‘A Christmas Carol’
example essay 2

Starting with this extract [old Joe from Stave 4], explore how Dickens presents the lessons Scrooge learns about life in A Christmas Carol.

Throughout Dickens’ novella ‘A Christmas Carol’, the protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge embarks on a spiritual journey, transforming himself from a miserly, misanthropic businessman into a philanthropist, an aid to the less fortunate. Through his journey, Scrooge learns lessons about Christmas and the importance of charitability, forgiveness and kindness within the holiday. From this, Dickens expands these typical Christian values into attributes that should not be possessed only at Christmas, but all year round, through the redemption of Scrooge and as he learns these key values and lessons in life.

Before his change, Scrooge’s attitude towards life is presented through his negative view of the poor. When asked to give a charitable donation to the less fortunate at Christmas, he responds to asking if there “are no prisons” if the “union workhouses” are “still in life”, they too are forced to confront their own ideas surrounding charitability and the responsibility they hold over others. Both Scrooge and the reader are forced to learn about the ‘Doom’ that will follow once the innocence of children is removed and the ‘Ignorance’ of the upper class reigns over the need the lower class experience. They are forced to learn how their actions will impact the lower class and the desperate need for the uptake in charitability from the upper class, not only at Christmas, but all year round to prevent the ‘Doom’ that will follow.

This idea of the need for charitability is continued into Stave Four as Scrooge is presented as a character who learns about and is forced to confront his own mortality. When members of the lower class profit from Scrooge’s death, one woman remarks how Scrooge “frisked away” in life only to “profit (them) when he was dead.” Here, Dickens uses an exclamatory sentence to highlight the uselessness of greed and the irony of Scrooge’s own life. He spent his life chasing greed, chasing profit only to die alone and unloved, giving his real ‘profit’ to the lower classes as they are forced to steal from him. Combined with the use of a flash-forward, Dickens enables Scrooge to supernaturally witness his own death, forcing him to confront his own mortality and come to learn that once his life is over, greed and materialism are pointless. He can’t take his money with him, nor did it serve him any good in life. However, this leads the reader to reflect on how Scrooge could have done good in his life, as shown in Stave Five. In Stave Five, the use of a cyclical structure highlights to the reader where Scrooge’s redemption has allowed him to become a philanthropic character, embracing his charity and denying his miserly nature at the beginning of the novella.

In conclusion, as Scrooge learns about the benefits of charitability so does the reader. They are both forced to confront their mortality and lack of need for greed, in turn embracing charity. Through this, Dickens aims to create a more charitable, kind and forgiving Victorian society, aided through the life lessons of ‘A Christmas Carol’.