The oral presentation I did for English class

1. The Message of
A Christmas Carol
Tamiga Patterson
Engl 1013
Betty Mealy
May 9, 2012

2. What is A Christmas Carol about?
• Scrooge’s transformation
• “Spirit of Christmas”
• Importance of friends,
family
• Just a Christmas story?
Original illustration, reproduced on
charlesdickenspage.com/carol

3. The Bigger Picture
• Dickens was making a point about life in
general, not just Christmas
• How do we know?
– Evidence from the story itself
– Arguments from critics
– Quotes from Dickens about the story Picture from
law.marquette.edu

4. The story itself
• Set during Christmas, but many events are not
related to Christmas
– Why Christmas?
– “A kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time”
– People would be receptive to the actual moral
• Warning against Ignorance and Want
• Description of Scrooge at the end

5. Critical Assessment
• Horsman: Dickens’ Christmas books on “moral
regeneration” (119)
• Glancy: Pattern of Christmas books (62)
• Johnson: “*S+ymbol and allegory” (86)

6. Dickens’ Own Words
• Dickens’ first fully-
planned, cohesive novel
• Inspired by the Sermon
on the Mount (Glancy 57)
• Aimed to “awaken some
loving and forbearing
thoughts, never out of
season *italics added+”
The preface to the original edition, reproduced on
(qtd. in Glancy 59) charlesdickenspage.com/carol

7. What was the moral?
• Be kind and loving all year long
• Learn from the past to change the present and
future
• If Scrooge could change, anyone can
– “May that be truly said *…+ of all of us! And so *…+
God Bless Us, Every One!”

8. Works Cited
• Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. New York:
Creative Education Inc., 1990
• Glancy, Ruth. Student Companion to Charles
Dickens. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.
• Horsman, Alan. The Oxford History of English
Literature: The Victorian Novel. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990.
• Johnson, Edgar. “A Christmas Carol Criticizes England’s
Economic System.” Readings on Charles Dickens.
San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1998. 86-93.