Social responsibility — A Christmas Carol — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Social responsibility
Themes
What you need to know
How Dickens explores social responsibility and how society should treat the poor across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Are there no prisons?', 'Mankind was my business', 'The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune', 'Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?', 'This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want.', 'most of all beware this boy', 'fellow-passengers to the grave', 'a second father'.
Context: Malthus, the 1834 Poor Law and the workhouses, Ragged Schools, and Dickens's own childhood in a blacking factory.
Eduqas's essay on this novel marks context as much as response and analysis: weave context into the argument, and treat the printed extract as a starting point, ranging across the beginning, middle and end of the novel.
