A CHRISTMAS ANALYSIS By Charles Dickens

A Historical AnalysisBy: Hirene Delos Santos

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver”. This is a quotation cited by Ayn Rand and I see it as a great exemplification of what is Great Britain and the effect of their ruling society to the lives of the people (especially the poor) living there. One of the accounts I have read is that people around the world is celebrating Christmas season every December regardless of what religion they are acquainted of, except for Great Britain in the Victorian Period. Of course, Christians had been celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ for centuries before Charles Dickens came along. Northern Europeans also had their winter festivals even if they are pagans or no religion at all. But, in England at the turn of the nineteenth century, Christmas had almost vanished from the scene or from the part of English life activities. Before this literary work of Charles Dickens came into press, he first experienced decline in his popularity and financial incomes as well and this is because of his American Notes for General Circulation, a literary work he wrote after his return to London from a four-month travel to America. In this literary work, he questioned the American habits--- the good and the bad. Unfortunately, many Americans could only see the bad. He did not paint a pretty picture: Americans were too familiar with strangers and obsesses with money. He hated that great American pastime, tobacco spitting, which took place even on the floor of the Congress. He also dared to write unsentimentally about the great American Shame and slavery. He saved the big ammunition for the American press, which had so hounded him while he was there. James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald was really offended on the contents of Dickens’ literary work. “Of all the travellers that ever visited this land, Dickens appears to have been the most flimsy---the most childish—the trashiest—the most contemptible. He does not have common grammar, sense, arrangement, or generalization”, he wrote on November 8, 1842. So much comment also came from America’s foremost literary men and other readers which really injured his fame. It had been a terrible year for the writer, full of disappointments and seemingly insurmountable pressures, financial, artistic, and personal. For the first time in his phenomenal literary career, Charles Dickens faced a crucial decline in popularity and income. After those contentions in Dickens’ life, there now where he wrote A Christmas Carol where some of his purposes in writing so are to regain his financial status and fame and to give life to the dying culture or practice in Great Britain which is one of his critical views in his society.

In accomplishing his work, his biographical accounts also helped him touched the hearts and the souls of his readers. When his father was imprisoned that was the start of his tremendous life because he became the breadwinner of his family. Two days after his twelfth birthday, Charles was taken out of school and sent to work, pasting labels on bottles for Warren’s Blacking Warehouse. Dickens left his home and walk three miles to Warren’s Blacking Factory. Situated by the Thames, at Hungerford Stairs, it was a “crazy,

tumbledown house with rotten floors and a staircase.” Here, for ten hours a day, Monday through Saturday, Dickens pasted labels onto the individual pots of blacking, a mixture used for polishing boots. In return he received six shillings per week. Many have treated him as an outcast. No words can express the secret agony of his soul as he sunk into the companionship of common men and boys. The deep remembrance of the sense he had of being utterly neglected and hopeless; of the shame he felt in his position; of the misery it brought to his young heart to believe that, day by day, what he had learned, and thought, and delighted in was passing away from him, never to be brought back, cannot be written.

On my own understanding of the novel, He used Scrooge to represent the society or

the business-minded persons in his society and Robert “Bob” Cratchit to represent himself and/or the poor people in Great Britain for general. As to what I’ve mentioned in the previous paragraph, on those years Great Britain is losing the spark and spirit of Christmas that they don’t even celebrate it anymore. Money is almost the be-all and end-all of everything to them. They do not mind the poor becoming poorer. One representation of the poor being oppressed is when Bob Cratchit is working even if it’s Holiday season. This represents that elite people can hold the poor as long as they want because they have the money. His concern for the children of the poor found further expression in the demon girl and boy Want and Ignorance. In defending them, the Ghost of the Christmas Present pleads for all lost children, wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable, who laboured in England’s factories and the Cornish mines and who attended the Ragged School. Here Dickens acted as a prophet, warning the public of the consequences of their indifference. Want and Ignorance were the legacy of a country that neglected its young.

Excerpts from different staves explain the plot analysis of the novel wherein these excerpts have relation to the life of Dickens.

