I Dreamed a Dream?

I noticed that Alec Guinness's Scrooge mentions several times that he thinks his ghostly encounters were a dream. He says it to himself on Christmas morning and also references "a dream" when asking Bob Cratchit about Tiny Tim.

It got me to thinking about various references I've heard/read over the years where Scrooge was said to have a dream or series of dreams.

It's possible that some versions do present the events as a dream, but it is not a dream in the book and I don't even think it's subject to interpretation.

First of all, the full title of the book is "A Christmas Carol in Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas." If it's a ghost story, the ghosts are real and not just dreamed up, right?

Perhaps that's just semantics, but what it really comes down to is that Scrooge sees things in the Christmas present that he had no previous knowledge of, so he wouldn't have dreamed them to begin with and they certainly wouldn't be accurate.

For example, he did know that Bob Cratchit has a wife and family, but it seems he did not know much about them. I don't think he knew about Tiny Tim and Tiny Tim does exist in the "real" world. He didn't dream up Bob Cratchit having a sick son, Bob really does have a sick son.

He also wouldn't know Martha's name, let alone that she was a milliner's apprentice, nor the names of Peter or Belinda.

Even more to the point, Scrooge couldn't possibly have known the guests at Fred's party or the activities they would participate in. It's implied that he had never even met Fred's wife.

But when he enters the room in "real time," he startles her because he forgot that she was sitting on a stool in the corner as he had seen when he was there with the spirit. That's kind of your "Twilight Zone" it-really-did-happen moment!

And from the text: "His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when they came."

So, Scrooge saw things happen before they actually happened, but they did happen the way he had seen them. That's supernatural ghost stuff, not a dream.

I'm not sure how far back the idea of crazy events being a dream goes, but I think it was cemented in pop culture with the 1939 movie adaptation of "The Wizard of Oz," where Dorothy's trip to Oz was revealed to be SPOILER a dream! I think people look through that lens at times.

In any event, Scrooge was not dreaming!

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