Nineteenth-century novel, Year 10: redemption, poverty and generosity (A Christmas Carol option)

Given something to the boy who sang a carol at his door

提示He had frightened the singer away with a ruler.

为什么It is his first regret, and it comes early. Dickens makes the change believable by building it in steps, not as one sudden conversion.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

提示He is kneeling by a gravestone.

为什么He says it in Stave Four, pleading that he would not have been shown all this if he were past hope.

If they only may be, he can still change the future by changing how he lives

提示One is fixed, the other is a warning.

为什么The whole book depends on the answer. The Spirit does not reply, but the last stave shows that the future was not fixed.

heart

提示Where feelings are said to live.

为什么He adds “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.” He means to keep hold of what all three Spirits taught him.

man

提示The plainest possible word for a person.

为什么Friend, master, man: he is better in private life, at work and in himself. Redemption here means changed behaviour towards other people.

Ignorance; Want

提示The boy is lack of education; the girl is lack of the things needed to live.

为什么They are “yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish”. They are ideas given bodies: the results of a society that neglects its poor.

Ignorance

提示The one that schooling could cure.

为什么On the boy's brow he sees “that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased”. Dickens is warning that a country which leaves its poor uneducated is heading for disaster.

They are the responsibility of all of society, not just of their parents

提示“Man” here means humankind.

为什么The comfortable cannot say the poor are somebody else's business. That is the book's case for social responsibility.

A donation to buy food, drink and warmth for the poor at Christmas

提示Two “portly gentlemen” with books and papers.

为什么His view is that he pays for those institutions through his taxes and owes nothing more. The book sets out to show why that is not enough.

With Scrooge's own questions: are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?

提示The miser said the same thing to the charity collectors.

为什么They are the Spirit's last words before he vanishes. Twice in this stave Scrooge's own sayings are turned against him.

hearts

提示The part of a person that is said to feel; the miser keeps his shut.

为什么For Fred, Christmas is the time when people treat those below them as “fellow-passengers to the grave”. This is the idea of Christmas the book defends.

He eats alone in a tavern and reads the newspapers

提示No family, no guests.

为什么He “took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern”. His solitude is set against the crowded, noisy parties the Spirits show him.

With delight: nobody says or thinks that it is small

提示They praise it as a great success.

为什么“Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.” Dickens shows a family rich in affection and short of money, the reverse of Scrooge.

They all keep Christmas, however bleak and lonely the place

提示Each group sings or wishes the others well.

为什么The visits widen the picture from London to the whole country. Christmas feeling is shown to be everywhere except in Scrooge.

A poor one

提示The one that has least to begin with.

为什么Asked why, he says “Because it needs it most.” The book's Christmas is on the side of the poor.