Sunday, December 26, 2010
Story Euphoria 11: A Christmas Carol, Staves 4&5
Happy Holidays from Story Euphoria! We've reached the end of A Christmas Carol. Download and listen to the rousing conclusion!
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Magical Mystery by Forsonmeyer
In Somber Dreams We Dwell, pt 2, by Ken Smalts
and Amazing Grace arranged and performed by John Chamley
The Transformation Imperative
This week, the Story Euphoria podcast reaches the end of a four-episode celebration of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, witnessing one of the most famous and profound character transformations in popular culture: the hard-bitten and selfish Scrooge reclaims a child-like sense of joy and wonder. Because this transformation is “the point” of the story, the novella could be considered a transformation story.
Of course, the argument can be made that all stories are transformation stories. Students of the literary arts are often told that the characters in their stories must change in the course of the telling. Dynamic characters, we are informed, are much more desirable than static ones. Perhaps minor characters can be static, but hero protagonists must change for a story to be successful.
But is this really true?
Let’s imagine a story where the central character doesn’t change: Frank is unhappily married at the beginning of the story and sees himself as the victim of all the forces in his life—his wife, his job, his ungrateful children. During the course of the novel, his wife leaves him, his son evades a narcotics arrest by burning the garage down, he looses his daughter to an aggressive cancer, he wins a trip to Tahiti but also loses his job. However, at the end of all this, Frank’s outlook is the same. He still sees himself as the victim of these events and is passively dragged through them by his dedicated author.
Reading this, we might be frustrated by Frank and give up on reading his story—that is the risk his author runs. However, can we really say, despite the pains the author has taken to make it so, that Frank is completely unchanged? Maybe the first line of the book is Frank coming back from work, saying, “I’m home.” At the end of the book, he gets back from Tahiti, suntanned, parking his car out in the snow because the garage is yet to be replaced. When he walks in and says, “I’m home,” to the empty house, the very context of all that has happened has completely changed the impact of the words. Frank may be stubbornly entrenched in his self-pity, but he is in a different place at the end of the story than he was at the beginning, and this embodies his own transformation on a subtle level, if not on the grandiose level of Scrooge. We, the readers, can’t help but read him differently than we did at the beginning, no matter how hard the author tries to keep him the same. So, Frank has changed.
My example of Frank may be poor, so let’s look at an example from the literary cannon. Critics have suggested that the heroine of the epic Gone with the Wind is a static character, and that Melanie, as a very dynamic character, is the true heroine. But the book is not written with Melanie as the centerpiece, the vortex around which the other characters and events revolve. From beginning to end, we are emphatically concerned with Scarlet and her point of view. Yet the critics do have a point: after all she goes through—ravaged by the austerities of the Civil War, widowed, punished by the death of her child, et cetera—up to the last page of the book she is still using her same old wiles to snare her man.
Yet, enough has changed in her life and the lives of the other characters that, despite her resilience of spirit (which indeed, is a prominent theme of the story), Scarlet is in a different place. The focus of her affection has, perhaps sincerely, changed from Ashley Wilkes to Rhett Butler. Rhett famously refuses her, and by virtue of leaving the story at this juncture it is easy for the reader to imagine that Scarlet’s infatuation for him is not only sincere now, but is going to grow more tenacious, as it did for the unobtainable Ashley. And if her feelings have changed, then Scarlet herself has surely changed, even if she is also the “same old” Scarlet.
In short, the events of the book have made it impossible for her not to change. All supports her old character relied upon, other than Rhett, are dead or in other ways removed from her, and Rhett himself abandons her on the last few pages. With a change as big as this in all things against which she could be identified, the old Scarlet can no longer exist. It may have taken over 1,000 pages of narrative to do it, but she has no hope at the end but to change, and that change is the tragic taste the last page leaves in the back of the mouth.
