The 29th Annual Book Report Competition
For Secondary School Students
Class: 5C
Name: Chik Hiu Tung
Title: A Christmas Carol
Author: Charles Dickens
Publisher: The Commercial Press
This story was all about Scrooge. Scrooge, who was mean and miserable, was a company boss. In the town, everyone knew he never spent money and gave money away. He was unconcerned about anybody and very detached. Therefore, he was always alone at Christmas every year. He was so mean that he never celebrated Christmas because he thought celebration is just a waste of time and money!
On the Christmas Eve, a magical thing occurred. The origin was Scrooge’s best friend and business partner Marley, who passed away. Marley’s ghost found Scrooge. He said he was really exhausted because he was trussed up by chains. The chains were his sins – he was so mean when he was alive. So he reminds Scrooge that he must change his mind before it would be too late. After that, three ghosts went to find Scrooge one by one. There represented Scrooge’s past, present and future.
In the story we know that Scrooge did not have a good childhood. No child played with him; he was always alone sitting in the classroom, even at Christmas. After he had got married, his wife left him since he paid too much attention on money. For the present Scrooge, he gave such a low salary to his clerk, Bob, that he could not afford to money needed to cure his younger son’s illness. Although Bob felt stressed by Scrooge, he thanked Scrooge by treating him a Christmas dinner with his family. In Scrooge’s future, the spirit reminded him to change his evil thoughts otherwise he would go to the hell when he died. Of course, Scrooge became a nice person at the end.
After reading, I think Scrooge’s story reflects our society nowadays. Hong Kong is a commercial city in the world, and is developing extremely fast. Everyone only fights with the time to earn money. As a result, they ignore their family and friends. It seems that there is nothing more important than money. Just like Scrooge, he paid too much attention on money so he lost his wife, his family, his smile and happiness. Although money can satisfy whatever we want materialistically, money cannot buy us happiness or family.
‘A Christmas Carol’ is a really meaningful story for us. When we are affluent, we may be obsessed with what we have. However, to be honest, on the day we die, we cannot bring our own property and everything passes away in this world. At the end, we know money is not the most important thing in this world. On the contrary, what we should treasure is, friendship, family and smile, which money cannot buy.