Ebenezer Scrooge

• Scrooge


  Cold-hearted, miserly behavior
• Scrooge

  • Seemingly immune to both cold weather and warm
  • Cold, his heart icy
  • Imperturbable, unaffected by external forces
  • Removed not just from the suffering of the world around him but from its joys as well
• Scrooge

  Antithesis of the Christmas spirit, symbolizing selfishness and apathy
• Scrooge's character

  Vehicle by which Dickens critiques the upper class
• Scrooge is a fierce proponent of the Poor Laws
• The Poor Laws allowed the poor to receive public assistance only if they lived and worked in established workhouses, and the workhouses were deliberately made to be as miserable as possible to deter the poor from relying on public assistance
• Scrooge believes poverty to be a moral failing, and workhouses and prison to be its solution
• Supernatural intervention is required to reform Scrooge
• Scrooge's transformation

  1. Merciless misanthrope to charitable benefactor

  2. Schoolboy who enjoyed the festivities and the company of loved ones at Christmastime to obsessed with money to the detriment of his relationships
• Scrooge's descent into inhumanity is a criticism of a society that is indifferent to the needs of the poor and of the consequences that follow, indicating that cruelty often begets cruelty
• Scrooge's "rebirth" underscores the goodwill and good cheer inherent in the Christmas spirit, and the completion of his character arc evokes a feeling of hope, love, and community
• Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol

  • Miserable
  • Tight-fisted
  • Redeemed by the end
• Scrooge is the main character of Dickens's novella and is first presented as a miserly, unpleasant man. He rejects all offerings of Christmas cheer and celebration as 'Humbug!'.
• Cold-heartedAccording to Dickens's description, Scrooge is cold through and through.No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him.Dickens uses pathetic fallacy to represent Scrooge's nature. The weather is a metaphor for Scrooge's behaviour as he cannot be made either warmer or colder by it.
• Miserly Scrooge is stingy with his money and will not even allow his clerk Bob Cratchit to have a decent fire to warm him on Christmas Eve....as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. The indirect speech shows that Scrooge is threatening and in charge. He will not give permission for Cratchit to take more coal.
• Unfeeling Scrooge has no feelings towards others. When Fred asks if he can come round for dinner, Scrooge replies, “I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.” This quote highlights how Scrooge does not care about other people's happiness. It also suggests that he thinks of himself as better than everyone else because he works hard while they are lazy.
• Ill-mannered , His nephew visits to wish him a 'Merry Christmas' and Scrooge is rude to him in response."Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."Scrooge's response is comical, but unpleasant. He cannot accept the generosity that is offered him and instead turns images of Christmas into images of violence.
• Self-deluded , When he sees Marley's ghost, Scrooge tries to deny its existence by attributing the vision to something he has eaten."You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese..."Although Scrooge is afraid of the ghost, he tries to maintain his authority even over his own senses.
• "hard and sharp as flint, from which no stel had ever struck out generous fire"
• "solitary as an oyster"
• "No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him"
• "The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait"
• "no beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock"
• "Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so much smaller that it looked like one coal"
• "Bah!" said Scrooge "Humbug!"
• "Every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart"
• "If they would rather die", said scrooge ,"they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population"
• "Spirit," said Scrooge with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live.
• Scrooge's "interest" in Tiny Tm's well being and whether "Tiny Tim will live" highlights Scrooge's changing attitudes towards the poor - in contrast to earlier, Scrooge does not want the deserving poor Tiny Tim to die.
• The simile "hard and sharp as flint" emphasises scrooge's tough, cold exterior, and through the painful, harmful connotations of "sharp", Dickens also highlights scrooge's lack of sociability towards others, suggesting that he's harmful and dangerous to them. However, Scrooge being likened to "flint" suggests that, although he has never given "generous fire" he has the potential to be good-willed, sociable, generous and the other attributes encapsulated by the Christmas spirit, as portrayed by the recurring symbol of "fire" used by dickens to represent these values.