Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as a read-along book club.
By Charles Dickens
Last night was the Ghost Of Christmas yet to come. I’ll link to each of the staves for anyone coming in here before jumping into the final review, since I won’t be doing a Clutter Report book report on this one, and this last chapter is kind of short compared to the others. First, I want to go over the reason I’ve referred to Ebenezer Scrooge by his first name, rather than the more traditional usage of his last name like this book and pretty much every adaptation.
Britannica.com defines “scrooge” as “a selfish and unfriendly person who is not willing to spend or give away money — usually singular”. Of course the name comes from our pal Ebenezer, and if usually in the negative. We live in a world where we’ve misused the names “Chad” and “Karen”, the former positively despite actual people named Chad who are not “Chads”, and the latter negatively despite actual people named Karen who are not “Karens”. The latter is actually insulting, and I know a Karen who is not a “Karen” as the internet uses it and doesn’t deserve that. I used to know a Chad, but I don’t know what he’s like today.
Often forgotten when you call someone a scrooge is that Scrooge’s story is one of redemption, of not being a scrooge. Also remember technically Fen is a Scrooge, being Ebenezer’s sister, and thus her son Fred is at least a Scrooge by blood, probably taking his father’s name but we’re never given it. So they were NEVER scrooges, yet Fen had the name. We even hear from Fen that their unnamed dad has had his own emotional awakening, bringing Ebenezer back home to the family away from the boarding school. So calling someone a scrooge SHOULD mean “yeah, he’s a skinflint who hates celebrations, but there’s some good in him so he could realize what a fool he’s been and reform someday”, rather than focusing on the man he was. A real scrooge then should be the guy who USED to be a Christmas-hating money hoarder but is now a caring person with his wealth and loves Christmas like he used to.
However, just like the narrator isn’t going to change the English language by complaining about dead doornails versus coffin nails, there’s not much I can do and have better things to deal with. Let’s finish the book and then review the work as a whole.
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