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Analysis of the christmas carol
Analysis of the christmas carol
Literary analysis of Christmas Carol
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The past had a major impact on a person’s life, so it was important to look forward to life and remember the past. Ebenezer Scrooge and his late partner, Jacob Marley, were obsessed with making and keeping their money. After Marley died, the ghost of him came back (seven years after his death) to warn Scrooge about his future and what will happen if he didn’t change his lifestyle. That night, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future visited him. When Scrooge was being shown his life by the Phantoms, he saw how his decisions had shaped his life and what his life will become if he did not change his lifestyle. At the same time, Scrooge also got the chance to relive his terrible past and learned many lessons from it. Scrooge’s past had …show more content…
‘What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you?’ (Stave One, paragraph 20). Fred talked about his perspective of Scrooge's Christmas. These were some of the reasons to hate Christmas for a man like him. However, as the story moved on, the readers started to see Scrooge’s negative memories on and near Christmas day. The bad past reflected on Scrooge’s spirit during Christmastime. One evidence to show that Scrooge’s past affected his feeling towards Christmas in the future was that Scrooge was left alone at school during Christmas as a child. After the death of his mother, the only supporters that he had were his father and sister. However, he never received the love and comfort that he expected. During Christmas time, Scrooge’s father left him at the boarding school and never brought him home like all of the other kids. As a result, Scrooge grew to up having a miserable a Christmas every year and would often wish he had company other than books. For a kid that went through lonely Christmases, it made sense when something like this made a person dislike
Dickens displays guilt as the main form of how Scrooge’s character develops into a compassionate person by the end of the novella. As Scrooge feels this quilt, it's purely based on the visions that the ghosts provide which further causes Scrooge to realise the consequences of his actions. His alienation from specific characters that he used to love such as Belle, “...has displaced me…” whom left Scrooge, due to his desire for money and wealth which grew. This desire grows with him as he is rejecting the christmas joy and spirit as he continuously states that Christmas is a “humbug,” but by stating this it provides comparison. Dickens depicts that Scrooge has become a better person because of fear but in the end he has become kinder. As the
Scrooge was and owner of a factory and made a whole bunch of money, but he did not care about anyone else. “Merry Christmas said his nephew, what right do have to be merry you are poor enough”. This shows that scrooge is mean to family and does not care about Christmas.
The first reason he said what he said is because of what the Spirit of Christmas Past said to him. One of the first things he showed him was when he went to a party with his girlfriend and proposed marriage. She said yes. This was before he was greedy and mean. This showed him that being pleasant and kind pays off. The spirit then shows Scrooge another part of his past, where his wife
On Christmas Eve , Scrooge is gone by a progression of ghosts,starting with his old business accomplice, Jacob Marley. The three spirits follow,the Ghosts of Past , Christmas present and Christmas future ,show how his ,mean conduct has influenced everyone around him. Toward the finish of the story ,he is soothed to find that there is still time for him to change and we see him changed into a liberal and kind hearted person.
In the beginning of the play in spite of being selfish Scrooge is also cheap, cold-hearted, and cruel. Scrooge behaves in this manner to his nephew, Fred. One way of proving this is when Fred said “Merry Christmas.” Scrooge replied salty saying “Humbug Christmas is just a time for spending and wasting money.” Not only he treats Fred badly but many more people. For instance take one of his quotes towards the Gentleman Visitor, “Are there no Jails for the poor, are there no
In the play, Mr. Scrooge is a greedy man who thinks Christmas is “Bah Humbug!” (Dickens 3). His family has always wanted him to join them for a Christmas feast, but Mr. Scrooge has never wanted anything to do with Christmas. Marley, Mr. Scrooge’s old business partner, didn’t want Mr. Scrooge to end up like him with chains of greed attached to him when he died, so he sent Mr. Scrooge three spirits: Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Those three spirits visited each day to haunt him about his Christmases. Eventually, he traveled with two of the three spirits, but when the spirit of Christmas Future arrived, Mr. Scrooge realized that he would die in a few years. Ebenezer begged for mercy and promised to celebrate Christmas with joy and festivity. (Dickens 7-32) After the haunting with the spirits, Mr. Scrooge woke up and asked a boy what day it was. When the little boy, Adam, replied that it was Christmas, he ordered the boy
Often, readers don’t hear their protagonist shouting phrases such as “Bah!” and “Humbug!”, yet Ebenezer Scrooge is known as the prime character in the novel A Christmas Carol written by Charles Dickens. Right off the bat, the reader can notice Scrooge is known for being bitter, self absorbed, selfish, and cruel. Over the course of the book, the reader will reevaluate the main character and notice he becomes warmer, joyous, and pleasant. Growth and prosperity have both taken place by the end of the novel.
