what is meant by generosity and how is it presented in charles dickens's novella a christmas carol let's find out [Music] how's it going revision squad it's me liam aka mr knight aka dystopia junkie and in this video we are going to think about how the theme of generosity is presented in charles dickens's novella a christmas carol which we are going to do by looking at some key contextual information and reading and analyzing some relevant quotations my hope for this video is that something i say or write will help you out as you study or revise dickens's classic christmas tale as per usual i strongly suggest that you've got a pen and some paper in front of you as you watch this video so that you can make some notes of the ideas that we go over also if you find this video to be helpful in any way please do consider dropping it a like writing me a comment sharing it with anyone who might find it useful and of course subscribing to my channel if you aren't already in fact youtube tells me that almost 80 percent of you who are watching my videos aren't actually subbed up and you wouldn't believe how much it would help me if we could have more of you subscribed now helping me out also means that i can continue to help you out as well so really it's a win-win situation okay so i've said that this video is going to be about generosity but what exactly do i mean by that or rather what might an examiner be looking for when marking an exam paper that's about generosity now the most obvious approach to take here is to think about generosity in financial terms looking at acts of charity and financial support and how they and the characters involved in them are presented throughout the story now that's one approach to take and although it is the most literal interpretation of this theme that won't stop you from achieving those top top grades but here's the thing generosity can be more than just a money-based thing it's also possible to be generous with other things such as our time support and love as long as we are freely giving to those less fortunate than us we are behaving in a generous way now i mentioned this because having a consideration of non-financial generosity could really bolster an essay and show that generosity isn't just something that is restricted to the financially wealthy finally i would just like to mention that if you are given a question about generosity you can of course talk about its opposite so greed and selfishness as long as you remember to frame those things as the lack of generosity now you can do this with pretty much any theme for almost any text if asked about love you could also discuss hate if asked about conflict you could talk about peace if asked about fate you could talk about freedom or free will if the quotations are there to support you and you've got the argumentative capabilities in hand go for it be brave be bold and take risks as long as you can support your ideas well sensible ideas that is ones that aren't silly and have not misunderstood the literal meanings of words nobody can really call your literary analysis wrong it's just different anyway if the theme of generosity looks at acts of giving in terms of money but also time and support and whatnot or the absence of them which quotations can we discuss in relation to its presentation in a christmas carol well before we do that we've got some all important context to look at right context let's go remember most gcse exam boards require you to apply the historical social or political backgrounds of your victorian texts to your analysis of them if you don't do this you're likely to miss out on an awful lot of marks even if your actual analysis and discussion of the text is pretty spot-on so first of all i would like to acknowledge that there were charities in the victorian era but that they were no way near as formalized as they are today by that i mean that charities were much smaller in their scope they may only have covered a town or borough for instance or only gave support to certain groups of people furthermore they depended on donations from wealthy individuals rather than centralized support from the government or other means in order to run this meant that their funds would have been smaller of course now because the charities were smaller and had less money they were ultimately less effective now it has been suggested by some critics that individuals were able to take advantage of how small and disconnected these charities were and claimed support from more than one of them although this meant that some individuals were able to maybe get the full support they actually needed it also meant that the charities resources could not spread as far making them more ineffective now charities were based in lots of different locations but it should be said that churches were often hubs of charitable activity now this was because generosity particularly financial generosity had strong ties with christianity for some charity was seen as a way of saving one's soul while also supporting those in need whereas for others they believed that by coming into contact with human nature particularly with those in need they were able to come in contact with christ adding to this the idea that helping the poor was equitable to helping one's own family for christians believe that everybody is the child of god and it's easy to see why charity and christianity were so strongly connected in the victorian times simply put being charitable meant being a good christian now charities did have some links to education too not all charities believed in just handing out money to the poor and instead felt that if they educated the poor instead teaching them how to live better lives they could help them in a more permanent effective way now i'm sure you've heard about ragged schools at some point in your study of victorian literature in short they were free schools set up by wealthy benefactors to give poor children an education which in turn it was hoped would improve their quality of life although we