To expand the Scarlet Principle to stories at large, just consider what is necessary for a story to be a story. It’s like the old newspaperman’s adage: “Dog Bites Man” is not a story, but “Man Bites Dog” is. A story happens whenever something out of the ordinary happens, something that only happens once in the lives of the characters who figure within it. Anything else is just a character sketch or a situation from which there is no outcome. In other words, the very nature of a story mandates that the principle characters journey through events remarkable enough to trouble an author to write about them. Characters cannot go through such events without being at a different place, physically or emotionally, than they were at the beginning. Being in a different place is just another way of saying that the characters have transformed.
So rather than asking if characters must change for a story to be successful, perhaps it is more useful to ask whether the story takes its characters from one place to another—that is, if anything happens in the story. Likewise, if the characters in a story do honestly feel static throughout (really static, not like Frank or Scarlet), then it is a sign that the story hasn’t become a story yet. Once it blossoms, there is no choice for characters but to change, as surely as the tide is pulled by the moon, for change is the by-product of story.
Of course, the argument can be made that all stories are transformation stories. Students of the literary arts are often told that the characters in their stories must change in the course of the telling. Dynamic characters, we are informed, are much more desirable than static ones. Perhaps minor characters can be static, but hero protagonists must change for a story to be successful.
But is this really true?
Let’s imagine a story where the central character doesn’t change: Frank is unhappily married at the beginning of the story and sees himself as the victim of all the forces in his life—his wife, his job, his ungrateful children. During the course of the novel, his wife leaves him, his son evades a narcotics arrest by burning the garage down, he looses his daughter to an aggressive cancer, he wins a trip to Tahiti but also loses his job. However, at the end of all this, Frank’s outlook is the same. He still sees himself as the victim of these events and is passively dragged through them by his dedicated author.
Reading this, we might be frustrated by Frank and give up on reading his story—that is the risk his author runs. However, can we really say, despite the pains the author has taken to make it so, that Frank is completely unchanged? Maybe the first line of the book is Frank coming back from work, saying, “I’m home.” At the end of the book, he gets back from Tahiti, suntanned, parking his car out in the snow because the garage is yet to be replaced. When he walks in and says, “I’m home,” to the empty house, the very context of all that has happened has completely changed the impact of the words. Frank may be stubbornly entrenched in his self-pity, but he is in a different place at the end of the story than he was at the beginning, and this embodies his own transformation on a subtle level, if not on the grandiose level of Scrooge. We, the readers, can’t help but read him differently than we did at the beginning, no matter how hard the author tries to keep him the same. So, Frank has changed.
My example of Frank may be poor, so let’s look at an example from the literary cannon. Critics have suggested that the heroine of the epic Gone with the Wind is a static character, and that Melanie, as a very dynamic character, is the true heroine. But the book is not written with Melanie as the centerpiece, the vortex around which the other characters and events revolve. From beginning to end, we are emphatically concerned with Scarlet and her point of view. Yet the critics do have a point: after all she goes through—ravaged by the austerities of the Civil War, widowed, punished by the death of her child, et cetera—up to the last page of the book she is still using her same old wiles to snare her man.
Yet, enough has changed in her life and the lives of the other characters that, despite her resilience of spirit (which indeed, is a prominent theme of the story), Scarlet is in a different place. The focus of her affection has, perhaps sincerely, changed from Ashley Wilkes to Rhett Butler. Rhett famously refuses her, and by virtue of leaving the story at this juncture it is easy for the reader to imagine that Scarlet’s infatuation for him is not only sincere now, but is going to grow more tenacious, as it did for the unobtainable Ashley. And if her feelings have changed, then Scarlet herself has surely changed, even if she is also the “same old” Scarlet.
In short, the events of the book have made it impossible for her not to change. All supports her old character relied upon, other than Rhett, are dead or in other ways removed from her, and Rhett himself abandons her on the last few pages. With a change as big as this in all things against which she could be identified, the old Scarlet can no longer exist. It may have taken over 1,000 pages of narrative to do it, but she has no hope at the end but to change, and that change is the tragic taste the last page leaves in the back of the mouth.
