Nov 14, 2009

A Christmas Carol | Introduction

It is hard to believe that there is anyone on the planet who is not familiar with the story of A Christmas Carol. Written in a six-week period in October and November of 1843, the novel was the first of five short Christmas books published by Charles Dickens. Obviously, it was the most successful novel in the series. In fact, he was so certain that people would like his story that he refused to sell the rights to his publisher and instead paid to publish it himself. His instincts proved correct, and soon after its publication, all of the copies were sold.

In his later years, Dickens would read an abridged version of A Christmas Carol at public readings for which he charged a fee. Often, that fee went to the several charitable organizations that he was involved with throughout his lifetime. The book itself was instrumental in raising people's awareness of poverty.

Since its publication, the story has been told many times in all imaginable forms. Despite the thousands of times that A Christmas Carol has been adapted to stage, radio, movies, and television, the novel remains the most popular and poignant telling of the tale.

A Christmas Carol Summary

Stave I: Marley's Ghost
As A Christmas Carol opens, readers are introduced to Ebenezer Scrooge, the epitome of a tight-fisted miser: he is too cheap to heat his office, too cheap to give his clerk Christmas Day off without demanding he come in early the next day, and too cheap to care about the suffering of the poor people all around him. The tale begins on Christmas Eve, and Scrooge is visited by his nephew Fred, a good-natured man who tries to celebrate the holiday with his uncle, but is rebuked:

"If I could work my will," said Scrooge, indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"

Yet Fred is not discouraged by his uncle's crankiness and wishes him well. As he leaves, two men from a charitable organization enter and ask Scrooge for a donation to help the poor. He suggests that the poor should go to prisons and workhouses, and the man points out that many would rather die than live under those wretched conditions.

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

When he goes home that evening, Scrooge sees the face of his long-dead business partner, Jacob Marley, in the knocker on his front door. Going upstairs to his flat, he thinks he sees a hearse riding up the stairs. Dozing in a chair by a dim fire, he hears chains in the cellar coming nearer, until Marley's ghost enters the room.

Marley's ghost explains that he is required in death to wander the earth, walking among humanity as he never did in life. The chain around him is "the chain I forged in life." He has come to warn Scrooge that he must change his ways, and he foretells that three spirits will come to Scrooge over the next three nights. When he leaves through the window, Scrooge sees hundreds of ghosts in chains wandering out in the street below his window.

Stave II: The First of the Three Spirits
The next morning, Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Chnstmas Past. The ghost walks to the window and orders Scrooge to accompany him, but Scrooge asserts that he will fall.

"Bear but a touch of my hand there," said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more than this."

Scrooge finds himself at the school that he attended as a boy, watching all of the other children leaving for Christmas. He is shocked to see a young Scrooge, a lonely but imaginative boy that daydreams about characters out of "Ali Baba" and Robinson Crusoe. Suddenly it is the same scene a few years later, when Scrooge's little sister, Fan, excitedly tells him that their father said he can come home this year.

The next stop is the shop where Scrooge was an apprentice as a young man. It was run by... » Complete A Christmas Carol Summary