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A Christmas Carol
When Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol saying someone had no bowels was similar to saying today that someone has no heart. They meant the the person did not show caring or compassion to others. The...
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A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens, a declared social reformer, satirized the belief that the workhouses and poorhouses were beneficial to society. He especially satirized the writing of Thomas Malthus's Essay on...
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A Christmas Carol
This line comes from the beginning of A Christmas Carol when Scrooge is signing Jacob Marley's death warrant: Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose...
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A Christmas Carol
Dickens uses the Cratchit family to make the general point that even hard-working, decent people can easily fall victim to the scourge of poverty. Many of Dickens's readers will have shared the...
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A Christmas Carol
This happens when Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. In Stave II, Scrooge returns to a younger version of himself, and Belle is there. Her eyes are wet with tears, and she tells him...
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A Christmas Carol
On the whole, one would have to say that Mrs. Cratchit is indeed a happy person, despite the many problems that she has to endure on a daily basis. Things could always be better, of course—she...
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A Christmas Carol
Marley's ghost is still on earth because he is serving his punishment for all his years of avarice and greed. He tells Ebeneezer Scrooge, his old business partner, that the spirit within every man...
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A Christmas Carol
These words are spoken by Ebenezer Scrooge in stave 2, "The First of the Three Spirits," of A Christmas Carol, the classic Christmas novella written by Charles Dickens in 1843. The Ghost of...
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A Christmas Carol
By "opening passage," I believe that you are being limited to the first paragraph of Stave Two. It is not a large paragraph, and most of the information presented in it to readers is about how...
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A Christmas Carol
In his classic novella A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens portrays three kinds of poverty: poverty of means, poverty of will, and poverty of spirit. Poverty of means is described early in the story...
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A Christmas Carol
A dynamic character is someone who undergoes a significant internal change and completely transforms their perspective or attitude due to the conflicts they encounter throughout the story. In...
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A Christmas Carol
"A Christmas Carol" is a story with a strong message about the importance of reformation, but despite its sincerity, it is littered with instances of humor and light-heartedness. Arguably, Dickens...
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A Christmas Carol
Indirect characterization can be described as the author showing you, the reader, what a character is like, rather than telling you. So, instead of saying that a character is greedy (as Dickens, in...
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A Christmas Carol
First of all, Scrooge makes a young boy's day by giving him a princely sum for fetching him the largest turkey in the butcher's shop window. He tells the lad that he will give him a shilling if he...
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A Christmas Carol
In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is visited by three spirits who will teach him to mend his avaricious ways before it is too late. The second spirit comes in the form of a “a...
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A Christmas Carol
I believe that this question is asking about the symbolism that is present in Jacob Marley's chains. Marley is Scrooge's dead business partner. When his ghost appears before Scrooge in stave 1,...
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A Christmas Carol
In A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, mentioning the size of Scrooge’s fire compared to that of his clerk Bob Cratchit’s is significant because it underscores how stingy Scrooge is. Scrooge...
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A Christmas Carol
It is Christmas Eve, and Scrooge is about to shut up his counting house for the night. Bob Cratchit is about to leave and Scrooge sourly enquires: You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose? Bob...
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A Christmas Carol
Here are few symbols in A Chirstmas Carol. 1. The three ghosts are very symbolic; they represent Scrooge's life in the past, present, and the future. 2. The light from the Ghost of Christmas Past...
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A Christmas Carol
Authors generally convey a message through their characters, and Dickens was no different. We are supposed to learn a lesson from Scrooge, just as Marley tries to teach Scrooge to learn a lesson...
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A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is set in a poor section of London, England, during the Industrial Revolution (1800s). The book takes place mainly in Scrooge's business, Scrooge's house, and Bob Cratchit's house.
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A Christmas Carol
The only real similarity between the deaths of Tiny Tim and Ebeneezer Scrooge is that they happen about the same time. We are not told anything about the manner in which either person died. All we...
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A Christmas Carol
The ghost of Christmas Yet To Come is described as a "solemn phantom," creeping along the ground like a mist. This ghost is different from the others in its silence, which gives it an awful,...
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A Christmas Carol
Scrooge is stating a paradox, a contradiction or an apparent contradiction. The Ghost of Christmas Past is showing him a scene from his past, a time in which he began to love money more than...
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A Christmas Carol
The most obvious thing that the ghosts all represent is choices. Throughout his travels in the spirit world, Scrooge is confronted with choices he has made and the consequences of those choices....
