A Capitalist's Criticism of Christmas in "A Christmas Carol" story: "At last there is Scrooge, no longer a miser, but a human being, shouting at the 'talkative' boy in his Sunday best to buy him the prize turkey 'which could never have stood on his legs , this bird'". Perhaps he is no longer a miser, but, according to this description, Scrooge still plays the role of a capitalist oppressor, ordering his subordinates to bring him luxuries. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Although Dickens undoubtedly praises Scrooge's epiphany and the change that resulted from it, "A Christmas Carol" also alludes to the author's resentment of society's corrupt notion industrial by an industrial company. “The spirit of Christmas.” Through the examples of goodwill sparked by Christmas, Dickens suggests that Christmas is merely a disruptive 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 ultimately aimed at providing pleasure. Dickens subtly turns his criticism of the fleeting and selfish “vacation time” towards the reader. The simple, Aristotelian structure of the story and the constant foreshadowing and repetition reduce any potential anxiety about the outcome of the story. The main cause of anxiety about the conclusion of any sentimental tale is identifying in some way with the protagonist. Although Scrooge is a caricature with whom few would sympathize (or admit to doing so), Dickens's Three Spirits draws us into sympathy with the miser. while simultaneously engendering empathy in him. But Scrooge's production of humanity is just that, a manufactured, almost focus group mode of voyeurism that attacks Scrooge at his most vulnerable and solipsistic, by imposing upon him visions of the harm he has done to others, or, more significantly, his own past and his future. self at the lowest. For Dickens, the altruism that Christmas engenders is a false exercise in guilt reduction, and the ending of “A Christmas Carol” reinforces this; the satisfaction of listening to a story whose conclusion is never in jeopardy (and becomes easier to know as the years go by) spares the reader the self-examination that Scrooge endures and that a darker turn might provoke. Christmas is only a bright spot if the rest of the year is relatively bleak, and Dickens displays this contrast through Scrooge's nephew's optimistic reflections on: "Christmas time as a good time: a kind time, indulgent, charitable, and pleasant: the only time I know, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem with one accord to freely open their enclosed hearts and think of the people beneath them as s They were truly fellow travelers to the grave, not another race of creatures destined for other journeys. between Christmas, the “only moment” of the “long calendar”, corresponds to Gérard Genette’s terms for “singulative” and “iterative” narrative techniques. The narrator is not exempt from meditating optimistically on the benevolent singularative at the expense of the malevolent iterative: “And every man on board, awake or asleep, good or bad, had a kinder word for another that day than any other day in the world. year". The scene, a ship, is full of hierarchies "the helmsman atthe helm, the lookout at the front, the officers on watch" who melt into good humor. The spirit of Christmas unites with the momentary equalization of the social structure, just like the vision of the nephew of the “travelling companions” leads to the quasi-mixing of the different economic “races” Both cases gracefully elude what exactly happens on these other days, outside of Christmas, and what motivations define Scrooge bluntly describes the economic temporality of Christmas: “What. is Christmas for you, if not a time to pay your bills without money a time to find yourself a year older, not an hour older a time to balance your accounts and have every one; object in them for a dozen months presented dead against you? Unlike his nephew and the men on board the ship, Scrooge does not distinguish between the holidays and the rest of the capitalist calendar, but at least remains more honest about the 364 other days of the year. Despite the examples of the nephew and the sailors, Scrooge is not the only holder of an isochronic philosophy. Everyone in “A Christmas Carol” is a slave to time and, worse, everyone maintains a hypocritical capitalist attitude toward the holiday. He presents the city as functioning according to the bells? “When the clock struck eleven, this national ball broke up,” originally installed to unify public time, and their routine reminders of capitalism echo throughout the holiday. Mrs. Cratchit makes her own contradictions explicit when Cratchit asks her to drink to Scrooge's health: "I will drink his health for you and this day is not for him." This form of artificial benevolence operates at more subtle levels in the narrative. , when the narrator places an exclamation point after the optimistic conclusion to which the characters arrive: And it was a very rare kind of torch, because once or twice, when there were angry words between some bearers of dinner who had jostled, he poured a few. a few drops of water on them, and their good humor was immediately restored. Because, they said, it was a shame to argue on Christmas Day. And so it was! God love him, it was so! Just as the consumerist competition between the "dinner bearers" is corrected by the incense of the torch of the Christmas present ghost, the narrator's words pepper a final positive commentary on the event, which began with "angry" . words." The narrator is also implicated in his attempt to impose an artificial diachrony on the ischronic capitalist calendar. Such a pervasive capitalist ethic appears even in the description of the characters. Scrooge's niece is delineated by various monetary traits: "She was very pretty: extremely pretty. With a capital face, with a surprised look and dimples: a little ripe mouth, which seemed made to be kissed". From the passage to excess (the revision from "very pretty" to "excessively pretty"), the niece is presented as a material asset, with “capital” and “mature” features. The mouth, especially, which is not used to speaking, is described in terms of production and specialization. The men at the Christmas party. react to women accordingly; Topper pursues the "plump" sister and "assures himself of her identity by putting a certain ring on her finger and a certain chain around her neck. As 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’s no wonder that Topper impresses her, literally, with his own signifiers of wealth. Nonetheless, most readers will ignore these warning signs of illusory Christmas spirit and instead revel in holiday cheer, asnarrator keeps urging them to do it. To recognize the other half (or, more accurately, 364/365) of what the characters continually refer to under their breath when praising the Christmas community is to recognize the presence of selfishness in themselves, for Dickens accuses 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 pity a man who, deep down, feels sorry for himself. Attaching ourselves to Scrooge's struggle is a way of exonerating our own selfish sins by "learning" to identify with him as he "learns" what it means to be human, we suppose. him at the beginning of the story. Scrooge repeatedly expresses remorse for his life. Prompted by a scene of "two apprentices praising Fezziwig", Scrooge responds by saying that he "wishes he could 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. Scrooge's most pronounced instances of reform follow visions of him at his most desperate. After Scrooge sobs as he remembers being 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 only achieves this revelation through identification, and here the identification is more egocentric. Solipsism disguised as external empathy comes to fruition when Scrooge sees his future grave: “Assure me that I can still change these shadows. have shown me, by an altered life!'" Only this extreme case forces Scrooge to reverse his previous isochronic view of time, transforming him from capitalist to holiday: "'I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the time. ". Not only did Dickens show that such an honorable attitude is impossible in a capitalist system, that even good-hearted souls like Mrs. Cratchit use Christmas to conceal their true feelings, but the narrative focus of "A Christmas Carol" negates any capacity to live, as Scrooge promises, 'in the past, the present and the future'. History is constantly in motion, even while revisiting the past. Such a vision of the future, which Genette calls 'proleptic. ", accomplishes two central tasks. First, it situates the narrative in a capitalist temporality in which all present (or past) actions are aimed at securing future profit. Scrooge is often impatient throughout his tour, and expresses a desire for profit. 'future in economic vocabulary He begs the Ghost of Christmas Present: "'Tonight, if you have anything to teach me, let me enjoy it'". Keep going! The night is fading fast, and it's precious time for me, I know. Carry on!'” The triple repetition of “Drive!” mimics his proleptic motivations in all three tenses, which calls into question his ability to merge past, present and future. Before the visit of the first of the three ghosts, he attempts to compress his eventual epiphany into a uniform temporality: "'Couldn't I take them all at once and be done with it, Jacob?' Scrooge's "hint" to Jacob is also a clue to the audience of the lesson Scrooge will eventually learn, and the second purpose of the proleptic narrative expressly concerns the audience The foreshadowing in the story leaves little doubt about the conclusion. , or even about what will happen next, and the repetitions reinforce and bring us back to the foreshadowing. The first line triggers the method of foreclosure.will continue throughout the story: “Marley was dead: to begin with. There’s no doubt about it.” After declaring that "Marley was as dead as a doornail," the narrator spends the next paragraph dwelling on the cliché he has just invoked and then, after examining the repetition inherent in the cliché, comments in iterations: “Please allow me to repeat, with emphasis, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.” We return to the idea of the first line, the original intention of which was to mention Marley's ghost in advance and allay doubts about the future while leading the reader there. This technique works in concert with the imperfect sympathy for Scrooge as a reproach to the reader. This misguided sympathy convinces us that we are different from Scrooge and that he learns to be more like the reader, who already keeps the holiday in his heart. The proleptic narrative reduces