Lagerlöf built into the structure of the novel lessons on how to avoid contracting the disease. Since Lagerlöf could better express herself in a narrative way, rather than a treatise, she proposed to write the novel Körkarlen. Before the invention of antibiotics, tuberculosis was widespread and feared, public education was important. Lagerlöf had a personal interest in the disease her older sister Anna and their young child had it. Selma Lagerlöf was commissioned by a Swedish association to write an essay on tuberculosis ("consumption") and its control. In some European folklore the last dead person of the year in a village becomes the charioteer of death for the next year. Background Īn illustration of Les Merveilles de la nuit de Noël showing the Ankou riding his chariot, 1844. David prays the New Year's prayer that he has learned from George, God, let my soul come to maturity before being harvested. Georges will serve another year as driver to the dead. This Georges does and David redeems himself to his wife in a tear filled reunion. David pleads with George to allow his soul to return to his body so that he may stop his wife from killing herself and the children. David feels love for his children for the first time in his life. She has decided to kill herself and the children, life with David is no longer tolerable and she sees no way out. Finally, George and David go to David's wife. David vows that he will fulfill his brother's promise, and so David's brother dies in peace. The brother regrets that he his failed to fulfill a promise he once made to a sick child to see the ocean. The brother had been led astray by David, starting with drinking alcohol and then committing a murder. David and Georges then go to a prison in which David's younger brother is incarcerated. Edith can now die in peace, and Georges commands her soul from her body. When David learns that Edith has loved him, he softens and falls to his knees in front of Edith. Now a ghostly apparition, George takes David to see the people that David loved most and whom he has most harmed. When David refuses, Georges binds him and throws him into the death cart. David now has to replace George and serve as the driver for a year of death. None other than David's old friend George then appears in the Phantom Carriage. At the same moment the clock strikes midnight. After more drinking, David gets into a fight with his companions, is hit in the chest and suffers a hemorrhage (a complication of TB) and falls lifeless to the ground. David heard this story from his friend George, who died last year on New Year's Eve. Meanwhile, David is sitting in the park with drinking buddies and telling them a horrible story about the coachman of death - as it happens, the last person to die each year is recruited by Death incarnate to travel for the next year picking up the souls of the dead in the Phantom Carriage. On her death bed, Edith now wants to try one last time to put things in order. This makes Edith feel guilty, as David threatens to deliberately infect his children with TB. Edith persuades David's wife to return home, but they are treated worse than ever by David. Edith then learned David is married with children, but they had to leave home because David was so violent. This only increased her resolve and Edith developed a deep love for David. Over the next year Edith wanted to help him, but he was a violent alcoholic and always cruelly rejected her. He also had infected her at the time with tuberculosis after she stayed up all night mending his torn and infected coat. A year earlier, he was the first patron of the newly opened social welfare house that Edith had founded. It becomes apparent that the two have a special relationship. She requests that before she dies, she would like to again see David Holm, one of her charges. Edith, a young "Slum Sister" (social worker) in the service of the Salvation Army is on her death bed dying of "consumption" ( tuberculosis). The novel is set in a small town in Sweden at the beginning of the 20th century. It has been dramatized for the screen twice in Sweden and once in France, under various English titles of The Phantom Carriage, The Phantom Chariot, The Stroke of Midnight, and Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness. Lagerlöf was commissioned to write it by a Swedish association as a means of public education about tuberculosis ("consumption"). It was translated into English by William Frederick Harvey in 1921. Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! (Swedish: Körkarlen) is a 1912 novel by the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf.
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