Sean Philipps History Charles Dickens’ Hard Times is a story about what was happening in the industrial city of CokeTown. There are three main social groups in the story: The upper class, the capitalists, and the working class. The Grangrind family represents the upper class. The family owns a school where they believe that only facts are necessary for life and that emotions distract you from becoming successful. By the end of this story, the Grangrind’s discover that their ideals of life that facts are necessary, but you do not behave as a human should. Instead you become a lifeless animal with no emotion. Dickens tries to show us that trying to be "the fittest" is impossible. If humans try to compete for the "fittest" person, they become inhuman.

What is Social Darwinism? Social Darwinsim is the idea that humans, like animals and plants, compete in a struggle for existence in which natural selection results in "survival of the fittest." This phrase, survival of the fittest, lets people exploit others because they believe that the richest or elite upper class is the "fittest". But to support a society of supply and demand, the rich try to produce the most products. Therefore, they make their workers work extra hard so the company does well as a whole. In Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, Dickens shows how an industrial society and the wealthy exploit the working class. He does this through his description of each character: The Gradgrinds, Josiah Bounderby, Stephen Blackpool, and others. He also uses the description of Coketown and working conditions to show how Social Darwinism has effected CokeTown.