A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Essay -- Christmas Carol Charles

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Charles Dickens wrote his novels during the Victorian times. Britain was a harsh place at this time with the upper and lower classes being clearly separated. Dickens himself grew up as part of the lower classes, and so he knew what it was like. It was very hard for the poor to survive, many of them having no alternative but to go into the workhouses. This seemed to be the worst place to end up, as many people would rather have died than gone into the workhouses. When people went to the workhouses, they were separated from their families, forced to work long hours and hardly fed at all. The workhouse system was the upper classes solution to poverty, but it did not help at all. The lower classes were still living very hard lives. Dickens published 'A Christmas Carol' in 1843 to try to bring the lower classes hard lives to the attention of people who could do something about it; the upper classes. He decided to write a novel because he felt that more people would take an interest in a book rather than leaflet, because the attitude towards helping the poor was not good. In the novel, the main character, Scrooge, is used to personify the upper classes. The three ghosts are used to show that the poor are not all 'idle' and that some are genuinely in need. Before the ghosts came, Scrooge was 'hard and sharp as flint' and solitary as an oyster'. There is a lot of descriptive language used about Scrooge (in the 6th - 8th paragraphs) by Dickens, which gives the impression that Scrooge was bitter, cold and lonely. He believed that if people were poor, it was not his 'business' and he just wanted 'to be left alone'. He refused to give money to the poor at Christmas and sai... ...f they do not change their ways, then the poor people who still have some dignity, who were shown by the 'Ghost of Christmas Present', will also eventually become so desperate, that the seedy, dirty London that is shown by the 'Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come' is what the whole city will end up like. Dickens presents the lower classes realistically; he does not try to make out that all poor people are kind hearted. He tries to make the upper classes realise that the situation of the poor can only get better if they do something to help. He also tries to make the reader feel concerned about Tiny Tim and show the upper classes that they can help; when Tiny Tim is mentioned, it is almost like a personal appeal to the reader to help someone in need. Dickens presents the lower classes effectively and this is probably why the book is still very popular today.