December 5
December 5
Marley’s Ghost & the Fireplace
The fireplace was an old one, built by some dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh’s daughters; Queens of Sheba, angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like featherbeds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures, to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley’s head on every one.
Dickens lets the readers know from the beginning of his short book that Ebenezer Scrooge is a cold-hearted man who isolates himself from the world. It would seem that a man as stoic as he would be exempt from fear. However, the author lets us know that even Scrooge himself cannot shake the disturbing vision he saw in his door knocker of his late partner, Jacob Marley as he entered home that night. The description of this fireplace would fit into a coffee table book on decorative tile, which is why I was so drawn to it perhaps. Don’t we all have some visual anchors in our surroundings that we meditate upon specially in times of fear? Well, old Scrooge was so terrified that even this beautiful collection of biblical scenes could not shake the horrible image he had just seen. Dickens has shown his mastery in descriptive prose to “illustrate” his point.
Ellen Rundle
Marley’s Ghost & the Fireplace
The fireplace was an old one, built by some dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh’s daughters; Queens of Sheba, angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like featherbeds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures, to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley’s head on every one.
Dickens lets the readers know from the beginning of his short book that Ebenezer Scrooge is a cold-hearted man who isolates himself from the world. It would seem that a man as stoic as he would be exempt from fear. However, the author lets us know that even Scrooge himself cannot shake the disturbing vision he saw in his door knocker of his late partner, Jacob Marley as he entered home that night. The description of this fireplace would fit into a coffee table book on decorative tile, which is why I was so drawn to it perhaps. Don’t we all have some visual anchors in our surroundings that we meditate upon specially in times of fear? Well, old Scrooge was so terrified that even this beautiful collection of biblical scenes could not shake the horrible image he had just seen. Dickens has shown his mastery in descriptive prose to “illustrate” his point.
Ellen Rundle
posted by Pastor Stan | 4:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home