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A Christmas Carol Study Guide

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by Charles Dickens
About 90 pages (26,927 words)
A Christmas Carol Summary

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Themes

Guilt and Innocence

Often in ghost stories, the ghostly apparitions function to remind the main character of something evil he or she has done in the past. In other words, ghosts act as the character's conscience. Scrooge certainly has enough to feel guilty about: he is mean and tight-fisted with his assistant, Bob Cratchit; dismissive of his nephew, Fred; miserly and cold with the men from the local charity association; and nasty to the little caroler that he chases away from his keyhole with a ruler. Each of these people are associated with some form of innocence, a reminder of the less fortunate or the love of family and friends.

Marley's ghost raises the question of guilt directly, explaining that he himself is forced to walk the earth as a ghost because he was a.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 733 words. This study guide contains 26,927 words (approx. 90 pages at 300 words per page).

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A Christmas Carol from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.

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