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. . . .-Charles Dickens, Hard TimesWhich problem is the subject of this passage?

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Question [CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]

“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. . . .”-Charles Dickens, Hard TimesWhich problem is the subject of this passage?

A	economic inequality
B	poor transportation systems
C	lack of child labor laws
D	urban pollution

Explanation:

Detailed explanation-1: -This quotation is a description of Coketown in Hard Times. Smog and pollution from the factory chimneys have filled the atmosphere, discolouring the natural red-brick colour of many buildings with this sooty residue, which Dickens compares to looking like an unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.

Detailed explanation-2: -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.

Detailed explanation-3: -In this example, Dickens uses the alliterative words serpents of smoke as a metaphor for the imagery of the polluting smoke spiralling continuously from the chimneys of Coketown factories. The use of the word serpent is a biblical reference to represent the evil and poisonous, even Satanic, attribute of the smoke.

Detailed explanation-4: -v Industrialisation led to the misery of workers. b i He described Coketown a fictitious industrial town as a grim place full of machinery smoking chimneys rivers polluted purple and buildings that all looked the same. ii Here workers are known as ‘hands’ as if they had no identity other than as operators of machines.

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