any anxiety we might have about the outcome, an anxiety usually born from conscious identification with the protagonist. The proleptic impulse of the story increases over the spans, from analeptic exposure to prolepsy in the first span, to proleptic analepsy in Christmas Past (because in the past we receive clues about Scrooge's possible transformation), to prolepsy in Christmas Present in which the foreshadowing solidifies (and passes from simple anticipated mentions to stable notices), and in Christmas Future to an analeptic prolepsy. The less anxious we feel, the more foreclosure we receive, the less we have to wonder why, exactly, we are concerned about Scrooge's fate. This is not to say that the reader feels nothing for Scrooge, but that his attention to him comes from a higher position in which the reader believes that he, with Dickens, is co-educating the miser on the meaning of Christmas. And, rather than destroying the entertainment value of the story, the foreclosure and repetition of "A Christmas Carol" soothes the audience, providing them in advance with the satisfying ending they crave. Such satisfaction comes in the final scope but, as I hope As we have shown, few temporal adjustments actually occurred. Another audience member remarks that Dickens has "a twinkle in his eye, as he enters, which, like a promissory note, pledges to have fun in sixty minutes." As long as it doesn't exceed its time limits, the audience is willing to engage with its story, and the fast-paced finale scope ensures that. All the signs that Scrooge is a changed man can also be interpreted as indicating no change at all. When he returns from his ghostly tour, he wakes up: “Yes! and the bedpost was his. The bed was his, the room was his. . The best and happiest moment of all, the moment before him was his, to make amends!" The familiarity of Scrooge's surroundings is part of the reason why Dickens repeats "was his", but the cloud of ownership hangs over his happiness, which includes a sense of ownership over time Scrooge still runs like clockwork; after running into another room, he is described as "perfectly out of breath." that his return to present time is part of his new freedom, as when he joyfully responds to the church bells "ringing the loudest chimes he had ever heard", he is still rooted in. a maniacal desire to use the present effectively. His reaction to the indirect turkey purchase illustrates the stagnant capitalist ethic he maintains: "I'll send it to Bob Cratchit!" murmured Scrooge, rubbing his hands and bursting out laughing. “He won’t know who sent it.” It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller., 1980.

Essay / A Capitalist's Criticism of Christmas in "A Christmas Carol" story: "At last there is Scrooge, no longer a miser, but a human being, shouting at the 'talkative' boy in his Sunday best to buy him the prize turkey 'which could never have stood on his legs , this bird'". Perhaps he is no longer a miser, but, according to this description, Scrooge still plays the role of a capitalist oppressor, ordering his subordinates to bring him luxuries. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Although Dickens undoubtedly praises Scrooge's epiphany and the change that resulted from it, "A Christmas Carol" also alludes to the author's resentment of society's corrupt notion industrial by an industrial company. “The spirit of Christmas.” Through the examples of goodwill sparked by Christmas, Dickens suggests that Christmas is merely a disruptive 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 ultimately aimed at providing pleasure. Dickens subtly turns his criticism of the fleeting and selfish “vacation time” towards the reader. The simple, Aristotelian structure of the story and the constant foreshadowing and repetition reduce any potential anxiety about the outcome of the story. The main cause of anxiety about the conclusion of any sentimental tale is identifying in some way with the protagonist. Although Scrooge is a caricature with whom few would sympathize (or admit to doing so), Dickens's Three Spirits draws us into sympathy with the miser. while simultaneously engendering empathy in him. But Scrooge's production of humanity is just that, a manufactured, almost focus group mode of voyeurism that attacks Scrooge at his most vulnerable and solipsistic, by imposing upon him visions of the harm he has done to others, or, more significantly, his own past and his future. self at the lowest. For Dickens, the altruism that Christmas engenders is a false exercise in guilt reduction, and the ending of “A Christmas Carol” reinforces this; the satisfaction of listening to a story whose conclusion is never in jeopardy (and becomes easier to know as the years go by) spares the reader the self-examination that Scrooge endures and that a darker turn might provoke. Christmas is only a bright spot if the rest of the year is relatively bleak, and Dickens displays this contrast through Scrooge's nephew's optimistic reflections on: "Christmas time as a good time: a kind time, indulgent, charitable, and pleasant: the only time I know, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem with one accord to freely open their enclosed hearts and think of the people beneath them as s They were truly fellow travelers to the grave, not another race of creatures destined for other journeys. between