 Hello and welcome to this video summary of A Christmas Carol. Now, I made this video summary for two reasons. The first is that some of you students here have been following the entire course as a whole and we've gone through a detailed overview of the novella as a whole and we've also read through all staves in this novella. So this video is really useful to kind of take a step back and essentially see how it all fits in when you're thinking about the plot, context, genre, as well as the key quotations and characters. However, the second reason why I made this video is for some of the students who have joined us and who don't necessarily have the luxury of time. You are perhaps under time pressure and you don't necessarily have enough time to go back over the other parts of the course in more detail and you really just need a quick run through of the novella as a whole to know all the quotes that you need to know before you go on to the next videos where we go through exam, pass, paper questions. Now, if that's what you need and you don't necessarily have that much time, you are in the right place. So with that said, let's get into a summary of a Christmas Carol in a nutshell. So let's have a look at this mind map and let's start off with the plot. So essentially, the novella begins in Christmas Eve where we meet Scrooge and his clerk Cratchit who are working and we learn that Scrooge is so mean and so miserably that he doesn't even necessarily want to use any of his money to warm up the office in this really frozen and the working and these really horrible conditions. So we established that Scrooge is a very miserly man and he's even really angry at the fact that he has to give Bob Cratchit a day off work so that he can celebrate Christmas Day with his family. Then we find that essentially Scrooge rejects two men who come to ask for arms. In other words, they come to his office and essentially ask him to share just a little bit of his money in order to help all the homeless people, all the people who during Christmas Day don't have a home, they don't have food, they don't have anything and Scrooge rejects them and he asks all of these rhetorical questions, are there no prisons, are there no workhouses, can we not just cast away these people rather than helping them. So he turns them away. Then his nephew friend comes up and essentially invites him to have Christmas with his family and Scrooge says bar humbug in other words, essentially insulting the concept of Christmas Day. If he, if it was up to him, he would also use Christmas Day to make more money and to hoard more money. So he also turns Fred away. Then Scrooge essentially goes back home and he meets the first ghost. So he gets home and he realises things seem similar but also somewhat different, a little bit uncanny, a little bit strange. And essentially he finds the first ghost of Marley and we realise of course this is his former business partner that died. He was just as greedy and just as focused on attaining and accumulating wealth as Scrooge and he didn't really do very much for other people. Now he comes back as a ghost in chains and he essentially warns Scrooge that if it does not change his ways he too will essentially be put in hell like Marley and he will suffer the consequences of his lack of charity to society. Then Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Christmas past and this ghost essentially takes him through a journey of his past. We find a young boy Scrooge who essentially was abandoned in boarding school by his family who didn't really care. But the only person who did look after him and who came back to look for him during Christmas time was a sister Fran. We also learned that Scrooge essentially had a love interest cold bell. However his greed to make more money, to make more wealth essentially blinded him to building through his relationship and developing this love for Bell and ultimately Bell we find moved on, found a family, fell in love with another man and was really happily with her family whilst this man essentially describes Scrooge as this lonely decrepit man who stays alone in his office and makes all this money and counts this money but doesn't have anybody she share it with. Also from his past we learn of another man called Fezibig who was a man that was Scrooge's boss and he apprenticed for him and essentially Fezibig shows an alternative way of treating people when it comes to business and Scrooge does not take from him. He actually is quite selfish in the way he handles his business. Scrooge and goes back home and meets the ghost of Christmas present. Now this ghost essentially takes him on another journey and essentially he shows him Tiny Tim's family as well as the family of Fred. Now Tiny Tim's family of course he is the child of Bob Cratchit. This is the clerk that Scrooge doesn't pay very well he treats him quite miserly but equally he isn't able to as a result of not paying Bob Cratchit very well. Bob Cratchit is not able to look after Tiny Tim and to pay for the much needed care that Tiny Tim requires as a disabled young boy and of course Scrooge starts feeling a lot of compassion. Equally when the ghost of Christmas present takes him to see Fred's family he realises that literally society as a whole does not value Scrooge they don't value the fact that he makes so much money but still holds it and ultimately he meets two children the ghost of the ghost of ignorance or rather the young child who represents ignorance and the young girl who represents need