Hard Times

Look how we live, an' wheer we live, an' in what numbers, an' by what chances, and wi' what sameness; and look how the mills is awlus a goin, and how they never works us no nigher to ony dis'ant object—ceptin awlus, Death.

Gradgrind education, Louisa's marriage, bank frame-up, Stephen's pit death, and Tom's flight form a tight three-book fable of fact versus feeling, so plot scores 88.

NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.

Gradgrind, Louisa, Stephen, Bounderby, and Sissy each embody a pole in the utilitarian debate without flattening into allegory only, so cast scores 87.

I thout 'a' had'n enough o' me t-day, sir, if you please, wi' praising me up and swelling me wi' compliments. I ha' gotten een to see wi' and eern to year wi'.

Book I sows doctrine, Book II reaps marriage disaster, Book III gathers consequences — Dickens's most schematic three-movement design, so pace scores 86.

Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.

Coketown smoke, Stephen's dialect indictment, and Gradgrind's square forefinger render industrial satire in memorable, speakable cadences, so prose scores 90.

Look how you considers of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi' yor deputations to Secretaries o' State 'bout us, and how yo are awlus right, and how we are awlus wrong.

Coketown's identical red brick, mill hands, circus camp, and Old Hell Shaft map factory civilization as moral geography, so world scores 91.

NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.

'NOW, what I want is, Facts' is among the most quoted openings in English fiction and immediately declares theme and antagonist, so hook scores 92.

You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children.

Utilitarian education satirized as child-rearing experiment — the 'Hands' versus 'Heads' structure influenced later industrial and dystopian fiction, so innov scores 89.

All right, Thquire! said Mr Sleary, your thon may be aboard-a-thip by thith time. Childerth took him off, an hour and a half after we left there latht night.

Tom rescued by circus allies and shipped abroad relieves tragedy but leaves Coketown's system largely intact — structurally honest, emotionally mixed, so ending scores 85.