A Christmas Carol: Essay Writing Guide for GCSE (9-1) — Accolade Tuition (2024)

This clean & simple new guide from Accolade Press will walk you through how to plan and structure essay responses to questions on Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. By working through seven mock questions, these detailed essay plans will show you how to go about building a theme based answer – while the accompanying notes will illustrate not only how to masterfully structure your response, but also how to ensure all AQA's Assessment Objectives are being satisfied.

R.P. Davis has a First Class degree in English Literature from UCL, and a Masters in Literature from Cambridge University. Aside from teaching GCSE English (which he's done for nearly a decade now), he has also written a string of bestselling thriller novels.

SAMPLE FROM THE GUIDE

In your GCSE English Literature exam, you will be presented with an extract from Charles Dickens’sA Christmas Caroland a question that asks you to offer both a close analysis of the extract plus a commentary of the novella as a whole. Of course, there are many methods onemightuse to tackle this style of question. However, there is one particular technique which, due to its sophistication, most readily allows students to unlock the highest marks: namely,the thematic method.

To be clear, this study guide isnotintended to walk you through the novella scene-by-scene: there are many great guides out there that do just that. No, this guide, by sifting through a series of mock exam questions, will demonstratehowto organise a response thematically and thus write a stellar essay: a skill we believe no other study guide adequately covers!

I have encountered students who have structured their essays all sorts of ways: some by writing about the extract line by line, others by identifying various language techniques and giving each its own paragraph. The method I’m advocating, on the other hand, involves picking out three to four themes that will allow you to holistically answer the question: these three to four themes will become the three to four content paragraphs of your essay, cushioned between a brief introduction and conclusion. Ideally, these themes will follow from one to the next to create a flowing argument. Within each of these thematic paragraphs, you can then ensure you are jumping through the mark scheme’s hoops.

So to break things down further, each thematic paragraph will include various point-scoring components. In each paragraph, you will quote from the extract, offer analyses of these quotes, then discuss how the specific language techniques you have identified illustrate the theme you’re discussing. In each paragraph, you will also discuss how other parts of the novella further illustrate the theme (or even complicate it). And in each, you will comment on the era in which the novella was written and how that helps to understand the chosen theme.

Don’t worry if this all feels daunting. Throughout this guide, I will be illustrating in great detail – by means of examples – how to build an essay of this kind.

The beauty of the thematic approach is that, once you have your themes, you suddenly have a direction and a trajectory, and this makes essay writing a whole lot easier. However, it must also be noted that extracting themes in the first place is something students often find tricky. I have come across many candidates who understand the extract and the novella inside out; but when they are presented with a question under exam conditions, and the pressure kicks in, they find it tough to break their response down into themes. The fact of the matter is: the process is acreativeone and the best themes require a bit of imagination.

In this guide, I shall take seven different exam-style questions, coupled with extracts from the novella, and put together a plan for each – a plan that illustrates in detail how we will be satisfying the mark scheme’s criteria. Please do keep in mind that, when operating under timed conditions, your plans will necessarily be less detailed than those that appear in this volume.

Now, you might be asking whether three or four themes is best. The truth is, you should do whatever you feel most comfortable with: the examiner is looking for an original, creative answer, and not sitting there counting the themes. So if you think you are quick enough to cover four, then great. However, if you would rather do three to make sure you do each theme justice, that’s also fine. I sometimes suggest that my student pick four themes, but make the fourth one smaller – sort of like an afterthought, or an observation that turns things on their head. That way, if they feel they won’t have time to explore this fourth theme in its own right, they can always give it a quick mention in the conclusion instead.

* * *

Before I move forward in earnest, I believe it to be worthwhile to run through the four Assessment Objectives the exam board want you to cover in your response – if only to demonstrate how effective the thematic response can be. I would argue that the first Assessment Objective (AO1) – the one that wants candidates to ‘read, understand and respond to texts’ and which is worth 12 of the total 34 marks up for grabs – will be wholly satisfied by selecting strong themes, then fleshing them out with quotes. Indeed, when it comes to identifying the top-scoring candidates for AO1, the mark scheme explicitly tells examiners to look for a ‘critical, exploratory, conceptualised response’ that makes ‘judicious use of precise references’ – the word ‘concept’ is a synonym of theme, and ‘judicious references’ simply refers to quotes that appropriately support the theme you’ve chosen.

