A Christmas Carol by Dickens Essay

A Christmas Carol by Dickens was first published on December 19, 1843. Since its publication, this book, arguably one of his most famous works, has made its mark on American culture and literature. It is difficult to underestimate the significance of A Christmas Carol , which was made into numerous TV and stage versions. Some would even argue that this Dickens’s work invented or rather reinvented Christmas, while others underline the importance of his work for the development of the new forms of literature. This essay aims to discuss the theme and the characters of the book. It starts with a summary of the plot, then examines the main characters and the themes and concludes with the personal opinion on the novella.

Dickens offers a story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a greedy and selfish older man living alone in his London house, whose only concern is money. Scrooge hates Christmas and is indifferent to other people’s suffering, including his workers. However, on Christmas Eve, he is visited by the ghost of his business partner and by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future. The first ghost takes him on a journey through his past Christmases: one of a miserable and lonely little boy and others of a young man, more interested in gold than in his fiancé. The Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge his clerk’s family Christmas, a Christmas evening of a poor, but loving family, and his nephew’s celebrations, where guests mock him for his unfriendliness and greediness. Finally, the Ghost of Christmas Future shows him his own death, which would bring more joy to people who knew him than grief. The terror of this night magically transforms Ebenezer Scrooge into a generous and good-hearted man, kind to his neighbors and eager to help those in need.

The main hero of the book, Ebenezer Scrooge, is characterized mainly by his greediness and by the fear that he creates among people who know him. Charles Dickens describes (1843, 4) him as such: “No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man […] inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge”. Even his clerk is terrified of him and barely dares to speak in his presence.

According to Thompson (2017, 269), the descriptions of Scrooge’s personality allude to the Old Testament figure of King Belshazzar, the ruler who loves wealth and who is punished by God for his greed and pride. However, unlike Belshazzar, Scrooge takes advantage of the warning delivered by the Christmas ghosts and changes, fearing the dreadful end that is awaiting him. He accepts to change and declares: “I will not shut out the lessons that they [the Spirits of the Past, the Present and the Future] teach” (Dickens 1843, 57). Thus, he is a sinner, but the night that he goes through makes hem find the strength to change. This magical and radical overnight transformation becomes central to the figure of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Other central figures are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come. The Ghost of Christmas Past is the first ghost to visit Scrooge; he is quite and rather compassionate towards Scrooge, to whom he shows the pictures of his childhood. The Ghost of Christmas Present is a joyful and vibrant character, wearing a green robe and symbolizing joy and happiness. The third Ghost is the most fearsome one; he wears a black cloak and remains silent during their journey. Although the ghosts have distinct personalities, their common characteristic is their role as the messengers. Their figures also reflect Dickens’ interest in “the narrative possibilities of the communication between the living and the dead” (Wood 2018, 412). Dickens’s interest in the supernatural urges him to experiment with the forms of expression and create the figures of these Spirits to deliver the message to Scrooge.

Another prominent figure is Tiny Tim, who is the most significant figure of childhood in the book. He is a son of Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s clerk. He has a disability, but is full of cheer and love and brings a lot of joy to his family. His words – “God bless us every one!” – mark the end of the novella (Dickens 1843, 92). The figure of Tiny Tim reflects the conception of childhood as the stage of innocence, although it is not the only way children are represented in the novella (Robinson 2016, 8). For instance, the readers observe frightening figures of children clinging to the clothes of the Ghost of Christmas Present. Contrary to this image of “figures which are a product of a fallen world (Robinson 2016, 2), Tim is a constant reminder to everyone of the courage in the face of difficulties.

The characters of A Christmas Carol serve to express Dickens’s Christian humanistic views and attitudes. According to Newey (2016, 12), A Christmas Carol is one of the most important works of Charles Dickens in a sense that it “brings into focus many of Dickens’s core concerns and attitudes of mind.” Dickens demonstrates the transformation of a greedy lender with no sympathy to others, which symbolizes capitalist and rationalist values, into the embodiment of Christianity and humanism.

The contrast between Dickens’s characters furthers strengthens the differences between two ideologies, the humanistic and the capitalist one. The family of Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s clerk, is a model of a loving family, poor in money but rich in heart, while Scrooge himself reflects utilitarian, purely rationalist values. The values of family loyalty, humanism, kindness, are confronted with the rationalism and greediness of the protagonist.

Another theme of the novella is the relationship between the supernatural and the living. As stated above, Dickens’s works have significantly contributed to the development of the Victorian ghost story. His fascination with the supernatural makes him create the powerful figures of the Ghost of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future, who communicate with the protagonist and act as the messengers of the divine. This communication between the living and the supernatural is central to the plot. This theme reoccurs in Dickens’s works, for instance, in “The Signalman,” although in total, it is present in about 18 Dickens’s stories. The critical result of the supernatural intervention is that it leads to change and transforms the protagonist.

Although often presented as a children’s story, Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol tells a reader a lot about Dickens’s attitudes and views about the world. This novella promotes the humanistic ideology based on Christian values: love, empathy, and generosity. Moreover, the author experiments with literary forms and contributes to the development of the ghost story. The supernatural plays a central role in the transformation of the main hero. However, the idea that the protagonist needs supernatural intervention in order to change might be problematic for the humanistic perspective that is centered on the agency of human beings. The humanistic perspective stresses the inherently good qualities of human nature, which is contradictory to the idea that supernatural intervention is necessary in order to bring change.

Newey, Vincent. 2016. The Scriptures of Charles Dickens: Novels of Ideology, Novels of the Self. New York: Routledge.

Robinson, David E. 2016. “Redemption and the Imagination of Childhood: Dickens’s Representation of Children in A Christmas Carol.” Literator 37 (1): 1-8. Web.

Thompson, Terry W. 2017. “The Belshazzar Allusion in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.” The Explicator 75 (4): 268-270. Web.

Wood, Claire. 2018. “Playful Spirits: Charles Dickens and the Ghost Story.” In The Routledge Handbook to the Ghost Story, edited by Scott Brewster and Luke Thurston, 87-96. New York: Routledge.

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Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol  in six weeks during October and November 1843, and the novella (technically, it is not counted among his novels) appeared just in time for Christmas, on 19 December. The book’s effect was immediate.

The Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle went straight out and bought himself a turkey after reading  A Christmas Carol, and the novelist Margaret Oliphant said that it ‘moved us all in those days as if it had been a new gospel’. Even Dickens’s rival, William Makepeace Thackeray, called the book ‘a national benefit’.

Both ‘Scrooge’ and ‘Bah! Humbug’ are known to people who have never read Dickens’s book, or even seen one of the countless film, TV, and theatre adaptations. But what is A Christmas Carol really about, and is there more to this tale of charity and goodwill than meets the eye? Before we offer an analysis of A Christmas Carol , it might be worth briefly summarising the plot of the novella.

The novella is divided into five chapters or ‘staves’. In the first stave, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge rejects his nephew Fred’s invitation to dine with him and his family for Christmas. He reluctantly allows his clerk, Bob Cratchit, to have Christmas Day off work. On Christmas night, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley.

