A Christmas Carol: Charles Dickens
From Stave 2, ‘The First of the Three Spirits’ – Scrooge anxiously awaits the arrival of
the first spirit: the ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’.
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow,
melancholy ONE. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his
bed were drawn.
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet,
nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of
his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found
himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now
to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
It was a strange figure – like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed
through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded
from the view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions. Its hair, which hung about
its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle
in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular;
the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most
delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest
white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It
held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry
emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it
was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all
this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments,
a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.
Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its
strongest quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in
another, and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself
fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now
with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of
which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they
melted away.

Explore how Dickens presents the ‘First of the Three Spirits’, the Ghost of
Christmas Past, in this extract.
Give examples from the extract to support your ideas.

In this extract from “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens masterfully describes the appearance of the “First of the Three Spirits,” the Ghost of Christmas Past, creating a vivid and eerie image in the reader’s mind. Dickens uses rich and evocative language to portray the ghost’s appearance and characteristics.

Firstly, Dickens describes the ghost as a strange figure that is neither entirely childlike nor elderly, but somewhere in between. He writes, “like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions.” This description conveys the ghost’s otherworldly nature, as it exists outside the normal realm of time and age, and adds an element of mystery to its appearance.