To expand the Scarlet Principle to stories at large, just consider what is necessary for a story to be a story. It’s like the old newspaperman’s adage: “Dog Bites Man” is not a story, but “Man Bites Dog” is. A story happens whenever something out of the ordinary happens, something that only happens once in the lives of the characters who figure within it. Anything else is just a character sketch or a situation from which there is no outcome. In other words, the very nature of a story mandates that the principle characters journey through events remarkable enough to trouble an author to write about them. Characters cannot go through such events without being at a different place, physically or emotionally, than they were at the beginning. Being in a different place is just another way of saying that the characters have transformed.
So rather than asking if characters must change for a story to be successful, perhaps it is more useful to ask whether the story takes its characters from one place to another—that is, if anything happens in the story. Likewise, if the characters in a story do honestly feel static throughout (really static, not like Frank or Scarlet), then it is a sign that the story hasn’t become a story yet. Once it blossoms, there is no choice for characters but to change, as surely as the tide is pulled by the moon, for change is the by-product of story.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Story Euphoria 10: A Christmas Carol, Stave 3
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol continues with Stave 3, The Second of the Three Spirits. Download and listen!
If you missed the first two episodes of this series, check out the previous December podcasts.
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Magical Mystery by Forsonmeyer
and a medley on O Come All Ye Faithful, by Larkin Productions
Christmas Spirits
Most of the stories this time of year have something to do with Santa Claus or dysfunctional families finding the Christmas spirit despite their many mishaps, et cetera. Yet there is another kind of spirit that used to haunt the fireside this time of year—the more sepulchral sort that nowadays we more commonly associate with Halloween. But in the 19th century, ghost stories were a staple of Christmas Eve gatherings. Little wonder then, that Charles Dickens made a tradition of writing short stories with ghostly themes around the 25th of December.
Perhaps this was merely the consequence of gathering family and friends together on a cold and long winter’s night—what better way to pass the time? People told stories a lot more in those days, rather than letting the television do it for them. Furthermore, Victorians had an appetite for ghost stories, which littered all sorts of publications from magazines to monographs, and no doubt the shelves filled with annual collections when the end of the year rolled around. Moreover, telling scary stories around a fire fit well with other activities and games of the season that likewise have nothing in particular to do with Christmas—charades, cards, and blind man’s bluff—which are simply party entertainments. One version of the ghost story game followed the rule that a new bundle of sticks would be thrown on the fire at the beginning of each person’s story and the tale had to last as long as it took the sticks to burn.
The popularity of Christmas Eve ghost stories is well documented, with Dickens’ stories standing out as the most well-known. Jerome K. Jerome once wrote, “whenever five or six English-speaking people meet around a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories.” Also, Henry James’ unnerving ghost story, The Turn of the Screw begins with a frame where friends are trading spooky stories around a fireplace on Christmas Eve. Echoes of this quirky tradition can still be seen today, such as in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, or as referenced in the lyrics from the 1963 Andy Williams song, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: “There'll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting and caroling out in the snow. There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.”
It would be a shame to let the tradition vanish. We don’t tell stories nearly often enough as it is. Next time you are at a party on a long dark night, frost encrusting the window panes, saturated with fatty foods and punch, gather round in a circle and give it a shot. You might just be able to conjure the spirit of storytelling back to life.
Perhaps this was merely the consequence of gathering family and friends together on a cold and long winter’s night—what better way to pass the time? People told stories a lot more in those days, rather than letting the television do it for them. Furthermore, Victorians had an appetite for ghost stories, which littered all sorts of publications from magazines to monographs, and no doubt the shelves filled with annual collections when the end of the year rolled around. Moreover, telling scary stories around a fire fit well with other activities and games of the season that likewise have nothing in particular to do with Christmas—charades, cards, and blind man’s bluff—which are simply party entertainments. One version of the ghost story game followed the rule that a new bundle of sticks would be thrown on the fire at the beginning of each person’s story and the tale had to last as long as it took the sticks to burn.
The popularity of Christmas Eve ghost stories is well documented, with Dickens’ stories standing out as the most well-known. Jerome K. Jerome once wrote, “whenever five or six English-speaking people meet around a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories.” Also, Henry James’ unnerving ghost story, The Turn of the Screw begins with a frame where friends are trading spooky stories around a fireplace on Christmas Eve. Echoes of this quirky tradition can still be seen today, such as in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, or as referenced in the lyrics from the 1963 Andy Williams song, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: “There'll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting and caroling out in the snow. There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.”
