In “A Christmas Carol” Dickens aims to stimulate the reader’s social conscience and draw attention to the plight of the poor in Victorian London. Through detailed reference to the text, explain how the content and language of the story ensure Dickens achieves his aims.
A Christmas carol is a very descriptive book with a message. One of its main characters is Scrooge, a moneylender, very rich for that decade. He was described as “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching old sinner,” this describes how he holds and keeps the money. The description of his features is: “The cold within him froze his old features.” We get the image that he is an old looking man, his features immediately remind us, or make us think, he is a very old man, also that he is moody or arrogant, especially to the poor in London at this time. It was Christmas Eve and scrooge was walking home, he was tired and passed a few beggars, Dickens describes them as: “Even blind men’s dog’s appeared to know him,” “No beggar asked him for a trifle,” “What did Scrooge do? Keep his distance.” This describes Scrooge’s attitude towards the poor and the beggars that lived out on the streets during this time. Scrooge’s counting house is descried to have the door open so that he can keep an eye on his clerk, Bob Crachit, his clerk sat in a dismal little cell copied letters. It says: “Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal.” Dickens describes the conditions with language that makes the reader feel and see the clerk sitting in the room.
