Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' Review: The Soul's Rebirth
By: Brad Leithauser (WSJ)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" is an evergreen delight for a host of reasons, not least for its length. It's the ideal, modest size. The book's events—which track the elderly, prosperous, stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's psychic transformation from grouchy bear to purring pussycat—unfold in the course of one night. And, likewise, the book can, and should, be consumed in a single night, preferably Christmas Eve. Scrooge's clock and the reader's were meant to align.
In the book's fictional world, Scrooge's stunted soul is redeemed after serial visits from four ghosts, each conveying messages of fear and censure. In another, factual world (the one you the reader inhabit), Scrooge's night is best devoted to marveling at how compactly, how richly and deftly, Dickens lays out his tale of a pitiable man's salvation. If everything goes well, the evening's two prime participants, Scrooge and you, wind up at the same juncture: releasing tears of joy.
Scrooge is described as rocklike—a skinflint—but there is abundant water within this stone; tears flow generously in “A Christmas Carol.” The book might be subtitled “The Man Who Learned to Cry.” Scrooge’s first visitor is the ghost of Jacob Marley, his former business partner, buried seven long years before. In clangorous fashion, dragging his chains, Marley’s ghost outlines Scrooge’s upcoming evening, in which he will suffer visits from the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
The book’s first sentences are: “Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.” Categorical as this sounds, the reader in due course comes to grasp a startling, contrary truth: Marley is more alive than Scrooge. To lie eternally in a graveyard is to be less dead than to harbor a buried, unresponsive soul while yet breathing—embittered Scrooge’s fate.
Though “A Christmas Carol” is Dickens’s most celebrated creation, it was but one of five such novellas prepared for the holiday season, eventually assembled as the “Christmas Books.” It would be satisfying to report that “A Christmas Carol,” the majestic pinnacle of the five, culminated the series. But it was the first to arrive, and to read the set chronologically is to experience a gradual depletion.
Even so, today they compose a charming quintet, bristling with Victorian bustle, and in their gladsome heyday they were an exploding, near-annual phenomenon. Beginning in 1843, ending in 1848, each book arrived for Christmas. They were the new Netflix series of their time, a platinum LP, a YouTube viral sensation—they were precocious blockbusters, even if the term wouldn’t emerge until almost exactly a century later. The books were keenly awaited, speedily purchased, tirelessly discussed, variously performed. “The Chimes,” second in the series, generated five different stage adaptations within weeks of publication. “The Cricket on the Hearth,” the third, spawned an astonishing 17.
Unseen spirits abound in Dickens’s Christmas books. These are not disembodied feelings but determinate creatures, gesticulating at the rim of consciousness. While four ghosts are introduced to Scrooge by name, he is also granted a vaster vision, of an airborne world more frenzied and teeming than our own:
Scrooge followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms,
wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. . . . The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.
Similarly thronged is the atmosphere of “The Chimes”:
He saw the tower, whither his charmed footsteps had brought him, swarming with dwarf phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the Bells . . . He saw them ugly, handsome, crippled, exquisitely formed.
Hence, in both novellas solitude means company; nobody’s truly alone. Naturally, it’s tempting to regard such spirits as the native companions of the born novelist, who with each breath imbibes invisible, poignant stories.
Later in life, Dickens befriended Hans Christian Andersen, whose marvelous fairy tales offer a world of enchanted animations—talkative, opinionated animals and household implements. Dickens brings us “quarrelsome” kettles and “terrified” clocks and an “entertained” cricket. “The Haunted Man,” the last of the Christmas books, recalls Andersen’s spookiest and loveliest tale, “The Snow Queen,” in which young Kai grows remote and cruel after the Snow Queen lodges ice in his eye and heart. Dickens’s haunted man likewise turns cold and unpitying. He has beseeched a ghost to relieve him of his most painful memories, his “sorrow, wrong, and trouble,” but it turns out that pain is the midwife to empathy. Without it, we’re barren.