It would be a shame to let the tradition vanish. We don’t tell stories nearly often enough as it is. Next time you are at a party on a long dark night, frost encrusting the window panes, saturated with fatty foods and punch, gather round in a circle and give it a shot. You might just be able to conjure the spirit of storytelling back to life.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Story Euphoria 9: A Christmas Carol, Stave 2
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol continues with Stave 2, The First of the Three Spirits. Download and listen!
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Magical Mystery by Forsonmeyer
and Jingle Banjos, by G.H. Wikfors
Author Spotlight: Charles Dickens
Biographies of Dickens abound, and one short blog entry cannot hope to cover all the facets of any man’s life, yet, in tandem with Story Euphoria’s four-week celebration of A Christmas Carol, it’s worthwhile to take another look at the life events that shaped his writing.
Innovations in paper-making and the publishing industry that accompanied the Industrial Revolution allowed a popular author like Charles Dickens to reach a larger audience than any writer before his time, both in England and abroad. It was estimated that one in ten literate adults in Great Britain read Dickens, and that these readers frequently read his works aloud to many others. He was beloved in his own time for much the same thing he is admired for today—a talent for crafting memorable characters, often using natural speech and slang from across all levels of society. Because of these large and diverse casts, Dickens’ stories did indeed appeal to privileged and poor readers alike, no doubt helped along by larger-than-life plots that, while often displaying dark sides, frequently incorporated fairy tale turns of fate, as in the story of Oliver Twist, the orphan who goes from rags to riches, or in the frequent number of happy love matches that protagonists find by the end of the novel. In the 19th century as today, people loved happy endings, and Victorian taste was such that Dickens did not have to worry about coming across as “too sentimental.”
That is not to say Dickens’ tales are all roses and sunshine. Far from it. If protagonists find happiness by the end of the story, it is only after experiencing many trials. Themes of abandonment and betrayal are rampant, frequently embodied as ill-treated children, such as Oliver, David Copperfield, and poor Little Nell, one character who does not survive her story, The Old Curiosity Shop, or meet with any happy end. Dickens himself claimed this was due to the fact that, when he was twelve years old, his father’s financial mismanagement landed the elder Dickens in debtor’s prison. The entire family went to live there with him with the exception of Charles, who was sent to work at a shoe-blacking factory. The jarring transition from his middle-class and genteel upbringing to work as a factory boy was traumatizing to Dickens, and he never could forgive his mother who, even after the family managed to get free of the debt collectors, wished to see Charles remain at the factory. His father spared him the fate, instead sending him to attend a day school. Surely this pivotal crossroads haunted Dickens, for he narrowly escaped an uneducated and mean existence from which he almost certainly couldn’t have emerged as an author.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that this episode became a source of creativity for Dickens, providing an unending supply of material for plots and his colorful characters. This is seen prevalently in David Copperfield, a semi-autobiographical novel, in which the title protagonist goes through experiences that echo young Dickens’ own life. Also, one of the more memorable characters (and an incorrigible mismanager of money), Mr. Micawber, is a caricature of Dickens’ father. Likewise, Dickens drew on these early years when writing Little Dorrit, which begins with the principal family of the story living in debtor’s prison. And it is surely no coincidence that those family members constantly hound and take advantage of the title protagonist, much as Dickens’ own family badgered him for money after he became a successful author.
These characters (often caricatures, exaggerating qualities Dickens observed in those around him) might easily be criticized by the modern literary scholar as “flat.” In fact, Dickens’ minor characters are notoriously affixed throughout the entire course of his novels with repetitive tag lines and characteristics that never change—that’s how we know them. The effect is comical, and students of writing today would be leery to allow simplistic characters to inhabit their stories for the sole purpose of comic relief. Every character should add meaning to the story, should be real and “round,” even minor ones. Writers should know intimately every character who appears, even if they share but one line of dialogue. Caricatures, after all, are predictable and therefore not interesting, not alive.
