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A Christmas Carol Analysis

Decent Essays

“Bah, Humbug” an iconic line from a story we all know and love, said by a character that was made for us to hate. Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843, in part as an attempt to garner some success, and also as an attempt to convince the masses of kindness and charity at Christmas time. While it did not gain him commercial success, the legacy this story has left, succeeded in inspiring our society to give a little more at Christmas time. Nowadays, the story has become synonymous with Christmas. It would be hard to imagine a Christmas without some adaptation of Dickens masterpiece. As A Christmas Carol is one of the most adapted Literary sources, it is no surprise that Dr. Who would take a crack at it. The episode “The Unquiet Undead” aired in 2005, and takes place during the time of Dickens, and while it is not a direct adaptation of A Christmas Carol. it’s many allusions, and similar story structure, make it an apt analogy for it. Of course, revision is Dr. Who’s game, so the alien ghosts, and reanimated corpses are not a surprise either. According to Leitch, a story that is not a direct adaptation of a source, but instead an analogy to the story by way of invoking the characters and/or style of the author or developing their story in a way feels inspired by the source, is an analogue (Leitch, Pg. 113). “Unquiet Undead” is in spirit, inspired by A Christmas Carol, even though the story is not a direct adaptation. The episode takes place in Dickens’ time, around the end of his life, at Christmas time, and we know this because Dickens is a character in the episode. The story is that alien ghosts from the future are haunting a mortuary as gas, and possessing dead bodies in order to live again. So, not quite A Christmas Carol, but it does have some parallels. Most of which come in the form of Dickens’ character. He takes the place of the Scrooge character, and while he is not greedy like Scrooge, he is grumpy, and lacks belief in the impossible. Also, like Scrooge, he has become estranged from his family. The conversion that would take place in Scrooge, from greed to kindness, becomes a conversion from a grumpy cynic, to an ecstatic believer, that has been inspired anew. He also decides that he

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