don't really see a ragged school in action in a christmas carol it is generally believed that dickens's visit to a ragged school in 1843 was something that motivated him to write a christmas carol as he was so appalled by the conditions that the poor were subjected to the idea of education may also be particularly relevant to the entity known as ignorance as a better quality of education would do a lot to diminish the levels of so-called ignorance among the working classes finally and this is a super quick comment dickens himself was a notable victorian philanthropist this meant that he was a high profile example of a wealthy person who used his money and resources to help those who were less fortunate than he was perhaps this was another reason why he was motivated to write a christmas carol because as much as he was trying to do what he could to assist the poor he was only one man and one man's generosity does not solve poverty on its own dickens was aware that in order to help out the working class on mass the middle and upper classes had to get an awful lot more generous hopefully this has given you a good understanding of what it meant to be generous in the victorian times but now which quotations could we use in order to analyze its depiction in digging's story let's dive in as i'm sure you know by now if you've watched any of my other videos about a christmas carol all the page references i will be making in this video refer to this copy of the book so if you have a different copy they will probably be different hopefully though i still make it pretty clear whereabouts in the story they come from so the first quotation i want to think about in terms of generosity or this case the lack of it comes from scrooge in stave 1 when he talks to the charity representative he says and i'm sure you're pretty familiar with this quotation by now if they would rather die said scrooge they'd better do it and decrease the surplus population with the theme of generosity in mind i would say that this quotation shows that scrooge is so selfish that he hoards his wealth even though he knows that doing so will cost other people their lives this is clear i think in how he asserts that the poor had better do it meaning of course die which is more preferable to scrooge than him donating some of his fast wealth you could also argue that this quotation shows scrooge not only being financially ungenerous but also emotionally ungenerous too because he is not showing any sympathy whatsoever to those who are in need all of this i'm sure you would agree presents scrooge in a pretty negative light could this be dickens's way of encouraging his readers to behave in less selfish ways interestingly our second quotation comes from the ghost of jacob marley which of course means that it can be found at the end of stave 1. now marley says i'm here tonight to warn you that you have yet to chance and hope of escaping my a chance and hope of my procuring ebenezer now you're probably sat there thinking how does this show generosity well i would argue that this quotation shows marley displaying a degree of generosity towards scrooge because he is giving the miser a chance to avoid marley's fate now the reason why i think this is because when marley tells scrooge that he has a chance and hope of escaping my fate he then adds that this chance and hope were of his procuring the verb procuring means creation or obtaining whereas the possessive pronoun my makes it clear that it was mali who did the creation or obtaining what all this means then is that marley has chosen to go to the effort of giving scrooge the chance to redeem himself in the hope that this will allow the miser to avoid the ghost's fate now this is pretty generous and thoughtful i reckon because marley's ghost has gone out of its way to support scrooge this does make me wonder though did marley learn the importance of generosity too late it seems likely doesn't it perhaps if he was more generous in life he too would have been able to avoid the hellish existence he is now destined to forever lead quotation number three takes us to stave two in particular i want us to look at the ghost of christmas past's dialogue that is made in reference to feziwig scrooge's former employer at the end of the party that feziwig throws for his employees friends and neighbors the spirit observes a small matter to make these silly folks so full of gratitude he has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money three or four perhaps now what i'm going to say here is pretty similar to what i said in my analysis of this quotation in my wealth and poverty video which is that feziwig provides scrooge with an example of how small acts of generosity can have an enormous positive impact on people we get the idea that feziwig's act of generosity is small by which i mean that it did not cost him an awful lot because the spirit uses the modifier but a few to create the impression that the pounds that feziwig spends estimated to be three or four is not a large sum of money for him to spend at all in fact this amount equates to roughly 200 pounds in today's money which isn't really all that much for a business owner to spend on a christmas party now we know that feziwig has behaved in a generous way using a tiny amount of his wealth on others but how do we know that it has had an enormous positive impact well the spirit's use of the emphatic phrase so full of gratitude makes that pretty clear to me because not only are the partygoers thankful for what the business owner has done for them but their gratefulness is practically bursting out of them because that's how full of thanks they are stave 3 is where we're going to find our fourth quotation in particular we can locate it in the narration of scrooge and the ghost of christmas present as they wander about the streets of london on christmas day in the narration we find out the sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest the spirit very much for he sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch now to me this shows that the ghost of christmas present is especially generous towards the poor doing what he can to improve their days the reason why i think this is because he is shown to be sprinkling incense from his torch onto their christmas dinners an act that seems to improve the moods of the poor the spirit doesn't actually have to do this he is invisible to everyone but scrooge and so he cannot be thanked for his good deeds this is what makes him generous he does good things especially to the less advantaged fully in the knowledge that he will not get anything in return for it simply put that's charity still in stage 3 i would like to spend a moment looking at tiny tim's dialogue during the cratchit christmas dinner for a type of generosity can be seen there as they toast their meal tiny tim erupts with a god bless us everyone now you might think it's a bit odd for me to talk about how a poor character is being generous after all the cratchits don't have loads of money do they and you're not wrong but as i said earlier generosity doesn't just have to be about giving people money or other goods you see i reckon this quotation shows tiny tim being generous because he is being thoughtful towards everyone in asking for god's blessings to apply to them rather than only just his family this level of thoughtfulness is generous because tiny tin does not seek to gain anything in being selfless he just wants everyone else to live as best a life as possible and is trying to do what little he can to ensure that this happens if you've watched all of my videos in this series so far you'll probably have noticed that i've mentioned this quotation in quite a few of them which might suggest to you that this is a pretty good quotation to remember as it can be used in loads of different essays we're staying in slave three for quotation number six if you turn to the end of the stave in which scrooge has been introduced to the figures of ignorance and want you will notice that the miser asks are they no refuge or resource cried scrooge in asking this question at all we can see that scrooge's thoughts are becoming increasingly generous because by asking if ignorance and wants have any refuge or resource he shows that he is aware that the wealthy should feel obligated to support the less fortunate furthermore because the verb used to describe scrutiny's dialogue is cried you could even argue that scrooge feels that the needs of ignorance and want demand immediate attention given his heightened emotional state or that he is shocked by and perhaps then also sympathetic towards the impoverished state of the two monstrous entities this shows i reckon that scrooge actually sort of cares about ignorance and want showing a level of emotional generosity that he did not display at the start of the story of course scrooge's question is also used to achieve another effect written in the story like this it is bound to have made some of dickens's readers ask a similar question is there any refuge or resource for ignorance and wants and so it sort of functions in a similar way to a rhetorical question this is dickens's way i think of inviting his readers to ask if there really is enough support for the poor i hope it's pretty clear that the answer to that question would be a resounding no and so by having scrooge ask this question dickens is encouraging his readers to realize that more needs to be done to support the less fortunate we're only going to focus on one quotation from stave 4 and it's one that relates to fred hidden among all the sadness related to tiny tim's death bob cratchit recalls something said by scrooge's nephew in response to the news which is if i can be of service to you in any way he said giving me his card that's where i live pray come to me fred's generosity is evident in this quotation i think because he offers support to the crotchets despite the fact that he doesn't actually know them all that well the adverbial in any way suggests that fred is willing to support the crutches however they want whether that be financial emotional or in relation to their employment as we see later on when the crotchets excitedly joke about fred getting peter a better situation which means job in that context the fact that fred invites bob to come to his house whenever he needs also shows a level of compassion and emotional generosity too now fred is offering all of this despite the fact that he barely knows the cratchits which is revealed earlier in the scene as it is written in the narration that bob had scarcely seen fred but once before and furthermore fred's not really going to gain much in return for helping them out apart from maybe a nice warm fuzzy feeling as such his gesture is utterly selfless a true act of generosity and to end i want to look at a trio of quotations from stave 5 all relating to scrooge in some way the first about halfway through the stave can be found in the narration it is the chuckle with which he paid for the turkey and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy second we have scrooge's dialogue when he speaks with the charity representative after pledging to donate what we can only assume to be a large sum of money scrooge says a great many back payments are included in it i assure you and last of all when in conversation with bob cratchit towards the end of the story scrooge says i'll raise your salary and endeavor to assist your struggling family now all of these quotations i'm sure you'll agree make it pretty clear that by the end of the story scrooge is transformed into a generous individual but not only one who is generous in financial terms the first quotation features a list of three references to scrooge paying somebody as seen by the two uses of paid and then also the verb recompensed and each of these references are attached to the noun chuckle showing not only that scrooge is being generous but that he is happy to do so indeed generosity seems to bring the former miser great joy the second quotation hints at the