Dickens Clearly Attempts to Influence our Lives in "A Christmas Carol". What Techniques does he use to do this?

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Dickens Clearly Attempts to Influence our Lives in “A Christmas Carol”. What Techniques does he use to do this?

‘A Christmas Carol’ is a Victorian tale that is loved by millions worldwide. It was written by Charles Dickens in 1843 and combines the harsh reality of poverty in Victorian times with the joy of Christmas and ghosts. The reason why we celebrate at Christmas is due to Charles Dickens himself, with food, parties and the festive spirit. The story also has a moral to it. It focuses around one man Ebenezer Scrooge and his greed for money, his hate for Christmas and a journey through past, present and future. Throughout the novel Charles Dickens uses a number of techniques to get across the message of poverty and differences in class and he aims to stimulate the reader’s social conscience and draw attention to the plight of the poor in Victorian London.

One of the main techniques that Dickens uses is to set the story around Christmas. Christmas is a time of happiness and celebration and Dickens emphasizes the merriness of this festive time by describing it as a ‘joyous occasion’. Dickens goes into great detail when describing the feast that is had at Christmas using phrases like its ‘tenderness and flavor’ and ‘there never was such a goose’. But the main reason for the story to be set at Christmas is that Scrooge is the exact opposite of a festive person. He refers to Christmas as ‘a time for paying bills without money’ and whenever and wherever it’s mentioned the famous mutter of ‘Bah Humbug’ is stubbornly given as a reply. In the story Charles Dickens’ nephew plays a major part in trying to persuade his uncle Scrooge that Christmas time is a ‘kind, forgivable, charitable, and pleasant time’. The word ‘charitable’ though, has no meaning whatsoever to Scrooge as when he is approached by two charity collectors and asked whether he would donate some money, his immediate reply was to say ‘are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?’ and that judgment shows his utter lack of Christmas spirit, but I bet he wish he never said that as that line comes back to ‘haunt him’.

‘Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as a flint , from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire ; secret and self contained, and solitary as an oyster’.

Another of Dickens techniques used is his detailed character exaggeration of Scrooge. The way in which Scrooge is described and the words used are so ‘Dickens like’, as sentence after sentence of in depth words and phrases are used.

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In his school days, he was very serious and was more interested in his education than Christmas. Later in his life he had a fiancée and he used to enjoy the festivities. Money then took over his life and he has rejected everyone ever since and because of this, even though he is financially richer, his life is much poorer.

Scrooge’s house isn’t his; it is the late Marley’s. He just hasn’t changed the name. As described in the book; ‘he keeps the house quite neat’. He checks each room, and from his description he keeps the house in pristine ...

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