This book tells about Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly old skinflint. He hates everyone, especially children. But at Christmas three ghosts come to visit him, scare him into mending his ways, and he finds, as he celebrates with Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and their family, that geniality brings its own reward (Dickens, 1993).
The implicit lesson of this story is what makes this book interesting to discuss. In this book, Dickens chose very simple words to describe the implicit ideas. In the middle of this story, Dickens brings three character into Scrooge’s dream, The Ghost of Christmas Past, The Ghost of Christmas Present, and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Dickens uses these characters as the representation of the things that can show Scrooge, the error of his way. The representation itself called figurative language. In Christmas Carol, figurative language that Dickens uses is allegory.
Allegory is a representation of someone or something into a character. Allegory is used to give the portrait of the writing in the deepest meaning that different from its actual meaning, so it has both a literal meaning and representative one. There are two main types of allegory; the first is the historical and political variety that refers to historical person or events. The latter is the allegory of ideas which personify characters into abstract concepts. The story of A Christmas Carol is using the second one, those characters of three spirits shows Dickens’ abstract ideas.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: ALLEGORY
In literary works, if you want to describe something in order to get deeper understanding or if you want to express something which is beyond your imagination by comparing it with something else, you can use figurative language. According to Figurative Language Organization (2011), figurative language is “used to create interest among the reader by using unusual comparisons that color the subject matter with an alluring tone”. Miss Spott (2003) suggested that figurative language is the use of word that has deep impression from its actual meaning. She also stated that it requires you “to use your imagination to figure out the author's meaning”.
According to Quilligan (1979), the word “allegory” comes from Latin term allegoria, allos (another, different) and agoreuo (to speak). In the other way, Miller (1981) stated that allegory in English is “a part of a chain of related terms and concepts, including parable, symbol, image, sign, emblem, figures, aphorism, metaphor and translation”. Whitman (1987) added that the technique of allegory is “obliquity – the separation between what a text says, the ‘fiction’ and what it means ‘the truth’”.
Stedman (2009) found that “allegory employs comparison and correspondence of words and ideas”. As the writer written above, allegory is a comparison of the words – ordinary word and extra ordinary one. She continued, “ …it is illustrative and explanatory of a specific line of truth”. In other word, the author uses allegory to give more specific understanding of the general word mentioned at the book.