Hard Times Rhetorical Analysis Essay

The excerpt chosen from Hard Times by Charles Dickens is about a speaker sharing his view of an educational system that runs solely on teaching facts to students. Since the speaker is sharing his view with the schoolmaster and a third grown person, he speaks in a formal language. However, his formality and character makes him the target of the satirical passage as shown in the second paragraph of the excerpt where the narrator provides a description of the speaker. By referring to the speaker’s “square wall of a forehead,” the narrator uses imagery to create the illusion of an intellect with a large forehead. This is ironic since the speaker portrays the opposite of an intellect through his view of educating the students exclusively with facts. Also, by using the wall as a metaphor for the forehead, the narrator is stating that no logical thought can cross into the speaker’s mind, especially not when the …show more content…
The narrator begins the descriptions with “the emphasis was helped” and then states a seriation of the physical descriptions such as “the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set.” By using a judgemental and negative tone to explain the appearance of the speaker, the narrator establishes a list of all the ironic features that make the speaker unsuitable for sharing his view of the educational system. “The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders” creates a dull image of a person who should not be taken seriously. To further enhance the satiric nature of the passage, the narrator personifies the speaker’s neckcloth by stating that it was “trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact.” This reveals a frustrating tone by the narrator which is relieved with humour when the paragraph ends with “-all helped the