"What is Dickens message in 'A Christmas Carol' and how does he make it?"

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By Abigail Kaye

 

“What is Dickens message in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and how does he make it?”

A Christmas Carol is a compelling tale of greed, love and charity. It is the story of an old man called Ebenezer Scrooge who hates Christmas. Throughout the tale, four ghosts visit Scrooge and try to change his opinion. Dickens was sending a message to his readers that Christmas is the time of year where everybody should rejoice and be happy. Dickens was obviously trying to make a statement that we should all enjoy life as we have only one chance to.

During Victorian times, London became a centre for poverty, crime and pollution. Dickens was outraged at the conditions in which working classes lived in and wanted to draw the upper-classes attention to their plight. This is the reason that Dickens wrote novels with a social conscience to raise public awareness of the situation.

In ‘A Christmas Carol’, Charles Dickens portrays Scrooge as a very unpleasant and miserly man. He describes him as ‘a tight fisted hand at the grindstone’. This paints a picture of a stingy old man, obsessed with money and work. Dickens wanted the reader to see just how awful Scrooge is at the start. Scrooge is said to be ‘squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, covetous old sinner’. This is evidence that harsh words suggest violent actions. Scrooge would squeeze, wrench, grasp and scrape money from you. He is also covetous which means that he is jealous of what other people have and wants more than he can have. Dickens says he is a sinner so he hints that he is evil!

Part of Dickens’ basic message at the beginning of the story, is that you shouldn’t behave selfishly like Scrooge. The way Scrooge acts gives a lot about his inner feelings away. For instance Scrooge says ‘If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boil with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.’ This sums up Scrooge’s attitude to Christmas.  He believes anybody who celebrates Christmas to be an ‘idiot’. He is cynical and uses two Christmas symbols as torturous weapons. Again this shows Scrooge to have a violent and vindictive nature. Scrooge’s view on Christmas also shows him to be lonely and miserable. He shuts people out of his life such as his nephew and clerk. He takes his misery and anger at life out on other people. This can be shown by a comment Scrooge makes, “Let me hear another sound from you and you’ll keep Christmas by losing you situation” (job). The quote “I wish to be left alone” demonstrates that he prefers to be by himself because he’s not very good with people. Dickens managed to shock Victorian readers by bluntly stating that being selfish and greedy with wealth was wrong. Such a character as Scrooge had never been publicly described before and even today Scrooge’s attitude is shocking because Christmas is celebrated worldwide and such a character like him is many people’s worst nightmare!

Dickens’ major way of getting his important message across is in what he was the four spirits show Scrooge. They all show something different that affects Scrooge in different ways.

The First Spirit is that of Scrooge’s deceased partner Jacob Marley. Marley was a man like Scrooge. He was a “tight-fisted” man who held money as close to his heart as Scrooge does. When Marley appears to Scrooge, Dickens describes the chain which Marley has “clasped around his middle”. It is a chain made of “cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds and heavy purses wrought in steel”. These symbolise Marley’s selfish, covetous and obsessive personality. It is a representation of a message that Scrooge will only receive through the things he values most; money and wealth. Dickens is criticizing Marley’s previous lifestyle and bring a socially conscience attitude to the way he lived. He is trying to make the reader see how much he despised the rich “upper-classes” approach to the poverty-stricken. He wants the reader to see ever so clearly, exactly what the story is about.

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Marley tells Scrooge that the chain he bears is the chain he “forged in life”. Made by his own free will and by his own free will he wore it. He then goes to tell Scrooge the nature of Scrooge’s own chain, saying “Or would you know…the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was as full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas eves ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a ponderous chain.” Here Marley is blatantly telling Scrooge that his own chain is 7 years of greed added ...

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