The second Assessment Objective (AO2) – which is also responsible for 12 marks – asks students to ‘analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.’ As noted, you will already be quoting from the novella as you back up your themes, and it is a natural progression to then analyse the language techniques used. In fact, this is far more effective than simply observing language techniques (personification here, alliteration there), because by discussing how the language techniques relate to and shape the theme, you will also be demonstrating how the writer ‘create[s] meanings and effects.’

Now, in my experience, language analysis is the most important element of AO2 – perhaps 8 of the 12 marks will go towards language analysis. You will also notice, however, that AO2 asks students to comment on ‘form and structure.’ Again, the thematic approach has your back – because though simply jamming in a point on form or structure will feel jarring, when you bring these points up while discussing a theme, as a means to further a thematic argument, you will again organically be discussing the way it ‘create[s] meanings and effects.’

AO3 requires you to ‘show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written’ and is responsible for a more modest 6 marks in total. These are easy enough to weave into a thematic argument; indeed, the theme gives the student a chance to bring up context in a relevant and fitting way. After all, you don’t want it to look like you’ve just shoehorned a contextual factoid into the mix.

Finally, you have AO4 – known also as “spelling and grammar.” There are four marks up for grabs here. Truth be told, this guide is not geared towards AO4. My advice? Make sure you are reading plenty of books and articles, because the more you read, the better your spelling and grammar will be. Also, before the exam, perhaps make a list of words you struggle to spell but often find yourself using in essays, and commit them to memory.

* * *

My hope is that this book, by demonstrating how to tease out themes from an extract, will help you feel more confident in doing so yourself. I believe it is also worth mentioning that the themes I have picked out are by no means definitive. Asked the very same question, someone else may pick out different themes, and write an answer that is just as good (if not better!). Obviously the exam is not likely to be fun – my memory of them is pretty much the exact opposite. But still, this is one of the very few chances that you will get at GCSE level to actually be creative. And to my mind at least, that was always more enjoyable – ifenjoyableis the right word – than simply demonstrating that I had memorised loads of facts.

Essay Plan One

* * *

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.

Starting with this extract, explore how Dickens creates a hopeful tone inA Christmas Carol.

Write about:

• how Dickens creates a hopeful tone in this extract.

• how Dickens creates a hopeful tone in the novella as a whole.

Introduction

It’s important to keep the introduction short and sweet, but also to ensure it packs a punch – after all, you only have one chance to make a first impression on the examiner. I recommend starting the introduction with a short comment on historical context to score early AO3 marks. I would then suggest that you very quickly summarise the thematic gist of your essay.

“Given that Dickens came of age in a Europe still grappling with the dashed hopes of the French Revolution’s failures, it is little surprise that redemption fantasies had an outsized presence in the early Victorian imagination.1This extract not only cultivates hope by explicitly suggesting that the death under discussion spawned a positive outcome, but also, implicitly, through the narrator’s humour and levity. However, the Gothic imagery and Shakespearian allusion can be seen to threaten the hopeful tone.”2

Theme/Paragraph One: Although death is a phenomenon often associated with despair, Dickens conjures hope by framing death as a circ*mstance that opens the door to wonderful possibilities.

• Although this extract takes death – a phenomenon synonymous with hopelessness – as its chief subject matter, the structure of its opening sentence is alive with possibilities: the assertion that ‘Marley was dead’ might seem definitive, yet it is followed not by a conclusive full stop, but by a leading colon and the phrase: ‘to begin with.’3While this is most obviously rhetorical – the narrator is sign-posting the start of his story – it also contains a secret double meaning: namely, a sly insinuation that, though Marley might have been dead ‘to begin with,’ the situation may now have changed (and this is of course later borne out with the appearance of Marley’s Ghost). [AO1 for advancing the argument with a judiciously selected quote; AO2 for the close analysis of the language].

