It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke
and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red
and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall
chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for
ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river
that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of
windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the
piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an
elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets
all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another,
inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the
same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work,
and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year
the counterpart of the last and the next.
Rhett Ferrin on 05 Oct 10I think the supreme irony Dickens illustrates is that people in the idustrial revolution had to work under attrocious conditions in mines and factories in order to get money to live, yet it was that same work that eventually killed them. Either through years of compounded coal dust in their lungs or accidents in the mines or facotries.
Powerful imagery. I can picture the town!
Wonderful imagery. My favorite is The Old Curiosity Shop. I love Dickens. =]
