A Christmas Carol
 Frontpiece, first edition 1843 | |
| Author | Charles Dickens |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Chapman and Hall |
Publication date | 19 December 1843 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Hardback, Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (commonly known as A Christmas Carol) is what Charles Dickens described as his "little Christmas Book"[1] and was first published on December 19, 1843 with illustrations by John Leech.[2] The story was instantly successful, selling over six thousand copies in one week and, although originally written as a potboiler to enable Dickens to pay off a debt, the tale has become one of the most popular and enduring Christmas stories of all time.[3]
Contemporaries noted that the story's popularity played a critical role in redefining the importance of Christmas and the major sentiments associated with the holiday. A Christmas Carol was written during a time of decline in the old Christmas traditions.[4] "If Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable customs, its social and charitable observances, were in danger of decay, this is the book that would give them a new lease," said English poet Thomas Hood.[5]
Plot summary
A Christmas Carol is a Victorian morality tale of an old and bitter miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, who undergoes a profound experience of redemption over the course of one evening. Mr Scrooge is a financier/money-changer who has devoted his life to the accumulation of wealth. He holds anything other than money in contempt, including friendship, love and the Christmas season.
In keeping with the musical analogy of the title, A Christmas Carol, Dickens divides his literary work into five "staves" instead of chapters. This is a little joke Dickens has carried out throughout the story, it adds humour to the story and links in because, a stave is something you will find in a piece of music, and a "carol" is a type of music/song.
Stave I – Marley’s Ghost
The story begins by establishing that Jacob Marley, Scrooge's business partner in the firm of Scrooge & Marley, was dead—the narrative begins seven years after his death to the very day, (Marley was as dead as a doornail), Christmas Eve. Scrooge and his clerk Bob Cratchit are at work in the counting house, with Cratchit stationed in the poorly heated "tank", a victim of his employer's stinginess. Scrooge's nephew, Fred, enters to wish his uncle a "Merry Christmas" and invite him to Christmas dinner the next day. He is dismissed by his relative with "Bah! Humbug!" among other unpleasantness, declaring Christmas time to be a fraud. Two "portly gentlemen", collecting charitable donations for the poor, come in afterwards, but they too are rebuffed by Scrooge, who points out that the poor laws and workhouses are sufficient to care for the poor. When Scrooge is told that many would rather die than go there, he mercilessly responds, "If they would rather die ... they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." At the end of the workday, Scrooge grudgingly allows Cratchit to take Christmas Day off, but to arrive to work all the earlier on the day after. Scrooge leaves the counting-house, eats dinner at his usual tavern, and returns to his home, an isolated town house formerly owned by his late business partner, Jacob Marley. In keeping with his miserly character, Scrooge lives in a small suite of largely unfurnished rooms within the house which he keeps dark and cold since "darkness is cheap" (the rest of the rooms in the building having been let out as offices). While he unlocks his door Scrooge is startled to see the ghostly face of Marley instead of the familiar appearance of his door knocker. This is just the beginning of Scrooge's harrowing night. As Scrooge climbs the staircase of his house he thinks he sees a locomotive hearse charging up the stairs before him in the dark. As he gets to his room, puts on his dressing gown, and eats his gruel by the fireplace, he sees the carvings on his mantelpiece transform into images of Jacob Marley's face. All of the bells in the house begin to ring loudly. When they stop he then hears a clanking noise. His cellar door opens loudly and then the clanking on the stairs coming upstairs and approaches his room. Marley's ghost passes through the door and appears before Scrooge. Marley has come to warn Scrooge that his miserliness and contempt for others will subject him to the same fate Marley himself suffers in death: condemned to walk the earth in penitence since he had not done it in life in concern for mankind. A prominent symbol of Marley's torture is a heavy chain wound around his form that has attached to it symbolic objects from Marley's life fashioned out of heavy metal: ledgers, money boxes, keys, and the like (representing his sins ). Marley explains that Scrooge's fate might be worse than his because Scrooge's chain was as long and as heavy as Marley's seven Christmases ago when Marley died, and Scrooge has been adding to his with his selfish life. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a chance to escape this fate through the visitation of three more spirits that will appear one by one. Scrooge is shaken but not entirely convinced that the foregoing was no hallucination, and goes to bed thinking that a good night's sleep will make him feel better.
Stave II - The First of the Three Spirits
Scrooge wakes in the night and day the bells of the neighbouring church strike twelve. He remains awake until one, when the first spirit appears and introduces himself as the Ghost of Christmas Past. His personal appearance is very interesting; he looks like a young boy, but at the same time, he looks old. His hair is white (tied in a ponytail), but he has no wrinkles. This spirit leads Scrooge on a journey into some of the happiest and saddest moments of Scrooge's past, events that would largely shape the current Scrooge. These include the mistreatment of Scrooge by his uncaring father (who did not allow his son to return home from boarding school, not even at Christmas and was abusive according to his sister, Little Fan), the loss of a great love sacrificed for his devotion to business, and the death of his sister, the only other person who ever showed love and compassion for him who picked him up at boarding school to go home at Christmas. Unable to stand these painful memories and his growing regret of them, Scrooge covers the spirit with the cap (which was made by the sins of man and had a beam of light coming out of the top) it carries and he is returned to his room, where he falls asleep. He also noticed that the light of the cap had never extinguished and this is a symbol because it is foreshadowing that Scrooge's light in him will never be extinguished (his hope will never die).