enormity of scrooge's newfound generosity because the back payments that are included in his charity donation are modified by the phrase great many which put together emphasized the idea that scrooge is donating an incredible sum of money to the charity many back payments would be generous as would great back payments but putting them both together really suggests the vastness of the sum that scrooge is offering in the third quotation we see how scrooge's generosity is not just financial the verb raise makes it pretty clear that scrooge is going to start to pay bob moore which arguably is not all that generous as he may have been underpairing his clerk for quite some time however it is the verb chain endeavor to assist that reveals the true extent of scrooge's generosity you see the verb endeavor means to try but to try really really hard as such we get the impression that scrooge is going to do everything he can to help the crotchets out not only pay bob moore showing a degree of generosity and selflessness that would have been unimaginable for him to show at the beginning of the novella right that's the quotation analysis done but that doesn't mean that the video is over we still have a summary question further ideas and other recommendations to still talk about all of which i hope will assist you in analyzing this text to a super high standard so if we wanted to summarize how the theme of generosity is presented in this novella what could we say well we could say as a socially conscious writer dickens stresses the importance of being a generous individual throughout his novella he demonstrates that generosity is not only a financial obligation but is something that should permeate all aspects of how people treat each other generous characters such as fred feziwig and tiny tim are celebrated throughout the story whereas selfish attitudes which are most evident in scrooge in the first half of the story are demonized as such dickens encourages his readers to behave in more generous ways particularly to the less fortunate now this summary is helpful because it includes dickens's likely intention shows a clear argument aka generosity is good selfishness bad and also includes that more perceptive comment that's generosity should not just be a financial consideration in naming several characters the summary also sets up a number of analytical paragraphs which might help you to kick-start an essay if you think that summary is going to help you out in some way now is your last chance to pause the video and copy it down as we're about to move on so i promised you a question further ideas and extra recommendations and so here they are first that question out of all the characters in a christmas carol who would you say is the most generous and why now you're free to do whatever you want with this question you could use it to prompt a mind map a debate with your friends if you are revising together or even a shortish evaluative essay in which you weigh up the relative levels of generosity between various characters hey you could even write an evaluative paragraph for me down in the comments section if you do i'll make sure to reply with some informal feedback which might help you to think all the more deeply about this theme if you don't fancy doing anything with that question why not use the following questions instead to prompt some additional ideas after all do any other characters demonstrate selfishness other than scrooge bringing in other characters to the selfish side even if they are minor characters might allow you to make a more nuanced and perceptive argument which will only help you to gain extra marks furthermore do the generous characters such as fred fezzywig or some of the spirits display their generosity in quotations other than the ones i've discussed in this video for the sake of trying to cover as many characters as possible i've only really given each character one quotation and i know because i've still got loads of extra notes that their generous attitudes are evident in more quotations than the ones that i've discussed in this video if you don't want to do much more in a way of thinking and just want to watch another video or read some additional sources then please do have a look at my video about the theme of wealth and poverty the theme of generosity has considerable overlap with that theme and so you might be able to gain some additional insight into the importance of generosity by watching that video additionally please do check out my bibliography down in the video description which contains a bunch of resources that you might find useful to read if you're after some additional contextual information behind me i've offered you quite a bit there haven't i you could even say that i've been generous in supplying you of that much all right terrible pun over i can safely say that that is the end of my discussion of the theme of generosity in a christmas carol honestly i hope this video has been helpful in some way whether you're advising for exams just trying to understand dickens's story better or and this will date this video stuck at home doing some lockdown learning if this has been helpful at all and you would like to make your appreciation known a like comment subscription or share would be immensely appreciated it helps me out loads and helps me to help even more young people with their studies and so it's a win-win situation for everyone anyway as ever i hope that you have an awesome rest of the day if you are revising please do remember to take frequent short breaks as a burned out student is not a happy or successful student which is what i think you deserve to be so as well as being a financial obligation generosity for dickens is something that can be seen in our actions and thoughts as well characters such as feziwig fred tiny tim and the spirits all display different types of generosity and scrooge who is the most selfish ungenerous character at the beginning of the story comes to embody all aspects of generosity by its end [Music] you