So why do Dickens’ most boiled down caricatures still manage to resonate, to vibrate with something more? Take, for example, Mrs. Micawber who, in David Copperfield, seems to appear only for the purpose of delivering the laugh line, “I never will desert Mr. Micawber.” This is what she says from beginning to end, and indeed, she never does desert him.
The point, perhaps, is that characters can be flat but still be true and embody something vital about human nature. While many of Dickens characters may be considered “flat” by modern standards, his magic touch lies in his careful choice of what he caricatures. While Mrs. Micawber remains static and predictable throughout the narrative, her character still achieves a funny sort of complexity simply because her catch phrase reveals something about the human condition, and about who she really is: a housewife devoted to publicly maintaining a noble-sounding but deluded standard. This doesn’t make her a “round” character, but it does make her an interesting one.
In short, any student of literature interested in the possibilities of characterization would do well to read Dickens. A commentary on Dickens work, in an 1858 publication of Blackwoods’ Edinburgh Magazine, put it this way: "we are engrossed with a few favorite personages, and are delighted when they appear, look with eagerness for their return, and when the book is closed, we have some vague impression that we may possibly catch sight of them somewhere about the world.”
Innovations in paper-making and the publishing industry that accompanied the Industrial Revolution allowed a popular author like Charles Dickens to reach a larger audience than any writer before his time, both in England and abroad. It was estimated that one in ten literate adults in Great Britain read Dickens, and that these readers frequently read his works aloud to many others. He was beloved in his own time for much the same thing he is admired for today—a talent for crafting memorable characters, often using natural speech and slang from across all levels of society. Because of these large and diverse casts, Dickens’ stories did indeed appeal to privileged and poor readers alike, no doubt helped along by larger-than-life plots that, while often displaying dark sides, frequently incorporated fairy tale turns of fate, as in the story of Oliver Twist, the orphan who goes from rags to riches, or in the frequent number of happy love matches that protagonists find by the end of the novel. In the 19th century as today, people loved happy endings, and Victorian taste was such that Dickens did not have to worry about coming across as “too sentimental.”
That is not to say Dickens’ tales are all roses and sunshine. Far from it. If protagonists find happiness by the end of the story, it is only after experiencing many trials. Themes of abandonment and betrayal are rampant, frequently embodied as ill-treated children, such as Oliver, David Copperfield, and poor Little Nell, one character who does not survive her story, The Old Curiosity Shop, or meet with any happy end. Dickens himself claimed this was due to the fact that, when he was twelve years old, his father’s financial mismanagement landed the elder Dickens in debtor’s prison. The entire family went to live there with him with the exception of Charles, who was sent to work at a shoe-blacking factory. The jarring transition from his middle-class and genteel upbringing to work as a factory boy was traumatizing to Dickens, and he never could forgive his mother who, even after the family managed to get free of the debt collectors, wished to see Charles remain at the factory. His father spared him the fate, instead sending him to attend a day school. Surely this pivotal crossroads haunted Dickens, for he narrowly escaped an uneducated and mean existence from which he almost certainly couldn’t have emerged as an author.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that this episode became a source of creativity for Dickens, providing an unending supply of material for plots and his colorful characters. This is seen prevalently in David Copperfield, a semi-autobiographical novel, in which the title protagonist goes through experiences that echo young Dickens’ own life. Also, one of the more memorable characters (and an incorrigible mismanager of money), Mr. Micawber, is a caricature of Dickens’ father. Likewise, Dickens drew on these early years when writing Little Dorrit, which begins with the principal family of the story living in debtor’s prison. And it is surely no coincidence that those family members constantly hound and take advantage of the title protagonist, much as Dickens’ own family badgered him for money after he became a successful author.
These characters (often caricatures, exaggerating qualities Dickens observed in those around him) might easily be criticized by the modern literary scholar as “flat.” In fact, Dickens’ minor characters are notoriously affixed throughout the entire course of his novels with repetitive tag lines and characteristics that never change—that’s how we know them. The effect is comical, and students of writing today would be leery to allow simplistic characters to inhabit their stories for the sole purpose of comic relief. Every character should add meaning to the story, should be real and “round,” even minor ones. Writers should know intimately every character who appears, even if they share but one line of dialogue. Caricatures, after all, are predictable and therefore not interesting, not alive.
