Quote:
Originally Posted by caleb72
I'm not sure you're being entirely fair to the old Scrooge. He seems overly enthusiastic because he has come out the other side of a rather grand epiphany. Although I do think he will go on to be a more joyous soul, I'm not sure I'd agree that he'd remain "a giddy, silly, prancing idiot" for the rest of his life.
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I agree. I think it's the aftereffect of a profound experience. I mean if someone were in a car accident for example and by some miracle escaped serious injury they would no doubt feel a bit giddy from the shock of the experience. Scrooge has just seen his own grave and thought that he was about to be brought to judgement then and there. When the spirit of Christmas yet to come turns into his bedpost and he realizes that he has a chance to amend his life rather than being judged he loses control of himself for a little while. It's been a while since I read the book but there is more of a Christian aspect to some of the movie adaptations including a reference to the child born in Bethlehem and how he lives in the hearts of men all the days of the year. Things have changed since Charles Dickens wrote the book. Back then the poor were out of sight out of mind to many. Dickens himself had had some problems financially I believe and his father had been sent to debtors prison (where the rest of the family lived with him)when Dickens was a young boy. Incidentally I looked up what a half-crown is. A shilling is 12 pence and a half-crown is 2 shillings and 6 pence which means it's about 30 cents. Of course 30 cents probably went a lot farther back then too.