A Christmas Carol

Introduction

A Christmas Carol is one of Charles Dickens's best-known and most popular books. A century after it was written, it was still required reading at Christmas for many families. It has been made into films, plays, and parodies. As a result of this wide popularity, the book has come to be considered as a simplistic morality play, and its original intent is often forgotten.

Discussion

As literature, A Christmas Carol is not easy to categorize. At one level, it is a ghost story, complete with clanking chains and foggy nights. It can also be viewed as a moral lesson about the true meaning of Christmas and the proper manner of treating fellow human beings. There is also a sociological element: Dickens had much to say about poverty, and the pitiful condition of the Cratchit family and especially the crippled Tiny Tim are set up as an indictment against an uncaring society. Another interesting aspect of the book is its psychological dimension (Kaplan, Pp. 29).

Ebenezer Scrooge begins the story as a man obsessed by money, with apparently no feelings of humanity or interest in human society. He detests Christmas not because of any lack of Christian faith, but because Christmas is an interruption of business. Christmas is a time for emotions, which Scrooge has abjured. Christmas is used as a device for depicting Scrooge's attitudes toward people. The religious meaning of the holiday is relatively unimportant to the story, except in an indirect sense about Christian charity and love of one's neighbor.

It is important in this regard to consider that Dickens uses the terms “ghost” and “spirit” interchangeably in A Christmas Carol. The word “spirit” had several meanings in Dickens's time. The spirits that visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve are spirits in the supernatural, religious, and emotional senses (Newey, Pp. 45).

Marley's ghost is the first visitor of the night and, interestingly, the only one that Scrooge is able to banish ...