Brief summary of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. During the night of Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by 3 ghosts, each representing a different part of the Christmas season. The first ghost to visit Scrooge was the Ghost of Christmas Past, and this ghost took Scrooge to see his childhood and all that he had lost by living his early years with selfish ambition. When the first ghost left, Scrooge had a lot to think about, but he went back to bed. Here Dickens shows his readers that changing a person’s mind takes time and repetition. Scrooge needed another ghost to keep his train of thought going. The second ghost was the ghost of the Christmas present, this ghost simply showed Scrooge all the joy that people had during the Christmas season. However, the most important thing that the ghost showed Scrooge was a very poor family. This family was very happy and content with their circumstances and it made Scrooge think how they could be happy with so little and he could be so miserable with so much.
With the second ghost, Dickens is teaching his readers the importance of being content with what one has, without content a person will never be happy no matter how much wealth one accumulates. After the second ghost left, Scrooge was very shaken, but took advantage of the third ghost’s visit to make him a true believer in the Christmas spirit. The last ghost was the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and this ghost showed Scrooge what the world would be like if he didn’t change his ways and help the poor. A very significant passage shows Scrooge looking at the same family he had seen with the second ghost, but the youngest son of the family had died for lack of medical treatment. Scrooge is finally shown his own grave and begins to fear for his life and the lives of his kind. A Christmas Carol ends with Scrooge giving out presents at Christmas and promising to help the poor for the rest of his life; this is a typical ending of Dickens’s books in which the protagonist is put on the right path and everyone is happy.
High expectations
Dickens’s novel Great Expectations originally appeared in the All Year Round newspaper over a period of eight months and was very popular. Because Great Expectations was written for an article that Dickens wrote in two-chapter installments, they kept the reader engaged between articles while satisfying their need for resolution at the end of each installment. This novel is sometimes considered semi-autobiographical because in it Dickens draws on many instances from Dickens’s own life. Great Expectations is the story of an orphan named Pip that follows his life from early childhood to adulthood. Pip goes through 3 stages in his life, each with its own expectations of him. The first are with his humble beginnings with Joe and his visits to old Miss Havisham and Estella. Joe is a hardworking man who goes out of his way to love Pip and teach her about life. However, Pip is not grateful for the life Joe has given him and wishes to win the affections of the lovely Estella, who is a pawn of Miss Havisham.
The second stage of Pip’s life begins when a mysterious benefactor gives Pip a good amount of money and goes to live in London. Pip absorbs the upper-class life of London, but his ingratitude towards Joe continues when Joe sends Pip a letter saying that he wants to visit him in London. After reading this letter, Pip is horrified that Joe is coming into his life in London. Here Dickens gives the reader a real look at ingratitude, Joe is a hard working man and he loved Pip with all the love he had, but Pip cannot even begin to return this love by welcoming Joe into her London home. . In the third stage of Pips’ life comes the realization that his benefactor is actually a convict. Here, Pip must deal with the ugly side of life head-on, and it doesn’t go so well for him. The book ends with one of Dickens’s greatest sets of unbelievable circumstances in which many of the characters turn out to be linked to each other through Miss Havisham. In Great Expectations, Dickens gives the reader a lot to think about, particularly about gratitude and what it means to be a gentleman. Although Pip had a lot of money, Dickens makes it clear that it is his actions that define him, and it is only at the end of the book that Pip begins to understand for himself what it means to be a true gentleman.