An audience member's joyful first-hand account of Charles Dickens' public reading of "A Christmas Carol" unintentionally exposes an often overlooked in the story's climax: "Finally, there is Scrooge, no longer a miser but a human being, shouting at the 'talkative' boy in Sunday clothes, to buy him the prize turkey 'that could never stand on his own two feet, that' bird'". He may no longer be a miser but, according to this description, Scrooge still plays the role of a capitalist oppressor, ordering subordinates to provide him with luxury goods. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay While Dickens undoubtedly praises Scrooge's epiphany and subsequent change, "A Christmas Carol" also alludes to the author's resentment of an industrial society's corrupt notion of the "Christmas Spirit." Through the examples of goodwill that Christmas inspires, Dickens suggests that Christmas is merely an interruptive exception to the otherwise capitalist calendar. Even when Scrooge becomes altruistic, as in the scene above, his philanthropy still operates under the guise of capitalism, measured in economic terms and aimed ultimately at providing pleasure. Dickens subtly directs his criticism of ephemeral and selfish "holiday time" at the reader. The simple, Aristotelian structure of the narrative and the constant foreshadowing and repetition reduce any potential anxiety regarding the outcome of the story. The main cause of anxiety about the conclusion of any romantic story is identifying in some way with the protagonist. Although Scrooge is a caricature that few would commiserate with (or admit to doing), Dickens's Three Spirits draw us into sympathy with the miser. while generating empathy in him. But the production of Scrooge's humanity is just that, a manufactured, almost focus-group mode of voyeurism that attacks Scrooge at his most vulnerable and solipsistic, forcing him into visions of his harm to others or, more saliently, of its past and future. itself at the lowest level. For Dickens, the altruism that Christmas engenders is a false exercise in guilt reduction, and the affectionate ending of "A Christmas Carol" reinforces this; the satisfaction of hearing a story whose conclusion is never in jeopardy (and becomes more knowable with each year's retelling) spares the reader the self-examination Scrooge endures that a darker turn might provoke. Christmas is a good time only if the rest of the year is relatively dark, and Dickens exposes this contrast through Scrooge's nephew's optimistic reflections on: "Christmas as a good time: a kind, indulgent, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem with one accord to freely open their closed hearts and think of the people beneath them as if they were truly companions on the journey to the grave, and not a he other race of creatures headed on other journeys. between Christmas, the "only moment" of the otherwise "long calendar", corresponds to Gérard Genette's terms for the narrative techniques "singulative" and "iterative". from meditating optimistically on the benevolent singulartive at the expense of the malevolent iterative: "And every man on board, awake or asleep, good or bad, had a kinder word for another on that day than on any other day in the year." The scene, a ship, is full of hierarchies "the helmsman at the helm, the lookout at the bow, the officers who had the watch" who dissolve in joy. The Christmas spirit joins the temporary leveling of thesocial structure, as well as the nephew's vision of "traveling companions" leads to the quasi-crossbreeding of the different economic "races". Both cases gracefully elide what, exactly, happens on those other, non-Christmas days, and what defines the motivations Scrooge openly outlines the economic temporality of Christmas: "What is Christmas to you but a time to pay the bills without money; a time to find yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time to balance your accounts and have everything" has something in them for a dozen months shown up dead against you? Unlike his nephew and the men on the ship, Scrooge draws no binary between the holiday season and the rest of the capitalist calendar but, at least, remains more honest about the other 364 days of the year Despite the examples of his nephew and the sailors, Scrooge is not the only holder of an isochronous philosophy. Everyone is a slave to time and, what is worse, everyone maintains a hypocritical and capitalistic attitude towards the holiday season as functioning at the behest of the bells? "When the clock struck eleven, this house dance broke up" originally installed to unify public time, and their routine memories of capitalism echo throughout the holidays. Mrs. Cratchit makes her contradictions explicit when Cratchit asks her to drink to Scrooge's health: "'I will drink his health for you, and the day is