A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Week 6: Stave V — The End of It
Read Stave V ('The End of It') of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
Previewing Week 6 of A Christmas Carol
Read 3 of 8 discussion questions below. Unlock the complete 7-week guide when you’re ready.
The shortest Stave is the most exuberant — Scrooge wakes up laughing, weeping, and dancing, and the story races forward on the energy of his joy. Read it fast, as Dickens clearly wrote it, and then go back and sit with what has actually changed.
Discussion Questions
8 questions1.Scrooge wakes up laughing and crying at once, gets his stockings on inside out, and declares himself 'as light as a feather, as happy as an angel, as merry as a schoolboy, as giddy as a drunken man.' Dickens notes that 'for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh — the father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs.' What does it mean that Scrooge's laugh needed to be re-learned? What had suppressed it for so many years?
2.Scrooge's first act of generosity is anonymous — he sends the enormous prize turkey to Bob Cratchit without signing his name. Why does he choose to give anonymously? What does anonymity add to the gift, and what might it suggest about the nature of true generosity?
3.On the street, Scrooge meets the portly charity collector he dismissed so cruelly the day before. He whispers a large donation in his ear and the man cries, 'Lord bless me! My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?' Scrooge replies: 'Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it.' What does the phrase 'back-payments' suggest about how Scrooge understands his own past? Is he trying to compensate for lost time, or something more than that?