"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 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.

"…Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The M'Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn't state in figures, or show to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen." (Chapter V)

Welcome to Coketown, where the air is full of smoke, the rivers are dyed (dead?) with pollution, all the houses look the same, and no one seems to have a spark of creativity or individuality.

This is our first glimpse of the setting of Hard Times, Dickens's take on the Industrial Novel (also affectionately known as the Condition of England Novel). And wow, do we ever want to join the circus and escape from this place.

Facts, Facts Everywhere, and Not a Drop of Play

Dickens's Coketown is an extreme version of northern industrialization. It's like the entire Industrial Revolution personified in a single town. So it's no surprise that Coketown is totally dominated by factories and industries. Everything is covered in smoke and ashes, the river is definitely not safe to swim in, and life is all about efficiency and profits.

The town is full of cookie-cutter streets and people. In fact, it's almost as if these streets and people came out of a factory themselves. After all, one of the big changes in going from hand-made products to factory goods was that machines could make things exactly the same every time.

So even though we usually think of efficiency as a good thing, Dickens turns it on its head. A totally rational, efficient system also means there's no room for creativity and play and holidays. Everything is the same, everyone is the same, and every day is the same. And the people and workers have to keep going through the motions to keep the system going, just like the underground workers in Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

If everything is the same, it's easy to get lost. What street are we on? What day is it? Even the smoke seems to get lost: the "interminable serpents" trail on "for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled." It's lines like this that make us suspect Dickens is telling us something bigger about Coketown: people are so coiled up in the system that they can't get themselves uncoiled.

Repetition

This passage not only describes Coketown, it also seems to recreate the experience of the place. If you feel like the sentence structures are getting a tad repetitive, then you're getting a hint of Coketown's monotony. Dickens's sentence structures are repetitive for a reason: "It was a town of red brick […] it was a town of unnatural red and black […] It was a town of machinery."

And, then, of course we've got whole lists of what's in the town, and what life is like ("It had a black canal […] It contained [...]"). So just as everything is like everything else, and every day is like every other day, each sentence starts to feel like—well, like every other sentence.

And if there's a symbol for this monotony, it might just be the steam-engine piston. Dickens describes it in a startling way—the piston is like "the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness." Factory life: it's dull, it's monotonous, and it might just cause insanity.

Actually, the final sentence here verges on insanity. It's got the same repetitious structure (the school "was all fact," the relations "were all fact," and everything not factual "never should be, world without end, Amen"). But by the end, we realize this isn't just a description of the town—it's a mantra and a prayer to figures and profits.