File puptcrit/puptcrit.0909, message 106


From: HobgoblinH-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009 09:04:59 EDT
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Questions about "A Christmas Carol"


For myself, having read this book aloud cover-to-cover many, many  times to 
various classes over the course of 30-plus years of teaching, mostly to  
junior high kids, I prefer  certain scenes as the most challenging-- the  
scene in Old Joe's rag-and-bone shop where the charwoman, the undertaker's man,  
and the laundress fence their purloined articles is an example.  
 
"Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied
the woman  with a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to
do it, but I took it off again. If  calico an't good enough for
such a purpose, it isn't good enough for  anything. It's quite
as becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than he  did
in that one."
 
Getting all the voices separated, as Dickens most clearly did, is a  fine 
exercise. He clearly shows the discrete social levels between these  four 
people in their dialects and choice of words. Also, getting the  laughs 
correctly always requires a good ear. 
 
"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe,
producing a  flannel bag with money in it, told out their
several gains upon the ground.  "This is the end of it, you
see! He frightened every one away from him when  he was
alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!"

I have to prefer the Alistair Sim version above all others, as it has no  
agenda to pursue, no famous actors to showcase. Dickens' agenda, if we may  
call it one, must dominate all others-- he felt that England had forgotten 
the  fine old traditional Christmas customs of the days of yore, and so he 
showed  Christmas as he wanted it to be-- games, feasts, dancing, children, 
fellowship.  He transformed English Christmas forever in this one book, 
sweeping the  nation with his passionate outburst. For once, the horrors of the  
underground life of Victorian England were only a subtext to support a  
greater purpose. 
 
Cheers,
Alice  


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