Short Passage from Hard Times

The passage that we would like to elaborate on in this week’s blog post is that of the horses on the wall and flowers for a carpet dialogue from the second chapter of Charles Dickens’s Hard Times. In this chapter we are introduced to Mr. Gradgrind. He is a very fact-oriented man and a very “proper” man. The passage about the horses and flowers starts off with Gradgrind asking Sissy (or as he calls her Cecilia) what her fathers does for a living. When she is describing that her father is a “horse-rider” Gradgrind waves it off as objectionable and has Bitzer define what a horse is in a “boy’s definition of a horse” (Dickens, 9). The scene goes on further to show that Gradgrind – among others – denies the idea of having horses papered on the walls. The justification for not liking the idea of papering horses onto the wall by saying, “Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don’t have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact” (Dickens, 11). Now the three of us all had the same thoughts to this whole passage, blasphemy! For these men (especially Gradgrind) to be so against someone putting horses on their walls or flowers as their carpets is just crazy. They completely take away a person’s sense of imagination and even their creativity by shutting their minds down to these ideas. To live a life that is just completely based on facts would lead to a terribly boring and unadventurous life. If one cannot put horses on the wall or flowers on the carpet if they so please, than what kind of mindset would we be giving to our kids. Take Bitzer for example, this kid is like a robot of everything parents seem to want. He is obedient, fact-driven, and just a total bore (in our opinions at least). It seems that he has no free will or desire to stray from the course like most kids do. But that is the way that kids learn and mature, so if we were to live our lives the way that Gradgrind seems to want us to in this passage than our world would be super uneventful and lame! We must instill the ideals of learning from one’s mistakes in order to develop into the respectful and mature adults that most people become! So we must continue to keep papering horses onto the walls and to lay our carpets with flowers!