illustration of Ebenezer Scrooge in silhouette walking toward a Christmas tree and followed by the three ghosts

A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens

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Literary Devices in A Christmas Carol

Summary:

In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens employs a variety of literary devices to enrich the narrative and deepen character development. Allusions, such as references to Bedlam and Hamlet, clarify themes and enhance understanding. Foreshadowing is used to hint at future events, like Tiny Tim's potential fate. Dickens also uses similes, metaphors, personification, and imagery to create vivid scenes and memorable characters. These techniques help characterize Scrooge and others, making the story both engaging and thought-provoking. Dickens' style, though reflective of his era, effectively brings the tale to life.

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What is an example of an allusion in Stave 1 of A Christmas Carol?

One allusion made by the narrator in stave one refers to Bedlam, an insane asylum.  When Scrooge's nephew, Fred, comes to visit him at his place of business, Fred is cheerful and kind and hopes that his uncle will consent to come to Christmas dinner.  Although Scrooge refuses him repeatedly and even somewhat cruelly, Fred continues to be generous and hopeful until his uncle vehemently dismisses him.  Once he's gone, Scrooge says, of his clerk, Bob Cratchit,

"There's another fellow . . . my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas.  I'll retire to Bedlam."

Bedlam was one of the first insane asylums in the United Kingdom.  With this allusion, Scrooge seems to say that his nephew, Fred, is crazy, as his is clerk, Bob Cratchit, because they both insist on celebrating Christmas despite the fact that they have no money. ...

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Surrounded by all this so-called "insanity," Scrooge feels that he might as well be in Bedlam.  

Another allusion refers to Saint Dunstan, a tenth-century monk that eventually became Archbishop of Canterbury.  The narrator of A Christmas Carol says that the weather is

Foggier yet, and colder!  Piercing, searching, biting cold.  If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose.

The historical Saint Dunstan actually used a blacksmith's tool, metal tongs, to grab the Devil's nose, and this is the story to which the narrator refers.  Therefore, he is saying that being grabbed by such biting cold as this would actually be more painful than being grabbed by a blacksmith's fire-licked tongs.  

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An allusion is a reference to an event, literary work, work of art or something that is well-known by the general populace to clarify an idea.

At the beginning of A Christmas Carol, Dickens needs the reader to realize that Marley is dead because if the reader does not understand this, then the whole idea of Marley's ghost visiting Scrooge and setting him up for his three ghostly visits will be a waste of time.  He says,

"This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can  come of the story I am going to relate." (pg 5 - Stave One)

Dickens even uses the word "dead" seven times on the first page.  

To reinforce and clarify his idea, he alludes to Shakespeare's Hamlet --- a literary allusion --- in that the ghost of Hamlet's father visits him on the ramparts of the castle to tell him that he was murdered.  Dickens says,

"If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there woud be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot-- say St. Paul's Cathedral for instance - literally to astonish his son's weak mind" (pg 5-6 Stave One)

If we did not believe that Hamlet's father was dead, then the story would have had a different impact.  Dickens alludes to Hamlet and to St. Pauls Cathedral to make his point. It is important that we realize that Marley is a character who is also dead and whose ghost we are about to meet.

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What are examples of foreshadowing in stave 3 of A Christmas Carol?

When Scrooge visits the Christmas celebrations of Bob Cratchit's family, he listens as Tiny Tim blesses the family. A moment of foreshadowing follows this proclamation:

He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.

Tiny Tim is frail, and the fact that his father keeps him so close indicates his need for protection. His hand is "withered," and it is clear that the young boy might not live. This foreshadows the young boy's future and grieves Scrooge.

As Scrooge departs from the family, he makes particular note of the young boy:

But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit’s torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.

Tiny Tim has made a great impression upon Scrooge, and he is a primary force in reshaping Scrooge's character. As Scrooge eyes Tiny Tim for as long as possible, this foreshadows the way this young boy will transform him. It also foreshadows events to come; after Scrooge's transformation, he will become a "second father" to the young boy:

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. (Stave 5)

When visiting the festivities of his nephew's celebrations, there is foreshadowing that demonstrates Scrooge's ability to become more involved with his family. He has just witnessed the group enjoy a good laugh at his expense, playing a guessing game in which he was the object, and Scrooge takes the jabs with surprisingly good humor:

“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!”
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time.

This foreshadows a new relationship with his family that is possible after the visits by the ghosts. Scrooge demonstrates that he can enjoy a good laugh and be entertained by others, which is a distinct change compared to his typically irritable and miserly behavior.

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What are some literary devices used in A Christmas Carol, Stave 3?

Dickens uses many techniques, including idioms, hyperbole, and imagery.

Figurative language is used throughout A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  It is language not meant to be taken literally.  This helps to make the book more enjoyable by creating pictures in the reader’s mind.  Dickens makes use of many different types of literary devices, which are tools an author uses to add color to the work. 

One such literary device is an idiom, which is a type of figurative language.  It is a saying that has been used by a culture over and over again until it becomes common knowledge.  Here is an example of an idiom.

He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger despatched to him through Jacob Marley's intervention. (Ch. 3)

You are probably more familiar with the phrase “in the nick of time,” but it is the same thing.  It’s an idiom that means just at the right time, or before it is too late. Scrooge means that he work up just in time to meet the ghost.

Hyperbole is a literary device where the author exaggerates, usually for humor.  There is a great example of this here.

Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much. (Ch. 3)

The point is that Scrooge is so nervous, and has had so many surprises tonight, that nothing would surprise him!  He knows that ghostly intervention is afoot, and he is ready for anything. 

Imagery is descriptive language.  Consider the use of figurative language, such as a simile and metaphor, or sensory details, which use the five senses, to create pictures in the reader’s mind.  In the description of the room that the Ghost of Christmas Present "decorated," Dickens uses both.

The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and many a winter season gone. (Ch. 3)

The simile in this example is “it looked a perfect grove,” meaning that the room looked like a grove of trees.  Another example is that it looked “as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there” because the leaves reflected back the right.  The other descriptions are decorations and food that are throughout the room, so the description of the room is very colorful and interesting.

As you continue looking, you will see other examples of literary devices that Dickens uses.  These will enhance your appreciation of the book, as they are used by Dickens to create the world populate by Scrooge and the three ghosts, and all of the other characters.

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What literary device is used in stave 3 of A Christmas Carol?

In the following passage, Dickens uses both simile and personification to express a joyous mood for Christmas present. Simile is a comparison using the words like or as, while personification is giving human traits to inanimate objects or animals:

There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by ...

The baskets of chestnuts are, in a simile, said to be like the waistcoasts (vests) of jolly old gentleman who are heavy around the middle. The onions are personified as Spanish friars (clergyman) and are pictured winking slyly at the passing girls, as if flirting with them as a human would. The passage also uses imagery, which is description employing any of the fives senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. We can see the great bounty of chestnuts and onions in the shop, all of which give off a dominant impression of jolly good cheer.

In the passage below, we meet up with imagery again. As in the quote above, we can picture the great bounty of food that Dickens uses to characterize Christmas Day:

Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.

The specific details of what is there—turkeys, mince pies, etc.—rather than a vague description of "a lot of wonderful food" makes the scene come alive for us.

The narrator uses antithesis, which is putting opposites together (in this case a baby and a rhino), to describe how broadly immune Scrooge feels from shock:

nothing between a baby and rhinoceros would have astonished him very much

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What are examples of foreshadowing in Stave 4 of A Christmas Carol?

The fearful tidings of the Ghost of Christmas Future are foreshadowed by his black garments and by Scrooge's reaction to him. Though he had gotten comfortable with the idea of ghosts at this point, Scrooge nevertheless

feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him

This foreshadows that what the ghost will show Scrooge will be frightening.

Scrooge's revelation of his own death is foreshadowed when he overhears people talking indifferently about someone who died. He wonders why the ghost is having him overhear so "trivial" a conversation. He does not yet know they are talking about him.

The ghost then whisks Scrooge to another scene, where again the revelation of his own death is foreshadowed. Scrooge still doesn't know, though the reader must strongly suspect, that the goods the laundress, the charwoman, and the undertaker's assistant are selling at a foul junk shop have been stolen from him, including the very shirt he was meant to be buried in. Scrooge says to the ghost:

The case of this unhappy man might be my own.

Not long after, he will find out that it is his own case. He will also see Tiny Tim's death foreshadowed.

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What are some literary devices in A Christmas Carol?

A perennial favorite of audiences of all ages, A Christmas Carol is a classical tale of a miserly old man who finds himself confronted with his present, past, and future. In this confrontation, Scrooge is uncomfortable with much of what is shown to him; consequently, he resolves to reform.

In order to describe his characters, especially Ebenezer Scrooge, Charles Dickens employs certain literary devices. Here are some: 

Stave One

Metaphor (unstated comparisons):

  • "But he [Scrooge] was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone"
  • "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!"
  • "A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin."

Simile: (stated comparisons using "like" or "as")

  • [Scrooge is] "Sharp as flint"
  • "Solitary as an oyster"
  • "Candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air."

Alliteration: (repetition of initial consonant sounds)

  • "No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him." /w/

Parallelism: (repetition of words, or phrases that are similar in structure)

  • No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. 

Stave Two

Simile:

  • "It was a strange figure -- like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man...." 

Parallelism:

  • "...now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body"

Imagery: (Visual)

  • "It wore a tunic of the purest white and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers."

Repetition: (the words now and leg are repeated)

"now with one leg,now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body"

Personification: (the attribution of the qualities of a human being to inanimate objects)

  • "melancholy room" and "feeble fire"

Stave Three  

Antithesis: (an opposition of ideas expressed by parallelism of phrases or words that are the opposite of each other)

  • "Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing..."

Simile:

  • "The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there..." (comparing the reflection of the holly, mistletoe, and ivy to mirrors)

Alliteration

  •  "bright gleaming berries glistened"

Throughout his narrative, Dickens makes use of this type of figurative language, and it is clear that this use of literary devices enhances the descriptions of both characters and places, explicating and developing them in imaginative ways. Certainly, Ebenezer Scrooge is one of the most memorable characters of all literature and his story is both entertaining and thought-provoking.

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What literary devices in A Christmas Carol enrich the story?

Dickens uses similes throughout the book to make comparisons to enrich the reader’s experience and add humor.

One of the literary devices that Dickens uses profusely is the simile.  Dickens was very fond of similes, as many Victorians were.  There was even a game called similes that many Victorians played at parties!  You can see many examples of similes, a type of figurative language where the writer makes a comparison between two unlike things using “like” or “as,” throughout the book.  Dickens even makes a joke about a common simile.

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail.  … But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile… (Stave One)

Dickens makes a comparison between Marley and a door-nail.  It is a common idiom (a simile that has been so often used it has become well known), “dead as a door-nail.”  Dickens then goes on to use humor, making fun of the phrase and saying that door-nails don’t seem dead enough to him, but he will go ahead and use the phrase anyway.

Dickens uses other similes.  Look at how he describes his main character, Ebenezer Scrooge.

Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. (Stave One)

Apparently to Dickens, oysters did not hang out in packs.  This simile is also funny, and it serves to not only add humor and interest to the story, but also to characterize Scrooge.  We get a picture of him as hard and menacing, as well as being alone.  I do not want to hang out much with oysters either.

Throughout the book, Dickens uses his beloved similes to enrich his writing.  He adds a touch of humor, pizazz, and interest.  With these similes, he can better describe his characters and settings, capture his readers’ attention, and amuse himself all at once!

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What literary devices are used in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens?

Charles Dickens uses an abundance of literary devices in A Christmas Carol, including metaphors, similes, personification, symbolism, imagery, and allusions. Let's look at examples of each of these.

Metaphors are frequent in this text. In the first stave, the narrator describes the houses across the street from Scrooge's counting house as “mere phantoms in the fog.” Scrooge himself is “a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone.” He works continually and tries to squeeze out every benefit.

Similes, too, are ample. Scrooge, for instance, is “Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire.” He is also “solitary as an oyster.” Tiny Tim is “as good as gold” in church on Christmas day.

Sometimes Dickens uses personification, giving inanimate objects human qualities. The frost is congenial, the ice misanthropic. The “crisp air” laughs at the music that fills it. The fire is feeble.

Symbolism abounds as well. Marley's chain symbolizes his lack of generosity in life and the bitterness and heaviness that are the consequences of such. The three ghosts symbolize the true meaning of Christmas.

A Christmas Carol is filled with vivid imagery. The description of the fog in the first stave, for instance, is so detailed that we can easily picture this phenomenon even if we have never directly experienced a London fog.

Finally, Dickens also alludes to other literary works, including the Bible (Cain and Abel, the Queen of Sheba, Pharaoh's daughter), Arabian Nights (Ali Baba), and Robinson Crusoe.

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What techniques does Dickens use to characterize in A Christmas Carol?

Dickens uses a lot of interrupted quotes interspersed with body language indicators (as stage directions interwoven into a play script). One can visualize the characters' reactions as well as dialogue, making them come to life on a virtual stage:

"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand to his pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff: "but it's too late now."

Also, characters often invoke each other by direct address:

"Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"

"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, do you believe in me or not?"

Parenthetical expressions personalize speech and at the same time typify it. Who on earth, for example, cannot identify the author of the "Bah, humbug" one-liner?

Dickens is less adroit than Shakespeare, however, at establishing characterization through colloquial speech; social caste, sex, and age are not that identifiable. Indeed, his characters at times seem cut from one cloth. For instance, his children do not speak as children would, but seem to be mini-adults. One critic observes:

To say the least of it, his child characters were more than a little smug. They were angels. We all know very well that children are most decidedly not angels. I have not any children, but if I had and they started speaking and acting like Little Nell, or Little Paul, or Tiny Tim—even if they were cripples—I should have a doctor in right away, and suggest a good hearty blood-letting.

One must not forget that Dickens was a product of his age and bore the stamp of his time. Long, drawn-out sentences with innumerable enumerations and clauses were "in style." Despite this, Dickens' characters and their rich portrayal remain the chief hallmark of his genius.

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