After recognizing Marley, Scrooge still seems to be suspicious and when confronted with the question: “what evidence do you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?” he answers by saying he doesn’t know, but then when faced with “why do you doubt your senses?” he tries to re-assure himself that this cannot be, by exposing his narrow mindedness with the reply, “ because a little thing affects them (senses). A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
The point at which Scrooge begins to believe that the spirit may indeed be real is when he sees the jaw of the ghost fall to the specters breast. As if a new person, Scrooge calls out “Mercy! Dreadful apparition, why do you come to me?” And by this stage in the story he is starting to believe Marley. As he says “you are fettered, tell me why?” he is scared and it shows as he later says “Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!”
When he first hears what Marley has to say, he doesn’t quite understand what he means. Scrooge, who equates everything with money, cannot understand that, Marley, who was such a good businessman, should be burdened with the guilt of remorse. In his remorse, Marley is poignant and he expresses this by saying, “Oh! Captive, bounds, and double-ironed, not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity used! Yet such was I! Oh such was I!” inspite of Marley trying to explain to him and begging him to mend his ways so that he wouldn’t have to suffer in the after-life, Scrooge doesn’t listen. Marley tells him that his only hope of salvation is the visiting of the three spirits. Scrooge does not understand the seriousness of his situation. This is shown when he inquires “couldn’t I take ‘em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?” when told that the spirits would come on three consecutive nights on the stroke of midnight.
As Marley’s apparition starts to fade through his bedroom window, Scrooge hears sounds of cries of regrets and sorrowful moans of bleak and restless souls in the air outside his window, each of them wearing chains like Marley. Scrooge is frightened to even contemplate becoming one of them and wants to deny all he has seen by shouting “Humbug” but it has infact drained him emotionally and he soon falls into a restless sleep without undressing.
The first ghost arrives unexpectedly. As Scrooge is so bemused by the incidence with Marley that he is unable to fall asleep and is doubting whether such a strange occurrence happened or not. “Was it a dream or not?” and “Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it.” As the time ticks by until midnight, Scrooge is made to seem exceedingly anxious: “ Ding, Dong! A quarter past, half past. Ding, Dong! A quarter to it, Ding, Dong! The hour itself and nothing else!” Now Scrooge is relieved that midnight has finally come and the spirit that was destined to come had not. But the story has yet another twist. Because “ he spoke before the hour bell had sounded” the ghost does arrive and with a grand entrance.
“Light up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.”
The spirit itself is described as “child-like yet like an old man” This is to give a contrast between Scrooge’s past (child-like) and his present(old man). It says in the text that “The voice was soft and gentle” which indicates that the spirit has a calm personality and “instead of being beside him, it were at a distance” which shows the ghost might have been shy. The ghost also is shown to represent light, which is symbolic of goodness and caring. Scrooge’s first reaction is one of mystery and bamboozlement. He asks a lot of questions such as “who and what are you?” and is a bit scared as he “disclaims all intension of offending the Spirit.” Also, although the spirit is the smallest and seems to be the shyest of the spirits, he does talk a great deal.
The first place the spirit takes him is his old road where he used to live. During the visit a tear runs down Scrooge’s cheek, which reveals his more emotional side and begins to show the change occurring in Scrooge very early on in the story. This is very different to how Scrooge would usually behave and with the change coming so early on in the story, one knows that this will somehow be a happy ending. Next, the school. This is shown to remember how miserable he was alone, and to show him that when people helped him out of pure kindness, how happy it made him feel. This figure is shown through Ali Baba, a school friend of Scrooge’s. Then the spirit takes Scrooge a little further on in his life, to his old boss, Mr. Fezziwig’s Christmas party. This is important. Mr. Fezziwig is a businessman like Scrooge, but his personality clashes in almost every way. He is kind-hearted, caring, understanding and is shown to want to get along with his employees. He says words like “Hilli-ho!” as phrases of fun, and promotes Christmas by giving his employees days off, “ No more work tonight. Christmas eve, Dick, Christmas, Ebenezer.” His figure is there to show Scrooge what he could be like if he wanted.
