A Christmas Carol (Style)

Style

Point of View

Mainly, this novel is narrated in the third person; that is, the story is usually told as "he said" or "she said" or "Scrooge watched them," etc. In the beginning, though, there is a little touch of a first-person narrator, as someone talking directly to the reader, referring to himself as "I." This narrator is the type of personality who will use a phrase and then mull over its appropriateness ("I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail the deadest piece of ironmongery ") and to make humorous satirical remarks.

This first-person voice fades away once the characters in the book start interacting with one another, leaving the characters and the action of the novel to keep the readers' attention. The last time this first-person narrator is heard from is when it remarks on how strange it is that Scrooge, who had not thought of Marley since hours earlier, would see his face on the door knocker ("let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that ")

Setting

London is the setting of this novel, as it is for many of Dickens' works. The character of the city does not come into play much except in the gloomy darkness on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, caused by London's legendary fog. It is also present during the scene on Christmas morning presented by the Ghost of Christmas Present, with the city coming alive. Dickens gives long lists of the objects associated with Christmas (baskets of chestnuts, Spanish onions, tea, coffee, raisins, mistletoe, etc.), a bounty and richness that Scrooge has rejected in favor of his lonely, solitary existence.

The one other notable setting in the novel is the cold, dark house where Scrooge lives, which had been occupied by Jacob Marley before his death. Among its more individual characteristics are the wide staircase and the fireplace, which is decorated with carvings of scenes from the Bible. It is also symbolic of his isolation that Scrooge would live in such spare, dark surroundings.

Topics for Further Study

• Write a synopsis for an updated version of A Christmas Carol, using people who are in the news or who are famous in your community.
• Try to find out about music that would have been popular at the time of the novel. In particular, try to get a copy of "Sir Roger de Coverley," which Fezziwig dances to. Pick a popular song that you think is like the old music, and explain the relationship between the two songs.
• Research the significance of Christmas to charitable organizations, explaining how much their income from donations increases during December and what they do to prepare for it.
• Write a short story about Tiny Tim as a grownup, explaining how the crippling disease he had as a child was cured because of his father's rich benevolent employer.
• Examine the traditional use of ghosts in Victorian writing and write a paper explaining how their use here is common or uncommon.