A CHRISTMAS CAROL

'''A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas''' (commonly known as '''A Christmas Carol''' ) is what Charles Dickens described as his "little Christmas Book" and was first published on December 19, 1843 with illustrations by John Leech.^[1] The story was instantly successful, selling over six thousand copies in one week and, although originally written as a potboiler to enable Dickens to pay off a debt, the tale has become one of the most popular and enduring Christmas stories of all time.^[2]
Contemporaries noted that the story's popularity played a critical role in redefining the importance of Christmas and the major sentiments associated with the holiday. ''A Christmas Carol'' was written during a time of decline in the old Christmas traditions.^[3] "If Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable customs, its social and charitable observances, were in danger of decay, this is the book that would give them a new lease," said English poet Thomas Hood.^[4]

Contents

Plot summary

Characters

Principal

Supporting

Dramatic adaptations and sequels

Notes

References

See also

External links

Plot summary

''A Christmas Carol'' is a Victorian morality tale of an old and bitter miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, who undergoes a profound experience of redemption over the course of one evening. Mr Scrooge is a financier/money-changer who has devoted his life to the accumulation of wealth. He holds anything other than money in contempt, including friendship, love and the Christmas season.

In keeping with the musical analogy of the title, "A Christmas Carol", Dickens divides his literary work into five "staves" instead of chapters. The story begins by establishing that Jacob Marley, Scrooge's business partner in the firm of Scrooge & Marley, was dead—the narrative begins seven years after his death to the very day, Christmas Eve. Scrooge and his clerk, Bob Cratchit, are at work in the counting-house, with Cratchit stationed in the poorly heated "tank", a victim of his employer's stinginess.
Scrooge's nephew, Fred, enters to wish his uncle a "Merry Christmas" and invite him to Christmas dinner the next day. He is dismissed by his relative with "Bah! Humbug!" among other unpleasantries.
Two "portly gentlemen", collecting charitable donations for the poor, come in afterwards, but they too are rebuffed by Scrooge, who points out that the Poor Laws and workhouses are sufficient to care for the poor. When Scrooge is told that many would rather die than go there, he mercilessly responds, "If they would rather die ... they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." At the end of the workday, Scrooge grudgingly allows Cratchit to take Christmas Day off, but to arrive to work all the earlier on the day after.
Scrooge leaves the counting-house and eventually returns to his home, an isolated townhouse formerly owned by his late business partner, Jacob Marley. In keeping with his miserly character, Scrooge lives in a small suite of largely unfurnished rooms within the house which he keeps dark and cold (the rest of the rooms in the building having been let as offices).
While he unlocks his door Scrooge is startled to see the ghostly face of Marley instead of the familiar appearance of his door knocker. This is just the beginning of Scrooge's harrowing night. A spectral hearse charging up the broad staircase in the dark, the sliding of bolts and slamming of doors elsewhere in the house, and the inexplicable ringing of the ancient and neglected bell pull system precedes a visit from Marley as Scrooge eats his gruel by the fireplace.
Marley has come to warn Scrooge that his miserliness and contempt for others will subject him to the same fate Marley himself suffers in death: condemned to walk the earth in penitence since he had not done it in life in concern for mankind. A prominent symbol of Marley's torture is a heavy chain wound around his form that has attached to it symbolic objects from Marley's life fashioned out of heavy metal: ledgers, money boxes, keys, and the like.
Marley explains that Scrooge's fate might be worse than his because Scrooge's chain was as long and as heavy as Marley's seven Christmases ago when Marley died, and Scrooge has been adding to his with his selfish life. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a chance to escape this fate through the visitation of three more spirits that will appear one by one. Scrooge is shaken but not entirely convinced that the foregoing was no hallucination, and goes to bed thinking that a good night's sleep will make him feel better.
Scrooge wakes in the night and the bells of the neighboring church strike twelve. The first spirit appears and introduces himself as the Ghost of Christmas Past. This spirit leads Scrooge on a journey into some of the happiest and saddest moments of Scrooge's past, events that would largely shape the current Scrooge. These include the mistreatment of Scrooge by his uncaring father (who did not allow his son to return home from boarding school, not even at Christmas), the loss of a great love sacrificed for his devotion to business, and the death of his sister, the only other person who ever showed love and compassion for him. Unable to stand these painful memories and his growing regret of them, Scrooge covers the spirit with the large candle snuffer it carries and he is returned to his room, where he falls asleep.
Scrooge wakes at the stroke of one. After more than fifteen minutes, he rises and finds the second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, in an adjoining room. The spirit shows him the meagre Christmas celebrations of the Cratchit family, the sweet nature of their lame son, Tiny Tim, and a possible early death for the child; this prospect is the immediate catalyst for his change of heart. They also show the faith of Scrooge's nephew in his uncle's potential for change, a concept that slowly warms Scrooge to the idea that he can reinvent himself. To further drive the point, the Ghost reveals two pitiful children who huddle under his robes which personify the major causes of suffering in the world, "Ignorance" and "Want", with a grim warning that the former is especially harmful. At the end of the visitation, the bell strikes twelve. The Ghost of Christmas Present vanishes and the third spirit appears to Scrooge.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come takes the form of a grim spectre, completely robed in black, who does not speak and whose body is entirely hidden except for one pointing hand. This spirit frightens Scrooge more than the others, and harrows him with visions of the Cratchit family bereft of Tiny Tim, of Scrooge's own lonely death and final torment, and the cold, avaricious reactions of the people around him after his passing. Without explicitly being said, Scrooge learns that he can avoid the future he has been shown, and alter the fate of Tiny Tim—but only if he changes.
In the end, Scrooge changes his life and reverts to the generous, kind-hearted soul he was in his youth before the death of his sister.
The story deals extensively with two of Dickens' recurrent themes, social injustice and poverty, the relationship between the two, and their causes and effects. It was written to be abrupt and forceful with its message, with a working title of "The Sledgehammer". The first edition of ''A Christmas Carol'' was illustrated by John Leech, a politically radical artist who in the cartoon "Substance and Shadow" printed earlier in 1843 had explicitly criticised artists who failed to address social issues.

