1. A Christmas Carol
FINAL REVISION

2. What will the Question look like?
Read this extract taken from …….. where……
Starting with this extract, explore/explain/consider……….
Write about:
• how Dickens presents…………. in this scene
• how Dickens presents…………. in the play as a whole
Extract from the play

3. Questions used by AQA so far…
The question may have a character focus, a thematic focus – or, most likely it will combine both.
Starting with this extract, how does Dickens present the importance of family in ‘A Christmas Carol’?
Starting with this extract, explore how far Dickens presents Christmas as a joyful time.
Starting with this extract, explore how Dickens uses the Cratchit family to show the struggles of the poor.
Starting with this extract, explore how Dickens presents Scrooge’s fears in A Christmas Carol. (extract of The Phantom)
Starting with this extract, how does Dickens present Scrooge as an outsider to society?

4. Look at the Exemplar on the change in Scrooge
Starting with this extract, how does Dickens present Scrooge as a changed man?
Write about:
How Dickens presents Scrooge in this extract
How Dickens presents Scrooge’s changing personality in the novel as a whole.

5. Starting with this extract, discuss how Dickens uses setting to highlight the themes of poverty and social reform.
Watch GCSE PODs: Setting and Fog ad Blindness
BIG PICTURE IDEAS
Victorian London during Industrial Revolution – time of filth, grime and great poverty.
Fog is used as a motif throughout various descriptions of setting to not only reflect the impact of the industrial revolution but also to reflect the ‘blindness’ of Scrooge and other wealthy Victorians to the plight of the
Cratchit’s working conditions (‘dismal little cell’) represent working conditions for the poor – emphasised by the contrasts with Scrooge’s working conditions
Fezziwig’s ball – the setting is warm and inviting, showing that a small offereing can bring great happiness poor.
Cratchits present poor, cramped living conditions

6. how Dickens uses setting in this extract…
List of adjectives emphasise the harshness of the weather and link the setting to the coldness of Scrooge’s character revealed earlier.
how Dickens uses setting in this extract…
Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already -- it had not been light all day -- and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air.
Use of darkness to symbolically suggest an unwelcoming environment, perhaps foreshadowing dark events to come.

7. The personification of Nature reminds the reader of its power
The connotations of ‘pouring’ suggests an unstoppable force – emphasising the power of the fog.
The metaphor creates a ghostly quality to the setting which helps prepare the reader for the ghost story that follows.
The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The personification of Nature reminds the reader of its power

8. By comparing the two fires, Dickens reminds us of Scrooge’s mean and selfish nature
Metaphor that reinforces the terrible working conditions of the poor and also suggests that Cratchit is imprisoned within this poverty
The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
A pitiful image and an example of how Dickens uses fire and warmth as a motif throughout the novella to symbolise wealth/generosity/happiness

9. how Dickens uses setting in the novella as a whole…
The Ghost of Christmas Present – turns Scrooge’s room into a ‘Perfect Grove’ – it is full of green holly and mistletoe and heaped with a Christmas feast of extravagance. However, Dickens contrasts this setting with the next, when the ghost takes him out on the streets: where ‘The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker’ and ‘streets were choked up’ with mist. Dickens wants Scrooge and the Victorian reader to recognise that their privileged view of Christmas is not the reality for the poor. However, the people in the streets ‘were jovial and full of glee’

10. The Cratchit’s home – Dickens does not describe the physical setting of their home in any detail, instead, he presents the warmth and happiness of the setting by describing in detail the actions and behaviour of the Cratchit family, who are all involved in trying to make their Christmas a good one. Through this family setting, Dickens shows how the poor will find happiness despite their difficulties and the lengths they have to go to: ‘brave in ribbons’ and their meagre Christmas meal is ‘Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes’

11. Fezziwig’s Party – the setting of the party serves to contrast with the setting that Scrooge provides for his employee Bob. He presents the setting as lively, welcoming, bright and warm, where we are told that ‘fuel was heaped upon the fire’ (motif of fire)
The beetling shop – Dickens presents this as a most unpleasant setting, heaped with disgusting items that he lists at length. The characters such as Joe and Mrs Dilber represent how poverty can lead to crime.
The Churchyard in Stave Four – Scrooge’s potential burial place is presented as dark and overgrown ‘overrun by grass and weeds’ and is a final warning to Scrooge to change his ways. The setting perfectly suits the ghost story genre and adds to the sinister nature of the final ghost.

12. Final Practice Question…
Starting with this extract, explore how Dickens presents the theme of generosity and kindness.
Write about:
How Dickens presents generosity and kindness in the extract
How Dickens presents generosity and kindness elsewhere in the novella