The Silent Ghost
The ghost people look up most in A Christmas Carol is the one that never says a word. So we start there. Why does the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come stay silent? Fair warning, this has full spoilers, very gently, for a story from eighteen forty-three.
Here is the short answer. The book never explains it. Dickens gives that Spirit no line and no reason. What he does give us is a question that Scrooge asks and never gets answered, and a hand that trembles when Scrooge begs. My reading, and it is an opinion, is that a ghost who showed you the end and also promised it was fixed would take your choice away. So it points, and you answer.
Then we walk the four ghosts and put them on one map: Marley, Past, Present and Yet to Come. What each one shows Scrooge, what it seems to stand for, and one short line from the text. Dickens calls his chapters staves, and I read the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number forty-six, which is in the public domain.
Stave One, Marley and the Chain
Marley comes first. He is the only ghost who was a person Scrooge knew. He has been dead seven years to the night, and his ghost walks in dragging a chain made of cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds and heavy purses. That is not a random chain. It is built out of his business.
Marley explains it in one line. I wear the chain I forged in life. He says Scrooge’s own chain is already as heavy and as long as his, and Scrooge has been adding links for seven years. Then he gives the warning. Three spirits are coming, and they are a chance and a hope.
Out of the window Scrooge sees the air full of phantoms in chains, and they are crying because they can no longer help the living. So Marley stands for warning, and for regret that comes too late. Notice one more thing. He says a very little more is all that is permitted to him. A ghost who is not allowed to say everything. Keep that in mind, because silence comes back.
Stave Two, Past and Memory
The first Spirit arrives when the bell strikes one, and it looks like a child and an old man at once. White hair and no wrinkles, a jet of bright light springing from its head, and a great candle snuffer of a cap tucked under its arm. Scrooge asks if it is the long past. It answers, no. Your past.
It shows him a lonely boy left at school over Christmas, his little sister Fan coming to bring him home, old Fezziwig’s Christmas Eve ball, and then Belle. Belle releases him from their promise because another idol has taken her place. A golden one, she says. Last, it shows Belle years later with a noisy family of her own, while her husband says Scrooge sits alone.
Memory is the symbol, in my reading. Notice what the Spirit does not do. It does not scold. It only shows. And when Scrooge cannot bear any more, he jams the snuffer cap down over its head. The light still streams out from underneath. You can cover a memory, but you cannot put it out. That image is my interpretation, not Dickens’s own words.
Stave Three, Present and Plenty
The second Spirit is a giant sitting on a heap of turkeys, geese, puddings and punch. He wears a holly wreath, carries a glowing torch, and has a scabbard with no sword in it, eaten up with rust. He tells Scrooge he has more than eighteen hundred brothers, and Scrooge has never walked with any of them.
He takes Scrooge through the streets on Christmas morning, sprinkling his torch on the dinners of the poor. He visits the Cratchits’ four-roomed house, a miners’ hut, a lighthouse, a ship at sea, and then the nephew’s party, where a guessing game ends with everyone shouting Uncle Scrooge.
Generosity is the symbol, in my reading, but it comes with a price. Scrooge asks whether Tiny Tim will live. The Spirit says, if these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die. Then he hands back Scrooge’s own words about the surplus population. Remember that if. The whole future is already described as something that can be altered.
At the end the Spirit grows old. His hair turns grey, because his life ends at midnight, and from under his robe come two children. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Scrooge asks if they have no refuge, and the Spirit answers with Scrooge’s own line. Are there no prisons? Then the bell strikes twelve.
Stave Four, Yet to Come in Numbers
Now the one you came for. The last Spirit comes like a mist along the ground, draped and hooded in black. All you can see of it is one outstretched hand. Scrooge says he fears it more than any spectre he has seen, and asks, will you not speak to me? The book says it gave him no reply.
So I counted. In Stave Four, the word pointed appears twelve times in my ebook text. The words this Spirit speaks, in the whole book, are zero. There is not one line of dialogue for it, not here and not in Stave Five.
Here is how it answers him. Asked if it is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, it points onward with its hand. Asked if it will show things that will happen, its hood folds as if it nodded. Asked to speak, no reply. Asked whether these are shadows of what will be or what may be, it points at the grave. Asked if the dead man is him, the finger goes from the grave to Scrooge and back. And when he begs to change it, for the first time the hand appears to shake.
What It Shows, the Dead Man
What it shows is the part nobody forgets. Merchants on the exchange joking about a cheap funeral, if somebody provides lunch. Two businessmen who say the cold is seasonable for Christmas and walk on. A rag shop where a charwoman, a laundress and an undertaker’s man sell a dead man’s bed curtains and shirt to old Joe. And a family in debt, who sleep easier because their creditor is dead.
Scrooge does not realise the dead man is him. He begs to see anyone who feels something about the death, and the only emotion the Ghost can show him is pleasure. Then it takes him to the Cratchits. The house is very quiet. A boy reads from a book, and Bob comes home from a green place he has just visited, and says he will walk there on Sundays. Tiny Tim’s death is never stated. It is shown by silence.
That is the point, in my reading. Nothing in this stave is explained out loud, so the lesson has to be worked out by the man watching. Last comes the churchyard. The Spirit points at one grave, and Scrooge reads his own name. No ghost tells him. He has to read it himself.
The Four Ghost Map
Here is the board. Marley stands for warning: the chain you are forging right now. Past stands for memory: what you cannot unsee. Present stands for generosity and its price, which are Ignorance and Want. And Yet to Come stands for consequence: where the road ends if nothing changes.
Look at how much each ghost talks. Marley talks the most, because he is a person explaining his own mistake. Past and Present talk less, and they show more. Yet to Come does not talk at all. In my reading, the story moves from telling to showing to pointing, until Scrooge is the only one left who can speak.
So why the silence? It is the question of the video, so let me be careful. Three things in the text support it. Marley says only a very little more is permitted to him. Present puts an if on the child’s death. And Scrooge’s question, will be or may be, is answered only by a trembling hand. The book never says the Spirit is forbidden to speak, so that last step is my reading.
Stave Five, the Map Pays Off
Stave Five is where the map pays off. Scrooge wakes up in his own bed, and the bedpost is his own. The shadows of the things that would have been, he says, may be dispelled. He asks a boy the date and learns it is Christmas Day. He sends the big prize turkey to Bob Cratchit, whispers a large gift, with back payments, to the portly gentleman who collected for the poor, and dines at his nephew’s house.
The next morning he catches Bob arriving about eighteen minutes late, pretends to growl, and then raises his salary. The last lines say that Tiny Tim did not die, and that Scrooge was a second father to him. The stone in the churchyard is never mentioned again.
My verdict on the silence, again as opinion. A ghost that spoke would sound like a verdict. A ghost that points sounds like a question. Dickens wanted a question, and he lets Scrooge answer it with one morning. That is why the future never speaks in this story. It is waiting for him.
Your Turn
If you want the four ghosts as a map you can screenshot, plus the page for the whole book, the link is in the description. Subscribe, tap like, and tell me in the comments which ghost scared you most.
