A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Dec
'07
I was telling Richard this morning as I was finishing up this book that it’s so much fuller than any of the movie adaptations. I mean, it seems that in those, the Scrooge character doesn’t repent his evil ways until the final Spirit visits him, and he realizes what an awful, lonely death he’ll have. That shouldn’t be the only thing that turns him, and in the book it isn’t. I wouldn’t like to admit that I cried at the end, but I did, and even though this story has been told to me since my first comprehending Christmas, this was the first time I ever really got anything out of it.
We read the story in seventh grade and then saw the play at Ford’s Theatre (the place where Lincoln was shot). It was more exciting for me to be in Ford’s Theatre as I was a big fan of Lincoln at the time, so I wasn’t really paying attention to the play or how it was portrayed. I have vague memories of it: some lighting, Scrooge in his night gown, a table full of food that was so shiny it was either painted with cooking spray or it was actually real. I didn’t get much out of the story then either, however, and up until now reruns of Christmas Carol based stories have struck me much the same way reruns of any old shows do: They’re just reruns, ways to pass the time in a slightly entertaining way.
Scrooge, however, never seems to quite get anything out of his experience until the end when lowly thieves are stealing his bedsheets. What I really liked about the book is how he started to change, to want to become a better man and share in all the happiness of his coworkers and family, all right from the first Spirit. It was gradual, yes, but it was there, and as cheesey as it may have been, it was much more touching than a man who turns away from his greed only so that he doesn’t have to die a lonely death.
I read this book on the purpose that I hadn’t read it in so long and thus hadn’t remembered much of it, but also because I’d like to start reading more Christmasy books around Christmas time. Perhaps, like with The Christmas Box, I will analyze all the confusing idiocy in the writing, and state that although it may have been touching it wasn’t particularly good. The other reason was to compare this book to the aforementioned title which I’ve heard some say is in muc higher regard than A Christmas Carol. I now find that very hard to believe.
A short book at merely 100 or so pages, A Christmas Carol was still jam-packed with so much more emotion, attachment, and engrossing text than The Christmas Box was. The narrator was even as into it as the characters were, wereas in the Richard Paul Evans book, the narrator was quite indifferent to the events and seemed only to be telling the story out of obligation for the Christmas season. Though Dickens doesn’t make you feel like you’re there so much that you’re pulled so thoroughly into the book and you can’t escape, it’s still better to be excited about the goings on in a book than it is to be totally uncaring. Why read a book if the narrator doesn’t even seem to care?
This book also made me think that I’d like a leatherbound edition that I can read over and over which won’t be destroyed until years after use. I’d pay $27, or more, for this copy I speak of, but the $27 towards the Christmas Box hardcover hardly seems worth the savings. And yet, A Christmas Carol is offered in smaller, cheaper paperback sizes, and The Christmas Box is not, at least not widely. I’m not sure what to make of this, but I feel sorry for anyone who should receive a small paperback of A Christmas Carol and an expensive hardcover of The Christmas Box. They might actually expect the latter to be better.
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