Full spoilers for the entire book below. Proceed with caution.
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Title: A Christmas Carol
Author: Charles Dickens
Publication Date: 1843 (novel), 2007 (audio)
Publisher: Chapman & Hall (novel) and Blackstone Audio, Inc. (audio)
Narrated By: Simon Prebble
Recording time: 3 hrs, 9 mins
THE PLOT
via wiki:
The book is divided into five chapters, which Dickens titled “staves“.
Stave one
A Christmas Carol opens on a bleak, cold Christmas Eve in London, seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge‘s business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge, an ageing miser, dislikes Christmas and refuses a dinner invitation from his nephew Fred. He turns away two men seeking a donation to provide food and heating for the poor and only grudgingly allows his overworked, underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, Christmas Day off with pay to conform to the social custom.
That night Scrooge is visited at home by Marley’s ghost, who wanders the Earth entwined by heavy chains and money boxes forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a single chance to avoid the same fate: he will be visited by three spirits and must listen or be cursed to carry much heavier chains of his own.
Stave two
The first spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Past, takes Scrooge to Christmas scenes of Scrooge’s boyhood, reminding him of a time when he was more innocent. The scenes reveal Scrooge’s lonely childhood at boarding school, his relationship with his beloved sister Fan, who died young while giving birth to Fred, and a Christmas party hosted by his first employer, Mr Fezziwig, who treated him like a son. Scrooge’s neglected fiancée Belle is shown ending their relationship, as she realises that he will never love her as much as he loves money. Finally, they visit a now-married Belle with her large, happy family on the Christmas Eve that Marley died. Scrooge, upset by hearing Belle’s description of the man that he has become, demands that the ghost remove him from the house.
Stave three
The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge to a joyous market with people buying the makings of Christmas dinner and to celebrations of Christmas in a miner’s cottage and in a lighthouse. Scrooge and the ghost also visit Fred’s Christmas party. A major part of this stave is taken up with Bob Cratchit’s family feast and introduces his youngest son, Tiny Tim, a happy boy who is seriously ill. The spirit informs Scrooge that Tiny Tim will die unless the course of events changes. Before disappearing, the spirit shows Scrooge two hideous, emaciated children named Ignorance and Want. He tells Scrooge to beware the former above all and mocks Scrooge’s concern for their welfare.
Stave four
The third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, shows Scrooge a Christmas Day in the future. The silent ghost reveals scenes involving the death of a disliked man whose funeral is attended by local businessmen only on condition that lunch is provided. His charwoman, laundress and the local undertaker steal his possessions to sell to a fence. When he asks the spirit to show a single person who feels emotion over his death, he is only given the pleasure of a poor couple who rejoice that his death gives them more time to put their finances in order. When Scrooge asks to see tenderness connected with any death, the ghost shows him Bob Cratchit and his family mourning the death of Tiny Tim. The ghost then allows Scrooge to see a neglected grave, with a tombstone bearing Scrooge’s name. Sobbing, Scrooge pledges to change his ways.
Stave five
Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning a changed man. He makes a large donation to the charity he rejected the previous day, anonymously sends a large turkey to the Cratchit home for Christmas dinner and spends the afternoon at Fred’s Christmas party. The following day he gives Cratchit an increase in pay, and begins to become a father figure to Tiny Tim. From then on Scrooge treats everyone with kindness, generosity and compassion, embodying the spirit of Christmas.
My Review
Prior to this reading, I had seen many live-action adaptations of A Christmas Carol, but without ever having read the novella. I now firmly prefer the book version of this story. Dickens imbues this tale with a humor, horror, regret, and repentance that I do not believe can be completely captured in another medium. Dickens, one of the greatest writers in the English language, was just uncommonly gifted at putting words together in a vivid and enjoyable way.
Dickens’ talents notwithstanding, I may be a little biased in favor of the book format of this story because my experience was enhanced by an audiobook narration performed by Simon Prebble. Prebble is an excellent narrator. He also did the audio narration for my previous reading of George Orwell’s 1984 and I enjoyed that immensely, also. Prebble might just have a knack for telling darkly themed tales.
One aspect of A Christmas Carol that comes through in the book format is how dark it really is. The three spirits, and Marley, represents a type of Final Judgment Seat condemnation for Scrooge. Marley’s chains, or the strangely formed bodies of the spirits, come across with a measure of levity in a visual format, but on the page they represent the type of thing one might experience while being condemned to hell.
I particularly enjoyed Scrooge’s visit into the past. Seeing him as a younger person, before his heart was hardened by bad choices, made his present state understandable, pitiable, and also relatable. Many people end up with their entire lives condemned because of the foolish convictions and choices of their youth. The hardened heart that can result from bad life choices, made while young, is also often incapable of performing the change needed to remedy the situation. Scrooge’s miracle is that this experience supernaturally broke and warmed his heart, giving him the ability to act on his new understand and second chance at life. His visit into the present showed him where he might use his heart, and his visit into the future demonstrated his fate while on his present course. But it was his visit into the past that truly changed him. One might hope that most readers are not so far gone as Scrooge, though, so that while reading his story, they might be able to discover and remedy their own hard-heartedness without needing assistance from time-traveling Spirits.
As I mentioned before, I love how Dickens puts words together. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:
“If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”
“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
“No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.”
“You fear the world too much,’ she answered gently. ‘All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off, one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you.”
“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.
“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”
“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”
““It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”
“And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”
If you haven’t read A Christmas Carol, or haven’t read it in a long while, I recommend doing so. It’s a short read and well worth your time during the holidays. I particularly recommend checking out Simon Prebble’s audio reading of the story.
Have you read A Christmas Carol? Let me know what you think.