A point of interest for me this week was learning more about the historical context Dickens was writing in. Learning more about the material conditions of the Victorian working poor during the 1840s added a new layer of appreciation for the text. References to the “Poor Law” and the “Treadmill” in the first stave completely went over my head in my initial reading. It is clear to me now that Dickens was thinking about the conditions of working class people as he was writing A Christmas Carol, but also had a keen sense of his middle class audience.

What particularly interested me the most about annotating Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was reading the textual version of the story. When reading the graphic novel, I was able to visualize what events were happening but was not even as much of an in-depth analysis of the text. This way, I was able to consider specific sentences and words that were used in a deeper way, allowing me to see more characterization, themes, and settings. This method of reading the text also helped me understand John Leech’s illustrations.

In this week's class, we focused on annotating both the text and the images of A Christmas Carol. What I found most interesting from annotating the text was the content annotations. Craft annotations are typically what we have to do when engaging with a text in order to draw out meaning. However, looking out for words or phrases that feel uniquely applied or that are not familiar is something I will occasionally neglect.

I found it interesting how disparate Leech's illustrations for A Christmas Carol are (so much so that I assumed they were done by different artists upon first reading it) in terms of style, method, and tone. Stylistically, the illustrations range (depending on tone, it seems) from particularly caricature-esque and cartoony to more Gothic and realist -- "Mr. Fezziwig's Ball" and "Scrooge's Third Visitor" examples of the former style, and "Last of the Spirits" and the woodcut from the second stave examples of the latter stlye.

What I found particularly poignant about John Leech’s work on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is how each illustration brimmed with symbolism and countless interpretations which expanded upon the original text in ways I wasn’t initially aware of. During the annotation and discussion process, I observed various details that were incredibly engaging to look and featured plenty to analyze.

Although A Christmas Carol is such a popular well-known text, I hadn't read it before this class. Sure, I'd seen the movies during Christmas time and I know of the story but I hadn't paid much attention to it let alone the illustrations. I really enjoyed how the story was written. I was interested in Dickens's use of descriptive writing without seeming like he's droning to fill up space. I liked how he made references to other texts such as Hamlet and spoke to the reader instead of at them.

   Today's lecture focused on Charles Dickens' infamous novella, A Christmas Carol. Although, the text is quite popular with its various adaptations, I have never actually read the actual text before taking this course. One of the most interesting things I noticed while annotating this particular text is that Dickens has a fondness for flowery writing and can go on endlessly describing whatever he is focusing on. As a result, I came across lots of words that I did not know or had different connotations in the 1840s versus now.

For today’s class we were tasked with annotating Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol and working with John Leech’s illustrations for the novella. I found it surprising to learn that illustrations were included with the book when it was first published. This adds to the importance of looking at image, text and context in relation to each other. It was also interesting to learn about the different types of drawings Leech created for the novella and discuss as a class the impact of these illustrations.

This week's lesson focused once more on image-and-text interplay; however, there was an emphasis on annotation for the purpose of illuminating various aspects of the text to the reader. What I found most interesting about this class was the process of annotating itself. Annotating requires not only an understanding of a certain word or literary convention - it requires the writer to understand these elements within the context of the text that they are annotating.

 I found it very fulfilling to be able to look at A Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens and Illustrated by John Leech today in class with my fellow peers. I have read/seen all different types of versions of A Christmas Carol as a result of just simply growing up. To call it a classic is an understatement, but to be able to study it in a university class this semester is a full circle moment. The images curated by John Leech have extreme depth and they have the capacity to be analyzed to great lengths.