and of course this is the consequence of an industrialist society that doesn't care for the weak and for the young. Then Scrooge meets the ghost of Christmas yet to come and this is the ghost who never talks to Scrooge. He is draped in black and essentially all he does is he points. He essentially shows Scrooge the terrible future that awaits him and ultimately we find that Scrooge dies not only does all his stuff get stolen all the wealth that he built and accumulated over all of these years come to no use of him and also nobody is there to even think about him in his death. People only simply celebrate. Of course Scrooge is really shaken by the stage and he promises to change and of course the novella ends when it's Christmas day and Scrooge has decided that he's going to become a better person and he decides to change his ways. Now when it comes to understanding the novella firstly you need to understand the genre that it belongs to so of course Christmas Carol is written in the form of a parable. Now a parable is a story that is fairly short and it teaches us a moral lesson. It's also known as a ghost story because ghosts are used and during the 17th and 18th centuries ghosts were used and the supernatural spirits were used as a way to warn people about the afterlife and what would happen and ghosts were seen as messengers from the afterlife to tell people in the present moment what they should do and what they should avoid. Now in terms of context that you need to be aware of when considering Christmas Carol the first contextual factor is to do with Victorian England. Now Christmas Carol was written by Charles Dickens who lived during Victorian England and this was as a very unequal society it was a society where there was a massive divide between the very few at the top who were quite wealthy especially the factory owners this was during the industrial revolution versus the majority of people who were very poor and Charles Dickens was extremely critical of this and a Christmas Carol is written as a social critique in order to let people know that they need to change the ways and treat others more equally and especially the rich they should also give to charity and consider the poor in how they treat them in these factories. The second contextual factor to be aware of is the industrial revolution. Now the industrial revolution was essentially a time from the roughly 1700s all the way to the early 1900s where England shifted from being a predominantly agricultural economy to being an industrialised economy powered by factories and of course this is where cities like London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester sprung up and lots of factories sprung up to support lots of people. However the cost of the industrial revolution was that a lot of these workers who ended up working in these factories and in these areas were paid very little first of all because these factory owners were very profit minded but secondly some vast amounts of poverty resulted from this terrible conditions that these workers had to live in the little pay that they had to subsist on and a lot of people ended up living very short and very terrible lives during the industrial revolution and again Charles Dickens is really critical of this industrial revolution and the capitalist principles that drive it. The other key contextual factor to remember is to do with Thomas Malthus. Now Scrooge mentions are there no prisons are there no work houses he talks about the surplus population and now within this novel this is making reference to an economist called Thomas Malthus who really looked at things like deaths especially the deaths of a lot of working class people and disease and things like famine and he essentially saw it as a mathematical concept he saw it in very cold mathematical way that it's not possible for a human population to continue to grow exponentially and continuously without anything to temper this growth so from him for his perspective as Thomas Malthus he essentially saw that the human population will get to a certain point beyond which there are not enough resources for everybody to share equally and disease famine death is a way to decrease the unnecessary what he called the surplus population from the human population in order for people to have more equal resources now Dickens was really critical of this economic principle as a way to firstly justify things like poverty things like unnecessary deaths and he saw it as a really cold way to look at human beings. The other contextual factor is to do with the poor laws which were enacted in England now of course as I've mentioned the Victorian society was incredibly unequal and what happened was that there were a lot of people and even prior to the Victorian society even in 1700s there were a series of poor laws that were enacted to deal with the issue of lots of people who were on the streets they were homeless they couldn't find any jobs and essentially what the poor laws dictated they punished poor people for not being able to have a job if you were able bodied and you were not able to secure a decent job or some kind of way to financially sustain yourself then you would essentially be put inside a work house which was essentially a kind of prison where you had to work for a certain amount of hours in order to justify you living in that work house and it became law so Dickens was really critical he saw these poor laws as a way of just essentially punishing poor people for being poor rather than creating opportunity