Master Key Vocabulary for Top Grades in Dickens' Social Critique

I'm not just going to give you six words to sprinkle into your essays and hope that you get a higher grade. No, these

words are going to give you a top grade concept and when you write about those concepts, you will inevitably get higher

grades. What are the words? Number one, Malthusian. So Mouthus pointed out that society was

incapable of producing enough resources to feed and house and clothe the poor. And therefore society needed to reduce

the number of poor people and consequently Scrooge comes up with this idea that they had better die and reduce

the surplus population. This isn't just to demonize and present Scrooge as a villain. It is to make the

point that Scrooge has the same views of society at large. Because Malthusian economics and

politics means we have the workhouse. You get very basic shelter, very basic food which is going to leave you

malnourished. and effectively you work a kind of slave labor in order to keep your bed. This obviously makes the poor

poorer. They cannot save. They can't get proper jobs and therefore their health deteriorates.

Hey presto, they are eventually going to die. So your top grade analysis isn't just saying this discredits Scrooge.

It's saying Dickens does this to discredit Victorian society. [music]

At number two, misanthropy or misanthropic. This describes Scrooge and it is the

quality of hating your fellow human beings, distesting them, despising them. That's what Scrooge feels. He doesn't

want any social contact with anyone. Yes, this gives you a snazzy bit of vocabulary, but remember, you get the

marks for writing about society. And so what Dickens is saying is Malthusian economics, the poor laws create a

misanthropic society. It takes poor people and detests them. It's a misanthropic view. It treats them as

undeserving. The poor deserve to be poor. They do not therefore deserve charity. They don't

deserve to be helped. This is what's wrong with Scrooge, but also what's wrong with society in Dickens view.

[music] At number three, we have avarice. This is the posh way of talking about greed.

It's what you're going to use instead of just saying Scrooge was a miser. Why? Well, avarice is one of the deadly sins.

This gives us a Christian message. Scrooge represents an uncchristian way of being. He is avaricious. He has the

sin of avarice. Why is sin important? Well, obviously the audience are Christian and Dickens builds on this

right at the very start of the novel. That is the point of Jacob Marley. He has committed the sin of avarice, greed,

and consequently he's doomed to walk the earth as a spirit clanking and carrying these huge chains, the burden of his

avaricious sins. And Scrooge wears the same chains, doesn't he? This is to punish him from sin. And the three

ghosts, their job is to try and save him from his own sin, the sin of avarice. Let's take it back to society. A society

that only values money rather than people is an avaricious society. A sinful

society. Now you can see how Dickens is appealing to his Christian readers to change their

sinful ways. That is a beautiful rhythmic introduction to our word number four,

didactic. To be didactic is to teach a lesson. That is this novela. The ghosts exist in

order to teach Scrooge the lesson. The lesson of social responsibility. It is a didactic text. But of course,

Dickens isn't trying to teach Scrooge a lesson. He is using Scrooge. Scrooge is a construct in order to teach the reader

the lesson. And the reader, of course, represents society. You know by now from my videos, the more often you use the

word society, the higher your grade. And so this is a didactic text to educate society about social responsibility and

abandoning malfusian views of the poor. Bosch grade nine thesis statement on the fly.

Number five, allegory. Instead of calling it a novella, you're going to think about it as an allegory. An

[clears throat] allegory is a didactic text where the story represents something else. The characters represent

something else. So, let's start with the deserving poor. Who represents them? The Cratchets.

Then we have Malthusian society. Who represents those views? Scrooge before his redemption. Then we have the

consequence of social neglect. What is society going to become? Then we have the death of Tiny Tim. The poor will

suffer and die. But we also have ignorance and want. And remember that which is written on the head of the boy

is doom. Ignorance leads to doom. Society will suffer if we don't educate. That will be

the consequence. We must educate the poor. A message that you might not have thought about, but that's why ignorance

and want appear in the novel. They are allegorical figures to deliver the didactic message that Dickens has in his

text. And then stage five brings us to redemption.

Scrooge is redeemed. In other words, he overcomes his sin of avarice. remember by transforming

himself into a generous human being. But that is not all. Let's look at the ways he transforms. First, he buys the

massive turkey. The message nutrition. The poor are malnourished. That's why Tiny Tim dies, isn't it? And by then

nourishing Tiny Tim, he lives. Tiny Tim who did [clears throat] not die. But what else does he do? He raises Bob's

wages. So this is a sophisticated point. Pay attention. Why doesn't Bob quit working for

Scrooge? Because he is paid 15 shillings a week. And guess what? To Dickens readers, 15 shillings a week for a

Clark's job like Bob's is the going rate. Yes. So even though Scrooge is an avaricious miser, he still pays the

going rate. That's why Bob doesn't have another job. So what's Dickens's point? Society has to change the going rate.

You've got to pay your employees more. That's why he's telling his readers that Scrooge raised Bob's salary. He didn't

just bung him loads of money as a bonus because that's a one-off. He makes sure that he changes the working conditions

by raising the wages. And then the third part of the redemption, which you might not have considered, is paternalism.

Being a father, Scrooge becomes a second father to Tiny Tim. That establishes the family

relationships that he now wants, but it also represents the job of Victorian society towards guess who? The deserving

poor. You have to become a father figure society to the poor. The workhouse, the

treadmill, the prisons, they're not the answer. Now,

six grade nine ideas which you can access simply through this vocabulary. If you would like to see all this

vocabulary used in essays and in quote analysis on quote flashcards, WELL, HARRAH. I've got the very thing for you

in the dooblydoo description thingy underneath my spatula. Hur.