How Dickens explores redemption and the possibility of change 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: 'I wear the chain I forged in life', 'Your reclamation, then', 'I am not the man I was', 'I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year', 'as merry as a school-boy', 'knew how to keep Christmas well'.
Context: the Christian idea of redemption, being saved from sin, and the novella's moral message that everyone can choose to be kinder.
OCR's question on this novel is one essay, from a choice of two, for 40 marks: an extract-based question on the printed extract and the novel elsewhere, or a discursive question on a view of the novel, using at least two moments. Response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2) carry the most weight and equal weight, context (AO3) counts when it is relevant to the question, and 4 marks are for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (AO4). An extract-based answer that never leaves the extract, or a discursive answer built on one moment, cannot go above Level 3. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the question it is for.
