With reference to the themes of wealth and poverty, what lessons do you think Charles Dickens wanted his audience to learn from the story of Scrooge's changing character?

With reference to the themes of wealth and poverty, what lessons do you think Charles Dickens wanted his audience to learn from the story of Scrooge’s changing character?

Charles Dickens was using ‘A Christmas Carol’ as an attempt to challenge his audience of rich contemporaries into action to combat the problem of the mistreatment of the poor in London at that time.

Poverty at this time was rife in London. The penny-pinching, tight-fisted, upper and middle classes exploited the poor and underprivileged around them. Charles Dickens wished to change this with his novella ‘A Christmas Carol’. He wished to communicate to them the problems that the poor were facing and that they should be helped and not just put in poor houses and prisons to ‘decrease the surplus population’. He felt that the poor were being grossly mistreated and that his work will be able to get through to people as nothing else would. He hoped it would be widely read and would influence people especially at the time of Christmas as people tend to be kinder to their fellow human beings at that time of year. He wished to bring relief to the problems that the poor face day on day.

In Stave One, we are presented with the character of Scrooge at his most miserly, the embodiment of all of the appalling qualities of the Victorian money lenders at that time. Dickens uses the linguistic tool of pathetic fallacy in the introduction of this stave to great effect in his description of Scrooge:

“He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas”.

This is also a good example of how in his descriptions of people he only creates impossibly bad and evil characters (in this case Scrooge) and impossibly good and perfect characters as well (e.g. the Cratchits). Another linguistic technique that Dickens uses powerfully in this book is listing adjectives and present participle verbs to build up a vivid picture of the characters, especially Scrooge. An example of this comes close to the beginning of stave one as Scrooge is being introduced to the reader: “Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!” This is also a good example of the hyperbole Dickens uses to hammer home his message of the need for social reform. We are then presented with Scrooge’s nephew at the counting house. He is juxtaposed with Scrooge, thus emphasising the awful qualities of his uncle.

The portly gentlemen that visit the counting house next are used as a device to show Scrooge’s lack of social conscience. This works because of Scrooge’s response to their request of charity to the poor: ‘Are there no prisons?’ This is a direct response to the quote ‘Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire’ meaning that Scrooge was very unyielding with money. Dickens brings the element of social commentary into the book again.

When Scrooge returns from the counting house to his own deserted apartment he is visited by the ghost of his long dead partner Jacob Marley. Marley warns him of the trouble that will befall him if he doesn’t change his exploitative ways and informs him of the three spirits. They will show him where he has gone wrong in life and what the world will be like if he doesn’t change his life for the better.

Stave Two begins with Scrooge being brought by the first spirit to his school with him as a child. He is secluded ...

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Stave Two begins with Scrooge being brought by the first spirit to his school with him as a child. He is secluded from other people at this school during the Christmas holidays; his peers have somewhere to go during the break and Scrooge has nowhere. This shows to the reader where Scrooge’s hatred for Christmas comes from and also his feeling that all Christmas has done for him is ill. His solitude is heightened through the line,

‘One Christmas time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy.’

He is talking about himself here in the third person emphasising to the reader his feelings of loneliness at this time and how they shaped him later in life. Another quotation from the text to support this argument is: ‘Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, “Poor boy!” and cried again.’ I think Dicken’s message to his audience in this passage is that even if you have reasons for being the person you are now, you can still change.

When Scrooge is brought to Fezziwig’s warehouse and office building we are shown an example of how a good businessman should act towards his employees and apprentices at Christmas. It also shows Scrooge’s guilty conscience. He later says: ‘I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. That’s all.’, after viewing how well Fezziwig treats his underlings. There is a realisation on Scrooge’s part of how badly he treats his employees compared to how he could when he remarks

‘He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.’

He sees how differently he could behave towards Bob Cratchit and this is the beginning of Scrooge changing as a person.

We are next brought to a Christmas later on when Scrooge’s infatuation with money has become so great that his fiancé is leaving him because of his love of money

‘‘It matters little,’ she said, softly. ‘To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.’

‘What Idol has displaced you?’ he rejoined.

‘A golden one.’’

This quote is a warning from Dickens to his audience of the dangers of becoming money-obsessed. It can drive away the people that you hold to be the most important to you and therefore this is to be avoided. This, I feel, is the beginning of Scrooge’s transformation and, through the line ‘‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, ‘show me no more. Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?’,’ Scrooge’s realisation as to what he has lost. Dickens wanted to show his educated, rich audience that the pursuit of wealth was not everything in life. People should think of others, and that will bring happiness to them too. This is part of the moral message of the novella.

