In Charles Dickens' Hard Times, Dickens presents Gradgrind as a down-to-earth man, portrayed as simply square. When we use the word square, we mean the actual shape of a square. In the first chapter, the reader reads all this descriptive language of how square Thomas Gradgrind is. Throughout the text, Charles Dickens changes the reader's view of Thomas Gradgrind from a square to a circle through Gradgrind's behavior and view of himself. The first time the reader sees any knowledge of Thomas Gradgrind or his family is in the first book, Sowing. In the first chapter of Hard Times, Gradgrind is introduced giving a lesson on facts at his new school. “The minds of reasoning animals can only be formed on Facts: nothing else can ever be of any use to them. This is the principle by which I raise my children, and this is the principle by which I raise these children.” (Dickens). In this first part of the book, Gradgrind is described as a man with a square head, a square body and practically everything square. This is the initial behavior of Thomas Gradgrind's square. The facts are his life and his faith. Gradgrind believes that facts are his faith because the facts he has learned in life have not yet failed him. Everything is about to change when Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a circus performer, can't answer what a horse is in a factual definition. When Gradgrind goes to tell Sissy that she can no longer attend school because she is a bad influence on the other children at her school. There is something about Sissy Jupe that made Gradgrind want to bring her home to raise her with his children. Part of the reason is that Sissy Jupe's father disappeared from the circus because he was so ashamed to ever perform again, so Gradgri... middle of paper... betrayed his family and made his wife as unhappy as Louisa was with Bounderby. Through Gradgrind, Dickens describes his feelings towards the education system and schools. They don't give students the education that is truly necessary for life, all they give is concrete evidence that pushes people into a lonely and miserable life. Gradgrind is meant to be the person who saw the horrible things the fact did to his family and changes. Without Gradgrind in this novel, there would have been no awareness of the need for change, and so it would not have been love that made their family work. Ultimately, Gradgrind and his children have a better bond thanks to Sissy Jupe's fantasy background. Without Sissy Jupe, the Gradgrind family would not be a family with any ties other than blood. Works Cited Dickens, Charles. Hard times. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001. Print.