Characters

Principal

★ Ebenezer Scrooge

★ Bob Cratchit

★ Fred (Scrooge's nephew)

★ Tiny Tim (son of Bob)

★ Jacob Marley (who appears in the story only as a ghost)

★ The Ghost of Christmas Past

★ The Ghost of Christmas Present

★ The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

Supporting

★ Fezziwig (to whom Scrooge had been apprenticed as a youth)

★ Fan (Scrooge's late sister)

★ Belle (a young woman to whom Scrooge was once engaged)

★ Mrs. Cratchit (Bob Cratchit's wife)

★ Peter Cratchit (Bob's eldest son)

★ Martha Cratchit (Bob's eldest daughter)

★ Belinda Cratchit (Bob's second eldest daughter)

★ two, unnamed, "smaller Cratchits" a boy and a girl

★ Mrs. Dilber (Scrooge's charwoman)

★ The Laundress

★ Old Joe (a receiver of stolen goods; in the "future" segment of the story, he is given the dead Scrooge's belongings, after his room and his body have been plundered by Mrs. Dilber and the Laundress)

★ The Two Portly Gentlemen

Dramatic adaptations and sequels

Main articles: List of A Christmas Carol adaptations

''A Christmas Carol'' was the subject of Dickens' first public reading, given in Birmingham Town Hall to the Industrial and Literary Institute on 27 December 1852. This was repeated three days later to an audience of 'working people', and was a great success by his own account and that of newspapers of the time. Over the years Dickens edited the piece down and adapted it for a listening, rather than reading, audience. Excerpts from 'A Christmas Carol' remained part of Dickens' public readings until his death.
''A Christmas Carol'' has been adapted to theatre, opera, film, radio, and television countless times. According to the Internet Movie Database, various movie adaptations of the story were filmed as early as 1908, in a version produced by Thomas Edison.
Perhaps the most popular and critically acclaimed film adaptation of the story was made in Britain in 1951. Originally titled ''Scrooge'' (and renamed ''A Christmas Carol'' for its American release), it starred Alastair Sim as Scrooge, and was directed by Brian Desmond-Hurst with a screenplay by Noel Langley.
Most modern adaptations refer to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come as the "Ghost of Christmas Future" instead.
Dickens wraps up the story with two short paragraphs telling us that sickly Tiny Tim survives and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge becomes renowned for his newfound goodness—basically a "happily ever after" ending—but he provides no detail on what happens to any of the characters. Following the every-good-story-deserves-a-sequel idea, a number of authors have crafted their own versions of what befell Scrooge and company. Ranging from Internet stories to best-selling novels (and even a television screenplay), several different works have picked up the characters and events of Dickens' classic to spin new tales for the story's aftermath.

Notes

1. Dickens sent out advanced presentation copies on the 17th while the official release date was the 19th. He was sold out by the 22nd. (see Hearn (2004), pg.xiviii)
2. Hearn (2004), xxxi
3.
4. Hood's Magazine and Comic Review, Thomas Hood, , , , 1844

References

★ Michael Patrick Hearn, ''The Annotated Christmas Carol: a Christmas Carol in Prose / by Charles Dickens'', W. W. Norton and Co., 2004, ISBN 0-393-05158-7

See also

★

External links

'Online editions'

★

★ ''A Christmas Carol'', illustrated scanned book via Internet Archive. Date and illustrator unknown. Abridged.

★ ''A Christmas Carol'', full text with audiobook.

★ ''A Christmas Carol'', 1912 scanned book via Internet Archive. Illustrated by Fred Barnard, with an introduction by G. K. Chesterton

★ ''A Christmas Carol'', audiobook via LibriVox

★ ''A Christmas Carol'', HTML version.

★ ''A Christmas Carol'' - Special Collections, University of Glasgow (with illustrations).
'Other'

★ A Christmas Carol - Differences between adaptation of the book

★ Victoria Web's - discussion of Washington Irving and ''A Christmas Carol.''

★ Victoria Web's - discussion of Scrooge.