The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [144]
A Christmas Carol
When we first meet the hero of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, he is already in the state of living death. He does not yet recognise it as such, nor do we yet know how he got there - but both things are central to the way the story then unfolds.
It is Christmas Eve. A freezing fog shrouds the City of London but nothing is colder or less full of seasonal goodwill than the heart of the moneylender Scrooge. We see him in three encounters which underline how he has become imprisoned in a grasping, ill-tempered meanness which sets him at odds with all the world. First he contemptuously rejects an invitation to Christmas dinner from his cheerful nephew. Then he rejects the invitation of two gentlemen to contribute to a charity to provide Christmas cheer for the poor. Thirdly, he turns on his clerk Bob Cratchit, refusing him more coal for his fire and all but threatening to dock his wages for the following day's absence from the office. As Scrooge returns home that evening through the freezing streets, it is emphasised that it has become `foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold!' Arriving at his meagrely furnished lodgings, he sees the door knocker assume the ghostly features -'livid ... horrible' - of his equally miserly former partner Jacob Marley, dead exactly seven years. Marley's ghost then appears, dragging a huge chain, to warn Scrooge of the punishment which awaits those who live only for themselves, and that he is about to receive visits from three more apparitions.
The first ghost, of Christmas Past, `like a child, yet not so like a child as an old man', leads Scrooge through a series of flashbacks to his early life. He recognises himself as a solitary little boy, then in later years surrounded by loving relatives and cheerful Christmas scenes, up to the point where, as a young man, he was finally abandoned by the pretty young woman he had become engaged to because she felt that she had been replaced in his heart by `an Idol'. "`What idol?"' the young Scrooge had asked. "`A golden one"' replied the girl, as she left him forever. We are seeing how Scrooge had originally been transformed from a pleasant young man into a cold, solitary monster, obsessed by money.
The second ghost, of Christmas Present, is a jolly giant, exuding plenty and good cheer. He shows Scrooge a series of visions of people enjoying all the sociable delights and generosity of spirit associated with Christmas. These festive groups include Scrooge's nephew and Bob Cratchit, each surrounded by a happy, laughing family. Nothing moves Scrooge more than the sight of Cratchit's little crippled son, Tiny Tim. In each case the only shadow over the merriment is cast by a mention of his own name.
The third ghost, of Christmas To Come, `a solemn phantom, draped and hooded, coming like mist along the ground', shows Scrooge a sequence of mysterious, sinister visions in which it seems that someone has died. No one could care less about the passing of the dead man. It seems that he did not have a friend in the world. In a squalid hovel a group of grotesques are dividing his belongings, stolen from around his freshly-cold corpse. Then Scrooge sees the Cratchit family again. Tiny Tim is dead. Finally he is shown a bleak little gravestone recording the name of the man who has died, unmourned and unloved. It is of course his own. Scrooge is so horrified at everything he has seen that he has gradually been going through a transformation. He ends with a promise to the vanishing phantom that, if only he has the chance, he will utterly reform his life.
Scrooge awakes from his nightmare,