• The extract’s final paragraph is even more explicit in linking Marley’s death to ‘wonderful’ possibilities: the narrator asserts that if the reader fails to ‘distinctly’ understand the fact of Marley’s death, ‘nothing wonderful can come of the story.’ ‘Wonderful’ possibilities, therefore, are not merely on the cards in spite of death, but are explicitly contingent on death. The notion that the hopelessness of death might lead to hopeful possibilities creates not just a hopeful tone, but a miraculous one. Indeed, given the novella’s title, there is a tacit invitation to reflect on how, in the New Testament, the tragedy of Christ’s crucifixion led to his miraculous return. [AO1 for advancing the argument with a judiciously selected quote].

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• Elsewhere in the novella: The idea that death might conjure hope is revisited when Scrooge confronts his hypothetical death with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. This encounter directly improves Scrooge’s hopes for reformation: as Scrooge himself remarks: ‘I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse.’ [AO1 for advancing the argument with a judiciously selected quote].

Theme/Paragraph Two: The tactic of obliquely turning the third person narrative into a first person narrative, plus the narrator’s gentle humour, cultivates a tone that inspires hope.

• While the novella seems at first glance to be rendered in the third person, one might observe that the narrator intermittently injects himself into proceedings (‘I don’t mean to say;’ ‘I don't know how many’), thereby subtly establishing himself as a first person narrator in a way that builds rapport. Moreover, the narrator’s tone is full of levity: there is humour in his parsing of the ‘dead as a doornail’ idiom, in his playful hyperbole (‘the Country’s done for’), and the visual image of an old father ‘rashly turning out’ at night.4 Finally, the reader can detect a distinct moral compass in the way the narrator ribs Scrooge for his inappropriate bargain-hunting (‘[Scrooge] solemnised [Marley’s death] with an undoubted bargain’). [AO1 for advancing the argument with a judiciously selected quote; AO2 for the close analysis of the language].

• The total effect is to signal to the reader that proceedings are in the hands of a benign storyteller, and thus they have reason to hope for a happy outcome – an effect made all the more convincing by the structural choice of establishing the narrator’s persona right at the novella’s start (this passage being the novella’s opening). [AO2 for discussing how structure shapes meaning].

• Elsewhere in the novella: The narrator later draws a subtle parallel between himself and the didactic Ghost of Christmas Past: he observes that Scrooge was ‘as close to it as I am now to you... standing in the spirit at your elbow.’5 This further establishes a hopeful tone, since it implies that, in the same way Scrooge is being granted vital redemptive instruction from the ghost, so too is the reader from the narrator. [AO1 for advancing the argument with a judiciously selected quote].

Theme/Paragraph Three: Dickens creates a hopeful tone here by subtly implying that the world of the living is receiving instruction from previous generations.

• Although appearing during the lampooning of an idiom, the assertion that ‘the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile’ powerfully plants in the reader’s mind the idea that the wisdom of the deceased is at hand to light the way for the living.6 This hopeful notion crops up even more firmly with the invocation of ‘Hamlet’s father’ – an individual who, though deceased, appears as an apparition at the start of Shakespeare’s play in order to offer his son guidance and instruction.7 While, again, this allusion appears during a whimsical passage, it nevertheless communicates the same serious point: that the deceased are watching over the living. [AO1 for advancing the argument with a judiciously selected quote; AO2 for the close analysis of the language; AO3 for placing the text in literary context].

• Elsewhere in the novella: Of course, this conceit of the deceased intervening kindly in the affairs of the living is later literalised with Scrooge’s rendezvous with Marley’s Ghost. Furthermore, while, like Hamlet’s father, Marley’s Ghost strikes a grisly image, his intervention is explicitly to give Scrooge hope for redemption: as Marley observes, he is there to help Scrooge ‘shun the path I tread.’

Theme/Paragraph Four: While Dickens deploys a number of techniques to create a hopeful tone, the litany of Gothic and gloomy tropes in the passage render the hope fragile.