Stave III - The Second of the Three Spirits
Scrooge wakes at the stroke of one. After more than fifteen minutes, he rises and finds the second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, in an adjoining room. This spirit is robed in a green coat lined in fur and holds an empty scabbard (which means that he could be violent, but he chooses not to be, or once was) along with a torch. The spirit shows him the meagre Christmas celebrations of the Cratchit family, the sweet nature of their lame son Tiny Tim, and a possible early death for the child; this prospect is the immediate catalyst for his change of heart. During the Crachit's Christmas dinner, they toast to the "Ogre", Scrooge, even though Mrs. Cratchit doesn't like Scrooge. Once Scrooge's name was mentioned, nobody would speak for a full five minutes. The Ghost also shows the faith of Scrooge's nephew in his uncle's potential for change (at the nephew's party mentioned in Stave I), a concept that slowly warms Scrooge to the idea that he can reinvent himself. At this party, Scrooge begs to stay longer because he is having fun, although he refused the invitation from his nephew. To further drive the point, the Ghost reveals two pitiful children who huddle under his robes which personify the major causes of suffering in the world, "Ignorance" and "Want", with a grim warning that the former is especially harmful. At the end of the visitation, the bell strikes twelve. The Ghost of Christmas Present vanishes and the third spirit appears to Scrooge.
Stave IV - The Last of the Three Spirits
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come takes the form of a grim spectre, completely robed in black, who does not speak and whose body is entirely hidden except for one pointing hand. This spirit frightens Scrooge more than the others, and harrows him with visions of the Cratchit family bereft of Tiny Tim, of Scrooge's own lonely death and final torment, and the cold, avaricious reactions of the people around him after his passing (they joke about his death and funeral). Without its explicitly being said, Scrooge learns that he can avoid the future he has been shown, and alter the fate of Tiny Tim—but only if he changes.
Stave V - The End of it
In the end, Scrooge changes his life and reverts to the generous, kind-hearted soul he was in his youth before the death of his sister. He anonymously sends the Cratchits the biggest turkey the butcher has, meets the charity workers to pledge an apparently impressive amount of money to their delight, and spends Christmas Day with Fred and his wife.
The next day after Christmas, Scrooge arrives at work early. Cratchit is late and Scrooge pretends at first to be his old selfish self, but then tells Cratchit that he is going to raise his salary. Cratchit is shocked and Scrooge wishes him a Merry Christmas.
In the denouement, Scrooge proves to be better than his word and gains a fine reputation as a kind and generous man who embodies the spirit of Christmas in his life.
Themes
The story deals extensively with two of Dickens' recurrent themes, social injustice and poverty, the relationship between the two, and their causes and effects. It was written to be abrupt and forceful with its message, with a working title of "The Sledgehammer". The first edition of A Christmas Carol was illustrated by John Leech, a politically radical artist who in the cartoon "Substance and Shadow" printed earlier in 1843 had explicitly criticised artists who failed to address social issues. Dickens wrote in the wake of British government changes in the "Poor Laws" (welfare system), changes which required among other things, welfare applicants to "work" on treadmills, as Ebenezer Scrooge points out. Dickens asks, in effect, for people to "lighten-up" in treatment of the poor.
Characters
Principal
- Ebenezer Scrooge
- Bob Cratchit
- Fred (Scrooge's nephew)
- Tiny Tim (son of Bob)
- Jacob Marley (who appears in the story only as a ghost)
- The Ghost of Christmas Past
- The Ghost of Christmas Present
- The Ghost of Christmas Future
Supporting
- Fezziwig (to whom Scrooge had been apprenticed as a youth)
- Fan (Scrooge's late sister)
- Belle (a young woman to whom Scrooge was once engaged)
- Mrs. Cratchit (Bob Cratchit's wife)
- Peter Cratchit (Bob's eldest son)
- Martha Cratchit (Bob's eldest daughter)
- Belinda Cratchit (Bob's second eldest daughter)
- Two, unnamed, "smaller Cratchits" a boy and a girl
- Dick Wilkins (Scrooge's co-worker under Fezziwig)
- Scrooge's unnamed charwoman, who sells some of his belongings, including his bed curtains and the shirt he was originally meant to be buried in (she took it off of his dead body!).
- Mrs. Dilber - Scrooge's laundress,(she is also his charlady) who also sells off some of the dead man's belongings.
- The unnamed undertaker's assistant, part of the trio who plunder the dead Scrooge's belongings and sell them to Old Joe.