Christmas, the “only moment” of the “long calendar”, corresponds to Gérard Genette’s terms for “singulative” and “iterative” narrative techniques. The narrator is not exempt from meditating optimistically on the benevolent singularative at the expense of the malevolent iterative: “And every man on board, awake or asleep, good or bad, had a kinder word for another that day than any other day in the world. year". The scene, a ship, is full of hierarchies "the helmsman atthe helm, the lookout at the front, the officers on watch" who melt into good humor. The spirit of Christmas unites with the momentary equalization of the social structure, just like the vision of the nephew of the “travelling companions” leads to the quasi-mixing of the different economic “races” Both cases gracefully elude what exactly happens on these other days, outside of Christmas, and what motivations define Scrooge bluntly describes the economic temporality of Christmas: “What. is Christmas for you, if not a time to pay your bills without money a time to find yourself a year older, not an hour older a time to balance your accounts and have every one; object in them for a dozen months presented dead against you? Unlike his nephew and the men on board the ship, Scrooge does not distinguish between the holidays and the rest of the capitalist calendar, but at least remains more honest about the 364 other days of the year. Despite the examples of the nephew and the sailors, Scrooge is not the only holder of an isochronic philosophy. Everyone in “A Christmas Carol” is a slave to time and, worse, everyone maintains a hypocritical capitalist attitude toward the holiday. He presents the city as functioning according to the bells? “When the clock struck eleven, this national ball broke up,” originally installed to unify public time, and their routine reminders of capitalism echo throughout the holiday. Mrs. Cratchit makes her own contradictions explicit when Cratchit asks her to drink to Scrooge's health: "I will drink his health for you and this day is not for him." This form of artificial benevolence operates at more subtle levels in the narrative. , when the narrator places an exclamation point after the optimistic conclusion to which the characters arrive: And it was a very rare kind of torch, because once or twice, when there were angry words between some bearers of dinner who had jostled, he poured a few. a few drops of water on them, and their good humor was immediately restored. Because, they said, it was a shame to argue on Christmas Day. And so it was! God love him, it was so! Just as the consumerist competition between the "dinner bearers" is corrected by the incense of the torch of the Christmas present ghost, the narrator's words pepper a final positive commentary on the event, which began with "angry" . words." The narrator is also implicated in his attempt to impose an artificial diachrony on the ischronic capitalist calendar. Such a pervasive capitalist ethic appears even in the description of the characters. Scrooge's niece is delineated by various monetary traits: "She was very pretty: extremely pretty. With a capital face, with a surprised look and dimples: a little ripe mouth, which seemed made to be kissed". From the passage to excess (the revision from "very pretty" to "excessively pretty"), the niece is presented as a material asset, with “capital” and “mature” features. The mouth, especially, which is not used to speaking, is described in terms of production and specialization. The men at the Christmas party. react to women accordingly; Topper pursues the "plump" sister and "assures himself of her identity by putting a certain ring on her finger and a certain chain around her neck. As 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’s no wonder that Topper impresses her, literally, with his own signifiers of wealth. Nonetheless, most readers will ignore these warning signs of illusory Christmas spirit and instead revel in holiday cheer, asnarrator keeps urging them to do it. To recognize the other half (or, more accurately, 364/365) of what the characters continually refer to under their breath when praising the Christmas community is to recognize the presence of selfishness in themselves, for Dickens accuses 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 pity a man who, deep down, feels sorry for himself. Attaching ourselves to Scrooge's struggle is a way of exonerating our own selfish sins by "learning" to identify with him as he "learns" what it means to be human, we suppose. him at the beginning of the story. Scrooge repeatedly expresses remorse for his life. Prompted by a scene of "two apprentices praising Fezziwig", Scrooge responds by saying that he "wishes he could 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. Scrooge's most pronounced instances of reform follow visions of him at his most desperate. After Scrooge sobs as he remembers being 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 only achieves this revelation through identification, and here the identification is more egocentric. Solipsism disguised as external empathy comes to fruition when Scrooge sees his future grave: “Assure me that I can still change these shadows. have shown me, by an altered life!'" Only this extreme case forces Scrooge to reverse his previous isochronic view of time, transforming him from capitalist to holiday: "'I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the time. ". Not only did Dickens show that such an honorable attitude is impossible in a capitalist system, that even good-hearted souls like Mrs. Cratchit use Christmas to conceal their true feelings, but the narrative focus of "A Christmas Carol" negates any capacity to live, as Scrooge promises, 'in the past, the present and the future'. History is constantly in motion, even while revisiting the past. Such a vision of the future, which Genette calls 'proleptic. ", accomplishes two central tasks. First, it situates the narrative in a capitalist temporality in which all present (or past) actions are aimed at securing future profit. Scrooge is often impatient throughout his tour, and expresses a desire for profit. 