[~4hr] 'christmas carol' noodling around

[schmirius]

FIRST UP, arbitrarily chosen from the stories that seem like they're shorter/have more structure built into them already: deconstruct 'a christmas carol'

dickens has:

(1) marley's ghost
(2) the first of the three spirits
(3) the second of the three spirits
(4) the last of the spirits
(5) the end of it


(1) marley's ghost

• opens with really making sure you know that marley is dead, so dead, scrooge said so, as dead as other famous literature ghosts were surely dead (king hamlet).
• scrooge is cheap as shit, which is why he doesn't paint out marley's name, and sometimes ~responds to~/is mistaken for the dead man, tee hee
• scrooge is Cold, temperamentally and literally. compare to his nephew who's like ruddy from the heat
  --> the thing to do, probably, lol, is run with that imagery of moriarty at the fireplace in the victorian christmas special, that moriarty is in fact hot, fuckin, //inflamed// compared to sherlock
• sadly we get the thesis laid out neatly by the nephew: "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."
  this thesis is not relevant to our sherlock journey and is universally understood by everyone as The Point of a christmas carol, so we're going to have to think about what kind of alternate tale to throw up as a replacement since just doing This isn't going to cut it, lol. nor wonderful life, geez.
• GHOST STORY TROPES (are they just Victorian London tropes lol):
  -- announcing a ghost up front
  -- Cold and the night
  -- fog
  -- gothic church bells
  -- living in (the dead man's apartment in) the dead man's house
• the door knocker LOOKS LIKE MARLEY'S FACE HWOA
  (also, damnit, the air is "curiously stirred [..] by hot air," so this ghost is already from hell, lol. that's not actually a change to do hot!Jim)
  GHASTLY LIGHT, UNKNOWN WIND THRU HAIR, LIVID COLOR
• "To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue."
• sits down for dinner -- housebells randomly ringing, incorporal chain-dragging noises then: Marley's ghost actually!! Wearing a chain and "his body was transparent." ("Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.") The ghost can sit.
• "death-cold eyes" BUT "infernal atmosphere of its own" -- "its hair skirts tassels were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven"
• ghost properties:
  -- carries its sins chained to it
  -- forced to walk the earth, but like, so fast
  -- has often sat invisible with Scrooge before this
  -- proved it was a ghost by just dropping its jaw on the table for the duration of the convo. but talked fine, whatever.
  -- walks backward away after it has delivered its message, gently hovering a little higher every time until it can just walkfloat out the window
• all ghosts out the window being especially sad because of how they wasted their christmases on earth, lols. they're Scrooge's rich pals. he has a glimpse of the "Invisible World."

(2) the first of the three spirits

• ghost notes: christmas past looks old and young at once, by e.g. having long white hair but healthy rosy flesh. it dissolves and looks like it has no legs, too many legs, head or no head with or without body, etc, but ultimately "it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever." its voice is soft and gentle; its grip is tender as a woman's but impossible to resist.


• out of its head comes a column of light, I think vertically? it's hard to know, except that its cap is described as also an extinguisher, and Scrooge really wants it to put the cap on so he doesn't have to look at it all. the light is worldly, capping it would bring the spirit down. don't bonnet me man.
  the vision takes him thru many childhood/young man xmases and ends when he can't stand it, seeing his former fiance with her husband pitying him one xmas, and pulls the cap down over the spirit. the light still shines out from under the cap after it's been pulled down.

(3) the second of the three spirits

• it's inexplicably 1am every time a ghost comes in even though he fell asleep after seeing Marley at 2am and this all happens in a single night before Christmas morning
• he expects to get the jump on this ghost, and opens his bedcurtains in anticipation etc, but instead of a ghost coming to his bed a "blaze of ruddy light" settles on his bed and he has to get up and go to the next room to find out where it comes from. surprise, the next room is his room, but full of evergreens and feast food and the ghost
• who is a Jolly Giant! like, huge Pan, or something? long curly hair with a holly wreath, wearing a green cape edged in white fur over its bare chest and down to its bare feet. it's joyful and kind-eyed and Scrooge doesn't want to make eye contact.
• they see the Cratchits, they see random miners and poor city folks and sailors, they see Scrooge's nephew, lots of cheer and suggestions on how to pass a wholesome and fulfilling Victorian xmas
• the spirit gets older in the span of a paragraph, hair graying, and explains it only lives til midnight. (Scrooge does not grow older at all, either as viewed subject as in chapter 2 nor as insubstantial traveler)
• Ignorance and Want personified as starving sickly children are here revealed as hiding under the spirit's robes, 9_9. spirit throws Scrooge's lines about ~are there no workhouses to take care of them~ in his face as it had thrown ~better to die and get rid of surplus population~ at Scrooge when they saw Tiny Tim. 9____9
• (spirit is it/its btw, never he/his)
  