- Old Joe (a receiver of stolen goods; in the "future" segment of the story, he is given the dead Scrooge's belongings, after his room and his body have been plundered by the charwoman, Mrs. Dilber the laundress and the undertaker's man)
- The two portly gentlemen are symbolic which Dickens compares to the young,boy & girl the rich getting richer due to the Industrial Revolution & no social reforms being introduced for the working classes
- A young boy and girl, Ignorance and Want, respectively.
Adaptations and sequels
A Christmas Carol was the subject of Dickens' first ever public reading, given in Birmingham Town Hall to the Industrial and Literary Institute on 27 December 1852. This was repeated three days later to an audience of 'working people', and was a great success by his own account and that of newspapers of the time. Over the years Dickens edited the piece down and adapted it for a listening, rather than reading, audience. Excerpts from 'A Christmas Carol' remained part of Dickens' public readings until his death.
A Christmas Carol has been adapted to theatre, opera, film, radio, and television countless times. According to the Internet Movie Database, various movie adaptations of the story were filmed as early as 1908, in a version produced by Thomas Edison.
Perhaps the most popular and critically acclaimed film adaptation of the story was made in Britain in 1951. Originally titled Scrooge (and renamed A Christmas Carol for its American release), it starred Alastair Sim as Scrooge, and was directed by Brian Desmond-Hurst with a screenplay by Noel Langley.
Patrick Stewart was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for his 1999 portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge in a made for television movie for the TNT network based on his one man stage show of A Christmas Carol. Stewart plays all the Characters in the stage show, but the movie has a full cast.
Fredric March (1955) and George C. Scott (1984) both received Emmy Award nominations for playing on television.
Most modern adaptations refer to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come as the "Ghost of Christmas Future" instead.
A lighthearted version of the story was portrayed in The Muppet Christmas Carol, with Michael Caine as Scrooge and Gonzo as Charles Dickens, narrating the tale while also being a part of the background action.
A classic Walt Disney adaptation of the tale, entitled Mickey's Christmas Carol, has the character Scrooge portrayed by Scrooge McDuck, a character who would later be the basis for the Disney series, Ducktales. Supporting players included Mickey Mouse as Bob Cratchit, Donald Duck as Fred, Goofy as Jacob Marley & Jiminey Cricket as the Ghost of Christmas Past, amongst the wide universe of Disney characters taking part in the story.
Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge (2002) is a satire by Christopher Durang, blending A Christmas Carol with O. Henry's Gift of the Magi and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.
A popular radio adaptation was presented in the 1930's with Lionel Barrymore playing Scrooge. Barrymore was so identified with the character that his home studio of MGM planned a film version for him to star in, but by the time cameras were ready to roll, Barrymore's arthritis had confined him to a wheelchair and the part was played by Reginald Owen. A new, original theatrical audio version faithful to Dickens and starring Peter Gerety with other Broadway performers has been released by The Night Kitchen Radio Theater through the web site SpokenWordAmerica.com.
Dickens wraps up the story with two short paragraphs telling us that sickly Tiny Tim survives and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge becomes renowned for his newfound goodness—basically a "happily ever after" ending—but he provides no detail on what happens to any of the characters. Following the every-good-story-deserves-a-sequel idea, a number of authors have crafted their own versions of what befell Scrooge and company. Ranging from Internet stories to best-selling novels (and even a television screenplay), several different works have picked up the characters and events of Dickens' classic to spin new tales for the story's aftermath.
Notes
- ^ Letter to John Forster quoted by Mitsuharu Matsuoka (7 May 1998). "John Forster's "The Life of Charles Dickens"". Cecil Palmer. Retrieved 2007-12-13.
- ^ Dickens sent out advanced presentation copies on the 17th while the official release date was the 19th. He was sold out by the 22nd. (see Hearn (2004), pg.xiviii)
- ^ Hearn (2004), xxxi
- ^ "Dickens and A Christmas Carol". Retrieved 2007-04-06.
- ^ Thomas Hood (1844). "Hood's Magazine and Comic Review": 68.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help)
References
- Michael Patrick Hearn, The Annotated Christmas Carol: a Christmas Carol in Prose / by Charles Dickens, W. W. Norton and Co., 2004, ISBN 0-393-05158-7
See also
External links
Online editions
- A Christmas Carol at Project Gutenberg
- A Christmas Carol, scanned illustrated editions from Internet Archive
- A Christmas Carol, full text with audiobook.
- A Christmas Carol, audiobook via LibriVox
- A Christmas Carol, HTML version.
- A Christmas Carol - Special Collections, University of Glasgow (with illustrations).
- "A Christmas Carol Audio version" - Audio version by The Night Kitchen Radio Theater.
Other
- The TLS guided tour to A Christmas Carol
- A Christmas Carol - Differences between adaptation of the book
- Victoria Web's - discussion of Washington Irving and A Christmas Carol.
- Victoria Web's - discussion of Scrooge.
