A Christmas Carol How Does Scrooge Change Through Staves 1 - 5?

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A Christmas Carol

How Does Scrooge Change Through Staves 1 – 5?

By Louise Sophocleous

A Christmas carol is a moral story and focuses upon the redemption of the most hardened miser Ebeneezer Scrooge. In stave one he is presented as selfish, rude, angry and lonely. ‘Warning all human sympathy to keep its distance.’ he is thoroughly dislikeable. Through the attentions of Marley’s ghost and the journey Scrooge takes through the past present and future Scrooge changes and becomes likable. He recovers his sense of joy in the world and this transforms all aspects of his life. How he reacts to people how he reacts to his setting, to Christmas and how he spends his money. It is a miraculous transformation. Dickens is saying that no matter how cruel, hard, old, bitter and unpleasant you are there is good in you and you can change.

In stave 1 Scrooge is seen as a ‘squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scrapping, clutching, covetous old sinner’. Dickens stresses the coldness of Scrooges bearing. ‘He carried his own low temperature with him’. His atmosphere is like constant winter. However it also describes him as ‘solitary as an oyster’ and this image gives a hint that he is protecting himself and is scared of the world. His hatred is a defence. He is cruel to his Clerk who whom he will not allow more than one coal for the fire. A contrast is made between Scrooge and his cheerful nephew. The nephew is relentlessly happy about Christmas and Scrooge cannot understand this because he says he is poor. Scrooge concentrates on every bad point about everything instead of looking on the bright side of things. He believes that people who say happy Christmas ‘should be boiled with there own puddings’ in response to every negative thing Scrooge says the nephew still responds saying something happy, honest and kind and continually asks Scrooge to dine with them. The nephew wants nothing from scrooge and is bewildered by Scrooges coldness, which to him does not make sense. The nephew has a different answer to life. It is clear from his relation with his nephew how much scrooge will have to change.

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Despite all of Scrooge’s confidence that he is right he reduces his life to the minimum pleasure he goes to eat in a ‘melancholy tavern’ and lives in ‘gloomy rooms’ it as if he is scared to live. His reaction to the knocker on his door is fear when he sees the face of his dead friend Marley. He attempts a dismissal with ‘ pooh, pooh’ but we are aware that he is terrified. He feels an ‘inexplicable dread’. Even though he believes that the world is just material and profit and loss some part of him believes in ...

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This is an excellent analytical essay that makes some very successful interpretations about the character of Scrooge and how he is used as a vehicle to communicate Dickens' message to the reader. The quotes chosen are apt ones that could be analysed at a deeper, world level at times to show understanding of the writer's language choices and the impact they have. When looking at a whole text ensure that all areas are looked at; there is a larger focus on the early part of the novella which means some of the detail that is important during the visits of the ghosts of the present and yet to come is a little underdeveloped.