Critique of Christmas Time in Charles Dickens A...

Critique of Christmas Time in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol An audience members gleeful first-hand account of Charles Dickenss public reading of A Christmas Carol unwittingly exposes an often overlooked contradiction in the storys climax: Finally, there is Scrooge, no longer a miser, but a human being, screaming at the conversational boy in Sunday clothes, to buy him the prize turkey that never could have stood upon his legs, that bird (96). Perhaps he is no longer a miser but, by this description, Scrooge still plays the role of a capitalist oppressor, commanding underlings to fetch him luxuries. While Dickens undoubtedly lauds Scrooges epiphany and ensuing change, A Christmas Carol also hints at the authors†¦show more content†¦For Dickens, the altruism Christmas breeds is a false exercise in guilt-reduction, and the pat ending of A Christmas Carol reinforces this; the satisfaction of listening to a story whose conclusion is never imperiled (and grows more knowable with each years retelling) spares the reader the self-examinat ion Scrooge endures that a darker turn might provoke. Christmas is only a bright spot if the rest of the year is comparatively dark, and Dickens exposes this contrast through Scrooges nephews optimistic ruminations on Christmas timeÃ…  as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. (8-9) The nephews breakdown between Christmas, the only time of the otherwise long calendar, corresponds to Gà ©rard Genettes terms for the narrative techniques singulative and iterative. 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