What are Dickens’ aims in “A ChristmasCarol”?

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English Essay

Sherrick Chavda

What are Dickens’ aims in “A Christmas Carol”?

Charles Dickens wrote ‘A Christmas Carol’ in 1843.  This essay will discuss the way that Dickens shows his message of the re-plight of the poor and what he thought of how the poor were treated during Christmas times in the 1840s.  

Britain in the 1840s was a very different, dark place.  Poverty was widespread and later these times were known as the ‘Hungry Forties’.  This was the time when many dreadful practices became dismantled.  For example, after 1843, children under the age of nine years old were banned from working in the factories.  However, social conditions for the working class remained desperate.  London was growing far to quickly, without proper provision of sewage or housing facilities.  In the 1840s alone the population increased by a quarter of a million.

England at this time was a good place to live if you were rich.  For the poor and the underdogs, there was misery, sickness, neglect and even starvation.  Charles Dickens knew the poor and how they suffered because he was one of them.  When he was younger he lived in poverty and his family did not have that much money.  Dickens made it an aim of his to write about everything that was wrong during his time.  Dickens is now a great figure in history for the many shameful things he put right by writing his novels.  

To portray his message Dickens uses Ebenezer Scrooge.  Scrooge is identified with some of the evils of society.  Scrooge is a caricature of the problems during the time that Dickens wrote the book; therefore he is described as a miserly, old clerk that runs his own business.  Dickens previously ran the business with his friend Jacob Marley.  Jacob Marley had died on Christmas day seven years before the book was set, this is one of the reasons that Scrooge does not like Christmas and certainly doesn't like other people enjoying themselves. Scrooge was not just miserable and bad tempered at Christmas; he was like that all year round.  He is a cold heartless man; his only cares in the world are his money, his client’s money and his dead friend Jacob Marley.  Scrooge’s name in onomatopoeic, as the name sounds like the sound a ghost makes, the cold, creepy sound adds to the description.

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Dickens uses similes in the novel to describe Scrooge, as he was uncharitable and cold hearted.  When Marley died, Scrooge was left alone with the business.  He became lonely without his business partner.  Scrooge was very stingy and he did not like giving money to charity.  To say ‘he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind stone’, describes how stingy he was.  To turn a grind stone the hand must have a strong tough grip.  This is how his hand was when it came down to money.

        ‘The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed ...

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