The novel introduces Scrooge as a man of greed. This is shown in the first stave when Scrooge's clerk Bob Cratchit can barely keep warm by such a small fire "that it looked like one coal." Because of Scrooge's greed, he insists on storing up on his wealth by burning less coal, despite it's lack of warmth. Furthermore, one can notice Scrooge's greed as he refuses to give any donation from his surplus wealth to the poor and destitute that the collectors were raising money for. Scrooge's selfish response to the collectors was, " 'I wish to be left alone...I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry..."
When we first met Scrooge, we are informed, and also observe that he is cold, miserly, and bitter. However, after the visit of the Ghost of Christmas future, Scrooge changes into a generous and cheerful man. It is clear that something must have caused a man who is really nice, turn into a mean and nasty person, in this case it was the Industrial Revolution.
Dickens portrays Scrooge as being a mean old man that wants nothing to do with anyone throughout the beginning of the novel. As a young boy many family members played a huge role in Scrooge’s life. It is easy to tell as a young boy, Scrooge loved his family although his father was extremely hard on him. His sister is the only member of his home-family that has a scene in the story. It seems as if that she was the only one who truly loved him. Whenever the ghost of Christmas past takes Scrooge back to the time his sister came and told him that she was taking him back home he was filled with joy. The ghost was sure to remind him that his sister passed away when giving birth to Fred. This really effected how Scrooge looked at Fred later in life. As hard as Scrooge was towards Fred, Fred never gave up on getting Scrooge to enjoy Christmas. “His nephew, Fred, and Bob Cratchit represent the salving spirit of Christmas. They have never abandoned hope and faith” (Gold 153). Scrooge’s relationship with his family is critical to the plot of the story. All of his hard times growing up led to Scrooge’s jealousy of Fezziwig’s wealth and charm. Scrooge’s determination to be like Mr. Fezziwig turned him into the exact opposite of his goal. “Dickens contrasts Scrooge, “excellent man of business,” with old Fezziwig, the master of his apprenticeship days. Fezziwig was a “reasonable” employer; he worked his men hard and fairly, be he was able to play occasionally, and he did not he did not hesitate to spend money at Christmastime for the entertainment and jollification of his employees” (Davis 122). Scrooge’s drive ended up being his
"At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he had used to be." (38).
On page 64, we see how Scrooge shows sympathy in the quote, “There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him something. That 's All.” After being shown a memory of himself as a boy, Scrooge regrets being harsh to the boy caroling and not giving him any money. Seeing his own sadness as a child made him realize it would have been nice to give the boy something to make him happy. He will probably do nicer things in the future because he now realizes that the boy would have been upset because of how Scrooge turned him away so harshly. He is changing his actions, and regretting bad actions in the past. He wants to fix what he did wrong, and he feels sympathy for the boy. People want to be shown compassion, so in the future if he helps people out and is kind, he will not be as isolated. Another quote to show how he becomes less detached from humanity is on pages 92-93, ‘”Spirit,” said Scrooge, “Tell me if Tiny Tim will live.” Scrooge feels sorry for Bob Cratchit because the spirit says if the future remains unaltered he will die. He feels upset that Tiny Tim will die, and sympathy for Bob because his son will probably die. He probably regrets not giving Bob more time with his son. He had made a comment earlier that if someone will die they better go and die to decrease the population, when the donation collector
“hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse.” “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!” (Dickens, Stave 4, Page 84) Finally, Scrooge changed for good.
Meeting the Ghost of Christmas Past begins the first stage of Scrooge’s transformation: regretting his actions. When Scrooge is shown his younger self alone in his classroom on Christmas, he regrets chasing a Christmas caroler away from his door. The Spirit skips ahead a few years to show him a happier time. His sweet little sister Fan arrives to take him home, and this is his first Christmas in a long time that is spent with family. Unfortunately, Scrooge doesn’t see it that way; seeing this scene makes him “uneasy in his mind” as he thinks about the way he treats his nephew Fred. Instead of treating him like his only family member, Scrooge denies invitations to Christmas dinner every year and is rude whenever Fred speaks to him. He doesn’t have time to dwell on this for long, however; Scrooge has many other important things to think...
In summation the Novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge was an unhappy man who was given the chance to change. The ghost that prompted this the most was the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The ghosts all showed us something different about Scrooge, but the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was literally the final nail in the coffin of Scrooge’s humbuginess! In the end Scrooge was a changed man, who was more merry than could be. He never again question the spirit of