Marley, bound in chains, warns Scrooge that a similar fate awaits him when he dies unless he mends his ways; he also tells Scrooge that he will be visited by three spirits.

The second, third, and fourth staves of A Christmas Carol are devoted to each of the three spirits of Christmas. First, the Ghost of Christmas Past visits Scrooge and reminds him of his lonely childhood at boarding school, and the kindness shown to the young Scrooge by his first employer, Mr Fezziwig (whom we see at a Christmas ball).

Scrooge is also shown a vision recalling his relationship with Belle, a young woman who broke off their engagement because of the young Scrooge’s love of money. The Ghost of Christmas Past then shows Scrooge that Belle subsequently married another man and raised a family with him.

The third stave details the visit from the second spirit: the Ghost of Christmas Present. This spirit shows Scrooge his nephew Fred’s Christmas party as well as Christmas Day at the Cratchits. Bob Cratchit’s youngest son, Tiny Tim, is severely ill, and the Ghost tells Scrooge that the boy will die if things don’t change. He then shows Scrooge two poor, starving children, named Ignorance and Want.

The fourth stave features the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who shows Scrooge his own funeral taking place in the future. It is sparsely attended by a few of Scrooge’s fellow businessmen only. The only two people who express any emotion over Scrooge’s passing are a young couple who owed him money, and who are happy that he’s dead.

Scrooge is then shown a very different scene: Bob Cratchit and his family mourning Tiny Tim’s death. Scrooge is shown his own neglected gravestone, and vows to mend his ways.

The fifth and final stave sees Scrooge waking on Christmas morning a changed man. He sends Bob Cratchit a large turkey for Christmas dinner, and goes to his nephew’s house that afternoon to spend Christmas with Fred’s family. The next day he gives Bob Cratchit a pay rise, and generally treats everyone with kindness and generosity.

A Christmas Carol wasn’t the first Christmas ghost story Dickens wrote. He’d already written ‘ The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton ’, featuring the miserly Gabriel Grub. This was featured as an inset tale in Dickens’s first ever published novel,  The Pickwick Papers (1836-7).

The tale shares many of the narrative features which would turn up a few years later in  A Christmas Carol : the misanthropic villain, the Christmas Eve setting, the presence of the supernatural (goblins/ghosts), the use of visions which the main character is forced to witness, the focus on poverty and family, and, most importantly, the reforming of the villain into a better person at the close of the story.

But the fact that Dickens had already developed the loose ‘formula’ for the story that would become, in many ways, his best-known work does nothing to detract from its power as a piece of storytelling.

Like a handful of other books of the nineteenth century – Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde spring to mind – A Christmas Carol has attained the force of a modern myth, an archetypal tale about the value of helping those in need, in the name of Christian charity and general human altruism. Oliphant’s description of the novella as like a new gospel neatly captures both its Christian flavour (though its message is far broader in its applications than this) and its mythic qualities.

But there is also something of the fairy tale – another form that was attaining new-found popularity in 1840s Britain thanks to the vogue for pantomimes based upon old French tales and the appearance of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in English – in the story’s patterning of three (three spirits visiting Scrooges), its supernatural elements, and the (spiritual or moral) transformation of its central character.

Indeed, it has almost become something of an origin-myth for many Christmas traditions and associations, and was published at a time when many things now considered typically Christmassy were coming into vogue: Prince Albert’s championing of Christmas trees at the royal court, for instance, and even the practice of sending Christmas cards (the first one was sent in 1843, the same year that A Christmas Carol was published). No wonder many people, when they hear talk of ‘the spirit of Christmas’, tend to think of goodwill to all men, charity, and benevolence.

Dickens invented none of these associations, but his novella helped to cement them in the popular consciousness for good. Even the association of Christmas with snowy weather may have partly been down to Dickens: there are a dozen references to snow in A Christmas Carol , and it’s been argued that Dickens associated snow with Christmas time because of a series of white Christmases in the 1810s, when he was a small child: memories which stayed with him into adulthood.

As with his previous novels, especially Oliver Twist , one of Dickens’s chief aims in A Christmas Carol , along with entertaining his readers, is to highlight to his predominantly middle-class readers the state of poverty and ‘want’ that afflicted millions of their fellow Britons. One of the most telling details in the novella is the revelation, following Scrooge’s conversion, that he will take on the role of father figure to Tiny Tim.

Since Tiny Tim already has a father, the point is perhaps not as clear to modern readers as it would have been to Dickens’s contemporaries: namely that the children of the poor were the responsibility of all of Britain, and if their own parents could not provide for them, then charity and generosity from the well-off was required.

Scrooge ensures this not only by improving Bob Cratchit’s financial situation (giving him a pay rise) but by becoming a friend to the family: money is needed to help fix the problem, Dickens argues, but it’s more valuable if accompanied by genuine companionship and communion between rich and poor, haves and have-nots, and if society works together to help each other.

On a stylistic note, the remarkable thing about A Christmas Carol is that it is entirely representative of Dickens’s work, even while it lacks many of the qualities that make him so popular.

In reflecting Dickens’s strong social conscience and his exposure of the plight of the poor and the callousness of those who refuse to play their part in making things better, it is emblematic of Dickens’s work as a champion of the poor. Its focus on money – and the dangers to those who place too much faith in money and not enough in their fellow human beings – it is also a wholly representative work.

But there are none of the wonderfully drawn comic characters at which he excelled and which, arguably, make his work so distinctively ‘Dickensian’. As a rule, the shorter the Dickens book, the less Dickensian it is, at least in this sense: Hard Times , A Tale of Two Cities , and the five Christmas books all lack those supporting comic characters which make his large, sprawling novels, whatever their shortcomings in plot structure, his most successful books.

But what it lacks in Fat Boys, Sam Wellers, Major Bagstocks, or Mr Micawbers, it more than makes up for in its concentrated plot structure and heart-warming portrayal of a man who learns to use his wealth, but also his sense of social duty, to help those who need it most.

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A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol Essay.

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Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is a morality tale of a selfish and bitter Ebenezer Scrooge and his visits from 3 spirits representing his past, present and future, bringing him into a complete change of character and reconciliation for his wrongs. It is based in a gloomy social divided 19 th  century London. The story is split between 5 staves (chapters). For my essay I will explore the language techniques such as repetition, exaggeration, similes, pathetic fallacy etc that Dickens has used to establish and illustrate his points and views through the story A Christmas Carol.

One technique Dickens successfully merged into the story structure is pathetic fallacy. In the first stave negative points of the weather is used to describe scrooges character, such as “The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect”, Dickens did this to give the reader an insight into scrooge, so they see how much of a cold person he is and how upon meeting him themselves his presence would be like harsh weather. The use of pathetic fallacy could also be linked to scrooge himself, rain, snow, hail and sleet are all weather conditions that are cold themselves and bring a chill through those who experience them, that could also be said for Scrooge. Scrooge himself is a cold person, so he brings about a cold atmosphere around him and spreads his coldness to others through the way he treats them.

