GCSE ENGLISH LITERATURE
Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol
THEMES: redemption. Christmas. Family, time and memory,
choices, greed/avarice, social injustice, poverty, guilt, generosity,
compassion and the Christmas Spirit, the supernatural
Generosity, compassion and the Christmas spirit The Novella takes
place on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and uses the ideas of generosity
and compassion that we associate with Christmas to highlight the
transformation of Scrooge. Scrooge’s nephew and his clerk show compassion
towards Scrooge which is in stark contrast to those who coldly dismiss him
(fellow business people, his servants, the pawn shop owner) as he does
them.
“ I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea,”
begins Charles Dickens in the preface to the 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. This story
entails the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge learning the value of compassion and kindness
after being visited by three ghosts in the early hours of Christmas morning.
While many people enjoy the story as a timeless tale of redemption, few think of it as a
work of serious political activism, but that was Dickens’s intention.
According to Michael Slater, a biographer of the Victorian author, A Christmas Carol is
“Dickens’s reaction to the attitude of the government and many of the ruling classes in
the 1840s … saying, if the poor couldn’t get work and couldn’t look after themselves,
they’d have to go to the workhouses.” This belief was part of a prevailing attitude in
Victorian society that the poor were a problem to be dealt with, instead of people to be
helped – a belief Dickens vehemently disagreed with. Dickens’s politics were shaped by
his own childhood experiences. When his family fell on hard times, he was briefly taken
out of school and sent to work in a factory.
In 1843, Dickens had initially planned to publish a political pamphlet called An Appeal
on Behalf of the Poor Man’s Child, but instead decided to plant “the ghost of an idea” in
a festive story. Early in A Christmas Carol, for example, when a charity collector tells
Scrooge that many people would rather die than go to a workhouse, Scrooge replies: “If
they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
, Modern readers might read as a purely malicious statement but in 1843 the phrase
“surplus population” was a loaded term used to refer to the poor.
People were terrified of overpopulation, especially amongst the poor, and they believed
that if people brought children into the world that they could not afford to keep, they
were almost committing a crime. CHARLES DICKENS HATED THIS ATTITUDE.
The story can therefore be seen as emanating from Dickens’ troubled childhood. The
darker aspects of “A Christmas Carol” and Scrooge’s personality are a reflection of his
own suffering caused by his father’s financial irresponsibility. When Charles was twelve
years old, his father John Dickens, was taken into the custody of Marshalsea debtor’s
prison. His whole family moved into the prison with his father except Charles, who was
forced to leave school and work in a so-called blacking factory which manufactured shoe
polish. Charles was deeply humiliated to being reduced to a common labourer. He
worked twelve hours a day in a rat-infested hellish environment, assigned to repetitively
placing tops onto endless pots of polish.
This experience traumatised the young Charles Dickens, and he never really recovered
from it. This horrible exposure to life as one of the exploited working masses coloured
the rest of his life, including much of his writing. The character of Scrooge is a reflection
of his own paradoxical, unresolved feelings towards his father. Charles both loved and
loathed his father, which explains why Scrooge is depicted in the story as both monster
and angel. This dual personality of Scrooge is rationalised in the book by the epiphany
he experiences as a result of the ghostly visitations he must endure.
1. Explore how Dickens presents Scrooge’s fears in A Christmas Carol.
Write about:
• how Dickens presents what Scrooge is frightened of in this extract
• how Dickens presents Scrooge’s fears in the novel as a whole
Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol
THEMES: redemption. Christmas. Family, time and memory,
choices, greed/avarice, social injustice, poverty, guilt, generosity,
compassion and the Christmas Spirit, the supernatural
Generosity, compassion and the Christmas spirit The Novella takes
place on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and uses the ideas of generosity
and compassion that we associate with Christmas to highlight the
transformation of Scrooge. Scrooge’s nephew and his clerk show compassion
towards Scrooge which is in stark contrast to those who coldly dismiss him
(fellow business people, his servants, the pawn shop owner) as he does
them.
“ I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea,”
begins Charles Dickens in the preface to the 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. This story
entails the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge learning the value of compassion and kindness
after being visited by three ghosts in the early hours of Christmas morning.
While many people enjoy the story as a timeless tale of redemption, few think of it as a
work of serious political activism, but that was Dickens’s intention.
According to Michael Slater, a biographer of the Victorian author, A Christmas Carol is
“Dickens’s reaction to the attitude of the government and many of the ruling classes in
the 1840s … saying, if the poor couldn’t get work and couldn’t look after themselves,
they’d have to go to the workhouses.” This belief was part of a prevailing attitude in
Victorian society that the poor were a problem to be dealt with, instead of people to be
helped – a belief Dickens vehemently disagreed with. Dickens’s politics were shaped by
his own childhood experiences. When his family fell on hard times, he was briefly taken
out of school and sent to work in a factory.
In 1843, Dickens had initially planned to publish a political pamphlet called An Appeal
on Behalf of the Poor Man’s Child, but instead decided to plant “the ghost of an idea” in
a festive story. Early in A Christmas Carol, for example, when a charity collector tells
Scrooge that many people would rather die than go to a workhouse, Scrooge replies: “If
they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
, Modern readers might read as a purely malicious statement but in 1843 the phrase
“surplus population” was a loaded term used to refer to the poor.
People were terrified of overpopulation, especially amongst the poor, and they believed
that if people brought children into the world that they could not afford to keep, they
were almost committing a crime. CHARLES DICKENS HATED THIS ATTITUDE.
The story can therefore be seen as emanating from Dickens’ troubled childhood. The
darker aspects of “A Christmas Carol” and Scrooge’s personality are a reflection of his
own suffering caused by his father’s financial irresponsibility. When Charles was twelve
years old, his father John Dickens, was taken into the custody of Marshalsea debtor’s
prison. His whole family moved into the prison with his father except Charles, who was
forced to leave school and work in a so-called blacking factory which manufactured shoe
polish. Charles was deeply humiliated to being reduced to a common labourer. He
worked twelve hours a day in a rat-infested hellish environment, assigned to repetitively
placing tops onto endless pots of polish.
This experience traumatised the young Charles Dickens, and he never really recovered
from it. This horrible exposure to life as one of the exploited working masses coloured
the rest of his life, including much of his writing. The character of Scrooge is a reflection
of his own paradoxical, unresolved feelings towards his father. Charles both loved and
loathed his father, which explains why Scrooge is depicted in the story as both monster
and angel. This dual personality of Scrooge is rationalised in the book by the epiphany
he experiences as a result of the ghostly visitations he must endure.
1. Explore how Dickens presents Scrooge’s fears in A Christmas Carol.
Write about:
• how Dickens presents what Scrooge is frightened of in this extract
• how Dickens presents Scrooge’s fears in the novel as a whole
