Posted on 12/26/2009 6:32:41 AM PST by marktwain
Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol as an indictment of nineteenth century industrialization and economic social classes. The following is a modern take on the tale exploring a different issue.
Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!
“All of the Bill of Rights shall be sacred to me and I will defend every free man’s right to keep and bear arms!” Scrooge repeated as he scrambled out of bed. “Oh, Jacob Marley! Heaven be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!”
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.
“Everything is here,” cried Scrooge, his eyes flashing around the room and glancing in particular at the silver picture frame and his gold watch. “They are here—I am here—the shadows of the things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!”
His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance.
“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect fool of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man!”
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
No he didn't, dammit.
“Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” as an indictment of nineteenth century industrialization and economic social classes.
No he didn’t, dammit.”
You are right, he didn’t. Although most of Dickens’ works reflected his stance of the plight of industrialization in mid 19th century London, “A Christmas Carol”, is an instructive story that takes its cue from the Biblical story found in Luke 16. This parable tells the story of a rich man who ignored the poor in his lifetime, and a poor man named Lazarus who had a very hard life in this world. When they died, their situations reversed and the rich man now in torment, begs Abraham to warn his brothers so that they might escape the fate he has fallen into. In the Biblical parable, it is too late, but evidently Dickens wondered what it would have been like if someone, like the rich man, could be visited by someone in torment in the afterlife, and because of this visit, change. Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s dead partner, visits Scrooge to “offer him a chance of hope” to escape Marley’s fate which certainly awaits Scrooge in the next world. The entire story of “A Christmas Carol” is really a tale of spiritual redemption. It is no accident that there are THREE Spirits who change Scrooge’s life mirroring the Trinitarian essence of Christian doctrine. Yes, there are elements of Dickens outrage at the treatment of the marginal in “A Christmas Carol”, but this beloved tale is inspired more by Scripture than by sociology.
You are so right; and it’s instructive to note that in his miserly existence, Scrooge consigns the poor to the government-run institutions of the time, namely, the prisons and the workhouses.
“You are so right; and it’s instructive to note that in his miserly existence, Scrooge consigns the poor to the government-run institutions of the time, namely, the prisons and the workhouses”
An excellent point, thank you.
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