In the last stave Dickens use of pathetic fallacy is switched completely from negative to positive. He does this through a dramatic change of how the weather is described, phrases such as “No fog, no mist”. By saying there is no fog or mist in the sky, it is meaning that the harshness of the weather has gone and there is nice weather that remains now, which represents all the unpleasantness and nasty points of scrooges character have vanished, and to show the reader that his character has transformed, and that he is a changed, good person. Dickens wanted to show two completely different types of pathetic fallacy to create a contrast between scrooge in the first and last stave that the reader can obviously see.

Dickens use of adjectives in the first stave describes scrooge’s character very negatively. Phrases such as “his eyes red, his thin lips blue” are used to describe scrooge’s appearance. This brings the reader to think of scrooge as an ugly man. Under typical thinking the reader may link his appearance to his personality and think of him as an all-round nasty and vulgar man. Dickens did this to strengthen the opinion of scrooge for the reader and sets them up for a big contrast between the first and last staves.

Dickens use of adjectives changes dramatically in the last stave. Phrases such as “He looked so irresistibly pleasant” are used to describe scrooge. Scrooges appearance has seemed to also transform somewhat to the first stave, as if along with his personality, now all the evil and nastiness has been taken out his appearance has adjusted to that as well. The reader now sees scrooge in a completely different light, now that his personality and his appearance has changed he is now seen as a completely transformed person.

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Dickens use of adverbs/verbs in the first stave describes scrooge’s character very negatively. Words such as “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping” are used to describe scrooge, the words link to how tight he is with his money, and how money hungry he is. The verbs themselves sound quite threatening, and so the reader would feel threatened towards such a person as he. Dickens wanted to create a negative view of scrooge for the reader and so by using verbs that describe his actions in a dramatically negative way and make him sound like a money-mongering all around bad person.

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In the last stave Dickens describes and makes scrooges actions sound much brighter and positive in comparison to his actions in the first stave with the use of nicer verbs/adverbs. Verbs such as “fluttered and so glowing” were used to describe scrooge’s actions. The words themselves fluttered and glowing are positive and sound nice, Dickens used words like this to add to scrooges newly found self, and for the reader to see along with a better appearance and transformed personality; his actions are also positive and nice. The term glowing could also be linked with the warmness and the renewing of his character; instead of bringing a dark atmosphere around with him, a certain glow is around him bringing to light to others of his change within himself.

Dickens wanted to put across this idea of rich people being selfish, un-compassionate people. As in Victorian society a blatant social divide of the rich and poor was evident. A sense that people in high society had was that they were more important than those poorer than themselves, and so they’re greed kept their money and anything they had to share was kept to themselves. Dickens’ also shows the appreciation and happiness of the little poor people had and how infact they were richer in life than the rich people were in their wealth.  He uses this with the example to Bob Cratchit’s family with such remarks as “Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content.” This shows an emotion not seen in the cold-hearted representation of rich people in A Christmas Carol.

Similes are another language technique that dickens has developed and used to create a dramatic sense of scrooges character. A simile used to describe scrooge for example is “Hard and sharp as flint” this gives the impression that scrooge himself is a person with a hard exterior, almost impenetrable for emotion to break through. He is sharp within the sense of his wit, he talks down to those he opposes and with his sharp wit attacks them verbally, such as where he talks to his nephew and says “What reason have you to be merry?  You're poor enough” this shows the sharpness in his tongue, and the nastiness in his personality. This sort of use of simile gives the reader something to compare scrooge to, and so see deeper into his personality. Here is another simile from the first stave “solitary as an oyster”   an oyster lives on it’s own at the bottom of the ocean isolated, this idea of loneliness could be linked to scrooge. Oysters are also cocooned within a shell; this connects with the thought of scrooge hiding behind a self indulgent front and not letting anyone in emotionally.

Dickens changes his use of simile in the last stave to suit scrooges newly found nice character; this shows a variance between the two opposites in scrooge’s personality in the two staves. For example, here is a simile that describes scrooge in the last stave “I am as happy as an angel” that simile sounds very positive in contrast to ones in the first stave. To say he’s as happy as an angel links into how before he wasn’t happy and his own atmosphere was depressing, but now he is happy and not just happy but as happy as an angelic creature. This shows the reader that scrooge is rejoicing in sight of his own change in character, and how they should feel happy to in response to that.

Repetition is another key technique used to dramatically describe scrooge’s character. A word repeated many times in the first few paragraphs is “dead” with this an instant negative mood is brought upon the reader. With it repeated so many times it keeps the text itself to a low mood, and with the other language techniques combined it makes the reader grasp the pessimistic atmosphere. The word “dead” itself could link to scrooge, as scrooge himself could be seen as dead on the inside, due to his complete lack of emotion shown to anything.

Repetition is used in the same way in the last stave but in a different meaning, not to severely show the bad atmosphere but to highlight and create a positive atmosphere towards the overall affect on the reader. Here is a word repeated often in the last stave “chuckle”. This is a cheerful and enthusiastic word that fits in with scrooge’s new change of character. It makes the reader feel that scrooge is now a humorous person, which he never was before and therefore he has obviously changed.

Scrooges views on Christmas vary between the first and last stave, In the first stave he appears to despise Christmas, and those who think of it as merry, for example he says this to his nephew Bob Cratchit in response to him asking to come round for Christmas dinner “every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart” this shows his reluctance against Christmas and makes the reader think that if such a person hates Christmas, a merry and happy time of the year they themselves must be a nasty person. On the other hand they may want to delve deeper into scrooges character, and maybe think why does this man hate Christmas so much? And so wait to find out until they reach an opinion. Dickens idea was to present people of high society as uncompassionate people, and because Christmas is a time to show love and compassion towards others Dickens uses that against scrooges character and makes him hate Christmas, and so that represents the people of high society in that stereotype as cold uncompassionate people, as wanted by Dickens.

In the last stave scrooges view on Christmas appears to have completely changed and reformed into a love of it. For example when he wakes up after all the spirits have visited him he says “A merry Christmas to everybody!” which of course he would have never said before seriously and meant it. This shows the reader that scrooge’s new character has awakened and therefore loves Christmas, and wishes a merry Christmas to all. Dickens created Scrooges love of Christmas to show a comparison between scrooge’s opinions on Christmas, so the reader can see that along with scrooge’s turn of character he is truly a changed man who now loves Christmas.

Dickens uses exaggeration to create a dramatic emphasis of an atmosphere or scrooge’s character, the meaning for it varies between the first and last stave. For the first stave it is used to emphasize the gloomy mood, for example  there is a long list of verbs that describe scrooge and his actions, here is a section of that list “grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous” this directly hits the reader with a settled opinion on scrooge, and makes them think of him as an awfully negative person. He may not be all these things, but in the readers eyes he is exaggerated to be a somewhat inhumanly, horrible and tightfisted man. For that is what dickens’ believed people like  scrooge and within his high class in society to be in the 19 th  century, and so to give the reader a bias view he used exaggeration to exaggerate scrooges actions in a way the reader would be manipulated into believing that that is what rich people were like.

