Trauma in Christmas Carorol by Dickens

PAPA MAMADOU MARONE NDIAYE                            P24337                771202526 student at Gaston Berger University                             E-mail: mdoundiaye93@gmail.com
English Section                                                                        2016-2017
TOPIC: The impact of the traumatic experience of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Outline
Plot Summary of A Christmas Carol
INTRODUCTION
Trauma and the social influences of the book 
Scrooge’s experience of trauma
Characteristics of trauma throughout the book
CONCLUSION
Works Cited

PLOT SUMMARY
    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens depicts the life of Ebenezer Scrooge, an old miser who considers Christmas as a humbug and does not care about other people. He is visited by the ghost of his late friend and business partner Jacob Marley who bears heavy chains because of his lifetime of greed and selfishness, a situation which traumatizes Scrooge a lot. Marley announces to Scrooge that he will be visited by three spirits. The first of the spirits, the Ghost of Christmas Past, takes Scrooge to his early past and shows him the situations he went through. The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge to the market showing him people who were getting ready for Christmas and also to Bob Cratchit’s family with young Tiny Tim who is seriously sick. The ghost also shows him Ignorance and Want, a boy and a girl, and warns people to avoid them. The third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come takes Scrooge in his future during Christmas day. The ghost also shows him the funerals of a man whose grave bears the name of Scrooge. At the end, Scrooge is completely transformed and became a very good man. 

INTRODUCTION
    The history of human beings has been dominated by conflicts and experiences which have resulted in a traumatic vision of society. Such disturbances and difficult situations have raised a great interest in the study of trauma theory. The theory of trauma has tried to understand and grasp these worldwide inexplicable traumatic problems in domains such as psychology, sociology, and literature among others. Charles Dickens, in his book A Christmas Carol, has depicted the protagonist Scrooge whose life has totally been changed due to the traumatic experiences he underwent with the ghosts. Considering the impacts of traumatic events, the writer himself struck by traumatic experiences which we will discuss later, we judge it necessary to highlight the issue that has shaken people’s life and humanity in general. The concern of the following study is to deal first, taking into account some texts by Shoshana Felman, Gabriele Schwab, Freud, and Cathy Caruth studied in class, with traumatic influence of the writing of the book then tackle the protagonist’s, Scrooge, experience of trauma and at last pinpoint the characteristics of trauma in book.
Trauma and the social influences of the book 
The writing of A Christmas Carol has been influenced by the author’s social conditions and experience which can be considered as traumatic. In fact, Dickens was shocked by the lot of poor children in the late nineteenth century. In early 1843, he toured the Cornish tin mines, where he was angered after seeing children working in appalling and harsh conditions and that situation haunted the writer. The atrocities he witnessed there were reinforced by his visit to the Field Lane Ragged school were half-starved, and illiterate street children were sent.  Taking into account Gabriele Schwab view about “Haunting Legacies”, this situation can raise traumatism in people who try to side with or take the position of the victimized. She acknowledges: 
Once again the notion of transference is important because it shapes the way history is told, the way we perceive certain events at the national and cultural level, the way our textbooks depict events, etc. In other words, how do we remember events without taking sides, or whose side do we take when recounting an event. (Haunting Legacies, 9)
It this then a way of taking part in the struggle against poverty and mourning the victims that more or less influence the work of Dickens. The effect of the Industrial Revolution upon the working class horrified Charles when he read the parliamentary report and realized that the most effective way to reach the broadest segment of the population with his social concerns about poverty and injustice was to write a deeply felt Christmas narrative rather than polemical pamphlets and essays. This vision recalls the long history Marxist theory about the struggle against class differentiation. According to Marx, “(i)t is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. This assertion champions a transformation of life after violent and hard conditions which are likely to provoke trauma among people. Marx argues that all mental (ideological) systems are the products of real social and economic existence. The material interests of the dominant social class determine how people see human existence, individual and collective. So, social and political events can contribute to the development of the interest in trauma according to Ramadanovic. Then, Dickens was not unconcerned about the horrific event during his time, rather, he felt historically appointed because of the trauma he went through to publish the book and bear witness to the history of the poor which affected him a lot.

