Dickens: A Christmas Carol

[Ardbeg... innit]

Having only seen the endless versions proffered by the mass media over the years, I decided for a bit of seasonal reading to go back to the source material, Dickens original version of A Christmas Carol.

Take away all the music and dance productions Hollywood seem to find necessary for visual consumption, I found a story written for adults, not children. Dickens sets a much darker London on Christmas eve. The city is beset by a dark and oppressive fog on Christmas Eve. After meeting Marley, the streets seem to Scrooge filled with similar spirits bound in the chains they forged in life.

Each of the visitations are longer and more detailed than any movie version. In fact, most of the book will be very familiar to anyone who has watched any movie version, but what seems to have been left out of all of the movies are the last little details that would give the final arguments that should be required by Scrooge to reform. Example: A scene I have never seen in a movie version, with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Scrooge visits his own death bed but does not have the courage to pull back the sheet to view his own dead body. With this context, the graveyard scene we typically see is where Scrooge puts the puzzle pieces together before he wipes clean his headstone to see his name... much more powerful.

My personal favorite passage is his final confrontation with the Ghost of Christmas Present, which takes place immediately before the spirit disappears on the 12th day of Christmas (a scene that is best presented in my personal favorite movie version with George C Scott as Scrooge and the Spirit of Christmas Present played by Edward Woodward)

"Oh, Man, look here! Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No ch-ch-change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

"Spirit, are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.

"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end."

"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.

"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"

The bell struck twelve.

Online version of Dickens: A Christmas Carol available for free at Link

[Chicago Jake]

Yes, but have you read it in the original Klingon?

I've read Dickens' original Christmas Carol, many years ago, and it is like all Dickens prose: dreary, depressing, doleful, and lots of other dark descriptions that start with D. Good source material for a Gothic horror tale on film, but man, I would kill myself if I had to read much more than a short story by that dismal dude.

[Ardbeg... innit]

I believe that in the original Klingon, Bob attempts to restore honor to the House of Cratchit by feeding his weakling son Tiny Tim to the holiday Gach, keeping the Gagh alive and saving the feast for the rest of the family.

More thoughtful response later:

[Chicago Jake]

The Klingon Christmas Carol is showing up the street from me at the Victory Gardens Theater. I was tempted to go, but $39 was too much for my cheapskate ass. But Jeremy is going, so I'll see if we can cajole a review out of him.

[Ardbeg... innit]

Been delayed in getting back to this.

With regards to Dickens dark writing style, it is extremely depressing as you noted but only in parts. I think its his writing tool for placing a "thermometer" on the condition of Scrooges soul. Throughout the story the level of that dark brooding lifts and descends as Scrooge goes through the visitations. During the Ghost of Christmas present, the writing becomes very tolerable as Scrooge begins to open his heart, only to have the darkness descend again when that spirit is replaced by the "Future".

In the end, on Christmas morning there is no hint of darkness at all. In fact, his writing emits a light that is almost blindingly brilliant by comparison, worthy of Julie Andrews singing about her living hills in the mountain sunlight.