Exaggeration is used in an intensely positively way in the last stave in contrast to the first stave. The phrase “as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world” is an exaggerated phrase, because of course he isn’t the nicest man in the world, but to the reader he appears to be through pushing this idea to them through exaggeration. Dickens wanted the reader to believe that scrooge had become a new person in complete reconciliation for his past-self, and did so by using exaggeration as a language technique to give an obvious contrast between scrooges transformation.

The change of tone and attitude of scrooges character changes dramatically between the first and last stave, this is shown by the way he acts towards others, and how they perceive his as a person. In the first stave for example it says “No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle” this means that no beggars would bother asking him for anything, as they already know what his response would be, a blatant no. This also links to Dickens’ views on people in high society, he regarded them as selfish and tight people, because during the massive social divide in his lifetime people in rich situations in his opinion were selfish and tight and so to spread his views across he used scrooges character and by showing a beggars negative reaction to scrooge. That shows the divide between the two people, high and low class and a disrespect and tightness from high to low. This makes the reader think that scrooge is a selfish, mean man. Dickens uses scrooges attitude towards others so let the readers form an opinion of how they would react to scrooges character themselves.

Scrooges tone and attitude in the last stave reflects his change of character deeply. Because he is of course a changed man his attitude towards others changed also with that. For example as he is asking a young boy to buy him a turkey he says “Come back with him in less than five minutes and I'll give you half-a-crown." This shows his newly found generosity, as before he would have never given anything willingly to anyone. This helps towards the reader adjusting their opinion of scrooge, and believes that if he is kind to others he must be a kind and changed person himself.

The Young Vic performance showed a modern twist of A Christmas carol . Scrooge was played by a woman in a South African setting, I believe having a woman play scrooge is to show that now that there is a near equality between men and women; women can become in a position like scrooge, have money to themselves and be selfish with it. The story explores Aid’s, prostitution, poverty etc, this highlighted the contrast between old and modern society by exploring these issues from today’s world, this is important because it demonstrates the moral of A Christmas carol  in relevance to today.

In conclusion I believe the moral behind Christmas carol is that in a social divided community it is important to treat everyone the same. This is shown through scrooge’s character, and how he treats people somewhat below him in the social hierarchy as a man quite high in society and how he treats them after he has been visited by the spirits. I think that the moral is still of relevance to today’s world, although there is a large time difference between now and then there still are social divides throughout society, weather it be financially or through the new celebrity status’s there are or anything else, so it is still important to withhold the belief that everyone has the right to be treated the same, rich or poor, famous or not famous. Equality is something that should be of relevance though any time, weather it is a problem or something newly found, it is an issue and still will be until there is complete equality for all.  

A Christmas Carol Essay.

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And is guaranteed to make parts of any essay worth grade 8 and 9.

As a free subscriber, I am going to give you all of it.

Paid subscribers will get it transformed into a 930 word 30/30 answer. Actually, it is way better than 30/30. If you write only 700 words of this, you’ll still get 30/30.

So, in my commentary, I also share which sentences are essential to getting 100%.

This is an extract from my Ultimate Guide to A Christmas Carol (which also includes 7 grade 9 essays).

I wrote it to help you love the novel, get grade 9 and understand and enjoy literature so that you could choose English literature A level (if you wanted to - some people have to become doctors and chemists, but 100X more will want to read and write for the rest of their lives!)

This topic is going to be 100% relevant to any question you ever get on A Christmas Carol.

How is A Christmas Carol a Criticism of Social Policy in Victorian England?

Dickens shows his opposition to The Poor Laws, which created “workhouses”, by making Scrooge support them: “Are they still in operation?”.

The Victorians Thought the Poor Deserved to Be Poor

Scrooge also supports the criminalisation of the poor, “Are there no prisons?” and believes these are necessary to “decrease the surplus population”, even if this means the poor would “rather die” than attend them. The Ghost of Christmas Present quotes Scrooge’s support back at him ironically when Scrooge is desperate to save Tiny Tim, now that he knows what “the surplus population” looks like.

Thomas Malthus

This language uses the politicians’ interpretation of Thomas Malthus’s economic theory. Because only male property holders could vote, Dickens targets his book at them, pricing it at an expensive five shillings, a third of the “fifteen shillings” a worker like Bob Cratchit earns. Dickens invites the readers into the warmth of the Cratchits’ family Christmas, so that they too can understand the social effects of low wages.

Trading Laws Which Starve the Poor

On the way, Scrooge challenges the ghost for shutting bakers on a Sunday, which was a law upholding the Christian tradition of the Sabbath, forbidding trade, which will “cramp these people’s opportunities of innocent enjoyment...deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day”. Dickens juxtaposes the harshness of society with the “hard and sharp as flint” Scrooge, pointing out that the miser is actually more generous than the reader who votes for such laws.

How the Cratchits Symbolise the Poor Working Class

Inside the Cratchits’ home on Christmas day, we wait for the eldest daughter Martha, a maid of all work, who has still had to “clear away” on Christmas morning for her thoughtless, and entirely normal, employers. The mother and second daughter make their old dresses appear more festive with “ribbons”, Peter wears a ridiculously large present of his father’s old shirt, whose collar is so big it gets “into his mouth”. Only Bob and Tiny Tim have been to church, presumably because the rest of the family lack suitable clothing. Bob himself has no “greatcoat” and his best clothes are “threadbare”. Although this is a comic portrait, it is also a clue that the winter is a threat to health in a poor family.

Next, Dickens italicises the children’s excitement at the feast: “there’s such a goose,” and contrasts this with the goose’s meagre size, so that the family even eat the bones, and there is only an “atom of a bone” left on the table. After witnessing this comic scene, Scrooge brings us back to real life, asking the Ghost “if Tiny Tim will live”. He won’t.

So, Dickens challenges his readers to realise that the going rate of pay creates the working poor, which leads to their malnourishment, poor health, servitude and often death. Scrooge, like the reader, has simply supposed the poor are “idle people'' who choose poverty because of defective character. Dickens wants to disabuse these readers, as he shocks Scrooge into transforming.

Scrooge’s Transformation

It is tempting to see Scrooge’s transformation as needing The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, but actually this question in Stave Three is the pivotal moment. Dickens shows us this structurally, as it occurs in the middle of the novel, and also thematically at the end, when Scrooge becomes a “second father” to Tiny Tim.

If this last ghost is not necessary for Scrooge’s transformation, why is he introduced? Dickens uses him to show the reader how wider society is affected by their poor pay. Bob has a comparatively good job for a working-class man. Those who earn less live in slums, where he now takes us: “the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery”. Like the reader, Scrooge has avoided seeing the “wretched” conditions in which the poor live, and “never penetrated” there.