not for him.'" This form of artificial benevolence operates on more subtle levels in the narrative. , when the narrator places an exclamation point after the optimistic conclusion the characters reach: And it was a very unusual kind of torch, for once or twice, when some dinner bearers who had bumped into each other exchanged angry words, he if they lost a few drops of water fell on them and their good mood was immediately restored. In fact, they said it was a shame to argue on Christmas Day. And so it was! God willing, so it was! Just as the consumerist competition between the "dinner bearers" is remedied with the incense from the Ghost of Christmas Present's torch, the narrator's words sprinkle a final positive commentary on the event, which began with "angry words." The narrator is also implicated in the attempt to impose an artificial diachrony on the ischronic capitalist calendar. Such a pervasive capitalist ethic also appears in the description of the characters. Scrooge's niece is delineated by various monetary traits: "She was very pretty: extremely pretty. With a dimple, a capital face with a surprised look: a little ripe mouth, which seemed made to be kissed". Starting from the transition to excess (the revision of "very cute" to "extraordinarily cute"), the niece is presented as a material asset, with "capital" and "mature" characteristics. The mouth, above all, which is not accustomed to speaking, is described in terms of production and specialization. The men at the Christmas party respond to the women accordingly; Topper stalks his "plump" sister and "assures himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring on her finger and a certain chain around her neck." Since the sister is identified by the narrator only as "plump," a word whose connotations of wealth resonate throughout the story, most often in relation to food, it is no wonder that Topper impresses her, literally, with his own signifiers of wealth. However, most readers will ignore these warning signs of an illusory Christmas spirit and instead enjoy the holiday cheer, as the narrator continues to urge them to do. Recognizing the other half (or, more precisely, 364/365) of what the characters continually refer to in hushed tones as they praise the community of Christmasit means recognizing the presence of selfishness in oneself, as Dickens indicts those, like Topper, who cause no harm but are inevitably guilty of seeking pleasure through capitalist means. The Christmas Spirits humanize Scrooge by capitalizing on this selfishness, and this process highlights the reader's sympathy for Scrooge as equally flawed; we feel compassion for a man who, deep down, feels sorry for himself. Attaching ourselves to Scrooge's struggle is a way to exonerate our selfish sins by "learning" to identify with him as he "learns" what it means to be human, we assume that we were very far from him at the beginning of the tale. Scrooge repeatedly expresses remorse for his life. Prompted by a scene of "two apprentices pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig", Scrooge responds by saying that he "would like to be able to say a word or two" to his clerk. The selfishness is diluted and understandable, evident in Scrooge's desire to be loved as Fezziwig is. The most pronounced examples of Scrooge's reformation follow visions of him at his most desperate. After Scrooge sobs as he remembers himself as an ostracized schoolboy, he reflects: "'There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night. I wish I had given him something.'" As with the apprentices, he reaches this epiphany only through identification, and here the identification is more self-centered. Solipsism masquerading as outward empathy comes to fruition when Scrooge sees his future grave: "'Assure me I can still change these shadows have shown me, with an altered life!'" Only this extreme case forces Scrooge to reverse his previous vision isochronic of time, transforming it from capitalist to festive: "'I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all year round'". Dickens not only demonstrated that such an honorable attitude is impossible in a capitalist system, that even kind-hearted souls like Mrs. Cratchit use Christmas to hide their true feelings, but the narrative drive of "A Christmas Carol" denies any ability to live, as Scrooge swears, "'in the past, present and future'". History is constantly in motion, even when revisiting the past. Such a vision of the future, what Genette calls “proleptic,” accomplishes two central tasks. First, it places the narrative in a capitalist temporality in which all present (or past) actions are undertaken to ensure future profit. Scrooge is often impatient during his tour and expresses a longing for the future in economic vocabulary. He implores the Ghost of Christmas Present: "'Tonight, if you have