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Personification
Definition of Satire
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of satire, but satirists can take... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians... read full definition
Book 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Facts vs. Definitions:
Hard Times satirizes the worldview of utilitarianism through one of Mr. Gradgrind’s lessons.
“ [...] Give me your definition of a horse.”
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand).
“Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!” said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. “Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals!”
On her first day of class, Mr. Gradgrind demands Sissy Jupe define a horse, a question which flummoxes her because of its imprecision and irrationality. What could it mean to “define” a horse, a complex living organism made up of many biological systems working together (not to speak of its mind, its experience of the world, and its relationship to human beings across times and cultures)?
The definition that Gradgrind is looking for isn’t really a definition at all, in the formal sense. He is looking for a string of facts, which Bitzer then delivers (“Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth [...]”). But the point remains that while all of these facts may tell you about a horse, they don’t really tell you what a horse is—the whole conversation feels pointedly reductive. Dickens uses humor to show how a worldview based narrowly on facts makes the holder of such views diminish the complexity of the world around them.
Related Themes:
