Charles Dickens' Amazing Language

Should I really read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol again this holiday season?  I've been making that activity a Christmas tradition for more years than I can remember.  I know every character, every plot twist, every description, and I can even quote some of the lines.  Could Dickens still enthrall me?

I picked up my well worn paperback copy and decided to read just a few pages this year.  I was hooked. And it wasn't so much what Dickens said as how he said it.  Unlike many modern books that encourage lighting-speed reading to find out what happens next, Dickens slows down my frantic reading pace so that I can savor his language.  I want to share with you some of Dickens' language that still sends a thrill up my spine.

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"Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!"  Every time I am not as generous at Christmas time as I should be, I think about that string of adjectives.  I wouldn't anyone to substitute my name for Scrooge!

"He [Scrooge] carried his own low temperature always about him;..."  Can't you just picture it?  A person who gives off such negative signals that he succeeds in driving away the world, which is exactly what he wants to achieve.

"The city clocks had only just gone three but it was quite dark already-it had not been light all day,,,"  Even in El Paso, Texas, I notice darkness stealing away the light starting at about 3:00 pm.  I think that has a profound effect on a person's psyche.








When the boy Scrooge is going home with his sister, Fan, the schoolmaster invites them to his very chilly parlor to partake of "...a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously heavy cake."  The description of those refreshments always brings a smile to my face.

And how I would like to have attended the Fezziwigs' Christmas celebration to meet the participants.   "In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable.  In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke."







I would have enjoyed shopping for Christmas dinner at the fruiterers where there were "...great, round pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors..."

But the future turns darker.  Dickens describes the two children under the Ghost's robe, Ignorance and Want as "yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish..."  The last of the Spirits leads Scrooge to a graveyard and points to a gravestone with Scrooge's name.  Scrooge wants to know if he is doomed.

 

  "The finger pointed from the grave to him and back again.
   'No, spirit!  Oh, no,no!'
   The finger still was there."


A Christmas Carol  is available free online from many different sources.  Thanks for letting me share some of my favorite Dickens' language.  Do you have a favorite scene from A Christmas Carol?

Happy Holidays to all.  See you the week of December 30th!