SCROOGE

• ‘tight fisted hand at the grindstone’

  METAPHOR

  • tight with money
  • overworks people
  • underpays workers
• ‘to edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance‘

  METAPHOR (to edge his way along..)

  • taint of sympathy
  • scrooge puts himself in the edge of life
  • periphery
• (to fred)

  ‘what reason have you to be merry? you’re poor enough’

  NOUND (merry, poor)

  • thinks that money = happiness
  • can’t be happy without money

  RHETORICAL QUESTION

  • confused why fred is joyous
  • malthusian ideas
• (about christmas)

  ‘a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer‘

  MOTIF

  • only sees the negative in things
  • money = happiness
  • parsimonious
  • greedy and ignorant
• ‘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’

  NOUN (idiot)

  • cruel and harsh towards society

  VERBS (boiled + buried)

  • vicious attack
  • despises christmas

  PARADOX/ CONTRAST (stake of holly)

  • holly = joy
  • stake = death
• ‘are there no prisons? and the union workhouses?’ demanded scrooge. ‘are they still in operation?’

  RHETORICAL QUESTIONS

  • malevolent and cruel
  • sees the poor as parasites
  • wants the poor to be punished

  IMPERATIVE VERB (demanded)

  • frustrated at the poor
• ‘if they would rather die they had better do it and decrease the surplus population’

  PRONOUN (they)

  • poor are like another species
  • inequality and social injustice

  ADJECTIVE (surplus)

  • expendable
  • like parasites
• ‘i don’t make merry myself at christmas and i can’t afford to make idle people happy’

  ADJECTIVE AND PRONOUN (merry myself)

  • shows scrooges isolation
  • misery at a joyous time

  VERB (afford)

  • greed and parsimonious attitude

  ADJECTIVE (idle)

  • lack of empathy
  • poor are responsible for their own situation
• ‘a gloomy suite of rooms’

  ADJECTIVE (gloomy)

  • spectoral feel
  • assonance (elongated vowel sound)
• ‘darkness is cheap and scrooge liked it’

  NOUN (darkness)

  • reflects his isolated and lonely life
  • metaphorical

  ADJECTIVE (cheap)

  • greedy
  • not charitable
  • literal and metaphorical