Page 90 - The Language of Humour

WRITTEN TEXTS—LITERATURE 77
Activity with text
Examine the techniques used to construct a satirical portrait of the
speaker, Thomas Gradgrind, and all that he stands for. In what sense is
it a caricature? Refer to parody of register, repetition and exaggeration;
absurdities and incongruity; metaphor and simile, contrast and
connotation.

Chapter 1 The One Thing Needful
‘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. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals
upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of 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. Stick to Facts, sir!’
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and
the speaker’s square forefinger emphasised his observations by
underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve.
The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead,
which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious
cellerage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis
was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin and hard set.
The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inf lexible,
dry and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair,
which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep
the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust
of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard
facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat,
square legs, square shoulders—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take
him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn
fact, as it was—all helped the emphasis.

‘In this life, we want nothing but facts, sir—nothing but facts!’
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person
present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane
of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial
gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim…
Chapter 2 Murdering the Innocents
…he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and
prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one
discharge. He seemed a galvanising apparatus, too, charged with a grim,
mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be
stormed away.