EM Forster and Charles Dickens use their novels, Home Howard and Hard Times, respectively, to discuss social class inequalities. These inequalities are registered in their characters' different relationships with facts and knowledge. While Dickens' characters in the Gradgrind family are shackled by bland facts, Forster's intellectuals use debate as a way to seek larger truths. It is Forster's poor characters, especially poor Mr. Leonard Bast, who can only grasp simple facts. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Dickens' Hard Times portrays his economic elite as a de facto people. Mr. Thomas Gradgrind is described as "burdened with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imagination that was to be carried away" (42). His logic is based only on facts. When he asks Cecilia "Sissy" Jupe what her father's profession is, he manages to create a more regal title for the circus performer by taking every single task he performs and giving it its own title. The power of entertainment is of no interest to Gradgrind; however, after asking Cecilia what the individual duties of her father's work are, Gradgrind finds respectability in creating from Mr. Jupe "a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and a horse breaker" (43). Furthermore, the reader may observe that Gradgrind's reliance on facts is not limited only to the older generation. The younger Bitzer establishes that this same adherence to cold statistical evidence has permeated younger generations at the behest of their teachers. When Sissy fails to provide a definition for a horse, an animal her family is very familiar with, Bitzer is praised for his definition of naming the different physical properties that make up a horse. Although Sissy, a representation of the poor, knows horses and has dealt with real horses, she only knows them from experience. Bitzer on the other hand, a more financially stable member, creates his horse by the numbers. He adheres to the idea that "you must not have anywhere what you do not actually see. What is called Taste, is just another name for Done" (45). In contrast to Dickens, Forster positions the Schlegel sisters, academic and economic elites, as women engaging in intellectual debate. Their research is aimed at finding the truth through the process of debate. The simplistic idea of right and wrong is not what concerns them; instead, the idea of right and wrong is in fact associated with the impoverished. "In his [Leonard Bast's] circle to be wrong was fatal. Miss Schlegel did not mind being wrong" (109). The Schlegel sisters continue to be interested in goals higher than simple facts. So, they get involved and brag about the debate. “The purpose of their debates, he implied, was truth,” yet it is truth, not fact, that prevails; therefore, "'it doesn't matter much which topic is discussed'" as long as the discussion serves to bring those interested closer to a higher truth (104). For Forster's elite, truth is seen as something greater than facts. To find the truth, there must be interstitial connections. Different sides of the truth are revealed through debate and it is only by connecting these sides that man can find the truth. Margaret, a representative of the educated elite, is not concerned with accumulating statistical data like Bitzer and his horse, but rather with making connections. "Just connect! That was his whole sermon" (147). The rich are a people who can afford to make these connections. As a result, the poor can only afford to know" (90)..
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