Themes and context of A Christmas Carol Flashcards
Charity and generosity
Scrooge is a caricature of a miser, greedy and callous in every way. But we soon learn that he is the most impoverished character- he is lacking love, warmth and the spirit of Christmas. The story’s structure and Scrooge’s character development are engineered so that as Scrooge become aware of his own emotional poverty and learns to forgive and listen to his buried conscience, he is able to see virtue and goodness in other characters and rediscovers his own generosity. All the generous characters in the story are financially downtrodden but succeed in being good and happy despite their lot, whereas Scrooge needs to go through a traumatic awakening to find happiness. Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, firsts sounds this theme when he praises Christmas as “the only time… when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut up hearts freely” . Fred’s language indicates that, for Dickens, generosity involves more than giving money. It is about goodwill and compassion. Throughout the novella, the examples we see of generosity are more about the spirit in which something is given than the thing itself- from the schoolmasters offer of food and wine to a young Scrooge or Mr and Mrs Fezziwig modest but joyful celebration.
Social injustice
As A Christmas Carol begins, Scrooge is not condemned to his miserly ways alone. Scrooge isn’t just a parsimonious man, his miserliness is representative of the way in which his society ignored, exploited and abused its poorest and most vulnerable members. This refers to Scrooges objection to donations and the dismissal of the poor as “surplus population”. Such cynical refusal to share is, for Dickens, an outrage. It is important to consider the many forms of social injustice in the novella. Some examples are the victimisation of children, represented by Tiny Tim and the oppressive force of debt represented by the young couple in Stave 4. Through these brief glimpses of social injustice in Victorian London, Dickens builds a multi faceted impression of how it was like to live underprivileged to his mostly privileged readers; he implores them to open their hearts and be more giving to the poor.
Memory and Time
The Ghost of Christmas Past is memory personified; the light from his head allows Scrooge to see and learn both good and bad things in his past. In the novella, three ghosts appear to scrooge to show him how he is living sinfully and what the consequences will be if he doesn’t choose to live a better life. The three ghost represent his past memories, leading to his present misery and the continuation to the future of his death, symbolized by a hooded figure. Time in this story is distinguished by several motifs. For example, the bells tolling and chiming fit into the story’s song-like structure and also recur at key moments reminding Scrooge of the time and time passing “Expect the first to-morrow when the bell tolls one”
Family
The entrance of Scrooges nephew Fred at the beginning of the story introduces another side the miser. Scrooge is not unfortunate in the way of his relatives and he has a family awaiting him, asking him to dinner, wanting to celebrate with him yet he refuses. In the story cold and loneliness are set up in opposition to the warmth of family. Symbols of coldness such as Scrooge’s empty heart and his refusal to provide heat for the Cratchit family shows Scrooge’s cruelty and lack of connection. Family provides the antidote to this coldness as when Fred enters the counting house, it suddenly warms up. Further, Cratchit’s warmth, despite his lack of coal, and the togetherness of his energy of his large family, shows him to be one of the most fortunate men in the story.
Christmas and Tradition
A Christmas Carol was published as a Christmas story, and takes the form of a Christian morality tale containing a moral religion that the highly religious and traditional English population of Dickens’ time would enjoy. Dickens uses the idea of singing to connect the story to the joyful Christian traditions of the season, such as caroling, while at the same filling it with more serious, politically-minded themes. This theme has two aspects: Firstly, the festive, jolly Christmas atmosphere flourishes in the streets surrounding Scrooge’s company office embodied in characters like Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, and Scrooge’s nephew – these characters are examples of goodness and charity, and show Scrooge the way to kindness.At the same time, Dickens uses the seasonal period around Christmas to highlight the sort of unfair and crushing poverty that the Cratchit’s face. The cold, bleak winter weather exacerbates the terrible privations poor families of the era had to face, and in presenting the poor in such extremes A Christmas Carol profoundly criticizes the laws, policies, and economic system that promote such poverty.
Poverty
The story conveys a message about the visibility and effectiveness of charity being swamped by common misconceptions that the poor house is a functional institution keeping poor people usefully employed. In fact, the poor house was an institution that did nothing to help the poor. Rather, it was a terrible place that served primarily to keep the poor out of view of those who were better off. Scrooge’s repetition of his dismissive phrase “Humbug!” is a symbol of the insensitivity and ignorance of the middle class looking down on and dismissing the poor. Dickens blames the huge class stratification of Victorian England on the selfishness of the rich and, implicitly, on the Poor Laws that continues to subdue the underclass. Scrooge is the obvious symbol of the greedy Victorian rich, while the Cratchits represent the working poor.
Change and Redemption
Redemption is an essential concept in many religions, including Judaism and Christianity. When we speak of religious redemption, we refer to acts that provide deliverence from sin, or make right our wrongdoings, making up for the pain we have caused others through future acts of kindness. Essentially, an individual seeking religious redemption is ‘buying back’ God’s graces through their transformation from sinner to an enacter of God’s will. In Scrooge’s case, his acts of kindness in Stave 5 mark the beginnings of his long road to moral redemption: he first rekindles his relationship with the community, and with God, through his involvement with Christmas festivities. His immediate philanthropic act of delivering a turkey to the Cratchits demonstrates his acceptance of the social responsibility more privileged members of society must accept - to protect the wellbeing of the less fortunate. The world becomes a better place almost immediately following Scrooge’s conversion. In fact, the story implies that a renewed connection to humanity is, in fact, the very essence of redemption. Though the Christmas setting invites a traditional Christian interpretation of Scrooge’s redemption, his change is rooted not in a commitment to deeper spirituality or orthodoxy but in an authentic connection to and investment in the lives of other human beings.
