By Nathaniel Saylor

Continue reading Stave 4 of A Christmas Carol: Death and Resurrection
By Nathaniel Saylor
Continue reading Stave 4 of A Christmas Carol: Death and Resurrection
By Ron Bergez
In Stave Three of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Bob Cratchit carries Tiny Tim aloft on his shoulders into the Christmas-warm Cratchit household, followed by the Tim’s oft-imitated utterance “God bless us every one!” Stave Three becomes the place where we are relieved for a time from the bleakness of Scrooge’s sad, solitary existence and the fearsome revelations which accompany the visits of the Spirits. But then we are challenged. As the stave ends, Scrooge spies from under the Spirit’s robe a foot so meager that it could be a claw. Beneath the Spirit’s garment are two gaunt and frightened children. They are the boy Ignorance and the girl Want, says the Spirit. Both are the offspring of Man, and the Spirit warns Scrooge to beware particularly the boy Ignorance. “[O]n his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.” The Spirit disappears. Continue reading A Light Beyond Want and Ignorance: Stave 3 of A Christmas Carol