Discussion Topic
The children under the second spirit's robe in A Christmas Carol
Summary:
The children under the second spirit's robe in A Christmas Carol are symbolic representations of Ignorance and Want. They highlight the social issues of Dickens' time, emphasizing the dire consequences of neglecting the poor and uneducated in society.
Describe the two children from the second spirit's robe in 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 jolly Giant, glorious to see.” This spirit introduces himself as the Ghost of Christmas Present. The spirit takes Scrooge to observe the Christmas that his clerk, Bob Cratchit, shares with his large family. It is a meager Christmas, as they cannot afford a lavish dinner. However, it is also evident that the Cratchits are a loving family, and that makes their Christmas holiday warm and lovely. Scrooge also observes Tiny Tim, who is very ill. Scrooge realizes that Bob’s son is in poor health and needs medical attention that the Cratchits cannot afford.
The spirit then takes Scrooge to observe the holiday celebration at his nephew’s house. This drives home the knowledge...
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that Scrooge has a family, but he chooses to ignore them in the pursuit of his one passion: earning money. He also chooses to ignore them on Christmas. The nephew observes that Scrooge “loses some pleasant moments” by not celebrating with them.
The spirit then shows Scrooge two children who emerge from the spirit's robe. They are described in words that convey how awful they are. Specifically, they are “wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable.”
The spirit orders Scrooge to look at the children. When he does, Scrooge realizes that
they were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds.
Everything that one imagines about innocent children is lacking with these two. They are not like angels; instead, “devils lurked” in connection with them. Dickens spares no negative descriptive phrases to convey how horrible these children are. He writes,
No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. Scrooge started back, appalled.
The spirit explains that these children are Mankind’s children: Ignorance and Want. In other words, this is the human condition that befalls many unfortunate people. Many are ignorant, as Scrooge is. The spirit expressly tells Scrooge to be particularly wary of Ignorance, as Scrooge’s life is characterized by ignorance. He is ignorant of the pleasant ways of people around him, such as his nephew and Bob Cratchit. He is ignorant of how to behave to people and how to help them whenever he can. In short, he is ignorant of how to be a good person. As a result of ignorance, many people live in horrible conditions and want for their very food and warmth. Although not quite at this level, Bob Cratchit’s family certainly wants for more sustenance than they can afford on the meager wages that Scrooge pays, which is one of the lessons this spirit tries to teach Scrooge.
What are the names of the children under the robe in 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 something protruding from under the Ghost's robe.
“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, "...Is it a foot or a claw?”
The Ghost replies that it might be a claw because there was so little flesh on it. Then he lifts his robe to reveal two children that Dickens describes as "wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable."
The children cower at the Ghost's feet and clutch at his robe. They are a boy and a girl, as best Scrooge could tell, but he is reluctant to call them children. He is much more inclined to regard them as "monsters," for lack of a better, kinder word, the most horrible and dreadful monsters that he believes ever existed "through all the mysteries of wonderful creation."
Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned devils lurked, and glared out menacing.
Scrooge is appalled at what he sees, but he gathers his wits and addresses the Ghost.
“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.
“They are Man's,” said the Spirit...This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree; but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.
Dickens considered the prevalence of ignorance and poverty as two of the greatest failings of Victorian society, if not mankind as a whole. Throughout his adult life, Dickens actively campaigned for "education for all" and for libraries to be built throughout England. He also wrote and lectured about the abject poverty that many English people endured, some for their entire lives, with little or no help from their fellow men and women.
Scrooge hardly knows what to say.
“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.
“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
The bell rings out the hour of twelve, and the Ghost of Christmas Past and the unfortunate children that Scrooge saw at the Ghost's feet are gone. Dickens reminds us, however, that the Ignorance and Want that the two children represented remain with us.