A Christmas Carol — Themes Flashcards
Charity
The main message within the story is the importance of charitable actions from rich people towards poor people. Scrooge becoming a patron for tiny Tim, that’s what dickens envisioned for rich victorian audience.
Redemption
What Dickens wanted to show to his very religious audience (victorian people were very religious and they believed in God and the afterlife), he wanted to show them if they, like Scrooge, changed their ways they would alter what happened in the afterlife. If they were really greedy, if they died they would go to hell and would be punished for their actions, almost a little bit like Jacob Marley. However if they changed, then God would give them a second chance so they were capable of redemption much like Scrooge was redeemed.
Christmas
Dickens is trying to remind his religious audience of the sacrifice that God made for us as human beings by sending Jesus who was born on Christmas day.
Family
What Scrooge illustrates is he neglected his family and this is one of the things that contributed to his misery, however people like Belle, people like Fred and even people like Jacob (Bob) Cratchit were incredibly happy because they placed family at the center of their lives. This story is also a very vivid reminder of the importnce of family and this is something that Scrooge learns throughout the story.
Class and social injustice
What Dickens was trying to illustrate was that rich business people / rich people like Scrooge contributed to the extreme class divisions that existed in Victorian society because they were too greedy and underpaid their workers. They contributed to the social injustice that happened towards people like Bob Cratchit and Dickens wants to change this.
