A Christmas Carol has been described as a fairy tale and a bleak portrayal of life in Victorian Britain - Essay Example

?A Christmas Carol has been described as a fairy tale and a bleak portrayal of life in Victorian Britain Introduction Fairy tales had been a far reaching tradition propagating from ancient history of world literature. Even after the trumpets of modern philosophies had been blown and all previous patterns changed their norms, fairy tales never lost their popularities among regular audiences. Consisting a structure and content quite similar to fairy tales A Christmas Carol has been able to achieve a popularity among natives that is due mostly to traditional fairy tales. During Victorian era, dickens was most proficient author and A Christmas carol is placed among one of his best and most widely read tales. It has many elements which comprise the story in a fairy environment to build up a plot that exist in an imaginary world but comes out as a proficient revealer of real human circumstances. Pattern and Structure As a quite regular element, fairy tales involve a romantic description of characters which thrusts all moral, ethical and even psychological upbringing of a character into a singly driven thought. In case of Scrooge, the idea is to earn money. Money leads him to facility and luxury and his conscience is blurred of his greedy vision. Characterization of Scrooge is developed over his certain specific tendencies only; and the most important is his intentional alienation from charity. Ghost of Marley comes up as a messenger or moral converter who reveals the secrets of afterlife and forces scrooge to think about the possibilities of his own afterlife. However, the event is weaved in a way that Scrooge’s moral conversion does not rely on any realization of moral sense but it is initiated by the fear of a dreadful afterlife. Partitions of whole tale are prepared in five staves and every stave consists of different portrayal of scrooge’s forwarding to moral revelations. Along with the propagating staves with ghosts of Christmas, Scrooge’s concern to life is also increasing ahead. In the first stave, the prophecy tells him of upcoming spirit. Before this point, earlier establishment of the tale consist mostly the establishment of Scrooge and his surroundings. After the arrival of sprit in second stave, the tale become thoroughly a fairy tale as it involves all the fairy elements including spirits, ghost, a journey though mysteries and an environment full of magical substance. The language and literal art used in A Christmas Carol is very much Dickensian; however, as Dickens had a very lucid and evoking language compiling of environment and events altogether, there had been a lesser choice for dickens to peep in psychological aspects. Subsequently, A Christmas Carol also bears a lake of Scrooge’s psychological aspects. It is another point that drags it into a genre of fairy tales as the tale remains thoroughly outward and circumstances-driven in nature. As a matter of fact, seems that author had put more attention on the moral which is a guiding factor that drives characters to achieve the terminal that it tends to reach. Content and Moral Victorian era was a historical time for rooting of future transitions of social patterns. It is quite evident that Victorian era did not offer much right of opinion and criticism to artists; but the upcoming movements had been rooted in that soil right from Victorian era where voices had been ready to conquer new patterns of living and thinking. Dickens was also one of the pioneers who opened new gates for upcoming patterns of literature. However, A Christmas Carol, when analyzed over its content and moral, does not belong to modernistic themes; rather, it resides in ancient moral tales. Significantly, the transformation of the character in A Christmas Carol does not come out of compassion and pity which are quite a symptom of Christianity. Whole the content consists of mystic elements which are enveloped of Dickens’s use of mystical use of language too. For example Dickens uses a rhythmic paragraph describing the incoming of natives; it holds a poetic fairy-type description of an event. In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her Mistress. In they all came, one after another; Such descriptions come out as makers of soothing environment and lucid construction building up a fairy-tale environment. On the other hand, moral of the story, which is wholly grounded in the transformation of Scrooge, also comes out as a straight and almost sudden realization of scrooge. The fifth stave ‘End of it’ does not offer a moral for society or surrounding but it is a moral for the wicked guys that were found in quite a good population. As Dickens portrays Scrooge’s unsheltered realization: ‘'There's the saucepan that the gruel was in!" cried Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fire-place. "There's the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There's the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present, sat! There's the window where I saw the wandering Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it all happened. Ha ha ha!" Most important are the factor that relate to the conditions of poor in Victorian Britain; especially the children who suffered very badly during the Victorian era. Dickens had chooses children as the ghosts who uncover the facts to scrooge. Dickens introduces these children in A Christmas Carol through the allegorical twins, Ignorance and Want. The Ghost of Christmas Present shows them, wretched and almost animal in appearance, to Scrooge with the warning: "This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. (Perdue 2010)" Considerably, the depiction that comes out from A Christmas Carol is a bleak one. Even if it consists of a happy ending and a moral message, it does not create a fool’s paradise to consider the time as a fairy place where troubles are blurred and euphoria is praised. Rather dickens chooses to borrow fairy tale style to depict the crude reality of Victorian Britain. Conclusion Looking at the pattern and structure of A Christmas Carol, its plain review manifests a tale of Victorian era during which a life devoted to earning money necessary required an overlooking of people’s misery. Foundation of the story is based on the attitude of Mr. Scrooge who carelessly disregards the affairs of charity and levels Christmas as ‘humbug’. Like most fairy tales, it becomes a point of initiations that guides rest of the story. It comes out as a linear narrative build upon a single layer point-to-point story. How dickens has been able to grip the reader does not reside in jumping among the layers of the story, which is more often a concern for modernistic writers, but he has weaved the story with continuous revelations of believable proceedings. However, even if the story consist a transformed character and successfully accomplished moral task the environment of the story portrays a Victorian age full of sufferers that allows full opportunities for moral corruption, economic meanness and straight rule of money. Thus, overall A Christmas Carol comes out as a tale that dwells in a fairy environment but still provides a transparent view of Victorian Britain and its socio-cultural surrounding. Works Cited Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Chapman & Hall. 1843. Print. Pudue, David A. “A Christmas Carol.” David Purdue’s Charles Dickens page. http://charlesdickenspage.com/carol.html. 2010. Web. Read More