Scrooge’s experience of trauma
Through the book and particularly with Marley’s ghost, Ebenezer Scrooge experiences trauma in different stages and that impacts a lot in his life and state of mind. The phenomenon, generally caused after a survival from accident, genocide, or even disease, here the encounter with different ghost, is inexplicably changing the course of people’s life in general and Scrooge in particular. It is magical realism or the supernatural that emphasizes some references of trauma with the presence of the ghost. It’s a return of the traumatic situations Scrooge has already gone through with Marley’s ghost which affected him later through visions or/and dreams. ‘‘The survivor’s uncertainty is not a simple amnesia; for the event returns, as Freud points out, insistently and against their will’’ (Caruth 6). 
“Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought. Marley’s Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through”, “Was it a dream or not?” (A Christmas Carol, 28)
This situation underscores what Felman considers as the crisis of truth. It is in this way that some thinkers tried to debunk and dig deep to grasp the manifestations and faced this difficultly definable theory of Trauma. ‘‘Freud’s peculiar strength was to say what could not be said, or at least to attempt to say it, thus refusing to be silent in the face of the unsayable’’ (Caruth P10).
In addition, Marley’s ghost and the Ghost of Christmas past had a horrific impact on the Character of Scrooge who used to be a bad man, “scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!”. 
“This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains. The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door (…and passed into the room before his eyes “I know him; Marley’s Ghost!” and fell again.” (18)
He was always talking and trembling asking why the “dreadful apparition” troubles and haunts him. The phantom’s only answer was “the whole time. No rest. No peace. Incessant torture of remorse.” (23) Scrooge went through a radical change in his life and the way he used to consider things after the visits of the different ghosts. At the end he asserts: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!” (84) It is in this way that we can comprehend Schwab when she argues that literature and the arts can become transformational objects. Trauma is then affecting the individual’s psyche and creating what Dr. Laub considers as an ‘‘inexplicable traumatic void’’ but the concern of some other literary figures was to call on history and a literature of testimony so as to better understand and explain Trauma theory.
Characteristics of trauma through the book
Other theories of trauma have been dealt with in A Christmas Carol which can be applied in some of the prior texts studied. Actually, apart from the theory of the haunting which is very apparent through the different ghosts, one can also notice a striking touch of memories and testimonials throughout the short story. Marley’s ghost is a means of testifying people’s deeds and here, Scrooge is being told what he is at the point of going through if he doesn’t change his attitude. It is then as a way of healing and saving that testimonies are used to help people get rid of their problems. Psychoanalysis and some other subjects dealing with human mental welfare proceed by taking testimonies from their patient. Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams can be considered as a response to the many testimonies drawn by people who more or less bear witness to a specific traumatic situation. Literature then because of the aesthetic language can be a main tool for the transmission of trauma which does not need to be grasped in order to reveal itself in the text, in order to be witnessed, to use Felman’s and Laub’s term. The effect of Marley’s ghost on scrooge who witnesses the testimonies of the phantom alert and mobilize his attention. However, it is the ghost of Christmas past which mainly recalls the principles of memories.
Indeed, the ghost shows the character’s own past with striking pictures and living images that Scrooge witnesses at the same time. Cathy Caruth argues that to be traumatized is precisely to be possessed by an image or event” (5-6). Shoshana Felman in her volume talks about a “larger, more profound, less definable crisis of truth…proceeding from contemporary trauma.” Such a crisis of truth extends beyond the question of individual cure and ask how we in this era can have access to our own historical experience, to a history that is in its immediacy a crisis to whose truth there is no simple access (Felman). It is thus difficult to understand trauma even through memories and history.

CONCLUSION
    In A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, the Character of Scrooge has experienced trauma through different aspects with the different ghosts. The book is partly influenced by the authors own traumatism during the ‘Hungry Forties’. Scrooge’s encounter with the ghosts changed totally his life and his vision about society. The theory of trauma is then applicable to the short story if we take into account some texts by Felman, Cathy Caruth, Gabriele Schwab, and Petar Ramadanovic among other texts. The book apart from its social dimension bears the influence of the Supernatural with the presence of the different ghosts.

Works Cited
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press: Oxford,
    1997. 
Caruth, Cathy, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History”. Yale: French 
    Studies, 1991.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Chapman and Hall, 186, Strand: London, 1843.
Laub, Dori. “No One Bears Witness to the Witness” in Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. Ed. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Luckhrust, Roger. The Trauma Question.
Schwab, Gabriele. Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1977.