Narrative Voice & Tone
English Lit: AQA GCSE A Christmas Carol, topic 5.1.3
Narrative Voice
The narrative voice is engaging and entertaining. It seems to describe Scrooge as a villain, which the reader agrees with, and so the reader comes to trust the narrative voice.
Chatty and humorous
- Charles Dickens uses a fairly chatty narrative voice in this story.
- The narrator comes across as humorous. He says things like "Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail". This allows the reader to warm to the narrator.
Opinionated about Scrooge
- We quickly get the sense that the narrator has a negative opinion of Scrooge. Some of the opinions he injects into Stave 1 include:
- “Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand.”
- “A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!”
- Because we warm to the narrator early on, we trust the narrator's view of Scrooge.
Tone
The narrator's voice dictates the tone throughout the novella.
Entertaining tone
- The narrator injects humour and sarcasm into the start of the novella, which creates an engaging tone.
- Humour: "Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail".
- Sarcasm: he calls Scrooge an "excellent man of business" amid many negative comments.
- This gives the start of the novel a light-hearted feel.
Sad and sympathetic tone
- As the story delves into Scrooge's sad past, the tone becomes less lively and more sad.
- From insulting Scrooge in Stave 1, the narrator moves to pitying Scrooge: “a solitary child, neglected by his friends”.
- The narrator speaks tenderly when describing Tiny Tim and the other Cratchits: "Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame".
Jovial
- But in the final stave, once Scrooge has vowed to change his ways, the narrator's tone turns jovial.
- This reflects both Scrooge's own happiness at his transformation, and reinforces the positivity of the novella's message about his transformation.
- The stave contains many exclamations, e.g. "Oh, glorious, glorious!"
Darker tone
- Dickens dampens the mood when he wants to stress the ignorance of his society and the importance of social responsibility:
- Ignorance and Want are described as “wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable” to emphasise how ugly these problems are for society.
- Dickens emphasises how awful the poverty is in parts of London with descriptions like "reeked with crime, with filth and misery".
Test yourself on Narrative Voice & Tone
The Narrator's Negative Opinion of Scrooge
Which of these is NOT a quote showing the narrator's negative opinion of Scrooge?