Number 51 of 52 Compelling Communicators: Charles Dickens

December 23, 2013


Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol

In the spirit of the season, I am paying homage to Charles Dickens, writer extraordinaire. While this man wrote many wonderful books, A Christmas Carol is the subject of this blog. This classic story of a miserly man who finally sees the wisdom of giving via the ghosts of his old partner and of Christmas’s past, present and future.

Lines from the book are so timeless as they remind us of the need to shun greed and focus on humanity.

Here are some of my favourites:

“I wear the chain I forged in life... I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

This line is mournfully said by Scrooge’s deceased partner Jacob Marley. His ghost dramatically expresses regret about his money seeking life. Dickens' imagination gets the reader to visualize how long their own chain might be.

He follows it up with these words from Scrooge:

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

Beautiful prose. Followed repeatedly throughout the book with the often mimicked:

"Bah, Humbug."

As he visits his past and sees the joy provided by his previous employers, the Fezziwigs, his enlightenment begins:

“He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

Two more ghosts and Scrooge is convinced of the error of his ways. When he wakes and realizes he still has a chance to make amends for the past, he is ecstatic.

“I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man.”

Dickens demonstrates the show, not tell mantra of writers with that line.

Every Christmas my husband and I get together with our good friends Patsy and Peter to watch the 1951 version of Scrooge with Alistair Sim. We have a competition to see who can say the upcoming line with perfection. It is often raucous as everyone is yelling out and even acting out the next bit. My husband does the best Bah Humbug so we leave that line to him. As much as we poke fun and giggle over the script, we still get a bit teary when Scrooge takes kindly to his overworked, underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit and gives him a big raise.  

“No, Bob, I haven’t lost my senses, I’ve come to them.”

In the book, Dickens cleverly wraps up the moral of the story and leaves his readers thinking.  Hopefully, it gives us all something to think about over the holiday season.

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!"

Merry Christmas all!

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