However not every body hated him, in fact some people loved him but only before he became how he was. The first person to love him was his little sister Fanny, whom he loved back. She was the one who came and brought him back from the boarding school he so hated, and gave him the love no one had ever given him before. This is why her death so badly affected his opinion on life and changed his views in such a big way. Then the first real lover he had came along and showed him love and affection and cared for him. Again that was why his life was affected the way it was, causing his suffering. However there was one person who neither disliked him nor liked him, this person was his little sister fanny’s son and his nephew. His name is Fred and he is not like Scrooge at all, but the total opposite. He enjoys Christmas and wishes everyone else to enjoy it as well. We know this because he goes to see his uncle Scrooge every Christmas and asks if he wishes to go to lunch with him and his wife for Christmas. A simple illustration of how he feels about Scrooge is in Stave three, when he says, ‘he is a comical old fellow, that’s the truth; and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry there own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.’ This is an strong statement and he goes on to say that he has sympathy for him and that he’s sorry for him but he couldn’t be angry with him if he tried. He then says that he suffers from his ill whims and that he takes it into his head to dislike them. Now this shows us that Scrooge actually hates most people as well rather than them just hating him. Anyway Fred’s statement shows just how caring he is, that he can’t say anything bad about Scrooge.
Why did most people dislike him? Well because he was selfish, greedy, unfeeling and stingy. This is proved many times during the course of the book, and a obvious example is that of Caroline and her husband, where we understand that Scrooge was not relenting towards them and letting them have a weeks delay on their debt but instead forcing them to pay up. Which just goes to show how greedy and uncaring Scrooge was, in fact he would not have cared even if they had to leave their home and go onto the streets to pay their debt. Scrooge even says that Christmas is a humbug, which means insincere and untruthful, and that just shows how unfeeling Scrooge was, to not feel the excitement of Christmas that everyone feels. He would give nothing to good causes but instead he gives the workhouses and prisons money as he thinks that the poor are insignificant and that if they wanted help they should go to these places. This is another sign of just how unfeeling he is, not to realise how much the poor and homeless suffer, and this is probably why he pays Bob Crachit so little.
My opinion on Scrooge is not that indifferent from Mrs Crachit’s opinion. However I know what she didn’t know, that he had a very sad and lonely upbringing and was sent away by his father. I also know his only sister, Fanny died and caused him much pain, as she was the first person to really love him and he loved her too. The rest of his background I feel is irrelevant and brought upon himself. But what I do know about his background is enough to change my opinion on him slightly. I think because of it he has a reason to be angry and hateful, but I don’t think he has a reason to make everyone around him suffer which he does. I also think he could make a better effort to enjoy life more. I do agree with Mrs Crachit that he is stingy and hard, as he not only doesn’t give any money to charities. Instead he gives it to the very thing that is not for charities or any other good means of helping the poor but for the poor being homeless and so forcing the poor to work in their workhouses. And if it’s not to them he gives it to the very thing that keeps them away from the outside world, prisons. Now I don’t however agree that he is unfeeling as everyone has feelings, even Scrooge, he’s just lost them since the death of his sister. I know he has some feelings because when the ghost of Christmas past came and he was being shown himself when he was alone at his school, he suddenly gets all emotional and says that he wished he had given this little boy some money. So I think Scrooge was stingy and hard, but he had some feelings so I think that Mrs Crachit’s statement about scrooge, that he was an “odious, stingy, hard and unfeeling man,” was a bit exaggerated. This was probably because she was so angry that she could nothing for her crippled son because Scrooge was paying Mr Crachit so very little. I think that Scrooge may possibly have paid him a little more if he had known he had a crippled son, which shows he was not that hard. I think this is true because in stave three Scrooge says he didn’t know Bob Crachit had a cripple, which to me shows us that Scrooge was generally upset about this. This is then confirmed when he later asks the ghost of Christmas present if Tiny Tim would live and was horrified when he heard the answer, “I see a vacant seat.” So if I put all these facts together it was clear to see that Scrooge was rapidly changing for the good. So my final opinion of Scrooge is that he is a man who has feelings but doesn’t show them and that he has a lot of room for change.
Charles Dickens shows us all that I have told you so far, very clearly by just using different ways of using the English language. One of these ways is using descriptive writing and he is very good at this and so creates a very clear picture of what he’s talking about in your head. A very good example of this is in Stave one where he’s describing Jacob Marley’s ghost. He writes “much greater was his horror when the phantom, taking of the bandage round it’s head, as if it were to warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw fell upon its breast!” Now this creates a clear picture, of what the ghost was doing, in my head and all was doing was describing it. It’s the way he phrases it that creates the clear picture of what the ghost was doing in your head and this is a very good quality, which is found among many authors. He also makes it more interesting by adding things like similes, such as, as dead as a doornail or adding real places like London. He also uses lists to bring his point across about the character, an example of this is Scrooge in Stave one where he says Scrooge was a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!” He also uses a lot of indirect reference to some things to create a sense of mystery causing the reader to read on to find out what will happen. He uses indirect reference or by taking along time to describe something of little importance when something critical is happening to build up a lot of tension like in Stave one where he describes Marley’s ghost before telling us what he was going to do. He then uses humour to realise the tension, like in Stave one where he tells us that Jacob Marley was as dead as a doornail. He makes it interesting by not just telling the story through a narrator or the characters but by using both. This then makes it feel as though you are really involved in the story rather than just the reader. He also uses the name of the characters to describe their personality or class. An example of this is Ebenezer Scrooge, Ebenezer sounds quite posh and so describes his class and Scrooge means tightwad or cheapskate and so describes his character. Another example of this is Bob Crachit where we are made to think he is a poor person because of the name Crachit, which does not sound posh at all. He also uses only extreme characters, so there is only very bad characters (i.e. Scrooge) and very nice Characters, which are sometimes to nice (i.e. Tiny Tim).
Charles Dickens did not just write this for the fun of it, in fact I think he wrote because he wanted to bring a point across that he obviously felt was not well enough emphasised. He wanted to tell everyone what Christmas was for and what we should look out for in the world. One way of showing us this was in Stave three when Scrooge sees two children clinging to the ghosts legs. The ghost explains that the boy is ignorance and the girl want and he then warns Scrooge to particularly beware of the boy as on his brow is written doom. He also wants us to realise that there are the poor in this world and that they really are suffering. However I’m not totally certain how much attention people now a days give to this as most people think that because the book was written in the eighteen hundreds that it only applies to that time and that there are no poor in our time. He also wants us to realise that it doesn’t pay to not enjoy Christmas as it is you who suffers no one else. He again wants you to realise that giving is not a bad thing but instead actually makes you feel good, especially if the recipient likes what you give them. So this just shows that Charles Dickens also knew what Christmas was about and we can actually learn quite a lot from him and what he says in his book The Christmas Carol.