So why do Dickens’ most boiled down caricatures still manage to resonate, to vibrate with something more? Take, for example, Mrs. Micawber who, in David Copperfield, seems to appear only for the purpose of delivering the laugh line, “I never will desert Mr. Micawber.” This is what she says from beginning to end, and indeed, she never does desert him.
The point, perhaps, is that characters can be flat but still be true and embody something vital about human nature. While many of Dickens characters may be considered “flat” by modern standards, his magic touch lies in his careful choice of what he caricatures. While Mrs. Micawber remains static and predictable throughout the narrative, her character still achieves a funny sort of complexity simply because her catch phrase reveals something about the human condition, and about who she really is: a housewife devoted to publicly maintaining a noble-sounding but deluded standard. This doesn’t make her a “round” character, but it does make her an interesting one.
In short, any student of literature interested in the possibilities of characterization would do well to read Dickens. A commentary on Dickens work, in an 1858 publication of Blackwoods’ Edinburgh Magazine, put it this way: "we are engrossed with a few favorite personages, and are delighted when they appear, look with eagerness for their return, and when the book is closed, we have some vague impression that we may possibly catch sight of them somewhere about the world.”
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Story Euphoria 8: A Christmas Carol, Stave 1
It's not much of an exaggeration to say "everyone" knows this story. We are surrounded by various adaptations where Muppets or modern misers in Brooklyn step in to fill familiar roles, yet when was the last time (if ever) you read Dickens' original? Our December-long journey through Dickens' timeless tale starts here. Download and listen!
If you want to follow along this month with a text of your own, you can get a digital copy for free from Project Gutenberg, or check your local library. You might also consider making a gift of it this season (maybe to yourself):
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Magical Mystery by Forsonmeyer
and God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen performed by Bob Couchenour
The Makings of a Timeless Classic
In the short story collection, You’ve Got to Read This, John Irving introduces A Christmas Carol by relating a story from a time he spent living with a circus in northwest India. One afternoon he was having tea in the ringmaster’s tent when he was surprised by an overheard snatch of English dialogue from a nearby TV. He at once recognized the voice as that of Jacob Marley’s Ghost, crying out against Scrooge’s compliment on his business skills: “Business! Mankind was my business.” He wandered over to the television to find a troupe of child acrobats seated on rugs, glued to the TV. He was surprised by their fascination, as he writes, “If the principal point of A Christmas Carol is that Scrooge reforms—that he learns ‘how to keep Christmas well’—these child acrobats had never kept Christmas at all; moreover, they never would keep it. Also, they spoke and understood little English, yet they knew and loved the tale.”
Mistaking Irving’s bemused curiosity for unfamiliarity with the tale, one child attempted to explain who the characters were and what was happening. Irving tried to convey his own understanding when he replied to her, “A Christmas Carol.” But the words didn’t seem to mean anything. Then the ringmaster, also not a man who kept Christmas, explained to him, “The children’s favorite ghost story.”
Indeed, A Christmas Carol is a ghost story. It is also a Christmas story. It is both and it is more than either of these things, or how else to explain the popularity the tale has achieved globally, with translations extant in every language group and countless adaptations to stage, opera, film and television. Dickens’ novella has been credited with popularizing the expression, “Merry Christmas,” and of course gave us, “Bah! Humbug!” When Thomas Carlyle, a Calvinistic thinker of the times, read A Christmas Carol, he was, rather out-of-character, “seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality,” according to his wife. Indeed, so wide is the influence of this little ghost story that it has never been out of print since it first appeared in 1843.
How to explain it?