In Stave Three Scrooge meets the Ghost of Christmas Present. It is this journey surveying the poverty that exists around him in London which produces the greatest change in Scrooge. When he visits the Cratchits he is presented to the reader in a way which shows how much he has really changed, as he shows genuine emotion and sadness when he finds out about Tiny Tim’s death. The spirit then rebukes him by bringing up his previous disregard for the poor around him by saying,

‘‘If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,’ returned the Ghost, ‘will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’’

This shows to the reader that Scrooge has an emerging conscience as before he wouldn’t have cared if the underprivileged people around him died or not.

Scrooge is then taken to where his nephew and his family and friends are. Here he is privy to the jollity and merriment that is occurring. Most of the jokes that are made at this occasion are at his expense, however. At the end of this though the nephew raises a glass and toasts Scrooge for the laughter he has brought them:

‘‘He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,’ said Fred, ‘and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, “Uncle Scrooge!”’…Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech’.

This shows Scrooge wishing he had been kinder to his nephew earlier in the book and could also wish him a merry Christmas in return. Dickens shows his audience that Christmas should be a time of thinking of those in need, even those who you don’t necessarily like. Scrooge’s nephew is a good example as although Scrooge has said some awful things to him in the past he still wishes him well.

In Scrooge’s final encounter with this Spirit, they come across a boy and girl who the spirit identifies as representing ignorance and want. It is also at this time we can hear echo from the past as the spirit brings up a much quoted line from Scrooge’s earlier dealings with the portly gentlemen:

‘‘Have they no refuge or resource?’ cried Scrooge.

‘Are there no prisons?’ said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. ‘Are there no workhouses?’’.

Scrooge now jumps to the defence of the two children. This shows the reader the change that has been brought about in him by the previous two spirits and gives hope to Dickens’s audience who may be beginning to realise their ill-treatment of the underprivileged around them.

Stave Four begins abruptly with the entrance of The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. This ghost resembles the stereotypical image of death in the form of a Grim Reaper. This is a premonition for Scrooge as he realises that he could die soon and therefore wouldn’t be able to put right the things that he has done wrong in his life against the underprivileged in society. This creates a sense of urgency in Scrooge to follow up his personal plans of reform. ‘The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me’. This is Scrooge commenting on the fact that he has little time to live and wishing to change his ways before it is too late.

He later encounters men talking of his own death, they talk of Scrooge as if his death were a good thing and that it is almost better that he is dead now. The response to the audience is this:

‘He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business: very wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point always of standing well in their esteem: in a business point of view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.’

This is a message from Dickens to the audience that although some people will act as if you are highly regarded among them to your face, they are really acting out of personal gain. The only way for them to truly know you and therefore care what happens is by doing things that the community as a whole will benefit by and therefore being pleasant to those around you is important.

The Final Stave begins and it is instantly clear to the reader that the transformation of Scrooge is complete. His character is now at the opposite end of the spectrum from the beginning of the book, impossibly good and with a sense of humour where before there was none. This is shown by the joke he plays with Bob Cratchit in which he reverts to his old self in jest. Charles Dickens here illustrates to his audience the massive change that Scrooge’s personality and character has undergone through the visits of the spirits.

‘Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it; holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.’

Dickens shows the shock of the character, Bob Cratchit, who knew Scrooge best at his transformation and emphasising to the reader the great change in his persona at this time.

Dickens uses Scrooge’s delight at the end compared with his despair at the beginning of the book to highlight to his audience the gains that they can make from becoming more generous and caring to the people around them. ‘His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.’ This quote is Dickens attempting to show his audience that although helping people may involve no monetary gains, the sheer happiness brought from helping those in need will be compensation enough.

A Christmas Carol could be described by some as being too moralistic even for Dickens’s audience of the educated upper classes who exploited the classes below them. This is because the character of Scrooge portrayed here is given a persona so awful to his fellows that it could not have existed in real life. Although this book was needed it was over the top in the presentation of its arguments. I, on the other hand, disagree with that argument because having a character such as Scrooge allowed the maximum amount of people to be able to identify their own character flaws with him. Some of Dickens’s contemporaries lacked social conscience to such a degree that a didactic plot such as this was required to get them to notice the message of this pamphlet that Dickens wished to produce on social responsibility. I think that he was successful in producing one and gaining the attention of his desired audience.

Simon Gibbons GC1