for these poor people now let's move on to themes before we look at quotes and characters now the first thing of course is that of the supernatural and as I've mentioned essentially people during this era saw the supernatural and the spirit world as a way of the afterworld and this world of the spirits of communicating with people in the present now of course the supernatural is a really important theme all ghosts including marlies ghost ghosts of christmas present christmas past and christmas yet to come they are brought to scrooge in order to help him change his ways in order to teach him a lesson so this is a really important theme the other key theme is that to do with generosity and charity and of course this is used to show or rather this is shown through the character of scrooge he is really miserly and he is used to represent the upper class elite of victorian society who had plenty but refused to share with anybody and charles dickens was to show the downside of this approach and he also wants to use a christmas carol as a way of encouraging people especially people in the upper classes to give to those who are in need the other key thing is that to do with redemption now charles dickens actually didn't want to portray scrooge as somebody who's beyond redemption he wants to portray him as somebody and much like other rich people he wants to portray them as people who are not one dimensional individuals they are capable of redemption they can be forgiven much like god forgives sinners however they must do something and change their ways in order to deserve that redemption and in order to deserve that forgiveness the other final key theme is that to do with class and social injustice and now this theme essentially relates to the class division that existed in victorian england what this means is that essentially in victorian england was highly divided between the very few who are really wealthy especially those who own factories and industrialists versus the vast majority who are quite poor and essentially charles dickens is using this novella as a social critique against these social injustices now when it comes to quotes the first is to do with the main character of course and this is scrooge and the first quotation to remember is when he asks are there no workhouses and of course this is contextually a reference to the poor laws where essentially he's essentially saying rather than helping the poor we should basically punish them for being poor it's their fault that they're poor and dickens found it this reprehensible this is a disgusting way of saying people the other quotation of course is a very famous bar humbug this is what scrooge says each time he's reminded of christmas the old scrooge of course but then of course he decides to change his ways and the final quotations is when he says the spirits strive within me so he says the spirits just strive within me but you can use ellipses here and of course this shows a change scrooge at the end where he decides that he's going to give back to society he's going to become the patron of tanitin and he says an example to all the rich people at the time how they should treat the poor now in terms of uh jacob marley's character the main quotation to remember is when he says mankind was my business and this is a direct attack on people and especially industrialists who only see their workers as cheap forms of labor they only see them as disposable assets for the business now this is really really important to remember because of course this is a viewpoint that charles dickens is completely against the other key characters to remember are the ghosts now of course the first ghost of christmas present is described as a jolly giant so that's the first quotation the second is when the ghost of christmas presents presents this boy is ignorance and this girl is wanted of course the boy ignorance represents lack of education that children have and want the girl she represents the lack of uh resources a lack of finance and of course this leads people to steal now the other key character or rather the other key quotation from the ghosts is it was shrouded in a deep black garment and this describes the ghost of christmas yet to come and how he looks like he's described in a really scary way as the grim reaper now the other key quotation is to do with the crutches so in terms of the crutches the first is to do with how they saw the little that they had this goose that they created for christmas however they speak in high perfectly they never was such a goose and this shows just how thankful they are in spite of having so little the other key quotation is a merry christmas to us all and this is what bob cratchett says it shows just how grateful he is and this is in direct contrast to the character of scrooge the other key character is bell this is the woman who scrooge falls in love with but then he prioritizes getting money over being in love with her and looking after her and she says another idol has displaced me and of course this is what she says before they break up and this idol indeed is his love for money the final character to remember the quotation is friend this is scrooge's nephew and he says his wealth is of no use to him talking about scrooge because essentially he's saying that all he does is collect money and pile up money he doesn't offer anything back to society and this is essentially what makes his wealth very little used to him so i hope you found this video somewhere useful and thank you so much for listening