Charles Dickens’s Hard Times is a novel divided into three books. These books are entitled “Sowing”, “Reaping” and “Garnering”. Explain how each book’s title relates to the events, characters, and themes in it, and and analyze how the novel’s three sections convey Dickens’s central message about rationality and logic in mid-nineteenth century England.
The titles that Dickens chooses for the three books of Hard Times work on different levels: the words are associated with agriculture and imply a nostalgia for the rural traditions that were swept away by the Industrial Revolution – sowing the seeds, reaping the crop, ...
