Overview A Christmas Carol is a long story of the kind sometimes called a novella (big for a story but too short to be a novel). Charles Dickens wrote it in 1843, the first of a series of what he called Christmas Books. It quickly became popular, and it has influenced the way people in Britain think of Christmas - indeed, some people think that Dickens almost invented our ideas about the season. Ebenezer Scrooge has become perhaps better known than the book he appears in - as has his catchphrase, "Bah, humbug".
An outline of the story A Christmas Carol is a story about change. Ebenezer Scrooge is a selfish and hard-hearted old man. One Christmas Eve the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley appears to him. Marley was almost as selfish as Scrooge, and now his spirit is being punished. He tells Scrooge that he must change his ways, and explains that three more ghosts will visit him. These three spirits show Scrooge his past, his present and a possible future. In the past lies the start of Scrooge's selfishness, which is completed in the present. The third ghost shows a glimpse of a future where Scrooge dies, unloved and unlamented. Many people are harmed by Scrooge's hardness of heart, but we read most about the family of Scrooge's employee, Bob Cratchit, and his disabled son, Tiny Tim, whose death the second spirit describes, while the third spirit shows the effect of the death on his family. Scrooge wakes after the visit of the last of the spirits, to find it is Christmas Day, and that he is able to change things for the better. He immediately sets out to help the Cratchit family, and others, while beginning to put right the wrongs of the past and the present. Tiny Tim does not die, and Scrooge becomes as kind as he once was selfish. |