abandons his birth mother and ends up betrayed by all. This book is another masterpiece by Charles Dickens, a renowned 19th-century British critical realist writer. The novel depicts the bourgeoisie's profit-driven nature, the poverty and suffering of the working class, as well as the contradictions and struggles between labor and capital. The author masterfully portrays a series of typical characters with a nearly cartoon-like style. This book is in English.