Don’t Forget the Workers Who are So Poor That They Become Criminals

Here we meet tradespeople Scrooge has employed, a “laundress” and “charwoman”, and an “undertaker’s man” who has prepared Scrooge’s body. They have all stolen from the dead man’s room. They have “all three met here without meaning it!” because they are embarrassed at their crimes. They are surprisingly polite to each other, and with “gallantry” decide that the poorest, the cleaner, should be last to ask old Joe for a price for her stolen goods, and therefore get a better price. Old Joe himself has made a tiny profit from crime. He is still having to do this, even though “nearly seventy years of age”. His poverty is introduced comically as he invites them into “the parlour... the space behind the screen of rags.” This ironic juxtaposition reveals Dickens' social commentary, where not just poverty, but a significant amount of crime is caused by middle class indifference to the consequence of low wages which they pay.

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This Book’s Readers are Employers

This is harder for a modern audience to grasp, but all Dickens’ original readers were exactly this kind of employer. Even Fred, the model of Christmas cheer who puts up with his uncle’s “Bah...Humbug!” has a live-in housekeeper who is still working on Christmas day to welcome Scrooge to Fred’s home!

Dickens expects the reader to identify with the morally good “master” Fred and perhaps now to question their indifference to the lives of their employees.

Revolution and Education

Dickens also warns of greater consequences than crime if society, and the reader, does not change. Because Scrooge begins his transformation, he notices the figures of “Ignorance” and “Want” whom Dickens personifies as a boy and a girl. The Ghost of Christmas Present delivers Dickens’ warning, “but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

“Ignorance” symbolises the lack of education denied to the poor, which results in a spiral of unemployability, or a qualification only for low-wage work. This unspecified “doom” suggests violent crime or political protest, or perhaps predicts the kinds of revolution which swept Europe five years later.

This scene is not necessary to the plot of Scrooge’s redemption, so it works like an aside to the reader, calling our attention to the author’s wider purpose, which is not just to entertain, but persuade the reader to build a fairer society.

The Importance of the Ending

Therefore, Dickens ends the novella with Scrooge raising Bob’s “salary” as his final act.

We remember that his lack of charity was a sign of his miserly behaviour. But Bob’s salary was only the going rate in 1843, not a product of Scrooge’s miserliness. So, this action becomes a clear signal to the reader to increase what they pay their employees and domestic staff.

The final line, ending with “God bless us” is partly ironic. God isn’t going to help the poor, so we, like Scrooge, have to.

Thank you for reading Mr Salles Teaches English. My mission is to help 10,000 students get grade 8 and 9. This post is public so feel free to share it. Help me on my mission.

Rewritten as an Exam Answer

Although Dickens writes the novel as an entertainment, he wants the story of Scrooge’s moral awakening to “haunt” the reader, and so lead to a change in how his readers think about the poor.

A 3 part thesis statement, which sets out Dickens’ ideas, and acts as a plan for your essay. I always write a 3 part thesis statement. Some grade 9 answers get away with 2 - but that leaves your marks to chance.

Dickens shows his opposition to The Poor Laws, which created “workhouses”, by making Scrooge support them: “Are they still in operation?”. Scrooge also supports the criminalisation of the poor, “Are there no prisons?” and believes these are necessary to “decrease the surplus population”. Then Dickens creates Tiny Tim to show us what “the surplus population” looks like, and he uses Tiny Tim’s impending death to transform Scrooge’s view.

Rather than explode a quote to death, use your quotes to build an argument. The argument has to be about the writer’s ideas. This gets your AO2 marks. The more quotes you use, the higher your AO1 mark. Exploding quotes adds very little to AO1, because you use too few ‘references to the text’. Obvious really!

I hope you can see how to turn the context into an essay. Paid subscribers get the rest, with my comments.

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an essay about a christmas carol

A Christmas Carol

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — A Christmas Carol — Generosity Theme in “A Christmas Carol”

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Generosity Theme in "A Christmas Carol"

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Published: Sep 7, 2023

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A Christmas Carol Revision 2024

A Christmas Carol Revision 2024

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

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English GCSE and English KS3 resources

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an essay about a christmas carol

A Christmas Carol English football manager lesson revision/revising. Revise AQA English Literature Paper 1 for 2024 with this fun and engaging revision and exam practice pack!

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Christmas 2023 Shot: "Joy to the World‪"‬ Lit for Christmas

Merry Christmas, all you Lit for Christmas partiers! Welcome to this bonus Christmas Day party!  For this special Lit for Christmas party, Marty shares his essay "Joy to the World."  BONUS POINTS:  Tell someone you love them today. TODAY'S CHRISTMAS SPIRIT: Marty Schnog Directions: Pour a mug of eggnog Add three to four shots of Bailey's Irish Cream Drink Lit for Christmas Party Host: Marty has an Master's in fiction writing, MFA in poetry writing, and teaches in the English Department at Northern Michigan University in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  He served two terms at Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula, and has published the poetry collection The Mysteries of the Rosary from Mayapple Press.  For more of Marty's thoughts and writing visit his blog Saint Marty (saintmarty-marty.blogspot.com) or listen to his other podcast Confessions of Saint Marty, also on Anchor.fm.  Marty is a writer, blogger, wine sipper, easy drunk, and poetry obsessor who puts his Christmas tree up in mid-October and refuses to take it down until the snow starts melting. Music for this episode: "Jingle Bells Jazzy Style" by Julius H, used courtesy of Pixabay. "A Christmas Treat" by Magic-828, used courtesy of Pixabay. A Christmas Carol sound clips from: The Campbell Theater 1939 radio production of A Christmas Carol, narrated by Orson Welles and starring Lionel Barrymore. Additional Episode Music: "JOYFUL (Ode to Joy)" by Anne Crosby Gaudet (youtube.com/watch?v=5mXVv2U5HNA) This episode's Christmas lit: Achatz, Martin.  "Joy to the World."  

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  • Martin Achatz

The Boston Globe

Digging ‘A Christmas Carol’ out from the lumps of coal heaped on it

Dickens’s classic is a pitch-perfect love story, not a treatise on inequality

Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” Tom Joudrey tells us, is “a lousy morality tale” that rationalizes the problem of economic inequality and in which Ebenezer Scrooge’s transformation dupes the reader into forgetting that Dickens is reaffirming the socioeconomic status quo ( “Bah, humbug! ‘A Christmas Carol’ is cringeworthy,” Ideas, Dec. 24).

This is what “A Christmas Carol” is not: a treatise on economic inequality, though Dickens had compassion for the poor and even allows them to be merry on Christmas.

This is what the novel is: a pitch-perfect Christmas story that, like every carol, sings. Like many Christmas stories, it is about love: the story of a man who exchanged his love of people for the love of money. His only friend, Jacob Marley, is seven years dead. His ghost returns to warn Scrooge of the fate that awaits him and to tell him he’ll be visited by three other ghosts.

With the three ghosts’ help, Scrooge reckons with the truth of what he has become. The final ghost reveals a vision of a possible future, in which Tiny Tim is no more and his father — Scrooge’s clerk, Bob Cratchit — walks more slowly without his beloved son on his shoulder. Then Scrooge sees his own grave. He has died friendless, buried in a neglected churchyard.

