Memory and Human Unity in Dickens' A Christmas Carol

Although Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is generally presented as an uncomplicated allegory detailing the pure goodness of Christmas, this is an oversimplification of the novella. Instead, it is essentially the story of an isolated man with a lack of personal identity who reconnects with humanity when he re-experiences past memories. Through the detailed account of Ebenezer Scrooge's vast transition, Dickens stresses the importance of memory and self-remembrance for a person to connect to the community as a whole. Furthermore, Dickens stipulates that a person's disregard of his or her own past is the ultimate cause of many human problems - he suggests that one's isolation from humanity causes an indifference towards the well-being of others. In A Christmas Carol, the reader can conclude that memory is the uniting factor of humanity; Dickens strengthens his ideas symbolically by the juxtaposition of lightness and darkness.

It is evident from the very beginning of A Christmas Carol that Ebenezer Scrooge is disconnected from humanity: he is represented as mean, hostile, almost inhuman. In addition to these nasty characteristics, Scrooge does not have a strong sense of self-identity. He fails to differentiate himself from his business partner, Marley, who died seven years ago, "the firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him" (Dickens 34). Because so much of what defines self-identity is an individuals memories, Scrooge avoids his own identity to avoid his painful past. The evasion of his memories causes Scrooge to isolate himself from the community by pushing everyone away with his snarling insults and unpleasantness. His effort is verbalized when he replies to a gentleman seeking money for charity, "'I wish to be left alone'" (Dickens 39). Scrooge wishes to be left alone because in order to reconnect with the community, he must reconnect with himself and the unhappy moments of his past that he is so afraid to remember. Even his nephew's wholesome attempt to describe humanity's harmony on Christmas warrants no desire in Scrooge to partake in the community's unity. Says the nephew in his good-hearted description of Christmas, "'...the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys'" (Dickens 36). With these words, Scrooge's nephew succinctly pinpoints the unity that Scrooge avoids and seems to fear.

Unwillingly, Scrooge re-experiences several past memories with the Ghost of Christmas Past. When he is put back into touch with his own history, Scrooge almost immediately begins to develop more human characteristics such as humility, regret, and sadness. "'What is the matter?' asked the spirit. 'Nothing," said Scrooge. 'Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night, I should like to have given him something: that's all'" (Dickens 59). As Scrooge sees himself as a boy, an adolescent, a young adult, he is reminded of where he came from and who he once was. This surge of empathy for humanity is something the reader has not seen in Scrooge before this point. Through remembrance, Scrooge will ultimately abandon his greed and selfishness at the end of A Christmas Carol. By using the story of Scrooge, Dickens suggests his idea that memory (and through memory, a connection with the rest of humanity) can solve human problems such as greediness and egotism. Scrooge's newfound compassion is caused entirely by remembrance; through remembering his own history, Scrooge remembers himself, and is reminded that he is indeed a member of humanity, a "fellow-passenger to the grave," in the words of his nephew (Dickens 36).

Alternatively, the reader also observes the beginnings of Scrooge's original transition as an empathetic young man to a person completely isolated and disconnected from humanity. With Scrooge as a man in his early middle-age, the reader sees in him a face that had "begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless, motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall" (Dickens 65). A woman, presumably a lost love of Scrooge's, calls attention to his gradual transformation: "'Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are'" (Dickens 66). This section of A Christmas Carol gives the reader essential clues about why Scrooge has avoided his past for so long: though he once was a man who had happiness and love, greed morphed Scrooge into an unhappy and lonely old man. The painful loss of love in his past is one of the main reasons Scrooge avoids his memories so fervently. Ultimately, it is the newfound remembrance of his past experiences that changes him back into a person who can relate to and empathize with humanity.

Even after Scrooge's transition into an individual connected with his own memories has begun, it is evident that the fear of his past is still embedded deeply within him. Essential facets to Scrooge's character, such as this hindering fear, are revealed when the Ghost of Christmas Past disappears: "In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed that its light was burning high and bright... but though Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he could not hide the light: which streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground" (Dickens 70). Scrooge, unready to fully face his past, attempts to suffocate and literally extinguish the light emanating from the ghost. The light is symbolic for Scrooge's memories, his past, and the truth that accompanies it: that every human being has a past and, thus, that memory is a hugely uniting factor of humanity. Scrooge's violent reaction to the light reveals that he has tried, and up till this point, succeeded, to avoid his memories and simultaneously the unity with fellow humans that Scrooge's remembrance could grant him.

Light, such as the light that floods from the crushed form of the Ghost of Christmas Past, makes a continuous appearance in A Christmas Carol. Throughout the novella, the rift between Scrooge and the rest of the community is symbolized by recurring images of lightness and darkness. Light and dark also represent the separation of Scrooge's memories from his current self - a separation that is a result of the lack of remembrance that Scrooge has experienced. "By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and as Scrooge and the spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful." (Dickens 84) At this point in the text, the reader infers through the narrator's tone and word choice ("wonderful") that Scrooge's attitude towards the light is in the process of changing. He no longer scowls at it and inwardly fears it, but he is beginning to literally warm to the light.

The images of lightness surrounded by darkness continue to reoccur; the light is a symbol for the unity of humanity - the unity that Scrooge, through the re-experiencing of his past, is ready to be a part of again. That the light represents this unity between humans based solely on the fact that we are all humans is explicit:
"Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse... But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands, over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas"
(Dickens 85-86).
Even in a place described as "dismal," "sunken," "solitary," the reader finds, by the symbolic light of the lighthouse, two men joining hands and uniting as a representation of all of humanity. Although there is a vast empty expanse of ocean and an abundance of darkness surrounding the lighthouse, inside, huddled around the emblematic light, the men find kinship and connection based on the fact that they are both humans. This image is representative of the message of unity that Dickens continually conveys throughout A Christmas Carol.

Ultimately, Dickens creates a story about the effect of memory on the individual and the unity of all humans. Remembering where one is from is what roots a person in the community of humans; a person's memory allows them to identify with all of humanity. Because memory relates so directly to humanity, a lack of memory or a disregard of one's past causes isolation from people and indifference towards the well-being of others rather than compassion. Dickens impresses these points upon the reader by relaying the exaggerated and allegorical tale of Ebenezer Scrooge. Through A Christmas Carol, Dickens repeatedly implies and, finally, convinces the reader that memory is the factor that unites humanity.

Works Cited

Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. 1843. A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas
Writings. Ed. Michael Slater, London: Penguin