Criticism > Short Story Criticism > A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens - George Anastaplo (essay date 1978)

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens - George Anastaplo (essay date 1978)

George Anastaplo (essay date 1978)

SOURCE: “Notes from Charles Dickens's Christmas Carol,” in Interpretation, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1978, pp. 52–73.

[In the following essay, Anastaplo examines the timing of and the reasons for Scrooge's conversion.]

MACBETH:
One cried “God bless us!” and “Amen!” the other,
As they had seen me with these hangman's hands,
List'ning their fear. I could not say “Amen!”
When they did say “God bless us!”

LADY Macbeth:
Consider it not so deeply.

MACBETH:
But wherefore could not I pronounce “Amen”?
I had most need of blessing, and “Amen”
Stuck in my throat.

Shakespeare, Macbeth II, ii

I

A classical scholar, in assessing the Greek dramatists, has remarked on the “extraordinary creative power that [Aeschylus] shares with Shakespeare and Dickens.” An Encyclopaedia Britannica article...

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