My favorite quote from A Christmas Carol
by David Atkins
Millions of Americans will be/have been watching A Christmas Carol today and yesterday. Some of the movie versions alter or gloss over this bit from the book, so I think it’s important to quote this particular section just as Dickens wrote it:
“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before,”tell me if Tiny Tim will live.”
“I see a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, “in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”
“No, no,” said Scrooge. “Oh, no, kind Spirit. Say he will be spared.”
“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! To hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.”
Hard as it is to believe, we are actually having this public policy argument in this country today, as Republicans argue that we don’t have money to feed the multitude of children on the SNAP program, because the taxes required to do so would interfere with the productive freedoms of billionaires.
Of The Christmas Carol, Dickens wrote in 1843:
I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly…
173 years later, conservatives are still out of humour with Dickens’ simple ideas, kicking against the pricks impelling them to basic decency.
.