How Does Dickens Prepare the Reader for the Change in Scrooge (From Mean-spirited Miser in Stave 1 to Kind-Hearted Man in Stave 5)?

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How Does Dickens Prepare the Reader for the Change in Scrooge (From Mean-spirited Miser in Stave 1 to Kind-Hearted Man in Stave 5)?

The novels written by Charles Dickens are well known and appreciated even in the present day. His novel, 'A Christmas Carol', is a story which tells of an old businessman called Ebenezer Scrooge. It describes his attitudes towards things such as Christmas, charity and money, and shows the reader that Scrooge is a bitter and cold man. The story starts with Scrooge being a miserable and hateful man then one night he is haunted by his own business partner Jacob Marley, who warns him of the future that awaits him if his attitudes don't change. He then tells Scrooge that he will be haunted by three Spirits that night. When the first Spirit arrives it shows Scrooge his past, the second shows him the present, and the third the future. These spirits shock Scrooge, eventually making him change his ways. In the final chapters of this novel written by Charles Dickens, we see a complete transformation in Scrooge's attitude, as he becomes a warm and generous man.

The novel was written in 1843. It was very popular at the time and remains so, to this day. This is because all the themes that are in the play are still issues even today such as greed charity and family. The novel also makes the reader think about how they act at Christmas time, for it reminds them of the poverty that still remains in large sections of the world. Dickens's main goal was to use his novels to help provoke social change; in this case his intention was to draw the reader’s attention to the plight of England's poor. Victorian London suffered very bad conditions, sewers leaked into the River Thames (which was the main source of drinking water) and people dumped rubbish on the streets. People were forced to go to the workhouses to try and earn what money they could in an effort to feed their family. Often, however they would do all they could to stay out of the workhouses as they were terrible places to live and work in. The widening gap between the rich and poor citizens proved how troubled London was, and Charles Dickens had experienced it all in the workhouses. This is why Charles Dickens became such a political writer who campaigned for social justice and reforms. He was a socialist.

Stave one is a very important part of the novel as it introduces us to the main characters who appear in the novel, the key one being Scrooge. Very early on in the chapter we find that Scrooge is a very anti-social man as he answers to both his and his dead partners name, because “it was all the same to him”. This tells us that Scrooge does not want to meet people and get to know them, or let them get to know him. One of the first things written about Scrooge is the description of his physical appearance. Dickens uses many descriptive techniques in the play such as similes, adjectives, pathetic fallacy and metaphors. Dickens says that Scrooge, 'was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone', he then lists descriptive words such as 'wrenching', 'clutching', and 'covetous old sinner'. This surprises the reader as it shows what Scrooge is like, and shows all the different ways by which he can be described, none of which are pleasant. Dickens then gives a very effective simile, 'hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out a generous fire’; this is very effective as it shows the reader how greedy and uncharitable Scrooge is. We then learn that Scrooge is a 'self-contained' and 'solitary' man, which reinforces that Scrooge is very anti-social man who does not want to know or meet people. We then receive a very imaginative description of what Scrooge looks like. 'The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice'. This description provides an early atmosphere due to all the references of cold and winter (Pathetic Fallacy), and describes Scrooge as corpse-like. 'He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog days and did not thaw it one degree at Christmas'. This metaphor again shows us that Scrooge is very tight fisted (refusing to give out more money than needed, even to heat his own office) and again compares him to the cold. These early descriptions in the play give the reader expectations about Scrooge before he has even spoken. It makes the reader realise how greedy, uncharitable and anti-social Scrooge is.

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Dickens uses a lot of Pathetic fallacy throughout A Christmas Carol. I good representation of this is in the quote ‘The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms’ This is on a par with Scrooge who is also deep, dark and miserable. When Dickens describes the houses as being 'mere phantoms' in the fog, it introduces the theme of ghosts and spirits into the rest of the novel.

When Scrooge's nephew appears in the novel we see Scrooge's attitudes ...

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