Dickens' Use of the Supernatural in A Christmas Carol

Dickens' Use of the Supernatural in A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol is built upon numerous contrasts: rich and poor,

family and loneliness, generosity and miserliness, affection and

cruelty, past, present and future. Most of these contrasting forces

are brought to light within the character of Scrooge himself. The

compulsive, lonely, miserly man, who eats his abstemious meals in the

shadows, emerges from his cold-heartedness into a generous, fun

loving, warm and caring man. Dickens uses a lot of rich contrasting

imagery within the character Scrooge to prepare the reader for his

conversion well before the concluding chapter.

Though there are many elements that led to Charles Dickens writing a

Christmas Carol, for example the Ragged Schools, the Manchester

athenaeum and Dickens' first-hand experiences with industrialism and

prison on his recent American tour, I feel that the single most

important and influential factor lay in Dickens observations of the

suffering, deep in the heart of London's poor, that children were

being seduced to. It has been said by many at the time that sex was

the only affordable pleasure for the poor, the result of course was

thousands of children living in unimaginable poverty, filth and

disease. Dickens' felt that the only answer to breaking the endless

cycle of poverty was education and so he became interested in Ragged

Schools. Ragged schools were free to attend and run through charity,

this gave even the poorest of children a glimpse of hope to break the

cycle. Despite the availability of these schools, a lot of poor

children did not benefit due to the demand for child labour and apathy

of parent...

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...ay's times as it

brings to light all the joys and happiness that everyone likes to feel

at Christmas. Also it helps that the novella was very well written and

that it still creates all the emotions it was written to create in

modern people. Dickens engages all readers of all ages as he based all

of his character on human charactistics which then makes the novella

an allegory for human behaviour. After reading this novella every

person looks at them selves through an imaginary mirror and thinks

about what they can change for the better within themselves, this is

another reason I think the novella is so popular. I do believe that

Dickens "little Carol" as it was first known will carry on through

generations and there will probably be another girl sat at her

computer in 50 years time writing about its success and message.