• As the reader moves through this extract, they are confronted with a host of Gothic tropes: not just the sheer fact of Marley’s death, but all the apparatus that goes along with it: the funeral, the presence of the ‘clergyman’ and ‘undertaker.’ Even as the narrative moves away from the circ*mstances immediately surrounding Marley’s funeral, the Gothic imagery persists with the reference to ‘St Paul’s Churchyard.’ Furthermore, while the invocation of Hamlet’s father might imply paternal guidance, it must be noted that not only is the ghost in Hamlet treated with trepidation (Horatio claims it ‘bodes some strange eruption to our state’), but Shakespeare’s play ends in tragedy and bloodshed.8 Indeed, given the mounting interest in Shakespeare in Victorian England, Dickens’s audience would have been acutely aware of this fact. [AO1 for advancing the argument with a judiciously selected quote; AO3 for placing the text in a literary and historical context].

• The mere presence in this passage of Scrooge – the excessive misanthrope – represents yet another Gothic trope: he seems to embody hopelessness with his indifference (‘not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event’) and ill will.9 The despair he represents is so potent that, at the end of the novella, the reformed Scrooge is still able to trick Mr Cratchit with a faux dressing down. [AO1 for advancing the argument with a judiciously selected quote].

Conclusion

We have a meaty essay here, so I’m not interested in introducing further themes in the conclusion. Instead, I shall tie together the thematic discussion, before leaving the examiner with an intriguing parting thought.

“Dickens’s novella functions on the understanding that hope is only meaningful – and, indeed, necessary – when adversity exists. As a result, the Gothic and despairing undertones should not be construed as subverting the hopeful tone; rather, they are a necessary foil that give the hopeful tones theirreason d’être.10Therefore, for all the tactics Dickens actively deploys to create a hopeful tone, perhaps the most important mechanism of all is, ironically, the deliberate sowing of a dread that gives the hopeful tone its purpose and potency.”

1The 1789 French Revolution was originally an effort to overthrow the aristocracy and create a more equitable society. However, this was quickly followed by The Reign of Terror, in which, under the auspices of Maximilien Robespierre (the revolutionary who seized power), there were brutal public massacres.

2An allusion is when a writer references something – for instance, a different work of literature or a work of art.

3You might know that the word synonym is used to describe a word that has a similar meaning to another word: for instance, ‘content’ is a synonym of ‘happy’. However, in this sentence, I’m using the word ‘synonymous’ to point out how one concept is intimately linked with another.

4Hyperbole is another word for exaggeration.

5To be didactic is to be morally instructive.

6To lampoon something is to mock it.

7InHamlet, the eponymous main character is tasked with avenging his dead father, the previous king, who was murdered and usurped by Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius. Since, at the start of the play, Hamlet’s father is already dead, he has no choice but to appear in ghost-form to relay his message!

8Horatio is Hamlet’s closest friend in the play.

9Misanthropy is the hatred of all people.

10Reason d’être is a French term. Something’s reason d’être is its reason to exist.

Customer Reviews

This is another very helpful title in this accessible and incredibly useful series of study guides. By focussing on key points for essay questions and how to approach them it enables students to take the themes of the book and prepare fully for what may be asked of them in an exam situation. My daughter had already studied A Christmas Carol quite closely but reading this guide enabled her to think of different angles and themes and prepare for possible questions and how to answer them in depth. The focus on how to gain extra marks is so useful for students aiming high in their studies.

This book is not an ordinarily walk-you-through guide to essay writing for GSCE students. Instead it shows readers how to write a stellar essay by tackling three to four themes from the extract and how to ensure that the essay is explorative enough to satisfy the mark scheme’s criteria.

This sounds blindingly obvious to many but putting pen to paper is another matter. Even diligent students who understand the content of a story may find it difficult to tease out themes from an extract or write an outstanding piece of essay under timed conditions. This book equips you with the tools for getting out of the ‘thematic jungle’.

Once you get to grips with the ‘know how’, suddenly the penny would drop and extracting themes and devising a creative plan for essay writing would become easier with practice.

I would say what makes this book stands out is that it offers practical and refreshing solutions for essay writing. Not only the author explains what are the Assessment Objectives the exam board want students to cover , he also explains how to score marks by utilising the skills that he advocates. I particularly like the use of seven different exam-style questions to demonstrate to readers of ways of dissecting an extract and picking up a few themes for essay writing.

A word of caution : if you want to get the most out of this book then you do need to read and re-read it.

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