Marley delivers a vision of the afterlife that clearly borrows from Dante’s Inferno. Yet it is often cut down in the easy-to-digest adaptations in media today. The Ghost of Jacob Marley’s appearance and warning to Scrooge about the afterlife is one of the key “scary” areas that are key to grasping A Christmas Carol’s core morality tale. Not gonna lie, this was cathartic to read circa 2020 as our political leaders hem and haw about providing economic support, housing, and healthcare in the midst of one of the greatest crises every faced-but I digress. Marley is fettered in chains, further weighed down by ledgers and money boxes that he “forged” throughout his selfish lifetime. Also terrifying to see a victim of a haunting praise of the tools of his torments? YEP.ĭickens aptly breaks up the Ghost of Jacob Marley’s creepy confrontation with dark humor-a good horror creator knows that to keep your audience engaged, sometimes it’s best to give them the release of a laugh in between bouts of building terror. He says he will “love it as long as he lives.” Intentional dark humor? Likely. Later, when we come full circle in Scrooge’s odyssey on Christmas morning, and he is dancing about “merry as a school boy,” Scrooge praises the knocker. We have this build up of dread, heightened by the fact that even this monumentally intimidating figure, Scrooge, is increasingly spooked. This is a set up worthy of the best haunted house sagas. Something wrapped in chains is coming up the stairs….Īt least the Muppet version makes the haunting of eternal torment a lot cuter. That’s when Scrooge hears, deep in the wine cellar, the sound of chains. And then bells all over the house come to life. An unused, abandoned bell in his bedchamber suddenly begins to ring. He imagines he sees a hearse in the corridors. Scrooge is on edge as he enters the dark house (dark due to his own fault-as Dickens says, Scrooge prefers darkness because it is cheap). A partner Scrooge spoke of just earlier that afternoon. The door knocker briefly transforms into the face of his dead partner, Jacob Marley. He is gradually beset upon by supernatural tidings. The capture of dread, Gothic imagery, the dark supernatural, it all places A Christmas Carol squarely in the horror genre.Ĭonsider the sequence of Scrooge arriving at his lonely home, frost and fog closing in around him. And that makes the story more fun and instructive. But Dickens spends much of the novella emphasizing that death and suffering is hardly exclusive to poverty.Īside from the philosophical motif of death, this story is creepy. And certainly, poverty and death are intertwined. We are all headed to the same equitable end, and there is immense value in easing the suffering of inequity in life.ĭickens was someone who was intimately acquainted with poverty. That might be why the more ‘gloomy’ text isn’t read as often in present day, and why the less complex TV or movie adaptations are preferred.ĭickens’ emphasis on memento mori hammers home the message to look to your fellow humans as fellow passengers to the grave. Memento mori was richly present in much of European culture and history, but the presence of and meditation on death has been largely scrubbed from 20 th century culture. In many ways, this work is a tribute to the concept of memento mori-‘remember that you will die’-the idea that you should bear in mind that life is temporary. It’s interesting how that both compliments and contrasts the Biblical Christmas story-a story of celebrating birth and everlasting life. And which adaptation had the Schweddy Balls to kick off their tale the same way? A Muppet Christmas Carol, ya’ll!
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