Biography Born to a poor family in Portsmouth, England on February 7, 1812, Charles John Huffam Dickens would become one of the most famous authors in English literature. The second of nine children, Dickens struggled with poor health as a child, and the frequency with which his family relocated interfered with any regular schedule of …
Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! (Stave One) “If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of …
True HumanityScholar Michael Patrick Hearn, in The Annotated Christmas Carol (1976; New York: Norton, 2004), notes that Dickens was a Unitarian. Unitarian Christianity, in Dickens day, focused more on morality and ethics than on traditional theology. Dickens wrote in one of his letters, “I have always striven in my writings to express the veneration for …
The most dominant metaphors in A Christmas Carol are the three spirits who visit Scrooge. The Ghost of Christmas Past is a personification of memory. In order for Scrooge to grow as a human being, he must remember his past and learn both positive and negative lessons from it. The light that shines from this …
Stave Four: “The Last of the Spirits” In Stave Four, Dickens employs irony to great effect. Each vision the Ghost shows Scrooge leads to the revelation of Scrooges own death in the future, yet Scrooge remains unaware (whether deliberately or not, readers must decide) of the visions significance until the last possible moment.All Scrooge can …
Stave Five: “The End of It” Scrooge is in his own bed-whose curtains are still intact (a reference to their presence in the charwomans plunder; see Stave Four)-and is overjoyed to find that he has time to repent of his former ways. For the first time in a long time, Scrooge even laughs. “Really,” the …
Stave Two: “The First of the Three Spirits” Scrooge awakens in the night and at first thinks he has slept either through an entire day: nearby church bells are striking twelve, and Scrooge had gone to bed after two in the morning. Confused, Scrooge reflects on his meeting with Marleys Ghost. He cannot decide whether …
Stave Three: “The Second of the Three Spirits” Understandably, given his experiences with the first Spirit, Scrooge is now ready, when the clock strikes one, for anything: “nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.” When nothing happens, then, Scrooge is agitated. For fifteen minutes he stays in his bed …
In keeping with the title of his work, A Christmas Carol, Dickens has divided his story not into chapters but into “staves”-that is, verses of a song.Note: Some analytical comments in the following commentary are indebted to Michael Patrick Hearn, ed., The Annotated Christmas Carol (1976; New York: Norton, 2004). Page references are given in …
Stave 1In keeping with the title of his work, A Christmas Carol, Dickens has divided his story not into chapters but into “staves”-that is, verses of a song.Note: Some analytical comments in the following commentary are indebted to Michael Patrick Hearn, ed., The Annotated Christmas Carol (1976; New York: Norton, 2004). Page references are …
