A Christmas Carol

Author: Charles Dickens

Pages: 114

How does one write a review for classics, the old ones especially - and one by Dickens, a tale this simple and familiar at that? Well, here goes -

A Christmas Carol is about how one Christmas Eve miserly Ebenezer Scrooge changes his ways thanks to a visit from the ghost of his late business partner Jacob Marley. Through three Spirits that visit him in a last attempt to help him change for the better, Scrooge peeks into Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet To Be.

First he is taken down the memory lane to see himself as a boy, a young man, an adult and sees how the loss of his values and hope had changed his life forever. He regrets the way he has turned to right from the first visit he pays to his past. And sees how his grumpiness and miserliness affects people around him, all this when he could very well do much to help.

In Christmas Present he sees people all around – his poor clerk Bob Cratchit, his nephew and many others across different strata of the society- creating for selves and loved ones a special day out of nothing materialistic- with just the simplicity of mind and each other’s company. As he treads this path with the second spirit he gets taken to the brink of what life could have been with his childhood love if only he had been different; without dwelling much on this, he vows to change himself.

Before he contemplates further a dark, unspeaking ghost -very different from the earlier two- of the future comes along and takes him through the horror of what future holds.

The tale covers Dickens' favored themes of poverty (Dickens wrote the book in six weeks to pay off a debt!), inequality; to me it is also about having the courage to change -even if it requires you to start out on your beliefs from scratch- however long into the play one might be. Regret over the lost years, possibilities that could’ve arisen from a different self, the parallel universes that might have been real are often the results of introspection when it really should be daring.

We had an extract from this book for one of the middle school non-detailed lessons. The portion covered was from Christmas Present with the Cratchits. Having read the book just now, I still find this part with the Cratchits the most delightful of the story. Of course, Scrooge’s enthusiasm does get to one towards the end when he just can’t stop chuckling!

"Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail."

“It is required of every man ... that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.”