Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

1421 Words3 Pages

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

The editor of one edition of ‘A Christmas Carol’ wrote “A story so

admirably told, the details of place, of time, of person so

dexterously made real for us” How does Dickens achieve this? How does

he ‘A Christmas Carol’ a story which “No one could help but enjoy”

In this essay I am going to be writing about the different techniques

in which Dickens uses, and by using these bring people, place and time

to life. Dickens cleaver use of techniques throughout this book really

makes us feel as if we are actually there are selves. I think that the

reason why dickens is so good at making this all seem so real to us is

because when he was younger he grew up as a child in London himself,

which I think would explain why this book has so much detail in it. A

lot of what happens in this book most probably happened to Dickens as

a boy as he used to be quite poor himself, an example of this is the

cratchits Christmas dinner which I think was based on what Christmas

used to be like for Dickens. Dickens motive for writing this book was

so that he could make people aware of how awful it was to be poor, so

he therefore wrote this in a story to try and get his point across.

This is why Dickens is so good at using a range of different

techniques which really create an image in are heads of what is really

going on.

I am mainly going to be focusing on the different techniques used in

three certain passages from the book; these are going to be the

description of Scrooge, the description of the shops in London and

Fezziwigs ball. I have chosen these three passages as I think that

they have been written in great detail and show us exactly how Dickens

brings things to life and how well he does it. Even though I am

focusing particularly on these passages Dickens use of techniques is

constantly used throughout this book. His constant uses of adjectives

throughout really create an image in are head of what something looks

like or what is going on. He uses adjectives in a number of different

ways but contently uses these same ways all through the book. Dickens

will use listing such as “Great joints of meat, sucking pig, long

wreaths of sausages, plum puddings.” He will also list three

adjectives and then a noun for example “Cold, bleak, biting weather”

and “Long, bare, melancholy room.” This really helps us to create an

Open Document