50 pages 1 hour read

Charles Dickens

Hard Times

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1854

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Book 1, Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Book 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The One Thing Needful”

In the fictitious city of Coketown in northern England, a wealthy industrialist named Thomas Gradgrind lectures a schoolroom full of children about the importance of “facts.” To be successful, he tells them, they must eschew everything but the cold, hard facts from their lives.

Book 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Murdering the Innocents”

Like many industrial cities, Coketown is filled with grim factories belching columns of coal-black smoke. Thomas Gradgrind has used his wealth to set up a school in the city. This school instructs children to follow Gradgrind’s distinctive ideology: They must abandon fanciful, whimsical ideas and relentlessly pursue success and profit. Gradgrind tests two students by asking them for “the definition of a horse” (28). Cecilia ‘Sissy’ Jupe, the young daughter of a circus entertainer, struggles to provide a direct answer. Bitzer, a pale young student, lists the dictionary definition of a horse. Gradgrind praises Bitzer and chastises Sissy. The pugilistic government officer asks the students whether they’d “paper a room with representations of horses” (29). Sissy insists that she would because she likes horses, and he again chastises her and tells her that she’s “never to fancy” (30).

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