A Christmas Carol: York Notes for GCSE - everything you need to study and prepare for the 2025 and 2026 exams

York Notes’s New GCSE Study Notes and Revision Guide for Grades 9–1 will help you get to grips with all aspects of Dickens’s entertaining ghost story with a moral message. Find notes on the plot, characters, themes, context, imagery, and use of language. By familiarising yourself with these aspects of the novella you will give yourself the best opportunity of gaining high marks in your GCSE exam.

In order to impress an examiner you are likely to need to demonstrate, with appropriate quotation from the novella, your understanding of key characters such as Scrooge and the journey he takes through the book. You will need to distinguish between characters that Dickens develops, like Scrooge, and figures such as Ignorance and Want, which he uses to get across his message about society, poverty and education. The Notes will help you analyse the language Dickens uses and to understand his aim of entertaining his readers but also making them think about society and their own lives.