When he wakes, it is Christmas day, and he is completely alive. He is reborn — Christmas, after all, is about a miraculous birth. He does more than bestow a turkey on the Cratchits and give Bob a raise. He becomes a “second father” to Tiny Tim and as good a man as any.

And that is quite a Christmas tale.

Neil M. Kulick

The writer is a retired public school English teacher.

Story’s simple yet powerful messages are timeless

After reading Tom Joudrey’s “Bah, humbug! ‘A Christmas Carol’ is cringeworthy,” I couldn’t help but feel bad for him. My wife and I enjoy watching “A Christmas Carol” every holiday season. It is the story that had the greatest impact on my childhood and that has left an indelible impression upon my life. That’s because it contains simple yet powerful messages.

It is the story of a mean, miserly, misanthropic man who awakens to his own humanity and to that of humankind. Many of us know someone who has shut the warmth of the world out and buried their own within. Perhaps we have even been that person ourselves. Who can forget the childlike glee and fascination Scrooge experiences as he undergoes his marvelous transformation? That’s one reason so many people enjoy this story.

The themes contained in this enduring Charles Dickens classic are timeless: Let us share our humanity without reservation or expectations and realize that by helping to lift another person, we also help to lift ourselves. Let us recognize that by allowing in the goodness and warmth of the world, we help bring the best of ourselves out. These are messages we should all celebrate and perpetuate.

Perhaps the greatest genius of Dickens’s story is that it makes us realize that we should embody the qualities of Christmas year round. So as you go about your business, think of what the author wanted readers to take away from his story: that humankind is the most important business of all.

Michael J. DiStefano

Jamestown, R.I.

The writer is an addiction recovery counselor and facilitator who uses literary classics as a part of his recovery coaching work.

The original manuscript for the 1843 Charles Dickens classic, "A Christmas Carol," at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York in 2009.

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Abortion Shield Laws: A New War Between the States

Doctors in six states where abortion is legal are using new laws to send abortion pills to tens of thousands of women in states where it is illegal.

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A hand with a blue glove reaches for a prescription bottle near a black tray with white pills on it.

By Pam Belluck

Pam Belluck spent time with abortion providers sending pills to states that outlaw abortion and talked with patients receiving those pills.

Behind an unmarked door in a boxy brick building outside Boston, a quiet rebellion is taking place. Here, in a 7-by-12-foot room, abortion is being made available to thousands of women in states where it is illegal.

The patients do not have to travel here to terminate their pregnancies, and they do not have to wait weeks to receive abortion medication from overseas.

Instead, they are obtaining abortion pills prescribed by licensed Massachusetts providers, packaged in the little room and mailed from a nearby post office, arriving days later in Texas, Missouri and other states where abortion is largely outlawed.

This service and others like it are operating under novel laws enacted in a half-dozen states — Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado, Vermont, New York and California — that have sought to preserve abortion access since the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion in June 2022. The laws have been in use only since the summer and have not been tested in the courts, but they are already providing abortion access to tens of thousands of women in states with bans, especially low-income patients and others who cannot travel.

Called telemedicine abortion shield laws, they promise to protect doctors, nurse practitioners and midwives licensed in those six states who prescribe and send abortion pills to patients in the nearly two dozen states that ban or sharply restrict abortion.

The laws stipulate that officials and agencies of their states will not cooperate with another state’s efforts to investigate or penalize such providers — a stark departure from typical interstate practices of extraditing, honoring subpoenas and sharing information, legal experts on both sides of the abortion issue say. Many expect them to ultimately be challenged in federal court.

Abortion opponents see the laws as brazen infringement on state sovereignty.

“You have states not just picking their own strategy but really trying to completely sabotage the governing efforts of their neighboring states,” John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life, said.

“It can’t stand, and we can’t be content with this new development,” he added.

The threat of shield laws is one reason that three states — Idaho, Kansas and Missouri — petitioned to join a case the Supreme Court will hear next month that seeks to bar the mailing of abortion pills and to require in-person doctor visits instead of telemedicine. The petition was denied.

“When you have states actively seeking to circumvent each other’s laws, that raises a very real legal problem that will stretch far beyond just the abortion sphere,” said Will Scharf, a Republican candidate for attorney general in Missouri, who helped draft anti-abortion legislation when serving as policy director for the state’s governor six years ago.

Pills have become the most common abortion method nationally, and abortion rights advocates consider shield laws a crucial way to counter the wave of bans enacted since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“ This might be the most important event since Dobbs on so many levels,” said Rachel Rebouché, the dean of Temple University Law School, who has worked with shield law advocates and legislators. “Thousands and thousands of pills are being shipped everywhere across the United States from a handful of providers. That alone speaks to the nature of what mailed medication abortion can do.”

Before shield laws were enacted, Aid Access, one of the organizations in the forefront of telemedicine abortion, served patients in states with bans by issuing prescriptions from Europe and shipping pills from a pharmacy in India. Pills could take weeks to arrive, potentially putting patients beyond 12 weeks’ gestation, the recommended threshold for taking the medication.

With shield laws, “some people who might not have gotten an abortion if they had to take off work and go to a clinic, or wait three weeks and all of that, are doing it now,” said Dr. Linda Prine, a New York shield law provider.

Aid Access providers are now using shield laws to serve about 7,000 patients a month, nearly 90 percent of them in states with bans or severe restrictions, according to Dr. Abigail Aiken, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who studies Aid Access data.

The shield laws upend the usual telemedicine model, under which out-of-state health providers must be licensed in the states where patients are located.

Beyond providing abortion access to individual patients, the shield-law movement carries broader implications for abortion politics, and supporters are working to enact similar laws in as many states as possible so the approach becomes commonplace, according to Francine Coeytaux, a co-founder of Plan C, a clearinghouse for medication abortion information.

“The shield laws are about a state’s legislative and justice system having skin in the game,” she said.

Inside the room

Carol, who asked to be identified by her middle name to help keep her role private, met me behind the brick building outside Boston and escorted me through a back door, down a warren of hallways. Others who rent offices in the building haven’t asked what she does there, she said, adding: “I’m kind of hoping that most people aren’t really that curious about what’s going on.”

At a plain white table, Carol, who has a master’s degree in public health, began her routine: checking a spreadsheet of prescriptions; printing out labels with medication information and patients’ names; printing address labels with tracking numbers and adding them to the spreadsheet.

Patients contact this service and others online and fill out forms providing information about their pregnancy and medical history. Carol’s colleague, Lauren Jacobson, a nurse practitioner, writes prescriptions, evaluating whether patients are medically eligible. They can be up to 12 weeks pregnant and must have no disqualifying medical issues like an ectopic pregnancy or a blood-clotting disorder. Patients and providers can communicate by email or phone if needed.

