More seriously, Trotty debates who is worthy of time—that is, who is worthy of life. On a New Year’s Eve, he considers himself and his working-class fellows and muses that they are perhaps unworthy, We seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always being complained of and guarded against … supposing it should really be that we have no right to a New Year. Trotty thanks the chimes for these lessons and then wakes up a new man (like Scrooge does) and like Scrooge, you feel such joy and relief that Trotty has a second chance to live life in a different way....in a more hopeful and joyful manner. After the heavy dinner, Trotty falls into a deep dream state, where ghosts appear to him, this is followed by a series of visions in which he is forced to watch, helpless to interfere with the troubled lives of Meg, Richard and other friends over the subsequent years. Upon waking up, Trotty is happy to realize it was only a dream and is ecstatic to celebrate the new year with his daughter, neighbors and friends. They had always been his clients, they had never been forgotten in any of his books, but here nothing else was to be remembered ... he had come to have as little faith for the putting down of any serious evil, as in a then notorious city alderman's gabble for the putting down of suicide. The latter had stirred his indignation to its depths just before he came to Italy, and his increased opportunities of solitary reflection since had strengthened and extended it. When he came therefore to think of his new story for Christmas time, he resolved to make it a plea for the poor ... He was to try and convert Society, as he had converted Scrooge, by showing that its happiness rested on the same foundations as those of the individual, which are mercy and charity not less than justice. [2] As the story opens its New Year’s Eve and Trotty’s daughter Meg, has announced the news that she and her fiancée are getting married in New Year’s Day, which to them sounds like an auspicious date.

Although not as popular as its predecessor, The Chimes turned out to be a pretty enthralling tale: part ghost story/part morality tale/part social commentary. The narrow space within which it was necessary to confine these Christmas Stories when they were originally published, rendered their construction a matter of some difficulty, and almost necessitated what is peculiar in their machinery. I could not attempt great elaboration of detail, in the working out of character within such limits. My chief purpose was, in a whimsical kind of masque which the good humour of the season justified, to awaken some loving and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land." Later on, Trotty meets a man and his little orphaned niece. The homeless man is very poor and is on the verge of going to jail for some petty crime. Trotty invites the man and girl to come home with him and spends the little money he has on a hearty New Year’s Eve dinner for them. Trotty, raising his hands in an attitude of supplication.‘I hardly know why I am here, or how I came. I have He is also told to try to improve conditions in the here and now, not to sorrowfully remember a fictitiously "better" time in years past.As A Christmas Carol has the memorable subtitle A Ghost Story of Christmas, so The Chimes has its own subtitle: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. In both cases, the subtitle indicates that this story too will be doing a bit of a genre mash-up, incorporating Gothicism into a tale of the holiday season.

I know there is a sea of Time to rise one day, before which all who wrong us or oppress us will be swept away like leaves. I see it, on the flow! I know that we must trust and hope, and neither doubt ourselves, nor doubt the good in one another." The final words of The Chimes seem fitting So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy. The Chimes is set in Victorian London sometime during the early 1840’s. These were times of hardship and much economic instability when Europe was still suffering the effects of the Great Potato Famine.The novel's setting is contemporary and the 1840s (the " Hungry Forties") were a time of social and political unrest. I grew up reading Spanish translations of classics like Oliver Twist, Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Little Women and The Little Prince. Trotty's "crime", he is told, is in not taking personal responsibility, in not having any inner convictions, and in losing confidence, faith in a higher power, and hope and determination that life would improve. He is reprimanded for his condemnation of people less fortunate than himself, offering them neither help nor pity. On his walk to Sir Joseph Bowley's house he had condemned a "cutpurse" (thief), and ignored the plight of a prostitute in the power of her pimp. He had read the account in a newspaper of a woman, driven from her home by poverty and misfortune, who had killed her child and herself. Trotty had seen this as final proof of the badness of the working class, and had cursed the woman as "unnatural and cruel". The goblins and spirits tell him that he has begun to emulate the behaviour of those such as Alderman Cute, was, if it smelt like this,’ said Meg, cheerfully.‘Make haste, for there’s a hot potato besides, and Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly round the fire! It has an awful voice, that wind at Midnight, singing in a church!"

try to bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come; and in your sphere - none is too wide, and none too limited for such an end - endeavour to correct, improve , and soften them." Twas the Night Before Christmas: Edited by Santa Claus for the Benefit of Children of the 21st Century" (2012) being Pamela McColl "smoke-free" edit of Clement Clarke Moore's poem As New Year’s Eve advances toward midnight, Trotty is confronted by the Spirits of the Bells, who take him on a journey to witness what will become of those dear to him if they are infected by his opinion that they are unworthy of a New Year. In a final crisis, Trotty declares I know that our inheritance is held in store for us by Time. I know there is a sea of Time to rise one day, before which all who wrong us or oppress us will be swept away like leaves. … I know that we must trust and hope, and neither doubt ourselves, nor doubt the good in one another. … O Spirits, merciful and good, I am grateful! All Genoa lay beneath him, and up from it, with some sudden set of the wind, came in one fell sound the clang and clash of all its steeples, pouring into his ears, again and again, in a tuneless, grating, discordant, jerking, hideous vibration that made his ideas "spin round and round till they lost themselves in a whirl of vexation and giddiness, and dropped down dead." [2]

The society’s scorn and disregard for the situation of people living in poverty is personified by a justice of the peace named Alderman Cute. Modelled in part on a real-life London politician who was known for claiming that there was no social problem that he couldn’t “put down,” Cute thinks of himself as a “Famous man for the common people”, but shows his real attitude toward the common people when he discourages Meg from marrying her fiancé Richard, telling Meg that she will inevitably quarrel with her husband, become a distressed wife, have sons who will get in trouble, become homeless, and attempt suicide – all of which, Cute adds, “I am determined to Put Down” (pp. 25, 28). Cute’s solution to poverty seems to be that the poor should never fall in love, marry, or have children. There are still politicians with his sort of attitude at work today in London, and in Washington, D.C.