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Quote 8. Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody else's thorns in addition to his own. Explanation and Analysis. Here we're introduced to Stephen Blackpool. Stephen is an important character--critics have pointed out that he's the only important character in all of Dickens who actually works at a factory. Dickens's portrait of Blackpool is tragic to the extreme: Blackpool's life as a laborer has left his body horribly scarred. Dickens clarifies his point with an interesting analogy: if the average human being has his share of pain and happiness, then Stephen has had his happiness stolen away from him, and in its place received an extra share of pain. Critics often point to the passage as an example of Dickens's socialist ideas. Stephen, one could argue, has been robbed of the fruits of his own labors by wealthy capitalists like Bounderby: instead of being adequately rewarded for all the hard work he does, he's underpaid and overworked.