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A review by heyimaghost
The Chimes by Charles Dickens
5.0
My Christmas reading tradition is to read all of Dickens' Christmas books leading towards Christmas Eve when, if I'd timed things right, Scrooge is figuring out his bed curtains aren't torn down. I've done this for a long time. I first read A Christmas Carol in 2005 over an afternoon, and I'd never read Dickens before. I read it again the next year along with this story and The Cricket on the Hearth.
And if, due to some disaster, we lost all of Dickens' Christmas books--I won't go so far as to include all of his works because that would be too unsettling. I say, if we were to lose all of Dickens' Christmas books except one, we should obviously retain A Christmas Carol, but it would be a shame if couldn’t keep some parts of The Chimes .
Take this one from the beginning: 'For the night-wind has a dismal trick of wandering round and round a building of that sort, and moaning as it goes; and of trying, with its unseen hand, the windows and the doors; and seeking out some crevices by which to enter. And when it has got in; as one not finding what it seeks, whatever that may be, it wails and howls to issue forth again: and not content with stalking through the aisles, and gliding round and round the pillars, and tempting the deep organ, soars up to the roof, and strives to rend the rafters: then flings itself despairingly upon the stones below, and passes, muttering, into the vaults. Anon, it comes up stealthily, and creeps along the walls, seeming to read, in whispers, the Inscriptions sacred to the Dead. At some of these, it breaks out shrilly, as with laughter; and at others, moans and cries as if it were lamenting. It has a ghostly sound too, lingering within the altar; where it seems to chaunt, in its wild way, of Wrong and Murder done, and false Gods worshipped, in defiance of the Tables of the Law, which look so fair and smooth, but are so flawed and broken. Ugh! Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly round the fire! It has an awful voice, that wind at Midnight, singing in a church!'
He describes things that are fantastic but the reader can perfectly picture them in his mind. His goblin, spinning, spinning, spinning, losing less and less of his physical form, until poof he's gone! I can see it clear as if he was spinning before me.
But aside from the writing, which is Dickens at his most angry, poignant, and frustrating (the end of the story feels so drawn out I want to skip it every year), this novel is Dickens expressing his social concepts perfectly. 'Who turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which they fell from good—grasping in their fall some tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf below; does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity.' as well as the closing paragraph: 'O listener, dear to him in all his visions, 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.'
'Learn it from the creature dearest to your heart!'
Dickens seems to be in desperation, trying to teach us a lesson, But is that lesson worth learning in modern, 21st century society? In short, is The Chimes worth reading today? Well, of course, like I said, there are moments within the prose that are some of my favorites in all of fiction, But in today's society, so eager to declare each of us a number, a statistic, and to give in to utilitarian consumerism, and when fascism is on the rise, this novel resounds as loud as the Bells that send goblin creatures about hurrying people to good and retarding those who would do evil. Any time wherein our leaders would ignore human decency for the sake of profit, The Chimes is important. Any time when our leaders would look back on an imagined past and glorify it instead of trying to better the present, The Chimes will be important. Any time wherein our leaders would reduce us to tables and sums, The Chimes is important.
In short, this novel's message will never be unimportant. It is a struggle. But as the Goblins of Bells say, 'Ages of darkness, wickedness, and violence, have come and gone—millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and died—to point the way before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check!'
And if, due to some disaster, we lost all of Dickens' Christmas books--I won't go so far as to include all of his works because that would be too unsettling. I say, if we were to lose all of Dickens' Christmas books except one, we should obviously retain A Christmas Carol, but it would be a shame if couldn’t keep some parts of The Chimes .
Take this one from the beginning: 'For the night-wind has a dismal trick of wandering round and round a building of that sort, and moaning as it goes; and of trying, with its unseen hand, the windows and the doors; and seeking out some crevices by which to enter. And when it has got in; as one not finding what it seeks, whatever that may be, it wails and howls to issue forth again: and not content with stalking through the aisles, and gliding round and round the pillars, and tempting the deep organ, soars up to the roof, and strives to rend the rafters: then flings itself despairingly upon the stones below, and passes, muttering, into the vaults. Anon, it comes up stealthily, and creeps along the walls, seeming to read, in whispers, the Inscriptions sacred to the Dead. At some of these, it breaks out shrilly, as with laughter; and at others, moans and cries as if it were lamenting. It has a ghostly sound too, lingering within the altar; where it seems to chaunt, in its wild way, of Wrong and Murder done, and false Gods worshipped, in defiance of the Tables of the Law, which look so fair and smooth, but are so flawed and broken. Ugh! Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly round the fire! It has an awful voice, that wind at Midnight, singing in a church!'
He describes things that are fantastic but the reader can perfectly picture them in his mind. His goblin, spinning, spinning, spinning, losing less and less of his physical form, until poof he's gone! I can see it clear as if he was spinning before me.
But aside from the writing, which is Dickens at his most angry, poignant, and frustrating (the end of the story feels so drawn out I want to skip it every year), this novel is Dickens expressing his social concepts perfectly. 'Who turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which they fell from good—grasping in their fall some tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf below; does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity.' as well as the closing paragraph: 'O listener, dear to him in all his visions, 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.'
'Learn it from the creature dearest to your heart!'
Dickens seems to be in desperation, trying to teach us a lesson, But is that lesson worth learning in modern, 21st century society? In short, is The Chimes worth reading today? Well, of course, like I said, there are moments within the prose that are some of my favorites in all of fiction, But in today's society, so eager to declare each of us a number, a statistic, and to give in to utilitarian consumerism, and when fascism is on the rise, this novel resounds as loud as the Bells that send goblin creatures about hurrying people to good and retarding those who would do evil. Any time wherein our leaders would ignore human decency for the sake of profit, The Chimes is important. Any time when our leaders would look back on an imagined past and glorify it instead of trying to better the present, The Chimes will be important. Any time wherein our leaders would reduce us to tables and sums, The Chimes is important.
In short, this novel's message will never be unimportant. It is a struggle. But as the Goblins of Bells say, 'Ages of darkness, wickedness, and violence, have come and gone—millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and died—to point the way before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check!'