Chain of Metaphors A Christmas Carol CD

A detailed Summary of Chain of Metaphors A Christmas Carol CD

"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, is a story that is rich in metaphors that ultimately questions the morals and ethics of the author's society during the time of hislife, the industrial revolutionized society. In the story, the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is a greedy, rich accountant who is visited by his old business partner ghost, Jacob Marley.

Marley's ghost tells Scrooge that he may face a penalty of becoming a lost soul if he continues to value money more than anything else in his life. He also foretells that Scrooge will be visited by three other ghosts that will give him the chance to redeem himself, and he can break an iron chain of greed that he has woven. Each time a ghost visits Scrooge, he will become more aware of the failures of the society he lives in. The ghosts will also let Scrooge see his contributions to those failures.

As Dickens writes the story of the three visits, we are able to out more about Scrooge's inner self-character. We learn this about him as he finds out about his own fellow man and his community. The crux of the story is alluded to in the ingenious metaphors Dickens creeates to illustrate his own reflection on Nineteenth Century society.

In the end, Dickens reflects his views on what his society became to the reader through his rich command of language, and unique technique of bringing metaphors to life. Through his performance in writing skills he was able to tell us the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, and his redemption. Scrooge is reborn after his encounters with four ghosts who showed him how to remember, recognize, and live with intuition. The three Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future showed Scrooge how to remember the good things in his life, cherish and share what he has, and lastly live humbly with the intent with being remembered as a good person. I think that Dickens was trying to tell us, and the people of his time especially, that if we live in the past, present and future, and keep those three factors alive, than we can be reborn just like Scrooge was.

Dickens uses Marley's chains as a metaphor as well. We should pay attention to what Marley and Scrooge were known for. Scrooge and Marley were both concerned about their money more than anything else that Dickens writes about. The two were so concerned about earning money, that the two didn't care how they got it. Each of them wanted to be alone. The chains that were "forged in life" by Marley were chains of guilt and sin. These chains were fashioned while Marley made money at other people's expenses, and were linked out of his lack of concern for what he did in life. Marley, like Scrooge, knew well of the poverty most people suffered. Their sins were that they showed no sympathy for unfortunate people. They both hid their sympathy in order to repress their guilt.

The irony in only using a small piece of coal is that they both had two entirely different reasons for not using more coal. Bob Cratchit is Scrooge's impoverished assistant, who can't afford to buy more coal to kindle up warmth in his office. If he had enough money to improve his working condition, he would. On the other hand, Scrooge had more than enough money to buy coal for his office and Bob's. He didn't find that necessary. Dickens makes reference to this as he shows how Scrooge doesn't find it necessary to build up more warmth in his office, or even to offer to keep his assistant's office warm, when he writes "But he (Bob Cratchit) couldn't replenish it (the fire), for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part."

In this sense, Dickens used the fog to act as a door that slammed after the singer left. It covered everything around Scrooge's office including the keyhole. It isolated Scrooge from the outside world, and kept him in the place he loved most, his office. "Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way." "All he could make out was, that was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making great s

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Approximate Word count = 2064
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels