When I read Scrooge's comments on Christmas, I want to feel distant from Scrooge as if I have no connections with his harsh opinions. Already Dickens has made me self recognise and self reflect my actions in society. He has done this by projecting a lonely, miserable image of Scrooge. Many people would only dread spending Christmas like Scrooge.
Dickens uses the poor to compare their attitudes towards life and Christmas with Scrooge.
In the first chapter Scrooges nephew approaches him in his dismal work office, his first words to Scrooge were, "a merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" Scrooge replies, "Bah! Humbug!"
Scrooge's, attitude to Christmas is dismissive, he can't bear Christmas and all that dwell with it, Scrooge believes that"... every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart." But Scrooge's nephew takes advantage of the precious, charitable time of the year and is merry despite the lack of money he owns. Scrooge thinks that you can't be merry without a lot of money. Scrooge questions his nephew he said, "what reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."
Scrooge is oblivious to happiness without money, he will only except the fact that his money will bring joy to his life yet he remains discontented.
In the conversation between Scrooge and his nephew, Scrooge's nephew tells Scrooge a very important moral message about Christmas. He said, "the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." Scrooges nephew tries to tell him that Christmas is a historical and highly communal festival that acts as a leveller of all social classes because we will all face the same judgement at the end of our life's. This is good example of dickens trying to tell us moral messages.
Linked with Christmas is the weather, which surrounds London and creates an atmosphere of dullness and bleakness, in the story A Christmas Carol. Dickens uses the weather to amplifies the conditions of the poor and makes Scrooge's approach to the impoverished seem even less charitable under these circumstances. Dickens again wants us to feel sympathy for the poor.
As soon as the story starts, Dickens describes the atmosphere in London using weather imagery. Dickens describes the poor suffering and making disappointing efforts to keep them selves warm.
"It was cold, bleak biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them." From this description I can tell that the poor are open to the elements of the cold, therefore they are dressed in tattered clothes that leave their bodies venerable to disease and illness.
I think Dickens describes the poor in conditions like these, because I believe he wants the rich people, reading the book to become aware of their fortunate social status in life, and think them selves lucky that working conditions, such as the ones in the story of A Christmas Carol, are not in attendance in their lives.
On page 13 of A Christmas Carol, Dickens uses a lot of personification in his description of the weather. He describes the cold as intense and "foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting cold."
By using personification Dickens achieves many images through small sentences. Through these few words and phrases, I can picture the poor in pain and suffering as the needle like cold prods and prick them like voodoo dolls. This helps bring about the effectiveness of the poor situations the poor are in.
Dickens describes Scrooge as having no sympathy for a poor boy "stopped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of "god bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!"
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.
In my opinion it seems like dickens was trying to describe the boy as asking for help (money) so he wouldn’t have to return to the cold and frost, but Scrooge rejected him and violently made the boy return to the dark dull weather of Victorian London. Again we are forced to self reflect on our selves and think are we like Scrooge and have I ever treated some one like this.
Dickens uses the type of buildings placed around Victorian London to compare the rich and poor.
First Dickens describes Scrooge's counting house and the room in which his Clerk worked in. Bob Crachit worked in a "dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank… Scrooge had a small fire, but the clerk's fire was so much smaller that it looked like one coal." "Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which he effort, not being a of a strong imagination, he failed." I believe that this image of Bob Crachit in his dismal little cell symbolises Scrooge's lack of compassion for the charitable time of year and other peoples feeling in physical and a metal state, its as if Scrooge chooses to prove his unawareness of emotional intelligence. Scrooge treats Bob like an animal not as human. This is just one of many situations in which Scrooge has proved his cruel ways.
Dickens describes Scrooges house as a big, old, lonely house, with only himself living there." He lived in chambers which only had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms…"
I believe that Scrooge's living conditions emphasises his loneliness and symbolises Scrooge's repayment for the way he mistreats the poor. Dickens mentions that the house had once belong to his deceased partner, who was Marley. This helps the appearance of Marley ghost seem more realistic.
The image of his dark and dismal house also helps to contribute to the understanding of Scrooge's unhappiness.
Dickens use of job descriptions of the poor helps contribute to his comparison between the rich and the poor. Dickens writes about how the poor who" …ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages and conduct them on their way." Dickens describes the poor forced to earn money by doing poor jobs for the rich.
And the poor are doing this to make the rich peoples lives easier. This makes the rich look self-centred, and is just another way of making the rich look worst than they actually are. The jobs that he describes help to contribute to the atrocious atmospheric nature that the poor are described in. Bob Crachit jobs is a good example of Dickens making the jobs the poor have seem worst then they actually are. Bob Crachit works inside an office unlike some poor people who have to bear with the cold outside.
Even though Bob is inside Dickens still describes him in poor conditions, such as only possessing "one coal" by just describing the elements of the cold affecting Bob, makes his job seem a lot worse than it actually is.
In conclusion I believe one of Dickens mane objectives of this story was the make the rich self reflect and self recognise their actions in society to day. I think Dickens was successful in doing this because he is constantly forcing the reader towards formulating a moral judgement by projecting a lonely mean image of Scrooge and therefore awakening a social conscience. The reader knows Scrooge is unhappy because of the way Dickens describes the way Scrooge treats people. His use of language, many adjective words, and the situations in which he situates the poor in using jobs, buildings, weather and the time of year helps force the reader towards formulating a moral judgement. I enjoyed reading the book very much because of his descriptive language, which helps your mind to think of detailed images that Dickens is trying to describe.
I think Dickens was very successful in changing rich peoples views for the better, even though his story is fiction, many facts are written about the poor, which helps us get more of a social conscience and understanding of the life they live.
