Criticism > Short Story Criticism > A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens - Arthur P. Patterson (essay date 1994)

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens - Arthur P. Patterson (essay date 1994)

Arthur P. Patterson (essay date 1994)

SOURCE: “Sponging the Stone: Transformation in A Christmas Carol,” in Dickens Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 4, December, 1994, pp. 172–76.

[In the following essay, Patterson contends that to “understand the significance of the Carol is to integrate the psychological and its spiritual message.”]

I don't remember reading the book until my adult years, yet Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol seems always to have been with me. The Carol entered my life when I lay on the living room floor with a belly full of Christmas turkey avoiding adult conversation at my grandmother's dinner. My first recollection of the story is in the form of the 1951 American film version Scrooge. Alister Sim, the most robust interpreter of Scrooge, fascinated me by his depiction of a man who starts off as “solitary as an oyster” and winds up a “second father” to orphans, the best...

[The entire page is 2360 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass