For the Deep Thoughts file

[drscott]

From the WSJ's review of a Dickens biography today:

"The Haunted Man," by contrast, is a creepy ghost story in the mold of "A Christmas Carol." A spirit appears to a man plagued by past betrayals and agrees to remove the bad memories—but curses him to similarly "blank" the memory of any person he encounters. Even with their memories erased, though, these people soon burn with a nameless rage, still haunted by a cruel past they cannot now recall. It turns out that only forgiveness, and not forgetting, is the cure for the hard feelings of the wronged. Like "A Christmas Carol," the tale captures both the joy and the poignant pain of the Christmas season—a time when the past always seems particularly present.

Dickens expressed the lesson of "The Haunted Man" this way: "To have all the best of it, you must have the worst also."

Comments

[omero-hassan.livejournal.com]

Put that way, it makes more sense -- makes me think of other aphorisms to similar effect: hunger is the best sauce, or absence makes the heart grow fonder. We perceive the world partially (entirely?) by contrast.