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The Haunted Man And The Ghosts Bargain (2000)

by Charles Dickens(Favorite Author)

3.32 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Horror

series

Christmas Books

review 1: Unfortunately this story was very difficult for me to digest.Regarding its language, there is a lot of unnecessary repetition and it might be fun once or twice to let a husband and wife repeat the same sentences over and over again, but it gets dull soon.I've read that Dickens got paid by word count, so that might be an explanation for the overabundance of repetition, but it really dragged the story down.The plot itself is rather confuse and more often than not the author failed to paint a clean picture of what was actually happening. He jumps between conversations, often it is even unclear how many people are involved in a scene.But I could overlook all that, consider the time it has been written in and might be more forgiving in my rating, but what was really off-putting... more for me was the preachy way in which conservative ideals of family are celebrated. Every bachelor or single character is depicted as a miserable and selfish person, who ruins the lives of others.In contrast family values are celebrated as the holy grail of happiness and even when there is discourse between a couple, it seldomly lasts long or has a negative consequence.Misery itself is portrayed as something that is necessary to truly value the positive things in life, which is another conservative myth to uphold the power of the ruling classes from my point of view and humble the lower classes into submission.I generally don't have an issue with conservative thinking, but when it is presented in such a preachy way as in this story, it leaves a very bad taste.
review 2: The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain is the fifth of Dickens' Christmas stories with the old adage that if it is to good to be true, it is. When Professor Redlaw is presented an offer, by of course a phantom, to "forget the sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have known...to cancel their remembrance." Well he naturally accepts and the story begins to play out all set about the Christmas season. After a series of trials and tribulations without the memories of sorrow to complete the man we get the obvious moral of the tale on Christmas morning from the angelic Milly Swidger that, "it is important to remember past sorrows and wrongs so that you can then forgive those responsible and, in doing so, unburden your soul and mature as a human being."If you are looking for some additional Christmas reading, this Dickens' story is a nice addition. Redlaw is no Scrooge but his redemption is sweet enough for the season. less

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