Charles Dickens

â–º Did Charles Dickens live in the 18th century or the 19th century?

â–º Why did Charles drop out of school?

â–º Why did Charles go to work in a factory?

â–º His first love's parents did not like him. Why not? (Tänk själv!)

â–º Where did Charles get ideas about what to write about?

A Christmas Carol

It was a town of red brick.  Or of bricks that would have been red if the smoke and ashes aska  had allowed it. But the smoke and ashes made the bricks dirty.

It was a town of machinery and tall buildings. And tall chimneys skorsten. Out of them serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever [ungefär: utifrån långa skorsten slingrade rök som en ändlös orm].

The town had a black canal [kanal = konstgjort flod] in it.

The town had a river. A river that was purple with chemicals kemikaler, ill-smelling dye färg. 

There were vast piles of buildings [ordagrant: störa högar av byggnader]. From their windows there was a rattling skrammel  and a trembling darrning  all day long.

Inside the buildings, the pistons of the steam-engines [kolv av en ångmaskin]  worked up... and down. Up and down. Like the head of a mad elephant...

The town had several fler  large streets. All very like one another. And many small streets still more like one another.

The people who lived their were equally like one another. They all went in and out at the same hours. With the same sound upon the same pavements [Br.E.: trottoar]. To do the same work.

For them every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow. Every year the counterpart motstycke  of the last and of the next.

You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful.

The members of a religious persuasion (=people who are part of a religion) built a chapel liten kyrka  there. They made it a pious warehouse [en from lager]  of red brick.

The jail looked like the infirmary (hospital), the infirmary might have been the jail fängelse. The town-hall might have been [skulle ha kunnat vara]  either. Or both. Or anything else….

â–º What colour is the town?

â–º Translate översätt: "would have been"

â–º Were the bricks clean or dirty?

â–º What were the "serpents" made of?

â–º What colour was the canal?

â–º How did the river smell?

â–º What made the windows rattle? (Tänk själv!)

â–º What was like an elephant?

â–º Which was the most interesting shopping street? (Note: Tricky question! Obs! lurig fråga!)

â–º The people were similar to each other. Give 3 ways.

â–º What made every day the same?

â–º Dickens (the author) makes up a new word, "workful." What do you think it means betyder?

â–º How can you say "pious warehouse" using other English words?

â–º Translate: "the imfirmary might have been the jail".

â–º Was the town pretty?

â–º The author författare  does not like the town. Which words and phrases fraser  does he use to show that?

â–º Translate the summary into Swedish.

Coketown, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact....

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 in it, 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.

These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off, comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned.  The rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these.

You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful.  If the members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there—as the members of eighteen religious persuasions had done—they made it a pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamental examples) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it.  The solitary exception was the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the door, terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs.  All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white.  The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction.  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.

A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of course got on well?  Why no, not quite well.  No?  Dear me!

No.  Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects like gold that had stood the fire.  First, the perplexing mystery of the place was, Who belonged to the eighteen denominations?  Because, whoever did, the labouring people did not.  It was very strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning, and note how few of them the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, from their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, where they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the church and chapel going, as at a thing with which they had no manner of concern.  Nor was it merely the stranger who noticed this, because there was a native organization in Coketown itself, whose members were to be heard of in the House of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning for acts of parliament that should make these people religious by main force.  Then came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement, human or Divine (except a medal), would induce them to forego their custom of getting drunk.  Then came the chemist and druggist, with other tabular statements, showing that when they didn’t get drunk, they took opium.  Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail, with more tabular statements, outdoing all the previous tabular statements, and showing that the same people would resort to low haunts, hidden from the public eye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined in it; and where A. B., aged twenty-four next birthday, and committed for eighteen months’ solitary, had himself said (not that he had ever shown himself particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, as he was perfectly sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top moral specimen.  Then came Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular statements derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared—in short, it was the only clear thing in the case—that these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen; that do what you would for them they were never thankful for it, gentlemen; that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never knew what they wanted; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter; and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable.  In short, it was the moral of the old nursery fable:

There was an old woman, and what do you think?
She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink;
Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet