Time Travel In A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens’s novel titled A Christmas Carol depicts a story of a rich, selfish and cold hearted old business man, Scrooge, who is visited by three ghosts on the Christmas Eve, and each of them leads him to watch the impactful events in his past, present, and future, later inspiring Scrooge to reflect upon his miser life and to change his future to a better one. In this morality tale, Dickens cleverly facilitates Scrooge’s conversion through time travel, as well as allowing readers to sympathize with the protagonist by understanding his unfortunate childhood. However, unlike other time travel works in scientific fictions, Dickens’s characters do not travel through a scientific –based method, such as a time machine, but rather through a

Scrooge’s journey through time holds the key to his change of character as it provides him a unique perspective to reexamine his mistakes in his past and present, and to foresee a deeply unsettling vision in his future. For instance, his trip to the past forcibly makes Scrooge to re-experience his distant memory. When he painfully witnesses his neglected childhood and his treatment to his finance, “Scrooge said in a broken voice, ‘remove me from this place.’” Even though it may seem too cruel for Scrooge to revisit the past that he wish to forget, it is his past that shapes his miserly character now; therefore, confronting his past is an essential first step to drive him to change. As the story progresses to his last trip with the Spirits of Christmas Yet to Come, Scrooge finally acknowledges the necessity of his internal transformation when he confronts the end of his wretched life. “He cried, tight clutching at its robe, ‘hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?’” Similar to other time-travel novella, the implication of time travel in A Christmas Carol lies on the confrontation and discovery of the traveler’s identity. Even in some time travel books that focus on beyond the