London , England ( CNN ) -- When people say the message of Charles Dickens ' `` A Christmas Carol '' is as relevant today as it was in 1843 , they usually have in mind Ebenezer Scrooge 's conversion . Overnight , he 's transformed from a mean old skinflint who believes that those unable to support themselves had better die `` and decrease the surplus population '' to an almost riotously generous giver to charitable causes . They remember especially , perhaps , Scrooge 's change of heart toward his poor , underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit and how he promises to ensure that Bob will be able to afford the medical treatment that his beloved little son , the crippled Tiny Tim , will need if he is to survive -- a plot detail that resonates with particular strength in America today , where citizens struggle with health care costs . Less often remembered , though , is an eerie interlude that can easily be taken as a mirror of our own times : Scrooge 's appalled encounter with the two fearful children , a boy and a girl , `` yellow , meagre , ragged , scowling , wolfish , '' who emerge from the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present . The boy 's name is Ignorance and the girl 's is Want , and the ghost warns Scrooge to beware of them both -- but especially of the boy on whose brow is written `` that which is Doom , unless the writing be erased . '' These fearful apparitions were products of Britain 's `` Hungry Forties , '' when there was widespread economic distress and great fear of social breakdown , but it is part of Dickens ' genius that he was recognizing here a theme that plays out everywhere , in every time and in every culture . It certainly does in today 's America with unemployment running at 10 percent ( or even higher in some areas ) and fears that this could lead to increased crime , and arguably has led to a growing sense of intolerance -- for example , towards immigrant communities -- and political extremism . It may seem odd to include such grim reminders in a tale about Christmas . But Dickens knew about poverty : His own comfortable childhood was transformed when his father 's overspending landed him and most of his family in a debtors ' prison . As a boy , Dickens worked long hours for about a year in a small-scale factory and later drew on this experience , to him deeply degrading , in the early chapters of `` David Copperfield . '' When not working he wandered about the streets of London , which he was later so richly to describe in `` Bleak House '' and his other great novels . For Dickens , building a system of national education ( something frustrated in his day by bitter disputes between the different religious denominations ) and reforming sanitary ( or public health ) laws were the two things needing urgent attention from the nation 's lawmakers . He continued to fear the danger represented by the boy Ignorance , who re-appears in the last of his Christmas books , `` The Haunted Man '' ( 1848 ) , as the savage street-child whom Redlaw , the protagonist , tries vainly to help . Of course , things gradually improved for Britain , as they eventually do in most big countries struggling to survive economic lows . In the 1850s and 1860s , as the country became more prosperous , the fear of chaos and revolution receded . Dickens dropped Ignorance and Want from his hugely popular public reading version of the `` Carol '' ( performed from 1858 onward ) , though he never stopped calling attention to the national scandal of the scavenging hordes of starving , uncared-for street children in London and Britain 's other great cities ( the first Education Act , which brought in compulsory state education at the elementary level for all working-class children , was passed in the year of his death ) . Today , however , cities still confront gang activity and , as we witness a surge of political and religious extremism , we might wonder what Dickens would make of the situation . As someone who sought in his own journals to fight against the depraving effect of cheap sensational literature produced by those he called `` Panders to the basest passions of the lowest natures , '' he would certainly have been alarmed and horrified by the level of pop culture violence and quasi-pornography -- on TV , in magazines and video games . He would have seen this primarily as a failure of public education , I believe . Again , as someone who in his last novel , `` Edwin Drood , '' depicted a drug addict who turns to murder , he would have been equally appalled by the drug culture now so widespread among the young . The powerful presentation of Ignorance and Want in the latest cinematic version of his immortal `` A Christmas Carol '' would surely have struck him appropriate for our day . In the new Disney film a ferociously scowling Ignorance wields a lethal-looking knife , and Want is a teenage prostitute driven crazy , presumably by drug abuse . Disney brilliantly demonstrates that the urgent social warning Dickens sought to convey in the `` Carol '' in 1843 is quite as relevant to us today as is the story 's more personal message about the need for us to open our `` shut-up hearts '' to our fellow men and give generously to those less well off than ourselves . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Michael Slater .
Michael Slater : `` A Christmas Carol '' used Ignorance and Want to warn of poverty 's effect . He says Dickens thought education , health reform could stem social decline . Slater sees grim parallels to `` Carol '' in today 's culture , economy . Slater : Heed book 's social warning as much as its goodwill message .