| December 19 |  |
Editor says, what if an Orwellian British Socialist State had subverted the true meaning of Dicken's Christmas Carol by portraying Scrooge as an unrepentant ogre? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).
Preamble
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live".
"I see a vacant seat in the corner," replied the Ghost, "and a crutch without an owner. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit. Say he will be spared" ~ Charles Dickens (1843)
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In 1984, at the Keir Hardie Motor Company in Dagenham, Essex workers and their families were entaintained by a modern adaption of "A Christmas Carol" updated from the original version written by the author and social reform advocate Charles Dickens.
Click 
to watch the 1970 Movie Scene
Bah, Humbug!Set in the early Victorian era, the genius of Dickens was his penmanship of such a stark portrayal of the British Class War; the harsh face of industrial capitalism was personified by the brutal money-changer, Ebeneezer Scrooge and the down-trodden British working class by his maltreated clerk, Bob Cratchit.
As the play develops from this transparent metaphor of abusive industrial relations, the true evil of the capitalists' inhumanity begins to emerge in Scrooge's callous indifference to Cratchit's ailing invalid son, Tiny Tim. Unwilling to grasp that his fortune could pay for the healthcare that could save his life, the play ends on a sad note with the Cratchit's mournfully eating Christmas dinner without Tiny Tim whose abandoned crutch stands at the fireplace.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Religion Source: Wikipedia Labels: Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Redemption, Capitalism, Victorian.
~ Dickens could easily have written it just that way, but, at least in our history, wanted to show the personal redemption of Scrooge. (No doubt that upbeat ending also helped sales of the book.)
~ I still think it's sad that we remember Scrooge at his worst, rather than at his redeemed best at the end of the book.
~ I always thought there was a lot to be said _for_ Scrooge. What a lot of people forget was that in that time, Christmas was just coming out from a long eclipse precipitated by the Roundheads, who'd actually cancelled the holiday as "papist." The Scroogester was also a self-made man and easily old enough to remember the hard times of the early 1800s---one commenter on my LJ said that my comparison of him with Depression survivors I've known was pretty on-target. Last but never least, Cratchit's problems weren't Scrooge's fault--he hadn't given Tiny Tim whatever disease he had and hadn't forced Cratchit to propagate a larger family than he could easily support.
~ Cratchett was not an industrial worker. Buh, Hamburg!
~ "1984"? Uh, don't you mean 1964?
~ In the updated story, I can only assume Scrooge's death is horrible. Now THAT would be a fun Christmas play.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