“We’re a free country,” said Ms. Jacobson, who sometimes writes 50 prescriptions a day. “So let’s put that to the test. Here we are and we’re not going to be intimidated, and we have our states backing us.”

Carol pulled the two abortion medications from storage boxes: mifepristone, which stops a pregnancy from developing, and misoprostol, taken 24 to 48 hours later to spur contractions to expel pregnancy tissue.

“I don’t really consider myself a rule breaker,” she said. “So it’s funny that here I am sitting in this tiny little closet surrounded by pill bottles.”

The operation resembles a small-scale assembly line, preparing medication for six packages at a time: one mifepristone pill in a manufacturer’s prepackaged box and 12 misoprostol tablets counted out by hand from bottles of 100 supplied by a wholesaler. Carol slid the medications into plain envelopes lined with bubble wrapping, along with a 10-page pamphlet from the mifepristone manufacturer and illustrated instructions from Aid Access about taking the medication and expected side effects, like cramping and bleeding.

She drove several miles to a post office to mail the envelopes.

“Getting ready for Christmas?” another customer in the post office asked one day, she recalled.

“Surprise, I’m actually Santa Claus,” she replied cheerfully.

One of Carol’s envelopes arrived at the home of Ashley Dickey in Texas.

Ms. Dickey has two young children and said she had experienced serious postpartum depression after those pregnancies. She said she dissolved in tears when she became pregnant again and concluded that she could not manage another pregnancy and raise another child. “It’s just not good for anybody,” she said.

When she learned she could receive pills by mail, “I was so grateful,” she said, adding, “If I would have had to travel somewhere, it would have been catastrophic, financially and then just emotionally.”

Reaching low-income patients

Supporters say shield laws are already making substantial progress toward an important goal: helping patients who cannot afford — financially or logistically — to travel to another state for an abortion.

“It’s reaching the ones that were impacted the most: low-income, poor people, communities of color, Indigenous,” said Michelle Colón, the executive director of SHERo Mississippi, an organization supporting reproductive rights for people of color.

Nationally, there are three main providers: Aid Access; the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project (called The MAP); and a service called Abuzz, which does not yet serve all states with abortion bans. They charge $150 or $250, though all three services provide pills for reduced prices or even at no cost, based solely on what patients say they can pay.

Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician who founded Aid Access, said over half of its shield-law patients cannot pay full price. About a third of The MAP’s patients can afford only the service’s $5 minimum, said Dr. Angel M. Foster, director of The MAP.

But shield-law providers say it is uncertain whether they can sustain their pay-what-you-can approach. Most providers are absorbing the cost for thousands of patients who can’t pay full price. So far, most abortion funds — organizations that provide financing to help patients obtain abortions — have not given money for sending pills to anti-abortion states, partly because they do not know if shield laws would protect the funds.

“I’ve had several funds say, ‘Our lawyers say we cannot do this,’” said Susan Yanow, a longtime reproductive health activist working with The MAP, who has nonetheless gotten some funds to contribute.

A few funds openly support shield-law activity. “We are here to boldly make a statement,” said Karen Middleton, president of Cobalt Abortion Fund in Colorado, which gives $2,500 a month to that state’s provider. And some advocates are starting funds, including Jodi Jacobson, an activist based in California, who said she wanted to support “providers who are losing money” performing what she called “medical civil disobedience.”

Legal strategizing

Several Republican attorneys general from states with strict abortion prohibitions declined requests to discuss shield laws. But Mr. Scharf, who is challenging Missouri’s incumbent attorney general in the Republican primary, predicted that the shield laws would almost certainly be challenged in court.

“Constitutional litigation is obviously an option here,” he said. “Ultimately, whenever you get attempts like this to circumvent our constitutional system of federalism, that’s going to be something that’s litigated.”

Dr. Seago of Texas Right to Life said taking action against shield-law providers would be “a difficult challenge” that would require “the right case,” including a patient “on the receiving side of those illegal activities” who would cooperate with a civil suit or prosecution.

“We can definitely promise that in a pro-life state like Texas with committed elected officials and an attorney general and district attorneys who want to uphold our prolife laws, this is not something that’s going to be ignored for long,” he said.

Many shield-law providers are taking precautions, including not traveling to states with abortion bans, where they could be more vulnerable to arrest. Some are not sending pills to states where they have family. Some are creating trusts to protect their assets from civil suits.

“At any moment, I might get a cease-and-desist order, or I might get a lawsuit, or I might get some district attorney coming after me, I have no idea,” said Dr. David Wiebe, who operates under Colorado’s shield law. “I’m absolutely flying out at full risk here.”

The MAP has taken several protective steps. All of its prescribers are within Massachusetts. Pills are stocked and packaged at a separate location by workers hired by Cambridge Reproductive Health Consultants, a nonprofit Dr. Foster leads. “Our model is about distributing risk,” she said.

One national mail-order pharmacy, Honeybee Health, based in California, is evaluating whether it can send pills to states with abortion bans under California’s shield law, a step that would allow providers in any shield-law state to send their prescriptions to Honeybee and avoid stocking and shipping pills themselves.

Honeybee’s co-founder and president, Jessica Nouhavandi, said she hoped to do so, but worried about jeopardizing her business, which dispenses other medications too. If an anti-abortion state like South Carolina pulled her license, “what happens to my thousands of South Carolina patients who get their blood thinners from me?” she said.

Another unknown is the outcome of the lawsuit by abortion opponents seeking to curtail mifepristone. An appeals court ruling effectively barred the mailing of mifepristone and required in-person doctor visits. The case is now before the Supreme Court.

“If we prevail on that, all these shield laws will be rendered moot at that point because then there’ll be a federal policy prohibiting such a transaction,” said Erik Baptist, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents abortion opponents in that case. Some shield law providers say they will look for legal ways to continue.

Texas, which has strict bans, is home to about a third of shield-law patients, including Elizabet, who asked to be identified by her middle name to protect her privacy. She considered traveling to California, where a friend lives, but medication abortion at a clinic there would cost $750, plus transportation expenses.

She was relieved to find Aid Access and to receive pills mailed from Massachusetts. Although abortion bans target providers and not patients, she said she was still nervous about people in Texas finding out.

“That’s been very scary,” she said, “but I was like, you know what, I have to trust it.”

Weeks later, Elizabet said she planned to visit a doctor for birth control, but worried about being asked if she’d taken abortion pills.

Ms. Jacobson, who prescribed her the medication under Massachusetts’ shield law, reassured her, noting that there was no medical reason to disclose having taken abortion pills.

“The symptoms that the abortion pills cause are exactly the same as those that a miscarriage causes, so there is no possible way for a provider, a doctor, to look at you, do any test and know that you took the pills,” she said, adding, “We’ve helped a lot of people navigate situations in places like Texas.”

Pam Belluck is a health and science reporter, covering a range of subjects, including reproductive health, long Covid, brain science, neurological disorders, mental health and genetics. More about Pam Belluck

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  1. A Christmas Carol: Mini Essays

    A Christmas Carol is an allegory in that it features events and characters with a clear, fixed symbolic meaning. In the novella, Scrooge represents all the values that are opposed to the idea of Christmas—greed, selfishness, and a lack of goodwill toward one's fellow man.