anything to teach me, let me profit by it.'" In the future, command: "Continue! Lead! Night is falling fast, and it's precious time for me, I know. Lead!'" The triple repetition of "Lead!" mimics his proleptic motivations in all three tenses, which calls into question his ability to blend past, present, and future. Before the visit of the first of the three ghosts, he tries to compress his eventual epiphany into a uniform temporality: "'Couldn't I take them all at once and be done with it, Jacob?' mentioned Scrooge." Scrooge's "hint" to Jacob is also a hint to the audience of the lesson Scrooge will eventually learn, and the second purpose of the proleptic narrative is expressly about the audience. The foreshadowing in the story leaves little doubt about the conclusion, or even what happens next, and the repetitions reinforce and bring us back to the foreshadowing. The opening sentence triggers the method of foreclosure that will continue throughout the narrative: "Marley was dead: for one thing. There's no doubt about that." After stating that "Marley was as dead as a doornail," the narrator spends the next paragraph dwelling on the cliché just invokedand then, after examining the repetition inherent in the cliché, comments by iteration: "Permit me then to repeat, with emphasis, that Marley was as dead as a doornail." Let's go back to the idea behind the first line, the original intent of which was to provide an advance hint of Marley's ghost and quell doubts about the future by leading the reader there. This technique works in concert with the reader's imperfect sympathy for Scrooge as reproach. Imperfect sympathy convinces us that we are different from Scrooge, and that he is learning to be more like the reader, who already has vacation time in his heart. Proleptic narration reduces any anxiety we may have about the outcome, an anxiety generally born of conscious identification with the protagonist. The proleptic thrust of the narrative increases through the lines, from the analeptic exposition to the prolepsis in the first stave, proleptic analepsis in Christmas Past (because in the past we receive clues about Scrooge's eventual transformation), prolepsis in Christmas Present in which the prefiguration solidifies ( and transforms from simple hints into stable warnings), and in Christmas Future into analeptic prolepsis. The less anxious we feel, the more garnishments we receive, the less we have to ask ourselves why, exactly, we are concerned about Scrooge's plight. This is not to say that the reader feels nothing for Scrooge, but that the reader's care for him comes from a superior position in which the reader believes that he, along with Dickens, is co-educating the miser on the meaning of Christmas. And, rather than destroying the story's entertainment value, the foreclosure and repetition of "A Christmas Carol" instead calms the audience, bringing them the satisfying ending they crave in advance. This satisfaction arrives in the final pentagram but, as I hope to have demonstrated, in reality a small temporal adjustment has occurred. Another audience member observes that Dickens has "a twinkle in his eye, when he comes in, that, like an IOU, pledges himself to any amount of fun within sixty minutes." As long as it doesn't overstep its temporal boundaries, the audience is willing to get involved in its story, and the fast-paced final pentagram guarantees this. All the clues that Scrooge is a changed man can also be read as indicating the absence of any change. Upon returning from his ghostly tour, he wakes up: "Yes! and the bedpost was his. The bed was his, the room was his." . Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his, to make amends!" The familiarity of Scrooge's surroundings is part of the reason Dickens repeats "it was his," but the cloud of ownership hangs over his happiness, which includes a sense of ownership in time. Scrooge still runs like clockwork; after running into another room, he is described as "perfectly breathless." freedom, as when he joyfully responds to church bells “ringing out” chimes he had never heard,” is still rooted in a manic drive to use the present efficiently. His reaction to the indirect purchase of the turkey exemplifies the stagnant capitalist ethic he upholds: "I'll send him to Bob Cratchit!" - whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands and bursting out laughing. "He won't know who sent him." He is twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never pulled such a prank as sending it to Bob!'Scrooge still exhibits all the mannerisms that accompany a corporate takeover's hands rubbing in eager anticipation, self-satisfied laughter, and is proud of the greatness he offers to the poor family. , comparing the size of his gift to the minimal stature of the Cratchit symbol of poverty. The only anonymity that, 1980.