Scrooge’s nephew Fred comes to see Scrooge and invite him to Christmas dinner. Scrooge replies with “Bah! Humbug” refusing to share Fred’s Christmas cheer. Fred is described as a cheerful man who loves Christmas. After Fred leaves two portly gentlemen enter the office to ask Scrooge for a charitable donation to help the poor. Scrooge replies angrily and explains that prisons and workhouses are the only charities he is willing to support. The gentlemen leave empty handed. This portrays Scrooge as a harsh man. Scrooge explains how he can’t afford to make idle people merry.
Bob wants Christmas day off. Scrooge complains about this ‘what good is Christmas’ scrooge snaps ‘that is should shut down businesses’ eventually he aggress to give Bob the day off but insists that he arrive all the earlier the nest day.
At Christmas time people have the Christmas cheer and a very cheerful mood is in the air. People show a spirit of good will and wouldn’t dream of complaining about their employees having Christmas day off, and then demanding they made up the lost time the next day – boxing day. This portrays Scrooge as a heartless old money obsessed man.
Just before Scrooge enters the house the doorknocker on his front door catches his attention. In the doorknocker in the face of his old partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge looks again and the face is gone. With a disgusted “pooh, pooh” Scrooge enters his house. He makes little effort to brighten his home. This symbolises Scrooge as a tight character because in the winter nights you heat and lighten your house because it gets darker and colder earlier darkness is cheap and Scrooge liked it.
The ghost of Jacob Marley visits him, Scrooge shouts in disbelief, refusing to admit that he sees Marley’s ghost- a strange case of food poisoning, he claims. The ghost begins to murmur: he has spent seven years wandering the Earth in his heavy chains as punishment for his sins. Scrooge looks closely at the chains and realises that the links are forged of cashboxes, padlocks, ledgers, and steel purses. The wraith tells Scrooge he has come from beyond the grave to save him from this very fate. He tells Scrooge he shall be visited by three ghosts. Bob personifies those who suffer under the “Scrooges” of the world—the English poor. Fred serves to remind the readers of the joy and good cheer of the Christmas holiday. The opening section also highlights the novels narrative style – a peculiar and highly Dickensian blend of wild comedy. Dickens takes aim at the Poor laws then governing the underclass of Victorian England. He exposes the flaws of the unfair system of government that essentially restricts the underclass to life in prison or in a workhouse. With a Christmas Carol Dickens hopes to illustrate how self serving insensitive people can be converted into charitable, caring, and socially conscious members of society through the intercession of moralising religious lessons. Warmth, generosity and overall goodwill overcome Scrooges bitter apathy as he encounters and learns from his memory. A Christmas carol is allegory in that it features events and characters with a clear, fixed symbolic meaning. In the novel Scrooge represents all the values that are opposed to the idea of Christmas- greed, selfishness and lack of goodwill towards ones fellow man.