(4) the last of the spirits

• it comes at midnight as the previous spirit dies, bringing with it tenors of Doom. "The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached." yer reaper-type, cloaked in black and visible only in its outstretched hand, ominously pointing, grimly and nigh-imperceptibly nodding rather than speaking
• Scrooge merely 'knows' "behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black."
• "the night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!"
  this night has had wicked confusing passage of hours, the clock chime being mostly meaningless and often a lie (2am back to two different 1ams, Christmas Present ages and dies by the end of the night, then it's midnight again when Future comes to call) but we're still worried about the precious passage of time, somehow.
  far, far worse, IMO, is that coked-out feeling where every moment of time is so SO full of shit that you have to process and pay attention to and feel things about; where you can't believe it's jjjust an hour that's gone by, you have to check the timestamps to make sure
• "The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along."
• they do listen to a gaggle of men gossiping about Scrooge's death where one of them has a quivering "excrescence" dangling from his nose, which combined with the Christmas Present section featuring canoodling behind the curtains during a round of blind man's bluff, is about as explicit as it gets, Victorianly. that I am so oddly charmed at these highly euphemistic renderings of actually explicit human behavior probably speaks to how ultimately Victorian my manners are.
• the undertaker's man, the laundress, and the cleaning lady all run into each other at Old Joe the -- rag dealer? tinker? peddler?--'s shop to sell shit they quickly robbed off Scrooge, lmao, and it's easily my favorite part of this whole story.
• dead!Scrooge's room again has a shaft of light, this one "pale," by which he beholds the figure of the scraggly robbed corpse. he cannot bring himself to look at the face, even when the Phantom bids him to.
• some debtors are overjoyed this hard man has died, their debt will surely be in better hands
• the grief of Tiny Tim's family is also like -- they're doing these cloying family things, but the grief itself is very real. they just miss Tiny Tim. they're sadder and slower and they have to force being cheerful and kind to each other. Tiny Tim was the paragon of a good cripple (e.g. wishing in Christmas Present section that people see him at church and think of how much luckier they are/that Jesus would even cure cripples) and there's some of that in the mourning, and it's hammy, but it's still affecting.
  
  come to think of it I'm having a lot of trouble between Dickens and Austen reconciling the moral underpinnings of their worlds with my present rejection of much of their conception of good and wicked in the world, lol, agh.
• the climax of this section is the spirit pointing past Scrooge's now-redecorated office to the churchyard for Scrooge to discover his own headstone, o dear!
• he'll not only honor Christmas, he'll keep Christmas in his heart all year.
  
  that's it, that's the holiday special from then in 1843 up through the present day, thank you SO MUCH mr. dickens.
  
• he takes the spirit's hand, imploring, only for the whole spirit to suddenly appear to be his bedpost.

(5) the end of it

• Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!
  
  “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed.
  
• he's hysterical, laugh-crying, so so relieved, can't get dressed properly, starts shouting MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYBODY alone in his room. does the Wonderful Life inventory, look, my saucepan with gruel!!
  
• the church bells wind this up -- now they are Christmas day bells, and they are as joyous as his random laughter of relief, "the lustiest peals."
• reversal of the fog, moral clarity attached to the temperature: "No fog, no mist, clear bright, jovial, stirring cold: cold, piping for the blood to dance to" and then reversal of the dark, "Golden sunlight: Heavenly sky"
• what's today WHY IT'S CHRISTMAS, the spirits can fuck with time if they want
• he gets an urchin to buy a huge turkey to send to Tiny Tim and spends a moment admiring his knocker, no longer Marley's face, declaring he'll love it forever
• he chuckles til he cries, and his hands are shaking even when he shaves: "But if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied."
  catharsis! shocky, shocky catharsis.
• puts on his good clothes, finally making use of his riches, contrary to what random poor people had been scolding him behind his back for not doing for the duration of the story
• he runs into the gentleman who'd been collecting for the poor and instantly promises him a ton, goes to church, and walks around just talking to beggars and working people and just giving them all money
  this is very charming, but I equally hope everyone in town just assumes Scrooge woke up and lost his mind one Christmas morning. like raving, manic, wow, lunatic
• the epilogue does touch on it! "some people laughed to see the alteration in him," but whatever, just literally lose your mind, give your employees raises.
• THE END