Wilder Christmas Carol Review

Wilder

A Christmas Carol

           

Christmas is often cherished as one of the most beloved and important times of the calendar year and a time where we rejoice with loved ones over one celebrated holiday. It is a time for love, caring, giving, etc. and can put a smile on nearly everyone’s face. Charles Dickens one of the most important people responsible for generating the Christmas spirit and making it such a wondrous time of year with his historic work in A Christmas Carol. Already regarded as the greatest writer of the Victorian Era in England during the years 1837-1901, this work influenced the entire world to give way to new Christmas customs and to make Christmas a beloved time of year. Dickens proves in this novella that he is one of the most influential writers of all time with this upbringing story of Ebenezer Scrooge.

The book is set in London, England on a “cold, bleak, biting” Christmas Eve. It has been exactly 7 years since Scrooge’s business partner, Jacob Marley, has died. The story’s main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is a grouchy, greedy, heartless, selfish, lonely old miser who hates Christmas, describing it as “a poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every December 25^th.” He refuses his nephew Fred’s Christmas dinner invitation and rudely turns down two men seeking donations for the poor and less fortunate. He reluctantly gives his overworked/overpaid clerk Bob Cratchit Christmas Day off. Scrooge arrives home to be confronted by Marley’s ghost. Marley is cursed by dragging a collection of heavy chains as he roams shamelessly through the after life, along with a bandage tied from his chin to his head. The chains are from living his life with only caring for himself and being heartless. He warns Scrooge that he will be visited by 3 ghosts in the night, (The Ghost of Christmas Past, The Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come,) and tells him that he must listen to them or suffer the same fate as Marley in the afterlife. Marley leaves, while showing Scrooge other spirits who suffer the same fate as Marley, who shamelessly wonder with their chains as they see people who they cannot help. The three spirits visit Scrooge, (each in separate staves,) to show Scrooge the true meaning of Christmas and try to make him look at life differently.

The style of the novella was quite satisfying for the most part. It was very easy to understand what was going on at all times and never went into boring, mind-numbing detail about every little thing that happened in the book, which made it flow through more efficiently. Also, the way the novel was organized was very efficient. With the five staves, we can accurately see how Dickens wanted people to see the transformation of the Scrooge and also the overall atmosphere of the book. Some scenes, in particular, accurately show the type of flow and atmosphere of the novel as a whole.

“It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them.  The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already -- it had not been light all day: and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air.  The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.  To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.”

This scene not only sets up the setting of the story, but also resembles the ways of Scrooge in the beginning of the novel.

       After reading A Christmas Carol, I would highly recommend it. It is a upbringing story about a man who really changed his horrible ways to new jolly ones through Christmas spirit. This novel shows us what the true meaning of Christmas is and brings us a historical context of how Christmas came to be. Without this novel, Christmas as we know it may never of happened, which itself should be motivation to read this historic book.