The Craft of a Master Wordsmith
Charles Dickens is known as a mater story teller. In my opinion, this is not precise. Dickens’ stories are less interesting than his use of language. Above all, Dickens was a master craftsman at using the voices of his characters to draw us into a narrative line. In this way Dickens could slow down the narrative at will to expound on just about any topic he was interested in. Here is a case in point. The opening of “A Christmas Carol”
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
And what next? Of course, Dickens ponders why we think “doornails” are the right symbols to use for death. Here is the opening of next paragraph
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.
The narrator has jumped out of the story telling to share his personality in a chat with you, the reader. Check out this fascinating article on how Dickens edited A Christmas Carol.