A Reader-Response Essay: Understanding the Life of a Wealthy Miser Elderly in the Novel “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
According to William (1984), he defines reading as a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been written. The process of understanding a text as a whole could happen if the reader has some information about the text and knows what to do about it. When the reader reads “A Christmas Carol”, he realizes the portrayal of Scrooge in the early story was a miserable man who did not want to spend his time, nor its money to others. It is evident that Scrooge made terrible choices to live his life at this fictional story. It describes a negative figure of a character that skeptics with his surroundings. In this case, the reader chooses to identify the life of Scrooge, about what formed him as a miserable man, why does it occur, and the new hopes for him to continue his life. A reader is a man who lives in college’s life which surrounded by many decisions and, sometimes, affected by others measures of an unexpected event that can change his path of life, whether it is positive or negative, or to convince the reader to be more well-prepared to make other choices in the next few futures. Hence, the readers agree with the author towards the values which conducted within the story regarding the people who tend to appear as antagonist-looks can gradually change their life to become more useful as a person if it is given the second chances.
Charles Dickens is an English writer and social critic (Black, Joseph Laurence 1962). He is well-known as the most popular writer in the twentieth-century and has declared as the most-influent person in the literary world. At his youth, Dicken has rough life with financial issues within his nuclear family due to his father who lives extravagant lifestyles then caused their life to become worst. As the readers perceive that the style of the author’s writing can be seen as the cause of the background at certain lifetimes, particularly in medieval Christmas culture, which has inextricably linked with the whole text of his works. A Christmas Carol was published in December 1843, at a time when medieval Christmas traditions were in steady decline. Indeed, Dickens’s heart-warming tale has been seen as a major turning point; the popularity of its setting and its diverse characters — from the wonderfully wicked Scrooge to the crippled but optimistic Tiny Tim — helped ensure that family unity and ‘goodwill to all men’ once more became the acceptable sentiments of the Christmas season. At the same time, Dickens used the poverty-stricken Cratchit family’s dependence on hard-hearted Scrooge to highlight the Victorian working class’s daily struggle against the indifference of the greedy.
The reader depicts that Ebenezer Scrooge as an antagonist character that resembles the idea of living in isolation. Yet, many schools of thought that isolating oneself from society can be more beneficial. Also, many people tend to think that socializing with others, or participating in social events, such as a benevolent society is an activity that wasting time as well as money and, indeed, it affects their behavior as well. The reader life’s in college resembles the decisions that Scrooge once made. The reader tends to avoid others, except the reader thinks it “looks-like less annoying stuff” and as long as it has meaningful values, like Scrooge keeping his clerk, under condition “working” as his clerk. For few people, this seems promising, due to it makes us less responsible for anything or anyone from an unexpected issue that is likely possible to occur. The main idea from this kind of life is keeping every entity in life is control-able, with no disturbance from others. Initially, the reader feels convenient towards these kinds of life until something unforeseeable future happened and, obviously, needs some other help.
From the reader’s point of view, this text has taught abundance of life-lessons that consist numerous powerful meaning and provide some moral values which are related to common mankind issues in real life. The reader sees that there is a plethora of similarities between the text and the reader's realities. More specifically when Scrooge finally realizes that his life not only to attain for such materials to be buried with, but it has beyond human thought regarding what life must have to live with others in peace and connected each other, in the end. Similar to the life of the reader itself, prior to enroll the college’s circumstances, the reader can be assumed as a stubborn individual which tend to ignore cooperating with his colleagues. Until it came to the time when all of the subjects in college must prioritize the capabilities to work in groups or individually. Moreover, “A Christmas Carol also accurately captures sentiments that many people feel around the holidays, and gives a refreshing message amidst the commercialism that surrounds Christmas today” (Dan Hoyt, Kansas State University). This point of view, however, has contradictive looks about what Christmas feels in large-scale of civil society between the past and these times. In the era of post-modernism, celebrating Christmas, nowadays, has tremendously changed since the consumerism culture plagues to many millennials who want to celebrate Christmas. Consumerism is an economic theory that states an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable (Merriam-webster). The reader assumes that due to the increasing rate of consumerism of goods, many aspects in life, especially in Christmas, has lost its essence to live simply as the ancestor used to do basically. As the economist quotes that “there are consequences of materialism can affect the quality of other people’s and other species lives” (Kasser, University of Missouri). Furthermore, the atmosphere of Christmas, these days, has terribly affected the way of one family treats another family due to its consumerism tradition year-by-year. Thus, this negative trend must be stopped and the awareness of giving aid to one and another must be preserved in order to stabilize the society with its environment. “As the act of giving can also be defined as a symbolic exchange in social relationships” (Belk & Coon, 1993)
A Christmas Carol is a compelling story about the Christmas holiday not as a religious observance, but as an aspect of the social contract: the time when those who ‘have’ experience joy in sharing with those who have not. It is also a story of transformation. Scrooge’s story offers the possibility that one can change for the better, become a better person and grow a bigger heart” (Naomi Wood, 2014). The reader is really impressed towards how the way Dickens writes which has spiritually connected to his past and the reader past, indeed. There such great memories to be once remembered, before the complex adult issues, that was the atmosphere within a huge family to embrace each other, giving help when other siblings need it. The text's success leads the reader to feel the warmth within a family and see this as an excuse to live longer and blessed. According to the text, the most conspicuous fact is when the main figure shows its moral value about how people can change as soon as possible. The reader assumes that Scrooge’s life taught us to realize that it is never too late to change your mind or how people approach something. Fearless is might be the essential weapon to try something new so that people not be stuck in their comfort zone in the long-term. Based on one of the conversations between Scrooge with the last spirit, he said that
“this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!” (pg. 77).
This part of the story was the beginning of Scrooge saw the last spirit that given him the visibility of his future, his grave, and his emptiness, so that it really touched his heart and started to concern what was wrong and what must be fixed later. As consequence, the reader strongly believes that when something went wrong, it is completely fine to give yourself permission to grieve and then move onto the next phase of life. “We learn about reflecting on our past, present, and future and allowing those reflections to influence our lives daily” (Paul K.Logsdon, 2017).
It is inevitable that Scrooge has led the reader's minds to think twice regarding the power he had before the transformation of himself. As he insisted that,
“It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentleman!” (Stave 1, 13).
Perhaps, this sounds a little bit arrogant, but it becomes an omnipresent cliché in nowadays culture. Despite his arrogancy, Scrooge has through a rough time when he was born poor and friendless, then gradually woke up and show his endeavor to attain his goal to become an entrepreneurship. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to succeed in business or earn well wages. But in putting our passion towards the ends of status and wealth, we often ignore everything else that makes life worth living.” (Alex Knapp, 2012). This is the key to Scrooge’s transformation — the realization that he had nothing to fear from other people. Live with joy, open his heart, and the world would come to him rapidly. As Dicken’s closes his magnificent book: “Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise to enough to know what nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.” so that it should be for us all.
To put in a nutshell, by supporting the text, the reader certainly believes that if “A Christmas Carol” can be paramount to those who want to seek pleasure in reading, but still concern about what life glanced as an obstacle to yelled loudly or as a miracle to grateful with. There is no doubt that if the reader fully agrees with the authors, not merely because of his skill in writing, but also, most importantly, the capability to bring people to return back to certain lifetime which exaggeratedly gives warmth and emotion to live back with it.
Works cited
Williams, J. (1984). Phonemic analysis and how it relates to reading. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 17, 240–5.
Belk & Coon (1993). Journal of Christmas, Consumption and Materialism: Discourse analysis of children’s Christmas letters.
