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영어

The purpose of this paper is to show Dickens's view on charity appeared in his famous fable-like short story, A Christmas Carol. Through the most famous character in Dickens's novels, Ebenezer Scrooge, Dickens argues that personal charity is more important than public charity. While public charity is cruel and impersonal like work house system, personal charity, Dickens argues, is more direct and effective for its psychological distance. Three Ghosts coming on Christmas eve implies the ways of Scrooge's past, present and future. The first Ghost is the representative of a Malthus's cruel rationality and the second one is the show case of the conflict between the middle class and the lower class in the mid Victorian Era. The last Ghost is a kind of a suggestion to heal the conflict through personal charity meaning the material contact between individuals. In A Christmas Carol Dickens shows that he prefers to personal charity for the immediate result of charity and the fact that public charity has not fully organized yet.