“A Christmas Carol” Made Me Appreciate Dickens

No "humbugs" to be found.

This is one of those classics where I knew the story, but had never experienced the actual book. Until now.

What an experience. Dickens is an author that, despite the rocky start I had with him, I knew I would keep giving a chance, and the giving has finally been reciprocated. (For this one, at least. Not sure how his other books will go down with me.)

Not gonna lie, I cried on and off throughout the whole book. It’s one of the most touching stories I’ve read, possibly the most heartfelt classic too. My overly emotional reaction is definitely in part due to me listening to the audiobook and the narrator’s expressive voices. When Scrooge was brought to tears, the narrator cried, and so did I.

You probably know the story, but in case you need a refresher: Ebenezer Scrooge is a butt, and he goes on a literal spiritual journey to become less of a butt.

I think the way this story really socks it to you is its simple usage of regret and loss; two emotional speed bumps that most people can relate to. Scrooge is given the opportunity to see what he used to be like. Although he had a troubled home life, all the comfort and familiarity of his childhood friends, the joy of once more falling in step with his old self, revives him, even as he feels the pain. I know if I could go back and see the house I was born in and walk the land again, I’d have the same reaction. But I can’t, because my house burned down, so it hits me even harder. A lot of people yearn for an idyllic childhood, even if they didn’t have one, and Dickens cuts to the heart of the yearning in a handful of pages, something I didn’t know he was capable of. That’s a sign of an author who knows the craft.

Scrooge is shown the woman he would’ve married if he hadn’t become consumed by his work. When he sees her married to another man, and with a family, he begs to be taken away. I didn’t remember that being part of his backstory, but the way the flashback unfolds makes this revelation natural. Of course there was a woman and that’s why she left. It makes sense; another sign of an author with writing chops: the characters are what they should be.

When he hears the people in the present talking trash about him behind his back, it has a profound effect on him. Rather than withdraw into himself when he hears the insults, he decides to go against what is expected. He could’ve easily doubled-down on his current reputation: “Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.” But while invisible, he’s allowed to seamlessly “join in” the festivities and he loves it. He wants more.

And knowing that someone would literally take a shirt off your corpse has a way of driving home the point of what your sowing will reap. If you’re like the Damsel of Last Week and you know only the outline of the story, you might not realize how absolutely brutal it is. One guy says he’ll go to Scrooge’s funeral only if there’s food. Yikes! That is…phew! that’s rough. You travel across a collage of your life and that’s the end of it? Yeah, Scrooge is not having a nice day.

The part that really got me is when the Spirit says Tiny Tim will die if nothing changes and Scrooge is all “Noooo!” and I’m like “Noooo!” Even re-reading that part made me cry again. It’s silly, ‘cause I knew he didn’t die in the real timeline, but that doesn’t make his absence in the future Christmas any less sad. Again, Dickens knew which heartstrings to pull and how to pull them.

All the characters are earnest in their emotions. They laugh harder, despair deeper, and louder cheer the new day. They look like they’re living life to their utmost and I think it’s because they had to be in the moment since that’s where everything is. It makes modern living’s addiction to online interactions feel not so alive. Even the fourth wall breaking narrator wants to get his piece in:

If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blessed in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him, too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance.

A nice touch is in the present when the two ghostly travelers watch the miners, the lighthouse keepers, and the sailors on a ship; they’re all sharing Christmas tidings and singing. That macro view of how others celebrate Christmas no matter their condition or means is the icing on the cake. Or rather, the flaming brandy on the pudding.

Which brings me to the food in this book. My goodness, it sounds wonderful! There’s lots of it and it’s described in some very unique ways.

…there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle-deep through withered leaves…

Never in my life have I wanted to eat a filbert more than I do now. And apparently Dickens was known for his Christmas parties, so if I had a time machine, that’s where I’d go.

I’ve listened to two other Dickens books (A Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House) and the problem I had with them is how rambling his writing is. “Why use a single sentence when a paragraph could work?” seemed to be his approach. A Christmas Carol is about a hundred pages, and that’s perfect. You get a feel for his writing, he still put in an homage to London’s fog, and it effectively tells its story.

Speaking of writing, I saw a simplified/modern/AI/disaster version of the opening sentence of The Great Gatsby and it completely stripped the soul out of the writing. Dickens has a…particular way of writing that will not appeal to a lot of readers, but if that singular writing style were removed, it wouldn’t have nearly the impact or character. Take this sentence talking about Scrooge’s home:

They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again.

Now imagine it said this instead:

His home was gloomy and didn’t match its surroundings at all.

That’s an extreme swing in the opposite direction, but I get the feeling that, broadly speaking, that’s kinda where modern, popular writing is. It doesn’t have the texture of classics or the command over commas. Most modern authors, and certainly the more popular ones, aren’t going to spend the brain power on coming up with these unusual ways to paint a picture, and their editor probably wouldn’t let them keep it if they did. Just because something’s popular, doesn’t mean that’s the only thing people want or can appreciate. But I see a time when Dickens’ work would be shredded for the sake of the “modern audience” and come out the other side looking like a Picasso. I don’t want Dickens to be changed. He needs to be preserved in all his fog-loving glory.

If you’ve never read a Dickens book, start here. If you decide you like it and you want it five times thicker with a couple dozen more characters and side quests that aren’t super important, then you can go to his other work.

Check out my review for the Muppet movie.

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