It helped that A Christmas Carol appeared in a perfect storm of conditions. Victorian England was undergoing a rejuvenated interest in old Christmas traditions, as well as introducing new traditions like the Christmas Tree, providing fertile soil for this tale to blossom. Furthermore, Dickens was already a popular writer and had a veritable mob of loyal fans who would insure the work was not overlooked. Yet these factors alone would not be enough to catapult the novella into the status it enjoys today as a Timeless Classic. After all, if it was just about Christmas Irving would not have had that charming experience in the circus tent, and none of Dickens works is nearly so ubiquitous, though equally loved by his fans, past and present.
I think it comes down to the fact that this tale is a warning, as Marley tells us in the very first “stave,” which all humans, regardless of culture or era, cannot help but heed. Scrooge’s adventure shows us clearly and believably that the greatest wealth is derived in equal proportion to our capacity for sympathy and generosity, and the cost of not cultivating these gifts is to die unmourned and unloved. Interestingly, Dickens conveys all of this through use of the prototypical hero’s journey.
Joseph Campbell, philosopher and mythologist, popularized the theory that all myths across time and culture share common elements, and in particular he thought hero myths exemplified this “monomyth” tendency. Campbell summarized the cycle of the hero’s journey in his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
The infamous Ebenezer Scrooge—a geriatric and antisocial “old sinner”—may seem like a bizarre choice of hero, but the elements of the hero’s journey play out to the letter! If Campbell is correct that all cultures have such stories, then it is no wonder the Hindu children in the circus tent loved the tale as much as Christian children in the West. Like all of the greatest stories, A Christmas Carol speaks to the most basic human fears and desires, and furthermore, it offers hope that even the nastiest members of our species can change.
Mistaking Irving’s bemused curiosity for unfamiliarity with the tale, one child attempted to explain who the characters were and what was happening. Irving tried to convey his own understanding when he replied to her, “A Christmas Carol.” But the words didn’t seem to mean anything. Then the ringmaster, also not a man who kept Christmas, explained to him, “The children’s favorite ghost story.”
Indeed, A Christmas Carol is a ghost story. It is also a Christmas story. It is both and it is more than either of these things, or how else to explain the popularity the tale has achieved globally, with translations extant in every language group and countless adaptations to stage, opera, film and television. Dickens’ novella has been credited with popularizing the expression, “Merry Christmas,” and of course gave us, “Bah! Humbug!” When Thomas Carlyle, a Calvinistic thinker of the times, read A Christmas Carol, he was, rather out-of-character, “seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality,” according to his wife. Indeed, so wide is the influence of this little ghost story that it has never been out of print since it first appeared in 1843.
How to explain it?
It helped that A Christmas Carol appeared in a perfect storm of conditions. Victorian England was undergoing a rejuvenated interest in old Christmas traditions, as well as introducing new traditions like the Christmas Tree, providing fertile soil for this tale to blossom. Furthermore, Dickens was already a popular writer and had a veritable mob of loyal fans who would insure the work was not overlooked. Yet these factors alone would not be enough to catapult the novella into the status it enjoys today as a Timeless Classic. After all, if it was just about Christmas Irving would not have had that charming experience in the circus tent, and none of Dickens works is nearly so ubiquitous, though equally loved by his fans, past and present.
I think it comes down to the fact that this tale is a warning, as Marley tells us in the very first “stave,” which all humans, regardless of culture or era, cannot help but heed. Scrooge’s adventure shows us clearly and believably that the greatest wealth is derived in equal proportion to our capacity for sympathy and generosity, and the cost of not cultivating these gifts is to die unmourned and unloved. Interestingly, Dickens conveys all of this through use of the prototypical hero’s journey.
Joseph Campbell, philosopher and mythologist, popularized the theory that all myths across time and culture share common elements, and in particular he thought hero myths exemplified this “monomyth” tendency. Campbell summarized the cycle of the hero’s journey in his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” The infamous Ebenezer Scrooge—a geriatric and antisocial “old sinner”—may seem like a bizarre choice of hero, but the elements of the hero’s journey play out to the letter! If Campbell is correct that all cultures have such stories, then it is no wonder the Hindu children in the circus tent loved the tale as much as Christian children in the West. Like all of the greatest stories, A Christmas Carol speaks to the most basic human fears and desires, and furthermore, it offers hope that even the nastiest members of our species can change.
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