of a ‘jolly, kind-hearted bachelor uncle, seated across the hearth from his hearers on some festive occasion’ (Slater, 1969, p.20). The story’s opening and closing passages certainly suggest a convivial narrator who is telling the tale to a group of close friends. Thus, the voice speaks of ‘our ancestors’ (p.33, author’s italics), digresses to talk about coffin nails and brings the story to a close with a pun on the word ‘spirit’, when he speaks of the ‘Total Abstinence Principle’ (p.118). This approach sets the tone for a Christmas ghost story, but does not prepare the reader for some of the terror to follow, or for the novella’s stern moral message.
Notwithstanding the almost jocular tone that surrounds the three chapters in which Scrooge is haunted, Slater’s comments downplay the force of some of the more sinister characters and the language they invoke. The first ghost is gentle and, aside from introducing his various visions, he has very little to say. The Ghost of Christmas Present, however, is a much more imposing figure. While he begins in a beneficent, jovial manner, as his time on earth grows shorter, his words become increasingly urgent and condemnatory. He foreshadows a future in which the neglected underclass will rise up to seize the basic comforts it has been denied. His vocabulary is appropriately bleak as he predicts the ‘Doom’ ahead (p.94). So powerful are this spirit’s words, that in the next stave, the faceless Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is denied language altogether, depending only on eerie gestures and the reader’s imagination to generate his meanings, in a creative masterstroke through which Dickens forces readers to project their own terror onto the phantom.
Scrooge’s own language undergoes a remarkable transformation between the beginning and the end of the story. When we first encounter him, Scrooge’s favourite expression is the dismissive ‘Bah! … Humbug!’ (p.35), with which he rejects any talk of charity or Christmas cheer. His speech is limited to necessary communications and when he is away from his office, eating dinner in a tavern, he is completely silent. The force of Scrooge’s words is emphasised through the growls and snarls with which he delivers them (p.37). However, once he has been redeemed by the spirits’ ghostly visions, his language changes as rapidly as his personality. His speech becomes effusive, punctuated by laughter and expressions of joy. He also incorporates simile and metaphor into his exclamations, comparing himself to an angel, a feather and a schoolboy all in one breath (p.111) and talking endlessly of his happiness about the second chance he has been offered.
CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER ANALYSIS
Preface (p.28)
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