Each Christmas novella chronicles a “reclamation,” despair giving way to hope, to restored faith in humanity. In “The Chimes,” perhaps Dickens’s most impassioned plea for charity toward the poor, the aging and debt-ridden Trotty Veck, dismissed by the high and mighty as a mere errand boy, questions the ultimate worth of the destitute and miserable. But neighborhood church bells pump out a contrary tune. They sing “The voice of Time cries to man, Advance!” and Trotty, after a dreamlike vision of his own death, eventually responds, like a Victorian George Bailey, with an “I am grateful!” In “The Cricket on the Hearth” a man learns to tame his murderous impulses on discovering his wife’s infidelity, only to perceive that she has been—no surprise here—faithful throughout.
In their time, both “The Chimes” and “The Cricket on the Hearth” often eclipsed the fame of “A Christmas Carol.” But in the 21st century, it becomes apparent that we need a better term than success to convey just how successfully “A Christmas Carol,” outstripping its fellows, has captured the collective imagination. The story is everywhere—translated into movies, plays, commercials, costumery, spin-offs, spin-offs of spin-offs. “A Christmas Carol” has to be the most beloved novella that anyone, anywhere, anytime ever concocted. Page for page, it may be the most pregnant prose ever dreamt up by a novelist.
Though it may sound like a Scroogelike proposal, “A Christmas Carol” is perhaps best appreciated once we remove most trappings of Christmas from it. Yes, read it on Christmas Eve, but it ultimately belongs not to the holiday season but to the rest of the year, especially those unlit stretches when holidays run sparse. Its theme—maybe the greatest of all novelistic themes—is timeless and uncalendared: the rebirth of the soul.
I’ve spoken of the tale’s copious tears, but there’s nothing indiscriminate in their dispersal: They’re the cleansing tools of a keen psychological portraitist. The first person for whom Scrooge weeps is, significantly, himself. The Ghost of Christmas Past reveals an abandoned schoolboy—young Scrooge—and the old man trembles and softens, touched to the quick. The book’s final sentence is “God bless Us, Every One!,” but for Scrooge to attain such a lofty perspective, to espouse an embracing humanity, he must first contend with his own life-long rations of self-disappointment and self-disgust. Only then can he extend clemency to the cold city’s other unfortunates, notably the cheerful crippled boy, Tiny Tim, who delivers the story’s envoi blessing.
Scrooge’s four ghostly visitors terrorize him, as even nowadays they terrorize children braving them for the first time—and as they still, in a dim echoing manner, terrorize the child within all the grownups who loyally cherish the story. Yet by the long night’s end those spirits prove to be instructive and benevolent, and the lesson they illustrate is a profound one: The finest gift any ghost can give us is to bring us back to life.
Mr. Leithauser, a poet, novelist and critic, is the author, most recently, of “Rhyme’s Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry.
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Dicken's timeless Classic.
Some of the responses to this review of the Great Christmas story are noteworthy:
"The 1950 version with Sim is the best screen version of the Dicken's story. The back and white cinematography captures beautifully the bleak winter scenes and atmosphere in Victorian England. You don't see this version much on tv these days. Many people will not watch a film in black & white."...William Mackey
And this one was priceless:
"Personally I've always found Scrooge much more attractive than Dickens. Trying to make his way in the deep depression of the early 1840s, he worries about solvency and cash flow and like most self-employed small businessman sees Christmas as a dangerous interruption in income and deals potential (I certainly did when starting a small business. )
Dickens on the other hand was your typical rich leftie, full of bad advice and unsound economics, and utterly condemning of the thrifty and hard-working.
As for Tiny Tim, my son and I booed Tiny Tim when we saw Christmas Carol at Ford's Theatre a few years ago. Very cathartic!"....Martin Hutchinson
I revisit A Christmas Carol every year, sometimes in whole, sometimes in part. It is a short book , and listening to the audiobook versions doesnt take much more time than watching a long movie. The benefit of the book rather than the movies, is that we get the depth of Dickens use of language.
My favorite film version is the one with George C Scott.
