Dickens reminds us of shared humanity and common duty to...

‘A Christmas Carol’

Dickens reminds us of shared humanity and

common duty to our fellow man.


Dickens suggests that we need to integrate emotionally and

psychologically. He shows that we need to illuminate our previous experiences before we can fully understand our present state.


When Scrooge sees the horrific vision of the tortured souls’ fate and the chance of avoiding the

same for himself, it sets the wheels of radical transformation

in motion.


Fear is one of the primary motivating factors for change.


Humility and shame can be seen as doorways to growth in the novella.


‘Carols’ are in sections called ‘staves’. A carol requires teamwork and

supporting each other – not a solo performance. Dickens’ intention of the

book seems to be to bring people together in a similar fashion.


True transformation starts with a profound

shift in perspective, and trauma is often a force

for change.


The agony of Marley and the other spirits at the end of Stave 1 is their incapacity to help others. They “squandered” the only chance they had to make something meaningful of their lives. There is a karmic suggestion that

hurtful, selfish and generally unskilful actions constantly forge our own metal chains.


Dickens himself had humble origins and only a partial

education, as a result of being sent to a blacking factory whilst

his parents were sent to a debtor’s prison.


Dickens was keen to escape the endemic attitudes of greed,

ignorance and hatred that he himself had been exposed to as a

child in the blacking factory.


Dickens shows an alternative humanitarian vision through Scrooge’s positive nephew,

Fred, and the wretched Marley’s lamentations.


Jacob Marley’s chains are of his own making. They are a type of divine retribution,

implying that everything is interconnected through time

and space.


Dickens suggests that yesterday shapes today and who we choose to be today defines who we will become tomorrow. Actions DO have consequences and it’s our responsibility to choose wisely.


Dickens was a skilful social

commentator.


The Victorians were far more religious than our modern readers. Dickens implies that the more materialistic readers are doomed to purgatory if

they fail to see the error of their ways and change.


Dickens believed in the ethical and political potential of

literature, and the novel in particular, and he treated his fiction as a springboard for

debates about moral and social reform.


Dickens showed compassion and empathy towards the vulnerable and disadvantaged segments of

English society, and contributed to several important social reforms.


• Church attendance was as high as 50%• Biblical Christianity was thickly

intertwined in the fabric of Victorian society.


The prevailing Victorian view was that the poor were responsible for their own situation,

that their only hope was to reform themselves. It was widely believed that the

poor were poor because they were sinful, and that the only way to help them is by saving their soul – by leading them to church and

prayer.


• There is only one God in three persons: while distinct from one another in their relations of origin ("it is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds") and in their relations with one another, they are stated to be one in all else, co-equal, and each is God, whole and entire".

• Accordingly, the whole work of creation and grace is seen as a single operation common to all three divine persons, in which each shows forth what is proper to him in the Trinity, so that all things are "from the Father", "through the Son" and "in the Holy Spirit".

• In order for Scrooge to reach enlightenment he must encounter and embrace God in all of his forms

Holy Trinity


- The novella is set in the 1840s and difficult period with:

Mass starvation in Ireland Fears of overpopulation Dangerous child labour Some child labour reforms in 1844 (9-13 year

olds 9hr shifts, 6 days a week)


William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890)‘Darkest England may be described as consisting broadly of three

circles, one within the other. The outer and widest circle is inhabited by the starving and homeless, but honest Poor. The second by those who live in Vice; and the third and innermost region at the centre is people by those who exist by Crime … the borders of this great lost land are not sharply defined. They are continually expanding and

contracting … the death of a breadwinner, a long illness, a failure in the city, or any one of a thousand other causes which might be named,

will bring within the first circle those who at present imagine themselves free from all danger of actual want.’


Nature is what we think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic

inheritance and other biological factors. Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after

conception e.g. the product of exposure, experience and learning on

an individual.


Dickens believed that the way that society treated its children was the true test of

society’s moral wealth.


Christmas celebrates the birth of a child -Jesus. Dickens saw the protection of childhood as vital and showed the dire consequences of the loss of childhood through Scrooge’s own experiences as a boy in Stave 2, and through

Tiny Tim, a symbol of the thousands of children injured in factories during the

Industrial Revolution.

Key information about the context

and Dickens’ message

Dickens reminds us of shared humanity and common duty to...

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