A Christmas Carol - short review
A Christmas Carol was published on 17th December 1843 in Victorian
England. Victorian England was not a very nice place to live and
Charles Dickens didn’t have the best childhood; his father was a clerk
who was taken away from him and imprisoned when he was 12. Some
people say this was how he became such a good writer – from all the
problems he had as a child.
England was a horrible place during these times – for example, there
was child labour, where people got children to clean their chimneys as
they were small enough, but it turned out the soot from the chimneys
was carcinogenic, meaning it activated cancerous cells. There was
also the Poor Law Act, which meant if you had lost an arm and were
unable to work you had no way of gaining money. People also believed
that you had to have money to be gentleman.
There was the class system that meant if you were born into a working
class family you would often die in a working class family – there
were few chances to become rich and famous.
Dickens often looked at life as a child; for example in Oliver Twist,
David Copperfield and Great Expectations. This could be one of the
reasons that Dickens chose A Christmas Carol to be at Christmas, as he
thought it would appeal to the child in everyone.
Many people believed that Dickens wasn’t just someone who wanted to
make money, even though he was a workaholic. What he really wanted to
do was to provoke authority to take responsibility for the problems
that people were having in the country and Christmas was the best time
of the year to do this.
Dickens’ use of imagery in the novel gives a great sense of
surroundings and what Scrooge and all the ghosts look like. For
example, here is a line from A Christmas Carol, that is just about the
weather,
“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 hand upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the
pavement stones to warm them.”
Smiles and metaphors help us to portray and compare images in our
heads and Dickens does this very well throughout the book.
In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is the novel’s protagonist. We know this
as everything in the book has some sort of connection with him.
In the novel Scrooge is represented as a misanthropist, i.e. a person
who hates his fellow men. This kind of novel where a person changes
The movie Four Christmases has two main characters are Vince Vaughn (Brad) and Reese Witherspoon (Kate). This movie is about an unmarried couple that has no plans of getting married or having children anytime soon. Every Christmas they plan an adventurous vacation for the two of them. They do this to avoid going to all of their families’ houses for the holiday. This year Kate and Brad planned to go to Fiji for vacation, but the weather took a turn for the worst and they weren’t able to go. Due to the weather, their flight got cancelled. The news caught them on live television alerting their families that they were now available for Christmas. Both Brad and Kate’s families are divorced, so there were four families to visit. They plan
Scrooge approached the door, but didn't have a speck of knowledge of what's going to happen next. When Scrooge is about to open the door, his old friend, Marley, and worker appeared on the door knocker in surprise. Scrooge walked in his dark house with a little fear, still think it is just, humbug. His mind resolute to playing tricks, he thought. Christmas eve, A night to fear, yet to thank. Life can change in a matter of minutes. In the story, “A Christmas Carol: Scrooge and Marley. Scrooge faces a series of turning points that altered his life forever. In this Exploratory essay, Three turning point will be talked about. Each one with a different ghost, Past, Present, and future. Each with a different lesson Scrooge has to face.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a story we are all familiar with, it captures a moment in time of blatant prejudices and inequality that spanned years from when it was written in 1939 to when it was released as a movie in 1964. However endearing the story may be, it is a testament to what conditions were socially accepted as normal during that time period. Originally written by Montgomery Ward to sell appliances, this story has an explicit lens of bigotry, inequality, and the importance of conforming to society.
In The Santa Clause when Charlie and Scott first go to the North Pole, Abby the elf talks about the North Pole to Scott saying, “Kids don’t have to see this place to know that it’s real. They just know.” This strikes home for children under the age of six, as the book states in chapter 6, “They believe that effective wishing takes a great deal of skill, and perhaps magic, but that it can be done. In related fashion, many believe that getting in good with Santa Clause can make their hopes come true.” Which correlates perfectly with a study which concluded that the average kid stops believing in Santa around six and a half, and seven-years’-old (Madrigal, 2012). Anyways, Charlie experiences a lot of stress and happiness throughout the movie because of the bioecological model, whether the stress or happiness is due to the microsystem or chronosystem.
