A Christmas Carol Essay

A Christmas Carol Essay
At the beginning of the novel, Scrooge is a cold-hearted, tight-fisted and greedy man, who despises christmas and all things which give people happiness. Dickens describes him thus: "The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and he spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice ... Scrooge has only disgust for the poor, thinking the world would be better off without them,   He has a particular distaste for the merriment of Christmas; his single act of kindness is to give his clerk, Bob Cratchit, the day off with pay. Done more as a result of social mores than kindness, Scrooge sees the practice akin to having his pocket picked on an annual basis. After they had introduced Scrooge and showing his shabby treatment of his employee, business men, and only living relative, the novel resumes with Scrooge in his mansion, intent on spending Christmas Eve alone. While he is preparing to go to bed, he is visited by the ghost of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley. Marley (who had died seven years earlier on Christmas Eve) spent his life exploiting the poor and as a result is damned to walk the Earth for eternity bound in the chains of his own greed. Marley warns Scrooge that he risks meeting the same fate, and that as a final chance of escape he will be visited by three spirits of Christmas: Past, Present, and Yet-to-Come.

As promised, the Ghost of Christmas Past visits takes him back a few years to see his time as a schoolboy, which makes him feel misery and pity towards himself. Here it is suggested that his mother died when he was a baby and his depressed father exiled him from home to live on the streets until he changed his mind when Scrooge has entered his teen-ages. This is relevant to Scrooge, because it shows the beginnings of his lack empathy. He does not socialize because he never experienced steady growth in a strong family unit. He does not empathize owing to the way...