Criticism > Short Story Criticism > A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens - Martin H. Sable (essay date 1986)

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens - Martin H. Sable (essay date 1986)

Martin H. Sable (essay date 1986)

SOURCE: “The Day of Atonement in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol,” in Tradition, Vol. 22, No. 3, Fall, 1986, pp. 66–76.

[In the following essay, Sable debates Dickens's familiarity with Judaism and finds parallels in Scrooge's conversion to the three main aspects of the Jewish Day of Atonement: repentance, prayer, and charity.]

A Christmas Carol is a permanent fixture in Western literature and popular culture, if only because it is retold at Christmas-time annually. As a morality tale it is a favorite of all age groups, not only because of its sincerity but due also to its emotional appeal.

Dickens completed the work in approximately two months during the autumn of 1843, and in December of that year it was published by Chapman and Hall of London.1 The plot is a simple one: Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly old bachelor, has outlived his business partner, Jacob Marley, in...

[The entire page is 4913 words long]

Join eNotes

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

eNotes Pass