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” (p29)

This quotation is from the first Stave where Marley’s Ghost appeared to Ebenezer Scrooge. Marley said these things in order for Scrooge to realize who he and Marley before. They were good friends, indeed! In Dickens’ life, according to my reading in my other reference, (The Annotated Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens edited with an introduction and notes by Michael Patrick Hearn) he was this guy who is very fond of going out and going to villages when Christmas comes. His business was everything back then because he have still that even not-so-good life (because they are poor) at least he have his whole family. But when his father was imprisoned, his tragic life also entered in him even if he was just a little boy. He experienced his first trial. He was embarrassed back then when he was working at Warren‘s Blacking Warehouse, and that made him realize how bad his society is! In relation to Great Britain also, back then they still have that spirit of Christmas. Christmas and Great Britain were good friends also. They celebrate---they dance, they have foods, they have parties, everything! Everything was their business before but when

Victorian Period started, Christmas started vanishing not only in Great Britain as a general but also to the English people.

“You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently. “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engross you.” (p 52)

This was when The Ghost of the Christmas Past visited Scrooge and they roam to where Scrooge was before. The Spirit showed Scrooge to how was he before and how great his hope and dreams was. This quotation from second stave of the novelette is also tantamount to Dickens’ first achievement after his tragic experience. His hopes and dreams came into reality, one-by-one. Those phantasms were brought to reality because he persisted to work hard, accepted those descriptions thrown to him (because he is poor) and made those as his springboards in attaining his goals and he made it! He went back to school after his father was released from imprisonment and there where his hopes and dreams started to flourished. At Wellington’s Academy, at his young age, he submits his literary works in a-penny-in-a-line (each line of your literary piece will cost a penny) and here where his skills in writing were developed. Until he grew up and wrote too many literary works. He also presents his sketches and essays pertaining to his society and those writings were collected in his Sketches by Boz. His fame was floating in the air. His dreams were almost fulfilled. His dreams came into reality.

“I was only going to say,” said Scrooge’s nephew, “that the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him.” (p 86)

This quote from the third stave talks about hope. His nephew was talking here when the Spirit of Christmas Present brought Scrooge to where they are. It talks about hope that even Scrooge treated badly his nephew before, the boy didn’t thought to hate him but rather, he tried to understand him. In the case of Great Britain and Dickens, this was when Charles Dickens penned the American Notes. This literary work contains criticisms and observations of Dickens in America and the American people when he stayed there in four months. Great Britain was also affected when American writers had feedbacks on Dickens because Dickens was one of their prides also. Dickens didn’t lose hope to try again after Americans bashed him out. After that trial he thought of another literary piece that would rekindle not just his fame but also the vanishing spirit of Christmas in Great Britain and he made it! He shot two birds with a single stone. His literary work became a favourite of almost everyone up to this time. Hope remained in his heart and hope made his fame again.

“Ghost of the Future!”, he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be

another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart.” (p 97)

On the fourth stave, there where the Ghost of the Future came out and kept on accompanying Scrooge to where he would become if he will continue doing what should not be. In Great Britain, this would be great alarm clock to them. The novelette of Dickens, A Christmas Carol is compared to the Ghost of the Future. The novelette became an instrument to everyone there to modify and bring back to where they are used to be. And the novelette really made it! It is an alarm clock to everyone around there. They rekindled the spirit of Christmas in their hearts. They went back to their traditions before and they realized the essence of Christmas to each and every one of them. In Dickens’ life also, the American Notes that he wrote was the Ghost of the Future in his life wherein that literary piece became his instrument to bring back the real him. What is life when full of criticisms? But he is just a writer and he can’t get away the fact that he can question anything and anyone by the power of his pen but that brought shame to American people also that is why when you notice, the Ghost of the Future didn’t talk at all and that is life. Our future is never seen by anyone but God only. He can warn us to modify our lives if we do not want to have a tragic ending. The Ghost of the Future is never talking because we ourselves makes our future. What we do now is what we are in the future. What the future holds for us depends on what we hold for the future.

“I don’t know what to do!’ cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoon of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!” (p119)

This time, Scrooge was already relieved because he is not dead and everything is fine. This was when Christmas is already on the hearts of everyone in Great Britain. This was when he got the fame and his normal life also in the case of Dickens because of his A Christmas Carol. He made not only his life happier but also almost all people in Great Britain. He bring back the Christmas and he brought Jesus Christ in each heart of the people.

“God Bless Us, Every One!” --- Tiny Tim (p 128)

He ended up his work by Tiny Tim’s “God Bless Everyone.” Tiny Tim is a dying child in the novel and he is an instrument of a dying heart of people around the world. Tiny Tim is hope to Charles Dickens’ and as we can notice Tiny Tim didn’t die at the end, meaning hope is forever in our hearts no matter what endeavour are we facing off. God is always with us no matter how hard life is. God is always with us to inspire and bring us back to where He created us—people with a pure soul, pure mind and pure heart. We should never lose hope, because if we did as if we also put away God in our lives.