A Christmas Carol: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''Bah, humbug!''}}

 

The novel is in the public domain. You can read the original story [[{{PAGENAME}}/Source|on this wiki]], [[wikisource:A Christmas Carol (Dickens)|on Wikisource]], or [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46 on Project Gutenberg].

 

 

The British Film Institute has posted the earliest surviving (though in-complete) film version of the story on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9Mk-B7MKP8 YouTube]; for its time it was a very modern undertaking, special-effects wise (1901). The earliest surviving complete film adaption is the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL2Of5xpd9U Thomas Edison version] of 1910.

* [[Freudian Excuse]]: Turns out Scrooge's mean old father left him at boarding school during Christmas. Oh, and Scrooge's best (and only) friend died on Christmas Eve. Gee, I wonder why he hates the holiday so much!

** The love of his life also broke off the engagement and dumped him on Christmas, but that was because he was already showing signs of being mean and bitter.

** It's implied he spurns his nephew because the lad reminds him of his [[Dead Little Sister]].

* [[Future Loser]]: Sort of...

* [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane]]: The question is left open whether Scrooge's visitation by spirits was real or [[All Just a Dream]].

* [[Meaningful Name]]: The word "scrooge" was originally slang for "to squeeze", as in Scrooge's tight-fistedness.

* [[Money, Dear Boy]]: Dickens originally wrote it to pay off a debt. However, the story was a hit from the first release on. Dickens was also quite fond of the story and would keep revisiting it.

* [[Morally-Bankrupt Banker]]: Scrooge.

* [[The Social Darwinist]]: Scrooge is your typical Malthusian aristocrat of the time. Suffice to say that another of Dickens's fictional followers of Malthus, Filer in ''[[The Chimes]]'', says the poor "have no earthly right or business to be born. And ''that'' we know they haven't. We reduced it to a mathematical certainty long ago!" Scrooge's battlefield is more market than campaign.

* [[The Speechless]]: The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

* [[Time Passes Montage]]: Broadly the entire visit to the past, but most especially the moment in the schoolroom when Scrooge sees his entire childhood pass in moments.

* [[Time Travel]]: The ghost of Christmas yet to come – but travelling only as an observer.

** At one point, Dickens uses a conversation between Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present for an [[Author Tract]] about blue laws prohibiting bakeries from being open on Sundays.

** There are a few subtle and not-so-subtle temporal references which would be lost on readers from another era. It's 1843 and, as the capital of a mighty Empire, metropolitan London is a beacon of modernity. Slavery [[wikipedia:Slavery Abolition Act 1833|has just been abolished]] Empire-wide, unlike the wretched backwaters of the United States of America where the price of cotton has collapsed, the landowners are [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-science-history/article/credit-market-discipline-and-capitalist-slavery-in-antebellum-south-carolina/5D4AD043345081CFA468BABA873B64F1/core-reader struggling], states are defaulting on loans and the banks [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jan/22/usa.davidteather have repossessed more than a thousand mortgaged slaves] as debtors try in vain to avoid utter default. After a short-lived prosperity after the War of 1812, the economy had indeed slid well into a major economic depression unequalled by anything until [[The Great Depression]] and municipalities were banding together to discourage paupers from begging for alms for the poor by building what they called "union workhouses" – no, not the trade unions of later years, but a union of municipalities joining together to build and operate a wretched poorhouse where beggars would have to work to earn the barest subsistence housing and a few table scraps. And then there were the financial instruments, such as the "demand note" – a form of IOU where the bearer could present the note and be paid by the debtor on three days notice – a reasonably stable economic concept, but one which would surely break if [[Time Travel|one were to break the normal passage of time]]. Of course the English note was good, while debt backed by the US states was likely worthless (and Dickens does get a [[Take That]] or two in about the economic situation). A few other concepts, such as Malthus and the very first glimmers of awareness of the consequences of human overpopulation, were also new in this era.

** For that matter, Christmas in this day was merely a somewhat minor religious festival. It didn't take on the scale it would attain a century later until capitalists learned to fully, cynically exploit it as the mass marketing opportunity we see today. Food and transport were still available at a price, same as any other working day.

**

 

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