Nineteenth-century novel, Year 10: the story and how it is built (A Christmas Carol option)

dead

提示The state of Scrooge's old business partner, seven years before the story starts.

为什么Jacob Marley died seven years ago “this very night”, that is, on Christmas Eve. Scrooge has kept his name over the door and carried on exactly as before.

Past; Present; Yet to Come

提示They follow the order of time. Dickens's title for the last of them has three words.

为什么The first shows him his own childhood and youth, the second shows how others are keeping this Christmas, and the third shows a death nobody mourns.

His own neglected grave, with his name on the stone

提示He has spent the stave asking whose death people are talking about.

为什么He has already seen businessmen joking about a funeral and thieves selling a dead man's bed-curtains, without admitting to himself who the dead man is.

A prize turkey

提示A bird far bigger than the goose they had in the Spirit's vision.

为什么He pays a boy to fetch it from the poulterer's and a cab to carry it. It is his first generous act, and he does it secretly.

He raises Bob's salary and promises to help his family

提示Scrooge pretends to be angry first, as a joke.

为什么It comes near the end of Stave Five. The change is proved in the counting-house where the story began, with the same two men.

5

提示The same as the number of acts in a Shakespeare play.

为什么Stave One: Marley's Ghost. Stave Two, Three and Four: the three Spirits. Stave Five: the end of it, on Christmas morning.

A verse

提示The book's title names a kind of song.

为什么The word fits the title: the book is laid out as if it were a carol, something shared and sung at Christmas, not a sermon.

door-nail

提示A piece of ironmongery fixed in something you open and close.

为什么He adds that this must be clearly understood “or nothing wonderful can come of the story”. The reader has to be sure Marley is dead for the ghost to be a ghost.

He apologises and whispers a large donation

提示The amount makes the gentleman gasp.

为什么Stave Five goes back over Stave One: the collector, Fred's invitation, Bob at his desk. Each meeting is replayed so the reader can measure the change.

Christmas Day

提示He shouts down to a boy in the street to ask.

为什么“The Spirits have done it all in one night.” He has not missed Christmas, so he can still put things right at once.

Tiny Tim

提示The youngest of the clerk's family.

为什么He first says it at the Cratchits' Christmas dinner in Stave Three. Ending on his words keeps the child, and the poor he stands for, as the last thing in the reader's mind.