A morality play, not unlike some of the popular plays I have seen. I think we all have seen this familiar theme many times over the years. As we head into the Christmas season, where reflective thinking becomes this very theme. I can compare this play with some of these seasonal plays. The play that comes to my mind immediately is, "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens.
Do you ever feel like people change? In A Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens, Scrooge is a grouchy, unsocial, miserly, uncharitable old man. He is extremely unsympathetic and bah humbugs everything to do with Christmas. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is magically visited by 3 ghosts. The ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Scrooge has a rude awakening of haunting memories he holds onto. These memories make him feeling as if he needs a second chance and a fresh start at life. What better day than Christmas to tidy the dreaded past. The mysterious ghosts bring him to the past, present and future in one night. Scrooge had remarkable experiences and felt emotions he had never thought were possible to feel again. Scrooge longed for
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966&2000) explains not only the life of the Grinch but the Whos as well. Through the theorists of Karen Horney and Erik Erikson, viewers can learn why the Grinch’s personality is formed. Not only had it formed, but through the years it transformed.
How can one truly be happy? According to psychologist Karyn Hall, radical acceptance of oneself is the only way to live a happy, healthy life. In Charles Dickens’s novel, “A Christmas Carol”, the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, declares that he will live in the past, present, and future. By the end of the story, Scrooge radically accepts himself, learns to love others, and copes with his anxiety. Scrooge’s declaration to live in the past, present, and future demonstrates his ability to overcome his suffering and become empathetic of the world. Although it is not possible for Scrooge to completely overcome his anxiety, he learns to radically accept it.
In this essay I will be talking about how Dickens presents Scrooge’s fear in A Christmas Carol. It is about how Scrooge’s change throughout the novel through various techniques Dickens uses to convey this.
in done by creating stages and builds up to the finale of the ghost of
A pill bug is an insect that forms a hard shell around its soft flesh whenever startled or scared. Just like this pill bug, humans guard themselves from anything that hurts them without realizing that they are shutting out the most precious moments of their lives. Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, is a cold man. He finds what he defines as true happiness in the form of money and wealth. At first he only seems to be a machine living in a human form, but as Scrooge's true journey and hardships are revealed, it becomes difficult to blame only Scrooge for his independence. It is inevitable that Scrooge's rudeness and impudent ferocity towards people led to the mistreatment of his dead body, but Scrooge's walls were not built for nothing. As the story progresses, and his true story from start to finish is revealed. There is no one person to blame, for it was the wrong of everyone. As Blaise Pascal once said, “All of humanity's problems stem from a man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
make him a better writer, and he felt that he 'must spend at least the
The true description of Scrooge first appears about quarter way through the book, before then there are only a few minor references to his character. The description begins metaphorically as it features the words “ A tight-fisted hand at the grindstone”. Its metaphorical because it is trying to portray that Scrooge is literally as tight as the hand to the grindstone. Then soon after this seven adjectives follow, “ Squeezing, Wrenching, Grasping, Scraping, Clutching, Covetous, Old sinner”. They are used effectively as each one has an individual meaning describing seven trates of Scrooges character, which begins to give the reader a visual picture of how the character may conduct himself. So far all qualities of Scrooge have been negative and so it continues. Then the writer brings in the object “flint” and states all the negative quality’s of flint then compares them to Scrooge.
In "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge undergoes a transformation as a result of his encounters with three ghosts and becomes a kind, happy, and generous man. His greedy, cruel, and grumpy demeanor is replaced seemingly overnight, but he doesn’t just wake up and decide to be nice. It takes three Spirits to change his outlook on life - The Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Future. The Ghost of Christmas Past makes Scrooge begin to regret his selfishness, and the Ghost of Christmas Present begins to teach him about others. This second Ghost helps to make him realize that money doesn't buy happiness. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, however, teaches the most profound lesson of all: unless he changes, no one will care if Scrooge dies. Because of the Ghosts, by Christmas morning Ebenezer Scrooge is a completely different person from the man who went to bed on Christmas Eve.
but one thing he was rich in was happiness. Bob earned 15 ‘bob’ a week