PLEASE ANSWER THIS ASAP !!!
The passage below taken from the opening of Charles Dickens' 1854 novel Hard Times describes the speaker, Mr. Gradgrind, a successful businessman and leader of Coketown, telling the headmaster of Coketown's school what kind of education he wants the school to provide. Read the passage carefully.
Then, in a well-written essay, explain how Dickens uses literary elements and techniques to establish the narrator's attitude toward the speaker, Mr. Gradgrind, while also defining his character.
In your response you should do the following:
• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible interpretation.
• Select and use evidence to support your line of reasoning.
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of reasoning.
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your argument.
"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 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. Stick to Facts, Sir!"
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker's square forefinger emphasized 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 inflexible, 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.
