Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol - Book Review

Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol - Book Review

This book is a story about the death of a man called Marley and is a description about how his ghost haunts the man called "Scrooge" 7 years after his death. It gives the hint that after a person dies their spirit does not leave but follows us around watching us and almost guiding us. In the book Scrooge is visited by the spirits of Marley and 3 other ghosts. They haunt Ebenezer Scrooge and change him by making him take a look at himself and realise what he has become. Selfish.

The spirits take him to various points in his life in the hopes to change his selfish ways. The first spirit, the ghost of Christmas past, shows him a point in his childhood, when he was innocent, gentle and kind. The second spirit, the ghost of Christmas present, shows him many scenes within the present to bring out a sense of responsibility and regret for the person he has changed into. The final spirit, the ghost of Christmas yet to come, shows him what fate will become of him if he does not learn from what he has been shown and tells him if he changes his ways then there is a chance his future may not come to this. He is shown that his grave will be left to decay. That after he has gone that no one want to help him, just as he never helped anyone else and only cared for himself. The spirits then leave knowing that they have done what they can. As for Scrooge, he decides he does not like what he has seen and does not want to become that type of person, so he drastically changed his views in both life and those around him and becomes a new man.

Compared with other books which I have read, this one has had the most powerful effect on me. It has made me look at myself and not feel that I have not been satisfied with my life and realise something which I have become. But that it has affected me from the very first sentence. "Marley was dead." Following this is the fact that his ghost and another 3 spirits visited him from beyond the grave has made me look differently at the people who I have grown up around and makes me feel sick at the thought of what will become of me when they are gone. It has made me doubt my own beliefs and what will happen after death. Charles Dickens portrays that after someone dies we return to follow them around as if we were normally there. But what if that doesn't happen. What if there is nothing? That is what I have felt ever since I read it. Charles Dickens's book may not have been intended to be a horror story, but it has been giving me nightmares since I opened it.