  2. A Christmas Carol by Dickens

    A Christmas Carol by Dickens Essay Exclusively available on IvyPanda Updated: Dec 13th, 2023 A Christmas Carol by Dickens was first published on December 19, 1843. Since its publication, this book, arguably one of his most famous works, has made its mark on American culture and literature.

  3. A Christmas Carol Essays

    3 The Changes of Ebenezer Scrooge in a Christmas Carol Essay grade: Good 1 page / 432 words A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, presents the theme that even the most despicable people are capable of changing for the better. The main character of the story, Ebenezer Scrooge, is known as a very selfish, stingy and cruel man.

  4. AQA English Revision

    A Christmas Carol and Death The Extract The Essay The Cratchits Cratchits Extract In this extract, we see how the Cratchit family are happy despite their poverty.

  5. A Summary and Analysis of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol

    A Christmas Carol wasn't the first Christmas ghost story Dickens wrote. He'd already written ' The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton ', featuring the miserly Gabriel Grub. This was featured as an inset tale in Dickens's first ever published novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836-7).

  6. A Christmas Carol: Suggested Essay Topics

    The 6 Best and Worst TV Show Adaptations of Books QUIZ: Which Greek God Are You? Suggestions for essay topics to use when you're writing about A Christmas Carol.

  7. A Christmas Carol Critical Essays

    In A Christmas Carol, an allegory of spiritual values versus material ones, Charles Dickens shows Scrooge having to learn the lesson of the spirit of Christmas, facing the reality of his own...

  8. A Christmas Carol Essays and Criticism

    Well, my candid opinion of A Christmas Carol is that it is the best of a rather poor lot of stories. In fact, when I consider that it was written by a giant and a genius like Charles Dickens I ...

  9. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

    SOURCE: "A Christmas Carol Criticizes England's Economic System," in Reading on Charles Dickens, edited by Clarice Swisher, The Greenhaven Press, 1998, pp. 86-93. [In the following excerpt ...

  10. A Christmas Carol: Essay Writing Guide for GCSE (9-1)

    A CHRISTMAS CAROL An Essay Writing Guide for GCSE (9-1) So you now know the novella - but how do you structure your essay? This clean & simple new guide from Accolade Press will walk you through how to plan and structure essay responses to questions on Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.

  11. Guide on Writing 'A Christmas Carol' Essay

    How to Write 'A Christmas Carol' Essay New Year and Christmas are close, so you might soon be writing a few themed essays for the holidays! Today, we'll talk about one of the most iconic holiday stories, Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

  12. A Christmas Carol

    A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech.It recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and ...

  13. A Christmas Carol Essay.

    A Christmas Carol Essay. Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol is a morality tale of a selfish and bitter Ebenezer Scrooge and his visits from 3 spirits representing his past, present and future, bringing him into a complete change of character and reconciliation for his wrongs. It is based in a gloomy social divided 19 th century London. The story is split between 5 staves (chapters).

  14. A Christmas Carol Essay Topics

    1. How are Victorian theories of poverty similar to or different from modern theories? 2. Why did the Ghost of Christmas Present tell Scrooge that Ignorance was the more dreadful of the two children of humankind? 3. Does modern Western society suffer the same economic stratification as Victorian England?

  15. A Christmas Carol: Every Grade 9 Essay in One

    AO3 context made grade 9 because it is linked to Dickens' purpose and ideas. Put then in your own words and memorise them. They will fit every essay. Here we meet tradespeople Scrooge has employed, a "laundress" and "charwoman", and an "undertaker's man". They have all stolen from the dead man's room.

  16. Theme of Redemption in "A Christmas Carol"

    Published: Sep 7, 2023 Redemption is a central theme in Charles Dickens' beloved novella, "A Christmas Carol." The story follows the transformative journey of the protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, from a miserly and heartless individual to a compassionate and benevolent man.

  17. AQA English Revision

    A Christmas Carol Revision. Below, you'll find everything you need to revise for A Christmas Carol - and if you need anything else, just let us know and we'll do our very best. It's what we ask of you, so it's the least we c ould offer in return...

  18. A Christmas Carol: Study Guide

    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, published in 1843, is a timeless novella that has become a classic of the Christmas season.While it reflects how many people think about Christmas, it is also a key source for popular Christmas traditions. The story follows Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly and cold-hearted old man, as he undergoes a transformative journey on Christmas Eve.

  19. A Christmas Carol

    A Christmas Carol is a novella written by Charles Dickens and first published on 19th December, 1843. The novella's full title is: 'A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas'.

  20. Generosity Theme in "A Christmas Carol"

    Published: Sep 7, 2023. Generosity is a prevailing theme in Charles Dickens' timeless novella, "A Christmas Carol." The narrative revolves around the transformation of the protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, from a miserly and self-centered individual to a compassionate and generous soul. This essay explores the significance of generosity in the ...

  21. A Christmas Carol: Context

    Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in the 1840s. While A Christmas Carol carries a mark of its time, you should try to consider what the text has to say about people, human nature, societal structures etc., and recognise these as universal themes, which are just as relevant today. For example, if you were to write about poverty, people's ...

  22. A Christmas Carol

    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an old man who transforms his miserly ways after four ghostly visits one Christmas Eve. Characters - AQA Three ghosts take ...

  23. What is a good thesis statement for A Christmas Carol

    Rebecca Hope, M.A. | Certified Educator Share Cite To write a thesis statement for a literary analysis paper on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, begin by thinking about what aspect of the...

  24. A Christmas Carol Revision 2024

    A Christmas Carol English football manager lesson revision/revising. Revise AQA English Literature Paper 1 for 2024 with this fun and engaging revision and exam practice pack! This uses football or soccer as a stimulus for engaging students in their essay writing and making improvements.

  25. ‎Lit for Christmas: Christmas 2023 Shot: "Joy to the World" on Apple

    A Christmas Carol sound clips from: The Campbell Theater 1939 radio production of A Christmas Carol, narrated by Orson Welles and starring Lionel Barrymore. Additional Episode Music: ... For this special Lit for Christmas party, Marty shares his essay "Joy to the World." ...

  26. Digging 'A Christmas Carol' out from the lumps of coal heaped ...

    When he wakes, it is Christmas day, and he is completely alive. He is reborn — Christmas, after all, is about a miraculous birth. He does more than bestow a turkey on the Cratchits and give Bob ...

  27. How does conflict shape Scrooge's character in A Christmas Carol

    Scrooge's character is shaped by the conditioning he experienced as a young child, as our characters as humans always are. Charles Dickens, in the short novella 'A Christmas Carol' was an expert ...

  28. Abortion Shield Laws: A New War Between the States

    Carol slid the medications into plain envelopes lined with bubble wrapping, along with a 10-page pamphlet from the mifepristone manufacturer and illustrated instructions from Aid Access about ...