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    The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
    The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
    The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
    Ebook121 pages2 hours

    The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain

    By Charles Dickens

    3.5/5

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    Redlaw is a teacher of chemistry who often broods over wrongs done him and grief from his past life. He is haunted by a spirit, who is not so much a ghost as Redlaw's phantom twin and is "an awful likeness of himself...with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress..." This spectre appears and proposes to Redlaw that he can allow him to "forget the sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have known...to cancel their remembrance..." Redlaw is hesitant at first, but finally agrees. However, before the spirit vanishes it imposes an additional consequence: "The gift that I have given you, you shall give again, go where you will."
    (Excerpt from Wikipedia)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOtbebookpublishing
    Release dateDec 27, 2015
    ISBN9783956761317
    Author

    Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.

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    Reviews for The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain

    3.5/5

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    • 2/5
      I really have no idea what this is, and I'm not sure I care to find out further.

      No, no, that's not fair. The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain is the final of Dickens' Christmas novellas, and the 15th all up of his 24 major works. Published in 1848, at the height of Dickens' busy career as playwright, social avenger, board member, husband, father, traveller, speechmaker, celebrity, and Dombey and Son churner-outer, this is perhaps my least favourite of the Christmas novellas. Well, The Battle of Life is less powerful but at least it's not as long.

      The story of a man given the power to obliterate the past feels needlessly repetitive. With Ebenezer Scrooge, each of the three ghosts brought a different aspect, and the story moved fairly swiftly toward its character development. Redlaw is not Ebenezer Scrooge, and the moral he learns - while powerful - could have been told in one of Dickens' short sketches.

      Regardless, CD is a strong writer, and his descriptions of a bleak and luminous landscape, of the world inhabited by Redlaw, make me glad I read through this at least once (even if the height of summer - a Southern Hemisphere Christmas! - is ill-fitting). Thankfully, from here on out, Dickens will write nothing but gems. Consider this one a blip on an otherwise crisp record.
    • 5/5
      The fifth and final of Dickens' Christmas Books and the one I thought was most like A Christmas Carol in quality and in its themes.Mr Redlaw has had many sorrows in his life although he is known as a generous man if gloomy and solitary. He is thinking of his sorrows one Christmas when he is visited by a ghost or spirit which offers him the gift of forgetting all the wrongs and sorrows which weigh on him so heavily."I bear within me a Sorrow and a Wrong. Thus I prey upon myself. Thus, memory is my curse; and, if I could forget my sorrow and my wrong, I would!"Believing that he would be happier without this remembrance, Redlaw agrees and the spirit takes these memories from him but also leaves him with the gift of passing this forgetfulness on to all others that he meets. Dickens uses this gift of forgetfulness powerfully among the strong cast of characters he has included in this novella to teach that it is the memory of our sorrows and sufferings that is the source of our compassion and enables us to forgive others and that without suffering, there can be no true joy.A very powerful story.

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    The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain - Charles Dickens

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