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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