A Christmas Carol teaches me how to weave a subtle message into a
story.
Wait, you say. A subtle
message? The message in A Christmas Carol
is anything but subtle.
That depends on which
message you mean. The values of generosity and kindness and the possibility of redemption
are all front and center, but that is only part of the point Dickens makes.
There was nothing
politically incorrect about the Christ message in Dicken’s day, but that didn’t
mean everyone wanted to read books about it. So he wrote a story that took
place at Christmas and extolled Christian values but had a seemingly secular
focus. On the surface, anyway. The Christ message was still there, but it was
woven into the story in subtle ways. I have highlighted the most important
words in these examples:
·
Near the beginning, Scrooge tells his nephew
that Christmas has never done him any good. Here is part of the nephew’s
response: “But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has
come round—apart from the veneration due
to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from
that—as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time.”
·
This passage comes during Scrooge’s discussion
with Marley’s ghost: “At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre said, “I
suffer most. Why did I walk through
crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that
blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode?”
·
After Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim return from
church, Tiny Tim leaves the room momentarily. While he is gone, Mrs. Cratchit
asks how he behaved in church. Bob says he was as good as gold and remarks on
how Tiny Tim says the strangest things. “He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church,
because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon
Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”
Dickens
couldn’t foresee the future and didn’t know how easily those passages could be
deleted from movie adaptations of his story. But people who read the original
version still find them there.
When
people are tired of hearing a message or simply don’t believe it, subtle is
better. And A Christmas Carol shows
me how to accomplish that.
__________
The picture at the top of
this post shows Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim returning from church. It was drawn
by Fred Barnard for an 1878 edition of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The illustration is in the public domain because
of its age.
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