Lit Analysis 4 " A Christmas Carol" By Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol Lit Analysis

General

11..       The novel is about an Old Wealthy man who is very grumpy. He doesn’t live a very good life and is uncaring with others. One night four ghosts visit him. The first is the ghost of Jacob Marley, he explains that scrooge lives a bad life, and that misfortune will befall him if he doesn’t change. He then explains that he will be visited by three ghosts, the ghost of Christmas past present and future. Scrooge meets the ghosts and realizes he needs to change.

22..       The theme of the books is redemption. Despite scrooge being so mean and grumpy, he is still able to turn his life around and redeem himself. Despite being so old and having been mean for so long he still redeems himself.

33..       The tone to me changes throughout. It changes with each part of the story, Pre ghosts, ghost of Christmas past, present, future, and post ghosts. In the beginning for me the writer’s voice came off almost like a Christmas special. I guess I compared the two because they’re both about Christmas but it seemed like some rich voice was narrating the events of my mind. The first and second ghosts (harbinger and past) were sorrowful, the second was more joyful, the third is omnious, and after all the ghosts are gone it is happy.

44..       Allegory: The Novel in itself is an allegory. Be a good person, it’s never too late to turn around. Flashback: The part with the ghost of Christmas past is a flashback                                                 Allusion: “If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot”            Personification: (Referring to a bell in a church) “…struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.”                       (Page 14)                                                                                                                                        Symbol: The chains on Jacob Marley symbolize what happens to those in the afterlife who fail to live good lives Syntax: “for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in his head to be.”                                                                                    (P. 95)                                                                                                                                                      Simile: “‘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. A merry Christmas to everybody. A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo here. Whoop. Hallo.” (Page 128)                                                                                                         Metaphor: “I’m quite a baby.” (page 128)                                                                                        Diction: “He had never dreamed that any walk — that anything — could give him so much happiness.” (Page 133)                                                                                                                                    Imagery: “Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.” (Page 65)

Characterization

1.1.       Some direct characterization includes “He is the misanthrope, the malcontent, the miser.” And “Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire” Some indirect characterization includes “Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley.” And “‘What else can I be,’ returned the uncle, ‘when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ‘em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,’ said Scrooge indignantly, ‘every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!’”

2.2.       The diction doesn’t really change at all. It is mainly focused on scrooge.

33..       Scrooge is a round dynamic character. It’s pretty obvious considering his sentiments and attitudes completely change by the end of the book. In fact that is what the book is about, how he changes.

44..       I didn’t really feel like I met a character. To be fair I had heard the story previous to reading the book. Many Christmas specials and plays are about the story and its very well known. That being said I got a much deeper understanding of scrooge from actually reading the book as opposed to a vague recollection of him from a movie I saw when I was seven.