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A Christmas Carol
In stave 2, the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge the scene from the past in which Belle breaks off their engagement to be married. She makes it clear that she is ending their engagement...
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A Christmas Carol
In stave 3 of Charles Dickens's classic English novella A Christmas Carol, at just fifteen minutes before the time that the Ghost of Christmas's year-long life was to end, Ebenezer Scrooge notices...
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A Christmas Carol
When Scrooge has his interaction with the final ghost, the frightening phantom of all the Christmases yet to come, he sees and overhears a group of fat businessmen talking about a dead man. He has...
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A Christmas Carol
In stave 4, Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. It is through this visit that Scrooge finally grasps how his greediness and oppressive behaviors affect other people and,...
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A Christmas Carol
"Bowels" used in this sense at this period of time refers to compassion or pity. In general, bowels were considered to be the "tender feelings". This archaic meaning is no...
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A Christmas Carol
Here are some reasons why Ebenezer Scrooge, the "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner" of Charles Dickens's Christmas novella, A Christmas Carol, might have...
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A Christmas Carol
When the two gentlemen come to collect donations for the poor, Scrooge tells them that he would like to be left alone. Further, he says that he does not "make merry" at Christmas and that he cannot...
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A Christmas Carol
While we do not get references to exact dates in the novella, it is possible to make some guesses. Let's begin by assuming the text is set in 1843, which is the year it was published (and seems...
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A Christmas Carol
Scrooge cannot bring himself to lift the veil from the man who died because he fears that the dead man is in fact future Scrooge, whom the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is presenting to him....
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A Christmas Carol
While the character of Tiny Tim has often been criticized as too sweet, syrupy, and sentimental, Dickens is nevertheless being fair in his use of the possibility of the small child's death to stir...
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A Christmas Carol
At the beginning of the classic novel A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Scrooge is the sole proprietor of a counting-house, which today would be like a bookkeeper’s or an accountant’s...
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A Christmas Carol
The last place the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge is to a "children's Twelfth Night party," a party that would be thrown on the last day of Christmas—which, according to the Christian...
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A Christmas Carol
Christmas is one of the most important themes of A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens used Scrooge's nephew, Fred, to show the importance of Christmas throughout the story. He also used other...
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A Christmas Carol
The term "stave" ("staff" in American English) refers to the set of five lines separated by four spaces within musical notation. Every line represents a different pitch in the music. Dickens likely...
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A Christmas Carol
To be sure, Scrooge isn't hesitant to depart from his nephew Fred's house, but he's certainly hesitant in approaching it. After attending church on Christmas morning, Scrooge, now a changed man,...
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A Christmas Carol
This elaborate simile refers to the chain that the ghost of Jacob Marley wears about his middle. Because of the greedy, grasping behavior Marley displayed when he was alive, his unquiet spirit has...
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A Christmas Carol
After surveying several frightening scenes with the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, Scrooge finally arrives at his own grave. Horrified, Scrooge begins begging the Spirit for a different outcome....
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A Christmas Carol
The most obvious example of responsibility in Stave I is when Ebenezer Scrooge is approached by two men soliciting for charity to support the poor and Scrooge refuses to donate. Not only does he...
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A Christmas Carol
The famous novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens tells of an old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge who is visited by various spirits on Christmas Eve. A brief summary of the previous staves is...
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A Christmas Carol
The Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge his former girlfriend, Belle, as she looked many years after their relationship ended, about seven years prior to the start of the text. Belle has married,...
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A Christmas Carol
In stave 4, Scrooge has died (although he doesn't know it yet), and he witnesses an interaction among some individuals who have stolen from him and the man to whom they pawn his goods, Old Joe....
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A Christmas Carol
Scrooge and Marley were former business partners until Marley's death, some seven years before the beginning of the book. According to the narrator, Scrooge was the executor of Marley's will, his...
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A Christmas Carol
In stave 1 of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is approached by a couple of gentleman out collecting for charity on Christmas Eve. As Scrooge is such a wealthy individual, they assume that he'll be more...
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A Christmas Carol
In paragraph 6 of the first stave, "Marley's Ghost," Dickens uses a figure of speech called simile to describe Scrooge's character. In a simile two different things are compared using the words...
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A Christmas Carol
The girl symbolically named "Want" and the boy named "Ignorance" appear in stave 3, "The Second of the Three Spirits," of Charles Dickens's novella A Christmas Carol. Dickens published the novella...
