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A Christmas Carol. By Charles Dickens. The Author. Charles Dickens was an Englishman who wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843. Click on picture of Dickens to view video about his life. Charles Dickens – Doodle Worthy. Click on Doodle to read what Google had to say about
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A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens
The Author • Charles Dickens was an Englishman who wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843. Click on picture of Dickens to view video about his life.
Charles Dickens – Doodle Worthy Click on Doodle to read what Google had to say about Charles Dickens in honor of his 200th birthday, Feb. 7, 2012.
Setting of the A Christmas Carol • Place: London, England • Time: Christmas, 1843 • Locations: Office of Scrooge, Home of Scrooge , and various other places in and around London
London 1843 – crowded, dirty, smelly • Imagine yourself in the London of the mid 19th century. The homes of the upper and middle class exist in close proximity to areas of unbelievable poverty and filth. Rich and poor alike are thrown together in the crowded city streets. Street sweepers attempt to keep the streets clean of manure, the result of thousands of horse-drawn vehicles. The city's thousands of chimney pots are belching coal smoke, resulting in soot which seems to settle everywhere. In many parts of the city raw sewage flows in gutters that empty into the Thames. Street vendors hawking their wares add to the cacophony of street noises. Pick-pockets, prostitutes, drunks, beggars, and vagabonds of every description add to the colorful multitude. • Personal cleanliness is not a big priority, nor is clean laundry. In close, crowded rooms the smell of unwashed bodies is stifling. It is unbearably hot by the fire, numbingly cold away from it.
Characters in A Christmas Carol • Ebenezer Scrooge – a mean, old man • Bob Cratchit – Scrooge’s employee • Jacob Marley – Scrooge’s dead business partner • Fred – Scrooge’s nephew • Ghosts - past, present, and future • Various people from Scrooge’s life
A Christmas Carol – what happens • Ebenezer Scrooge is a penny-pinching miser in the first degree. He cares nothing for the people around him, including his employee Bob Cratchit. and mankind exists only for the money that can be made through exploitation and intimidation. He particularly detests Christmas which he views as 'a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer'. Scrooge is visited, on Christmas Eve, by the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley who died seven Christmas Eves ago.
A Christmas Carol – what happens next • Marley, a miser from the same mold as Scrooge, is suffering the consequences in the afterlife and hopes to help Scrooge avoid his fate. He tells Scrooge that he will be haunted by three spirits. These three spirits, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, succeed in showing Scrooge the error of his ways. His glorious reformation complete, Christmas morning finds Scrooge sending a Christmas turkey to his long-suffering clerk, Bob Cratchit, and spending Christmas day in the company of his nephew, Fred, whom he had earlier spurned.
The Rest of the Story • Scrooge's new-found benevolence continues as he raises Cratchit's salary and vows to assist his family, which includes Bob's crippled son, Tiny Tim. In the end Dickens reports that Scrooge became ' as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew'.
Interesting Facts about A Christmas Carol • It would have cost Bob Cratchit a full week’s pay to buy Christmas dinner. • No scene with Tiny Tim was illustrated in the original book. • Dickens did not make money on the book because he kept price low to sell more copies. • Carol means song of joy celebrating the birth of Jesus. • The Cratchit house was based on an early residence of Dickens.
Movie Versions of the Story • It has been reported that there are over 200 film and television versions of A Christmas Carol. • The first was a 10 minute silent film made in 1910. • There are Mickey Mouse and Muppet Christmas Carols. • Click below on the picture of Mickey to see the trailer of the Mickey Mouse version and on the picture of Jim Carrey to see a trailer of the latest Disney production.
What do you remember? • 1. Who is author of A Christmas Carol? • 2. What is setting – time and place? • 3. Who is the main character? • 4. What is a carol? • 5. On what did Dickens base Cratchit home? • 6. Describe London in 1843 – 3 sentences. • 7. How many movie versions are there? • 8. Why was Dickens a champion the poor?
