To make people aware of the conditions of the poor, Dickens used The Cratchit Family. The Cratchits are still loving and honest people despite having to endure a daily struggle for survival. This makes the reader warm to the family and makes them want to help the Cratchits. Dickens tries to make the reader feel sympathy towards the Cratchits. This is most obvious in the scene where Scrooge is taken by the Ghost of Christmas Present to see the Cratchits having a less than lavish Christmas dinner. Although they only have a small amount to share around a large family, they are sincerely grateful for what they receive, and are grateful to Bob for earning the money to pay for the meal and even Scrooge for employing Bob! It’s not their fault that they are so underprivileged, it’s mainly Scrooge’s fault, and Dickens made this apparent in writing the argument Mr & Mrs Cratchit have on Christmas day. He was hoping that employers would have more sympathy for their employers if they related them to Bob. Of course not every family were as endearing and heart-warming as the Cratchits were. Especially if they had suffered the cruel and brutal life that the deprived people of London did. However it wouldn’t have had the same effect if it had been a realistic family, since the Cratchit’s were created to extract maximum sympathy from the reader.
The character that evokes the most sympathy is Tim, Christened ‘Tiny Tim’ due to his crippled frame and his waning health. He doesn’t complain, protest or pity himself, he even sees the positive in being crippled because we hear Bob Cratchit telling his wife ‘“He told me, coming home, that he hoped people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.”’ It is quotes like this that make you grow fond of Tiny Tim which makes it even more heartrending when Scrooge is shown the scenes where Tiny Tim has passed away. What makes the situation more frustrating is the reality that Scrooge could have saved Tiny Tim’s life if he had only been more charitable. Scrooge now cares about what happens to the unfortunate because when his words from page 8 ‘“If they had rather die,’ they better do it and decrease the surplus population”’ are quoted back to him by the Spirit on page 52, Scrooge feels mortified that he’d ever thought that way. We can tell this because it says ‘“Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.”’
Dickens could have written a full account of the poverty during that time but he didn’t want to deter people from reading on because they might not have been able to absorb the frightful circumstances in which the poor resided. Dickens also didn’t want the story to become a moral lecture because that could have discouraged people from reading on since they could have found it dull. He does describe the poverty because it would be unrealistic not to incorporate it into the story, but it is quite brief.
Scrooge started off as a misanthrope but as the story progressed we started to see changes in his manner. This is because the truths that he discovered started to diminish his hard exterior. One of the first signs we see that he is starting to soften is when the Ghost of Christmas Past shows him a scene from when he was a young boy. Instead of not showing a concern, Scrooge gets drawn in and becomes very animated and exclaims ‘“good heavens!”’ on page 25. He also sobs on page 26 as he has a torrent of emotion because after the Ghost says ‘“a solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.’ The Ghost then says to Scrooge ‘your lip is trembling,’ ‘and what is that upon your cheek?”’ Scrooge mutters that it’s a pimple when it is obviously a tear. This indicates the thawing of Scrooge’s frostiness. On page 28 he says that he regrets not giving anything to the carol singer. This is another significant change in Scrooge’s attitude as just the day before he had chased the boy off with a ruler. Only one scene has been shown to him and already he’s started to change and become a more caring person.
A very effective and memorable moment in the book is where Dickens personifies the poverty that the poor had to endure. At the end of Stave Three the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge two children claiming the boy to be Ignorance and the girl to be Want. His purpose was to shock Scrooge by showing him how doomed the poor were. The Ghost begs Scrooge to help the poor before it’s too late and he actually gets heated at Scrooge, ‘“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with Scrooges own words. “Are there no workhouses?”’
The moral of ‘A Christmas Carol’ is concluded perfectly by Jacob Marley’s quote on page 18,
‘“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again “Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.”’
Ultimately, Dickens uses Scrooge and his experiences with the different ghosts as a way of educating the upper class about the conditions of the poor. Dickens was cunning to get his message across so subtly, so much so that the reader doesn’t even know that they’re being taught anything because they’re being entertained at the same time. At the end of the book we see that Scrooge has become a benefactor, we know that he is happier this way from the quote on page 87, ‘“His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.”’ Dickens hopes that the reader changes for the better after seeing how elated Scrooge is after he becomes a philanthropist.