When I was young I liked Christmas, but now I’m just bah humbug about it. My wife goes nuts with the decorations and fills the dvr with hallmark Christmas movies. This year she dragged me to a light show in DC (sponsored by Hallmark, because of course it was), and to a local production of A Christmas Carol. I despised the light show, because it was just so expensive and unnecessary. It’s just another naked grab at your wallet. When we arrived she was told her normal sized purse was too large and must be stored in their special lockers for $13. Imagine that - before you even get into the door of this rip off event they’re already reaching into your pocket. I mean $13? Seriously?! The millions of lights inside the event were not the least bit entertaining, they were just a reminder of how quickly humans are needlessly wrecking the planet with over-reliance on electricity. The only thing that made it bearable was the White Russian in a can that my step son bought me for $18. The vendor then had the nerve to balk when he entered a custom tip rather than the suggested tip of 20% or 25% for handing him four severely overpriced canned beverages. The play wasn’t terrible, but I’m just not crazy about seeing a play where I already know every scene.
I’ve already got too much stuff, and the stuff I’ve gotten as gifts over the last decade is stuff I would never buy anyways. And don’t even get me started on the whole farce of gift cards. Christmas has become an event where you just exchange gift cards for other gift cards, because a gift card for a specific place is somehow considered less tacky than cash that can be used at every place. When you’re young and in a position of not owning much stuff and not being spoiled rotten by your parents daily, Christmas is something to look forward to. Now the only thing I like about it is the chance to be in the company or people you don’t get to see often. Bah humbug.
I am feeling pretty bah humbuggy myself and trying to take it one day at a time. Unemployed as of 12/2/22 and my former boss doesn't know what is what. Boo hoo for her. I wasn't going to go to my best friend's for christmas because he's not been very supportive so I played sick but he's cancelling our traditional plans because he is actually sick. I still love him as a best friend, he is like a brother to me but he can be a bit of a dick sometimes.
Seeing my extended family and good friends are one of the only things that makes it stand out for me anymore and look forward to also Hal
Very sorry to hear about your job Tessylo. I’ve been there more than once.
Also. Sorry to hear about your job and hope things improve for you
Morning tesso...yes I know the feeling as well. Hundreds of us were terminated on Christmas Eve by Alcoa years ago. Went to work and found an envelope on our desks...
But it is the old saying one door closes and another opens..I ended up back there for 18 years and a lot wiser.
Look at it the New Year is fast approaching so new year, new start.
As for your best friend they may have a lot going on in their lives as well and put on a brave face and not saying etc...so don't be to hard on them...
It's already Christmas day morning here..dead calm, blue sky and sun.. should be a ripper day...
Hang in there, enjoy the time for what it is and sloth out..
And have a happy Christmas and may 2023 be bigger and brighter with new beginnings just around the corner...
This is one of the more well known passages from A Christmas Carol -
I think it gets to the heart of what makes the holiday season so popular -
many if not most people have an expectation that the holidays are an improvement over the otherwise drabness of their lives. There is an expectation that people will be nicer, more friendly, more festive. Every civilization has had a period of the year where they had society wide festivals .
In America Christmas is now largely a secular celebration.
many if not most people have an expectation that the holidays are an improvement over the otherwise drabness of their lives. There is an expectation that people will be nicer, more friendly, more festive.
… unless your purse is larger than a clutch, then some asshole will charge you the price of a restaurant meal to store it in a locker for an hour after they have already rooted through it to make sure it doesn’t have weapons in it. Times have changed.
That's true.
I like the lights.
I like seeing them on people's houses and how people decorate.
For me it cheers up some of the gloom of winter.
Also it's like 10 degrees and the cupboard is kind of bare so I arranged for my Giant pick-up between 3-4
Merry fucking christmas
Expecting 23oC here today and Tuesday 33oC... bloody ripper...will be hitting the waves again..
Only thing is the place will be crawling with tourists..🥴 it's nice to see them, but good when they have gone..
I hate crowded beaches but that's an advantage as well...extra shark bait if any bities are around increases the odds someone else will get eaten..and not me..have to look on the bright side. 🦈🦈