About this title: A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Dickens's tender and comic tale of the Cratchit family, Tiny Tim, and Ebenezer Scrooge, has been a favorite since it was written in 1843. Badly in need of money, Dickens produced A CHRISTMAS CAROL in six weeks; the first printing of 6,000 copies sold out instantly. In Dickens's original version, Tiny Tim was Tiny Fred, and Scrooge said "Bah!" but not "Humbug!"
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"This is a classic and a half. It is also very sentimental to me. I have a copy of This book that was given to me by my mother that was given to her by my father. So the book is not the one pictured here. My copy as printed in the 1800's. I use to read this very book to my children during the holiday season, every single year. It is full of life and bitterness and awareness. Of course we all know the story.
Charles Dickens is a master author. He writes as if you are within two feet of him and he is in conversation right in your face. Of course, he is not but his legacy of language will never fade. His descriptions are powerful and in your face. The feeling that he portrays is priceless and gripping. His characters are more than worthwhile, they are three dimensional and even four. As you sit and read Dickens, you feel everything in front of you, and you are there, nowhere else.
His genius led me to seek out others of his works but I never quite got through them. Oliver Twist was one, and A Tale of Two Cities. I just wasn't quite as captivated. Eventually I put them down without finishing them. But A Christmas Carol? I must have read it 25 times; to my preschoolers, my children every year, and to myself for years. I even used it when I volunteered in my children's classroom and we were learning creative writing; his metaphors, foreshadowing,and similes are perfect. He is a master.
Though I've read this book more than any other I have ever read, never once was it a waste of time."
"This is a classic and a half. It is also very sentimental to me. I have a copy of This book that was given to me by my mother that was given to her by my father. So the book is not the one pictured here. My copy as printed in the 1800's. I use to read this very book to my children during the holiday season, every single year. It is full of life and bitterness and awareness. Of course we all know the story.
Charles Dickens is a master author. He writes as if you are within two feet of him and he is in conversation right in your face. Of course, he is not but his legacy of language will never fade. His descriptions are powerful and in your face. The feeling that he portrays is priceless and gripping. His characters are more than worthwhile, they are three dimensional and even four. As you sit and read Dickens, you feel everything in front of you, and you are there, nowhere else.
His genius led me to seek out others of his works but I never quite got through them. Oliver Twist was one, and A Tale of Two Cities. I just wasn't quite as captivated. Eventually I put them down without finishing them. But A Christmas Carol? I must have read it 25 times; to my preschoolers, my children every year, and to myself for years. I even used it when I volunteered in my children's classroom and we were learning creative writing; his metaphors, foreshadowing,and similes are perfect. He is a master.
Though I've read this book more than any other I have ever read, never once was it a waste of time."
"It's kind of weird to imagine how I can completely have avoided this book and any adaptations thereof, but up to now, I have. It's one of those things I've always meant to get round to, but never have until now -- at least in the book form: I'm not much one for sitting and watching things. Really I only got round to it because I realised I had the free ebook downloaded, and I wanted something quick and easy to read, even though this isn't exactly the appropriate time of year... I wouldn't normally describe Dickens as "quick and easy", but A Christmas Carol really isn't bad. The style isn't too overwrought. There are sections of thick description, but the whole thing has an easy tone, starting right at the beginning:
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.
Obviously, the story gets more serious, since it's a moral one, about the meaning of Christmas and about the value of Christian charity. It still has an air of the Christmas cheer about it, the whole way through, except maybe for the part with the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. The story is pretty simple: not many characters, just various lives all followed by each of the ghosts, with Scrooge at the center of the story. I was expecting him to be somewhat more terrible, from the sort of general cultural impression I got -- although of course, he's bad enough as it is, mostly in his ignorance and silly bad temper. Of course, the part where he refuses to give to charity makes him seem pretty awful, too.
The character development which is the entire point of the story is a little overdone, maybe, but it all adds to the good feeling of "yay, everything is better now", at the end.
The moralising didn't really bother me. It's a classic story, and the moralising is part and parcel of that. I even liked a lot of the description in this, though in most Dickens novels the level of description used to frustrate me. Mind you, I should try again now I'm older and wiser.
(Note: The writing isn't on the writing or anything objective, since I don't believe one can be objective about stuff like this. It's purely based on how much I loved the story, whether I would reread it again. As a piece of literature, I'd reflexively rate it higher, but I don't really want to: I "liked" it, but not "really liked".)"
"I gave this story so many stars, not because of the moral ending, but because of the language. Personally, I don't feel it to be very effective in convincing anyone to be a better person. Be a good person or suffer the consequence! Its a bit too Southern Baptist for my tastes. And, I can say that because I sat in a pew and had hellfire and brimstone thrown at me for my entire childhood. But I digress, Romantic literature is my favorite. This book has so many moving gothic passages. It's really quite thrilling to find gothicism used as a Romantic tool in a Christmas ghost story. It's well worth the read to see the inconsistencies of using the Christian belief that the afterlife reflects your earthly life--but the idea is re-enforced by pagan symbols. Fabulous. Throughout A Christmas Carol the prevailing festive mood is marred by disturbing images and situations: Marley's ghostly appearance, Scrooge's nastiness and his childhood memories of loneliness and unhappiness, tiny Tim's illness and his father's worries. But the most shocking event is, of course, the appearance of the "Last of the Spirits". The Ghosts of Christmas Past and Christmas Present are, on the whole, rather joyful figures. They are reminiscent of characters in fairytales and classical mythology. The Ghost of Christmas Past is compared to the genii in The Arabian Nights, and the Ghost of Christmas Present looks very much like a cheery Bacchus. The Ghost of Christmas Future, however, is an entirely negative figure. The final ghost is shrouded in darkness and the frightened Scrooge can only make out "one outstretched hand" pointing to nightmarish sights of death and neglect. The ghost's hand, like Marley's head at the beginning of the story, seems to have a life of its own and stirs up horror both in Scrooge and in the reader. Although, Scrooge seems to eventually recover from his terrors, neither the story's happy end nor the reassuring final message succeed in erasing the petrifying image from the reader's mind. This is quite a Romantic feat for a Christmas story. The third ghost is most terrifying in its silence. It has no emotion, no disfiguring appearance and no "just" opinion to project, and yet, it is the most frightening occurrence in the novel. The Ghost of Christmas Future effectively puts to use Dickens's gothic tool; terror. Dickens uses terror to appeal to his readers' moral obligations. If charity does not naturally exist in the heart, then the best way to persuade someone to be philanthropic is to scare heavenly consequence into them. The Gothic high style that Dickens employs is most notable in the scenes with the third ghost, "A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man," (86). The use of alliteration is particularly effective on the cognitive senses of the mind, "unwatched, unwept, uncared for." Even though Scrooge does not realize what the reader has already guessed, he is plunged into a cold reality; this man failed at life. Again, on the very next page we see a moving passage addressed directly to death. It is almost an ode it is so beautiful and strong in its sincerity to prove human goodness, "Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion," (87). The reader is thrown into the mood of Coleridge or Keats. What moving language Dickens has employed here. It is an hundred times more convincing than the "do or die" moral end."
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