On Angst, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Reading Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol as an Existentialist Work

Abstract

Abstract:One of the most important topics in works of existentialist literature and philosophy is surely the state that we can call angst or existential anxiety. Nowhere is this state more clearly and accurately described than in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol–a work not usually defined as existentialist writing at all. Analyzing this work, I demonstrate that it nonetheless has to be considered a pioneering work of existentialism given that we can clarify the state of angst or existential anxiety through its analysis with a transparency seen nowhere else, and can even correct misconceptions pertaining to this state that have been able to spread given the exclusion of A Christmas Carol from almost all discussions of existentialism and its major themes.