'future in economic vocabulary He begs the Ghost of Christmas Present: "'Tonight, if you have anything to teach me, let me enjoy it'". Keep going! The night is fading fast, and it's precious time for me, I know. Carry on!'” The triple repetition of “Drive!” mimics his proleptic motivations in all three tenses, which calls into question his ability to merge past, present and future. Before the visit of the first of the three ghosts, he attempts to compress his eventual epiphany into a uniform temporality: "'Couldn't I take them all at once and be done with it, Jacob?' Scrooge's "hint" to Jacob is also a clue to the audience of the lesson Scrooge will eventually learn, and the second purpose of the proleptic narrative expressly concerns the audience The foreshadowing in the story leaves little doubt about the conclusion. , or even about what will happen next, and the repetitions reinforce and bring us back to the foreshadowing. The first line triggers the method of foreclosure.will continue throughout the story: “Marley was dead: to begin with. There’s no doubt about it.” After declaring that "Marley was as dead as a doornail," the narrator spends the next paragraph dwelling on the cliché he has just invoked and then, after examining the repetition inherent in the cliché, comments in iterations: “Please allow me to repeat, with emphasis, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.” We return to the idea of the first line, the original intention of which was to mention Marley's ghost in advance and allay doubts about the future while leading the reader there. This technique works in concert with the imperfect sympathy for Scrooge as a reproach to the reader. This misguided sympathy convinces us that we are different from Scrooge and that he learns to be more like the reader, who already keeps the holiday in his heart. The proleptic narrative reduces any anxiety we might have about the outcome, an anxiety usually born from conscious identification with the protagonist. The proleptic impulse of the story increases over the spans, from analeptic exposure to prolepsy in the first span, to proleptic analepsy in Christmas Past (because in the past we receive clues about Scrooge's possible transformation), to prolepsy in Christmas Present in which the foreshadowing solidifies (and passes from simple anticipated mentions to stable notices), and in Christmas Future to an analeptic prolepsy. The less anxious we feel, the more foreclosure we receive, the less we have to wonder why, exactly, we are concerned about Scrooge's fate. This is not to say that the reader feels nothing for Scrooge, but that his attention to him comes from a higher position in which the reader believes that he, with Dickens, is co-educating the miser on the meaning of Christmas. And, rather than destroying the entertainment value of the story, the foreclosure and repetition of "A Christmas Carol" soothes the audience, providing them in advance with the satisfying ending they crave. Such satisfaction comes in the final scope but, as I hope As we have shown, few temporal adjustments actually occurred. Another audience member remarks that Dickens has "a twinkle in his eye, as he enters, which, like a promissory note, pledges to have fun in sixty minutes." As long as it doesn't exceed its time limits, the audience is willing to engage with its story, and the fast-paced finale scope ensures that. All the signs that Scrooge is a changed man can also be interpreted as indicating no change at all. When he returns from his ghostly tour, he wakes up: “Yes! and the bedpost was his. The bed was his, the room was his. . The best and happiest moment of all, the moment before him was his, to make amends!" The familiarity of Scrooge's surroundings is part of the reason why Dickens repeats "was his", but the cloud of ownership hangs over his happiness, which includes a sense of ownership over time Scrooge still runs like clockwork; after running into another room, he is described as "perfectly out of breath." that his return to present time is part of his new freedom, as when he joyfully responds to the church bells "ringing the loudest chimes he had ever heard", he is still rooted in. a maniacal desire to use the present effectively. His reaction to the indirect turkey purchase illustrates the stagnant capitalist ethic he maintains: "I'll send it to Bob Cratchit!" murmured Scrooge, rubbing his hands and bursting out laughing. “He won’t know who sent it.” It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller., 1980.

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