As the spirit returns Scrooge to his home, the spirit is shown to be “burning high and bright”. This is to show to the readers and Scrooge that Scrooge has begun to change into a better person and the bright light represents this.
The second of the three spirits is the ghost of Christmas present. After the arrival of the first ghost Scrooge is shown to be prepared for anything as the book says, “he was not by any means prepared for nothing”. But when and how the ghost arrives surprises him. Scrooge’s bed becomes “the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour.”
When Scrooge finds the source of this light, which is his own room, he is even more surprised to see that his room “had undergone a surprising transformation”.
Now “the walls and ceilings were hung with living green” and “The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there.” This shows a lush ‘green’ environment full of life, not like the slow dead atmosphere fashioned by the way Scrooge kept his house.
When Scrooge examines the room further, he notices, “Heaped upon the floor…were turkeys, geese, game poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red hot chestnuts, cherry cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.” This is to show to Scrooge that there are better things in life to utilise money upon and maybe the vast amounts of food are shown to indicate to him an incentive to share and use his money to bring happiness.
The ghost itself is very different and contrasts greatly from the first spirit.
Whereas the first ghost appeared to be timid and shy and was clothed normally, this ghost is in the form of a giant and “was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered in white fur.” The ghost is also so majestic compared to Scrooge, that Scrooge is himself said to look “timid” in front of it. Scrooge’s first reaction towards the ghost is that of fright and certain uneasiness is also clear. “Scrooge entered timidly, and hung is head before the spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.” This emotion is continued when the ghost speaks of himself for the first time, “I am the host of Christmas present. Look upon me!” Scrooge is said to do this “reverently”.
On first sight, this ghost seems to be kind and gentle. He never intimidates Scrooge and never interferes with Scrooge’s reactions, but simply shows and answers Scrooge’s questions.
The final spirit of Christmas is the darkest and most petrifying of the ghosts as he has a very dark aura about him and is concealed from head to toe in black and unnerves Scrooge as he never says a word. This is shown by Scrooge’s exclamation “ghost of the future! I fear you more than any specter than I have seen.”
The first place that the specter takes Scrooge is the city-center where people are discussing about a monstrous old man’s death and they are quite glad that he has died at last. Dickens uses a little trick in which the readers know something that Scrooge is yet to discover, this being that Scrooge is the subject of their discussion yet he is unaware of the extent to which the people dislike and despise him. This is aptly described in the words of this speaker, “its likely to be a cheap funeral, for upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?”
Second person, “I don’t mind going if a lunch is provided but I must be fed if I make one.”
The phantom next takes him to the most downtrodden part of the town where the poor have to beg, borrow and steal to scrape a living, as mentioned. Here Scrooge finds himself in a pawnbroker where a charwoman, a laundress and an undertaker’s man have come to sell things belonging to the dead old man previously mentioned and feel no remorse for having robbed him even in death and feel that he should have been punished even more severely than death for the wicked life he had led: “I wish it was a little heavier judgment” and “this is the end of it, you see. He frightened everyone away when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead. Ha, ha, ha!”
“Spirit” says Scrooge shuddering from head to foot, “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own” this is when Scrooge recoils in terror and begins to realize that the old, dead man might be himself. There is a change of scene, in which “He finds himself at the foot of the bare bed” with a dead body, which has been robbed of a shirt and bed curtains taking away his dignity.
“A pale light, rising in the outer air fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for was the body of this man.”
Still pondering over who this poor sole is, when the spirit points to the corpse for Scrooge to look at the face of the body, Scrooge is reluctant to do so, and begins to get more weary towards the ghost, “Spirit, this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me let us go.” Scrooge says this without looking at the face of the dead man because he is afraid that the body in front of him might be himself. At this point, Scrooge’s transformation from bad to good is almost complete, but the spirit wants to fully fulfill his purpose for coming to Scrooge and therefore shows him two more visions. First of a family who are relieved at his death for now their “debts will be wavered” for some time, “we may sleep tonight with light hearts.” The only emotion caused by the man’s death is one of “pleasure” and Scrooge is horrified
