A Christmas Carol Flashcards
‘Spectral and one great heap of black’
- Incorpreal, ghastly
- Shroud of mystery, uncertainty
- Light dessimating, unubiqtuos
- Juxtaposed with ‘darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it’
- The phantom as a literary device enables Dickens to explore the social and moral issues central to his fiction: –poverty, miserliness, guilt, redemption - a tradition of allegory. Their shapes tell you about author’s moral design.
The ghosts give the story its irresistibly logical structure, and make Scrooge think that he is prepared for each succeeding visitation.
‘Marley was as dead as a doornail’
- incomplete death
- juxtaposition between past, present and future
- rejects hope, void, tense
- death is usually at the end
‘I am here- I am here- the shadows of the things that would have been dispelled. They will be!’
- determination of jubilance
- replenishes love
‘A throne, a jolly giant, glorious to see’
- jovial but disciplinary
- objective noun ‘throne’ - regal
- awe, attractiveness - maintains comforting and exhuberant nature
- tragic to abundant
- reforms to a subserviant position
- alliterative sound - ‘jolly giant’
FEZZIWIIIG
- skillfully juxtaposes 2 different working conditions
- blacking factory, dad debt
- prominent penitence
‘Why, is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money?’
- ridiculing his hostile apathy
- temporary value - not even using it when he’s alive
- prepositional time phrases
- meagre care for retribution and reformation
- knocking him off his pedestal
- concerning him of human welfare - liberal
‘No beggars, no children (…) blind men’s dogs (…) tug their owners into doorways’
- dogmatically marginalises himself
- impressionable creatures
- not likely to change his unlikeable demeanour
- steer clear of sin
- manifestation of malevolence, incredulous
- detritus of his kindness
- aviance of proto-socialism anthesism
- static mannerisms
‘Cold within him froze his features’
- imperious to the seasonal conditions
- stressed syllables - lack of comfort
- semantic field of bitterness
- cantacurous individual
- emblamatic pervasive gloom
- withering husk of a man
The Malthus ideology
- monetary solutions for humanitarian problems
never truly believes in a truly utopian society - people do not use advantageous resources to better standard of living - parsimonious
‘If they would rather die, they had better do it and decrease the surplus population’
- malthus
- clinical, callous
- elaborate if needed
- a burden to society - financial collectors
“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the
grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching,
covetous, old sinner!”
- oh - unpleasant emotion
- The negative verbs
all have an onomatopoeic feel associated with lacking liberty; they have a
guttural quality and are harsh and unpleasant in their sound - like Scrooge. - the utilisation of exclamation marks could
amplify our disgust at him. Alternatively, it is quite conspicuous that there are
seven verbs listed. Perhaps, they could be symbolic of the seven deadly sins -
avarice in particular.
‘Can’t I just take them out at once?’
- lack of development
- wishes to alter out of fear, not his mannerisms and beliefs - older gen
