Scrooge Quotes

• 'No warmth could warm him no wintry weather chill him' Stave 1 


  Analysis; Scrooge lives a self contained life. Not even the cold weather effects him because metaphorically he has a cold heart. If external forces do not influence him, people certainly won't his coldness rebuffs people.
• 'Darkness is cheap and scrooge liked it' Stave 1

  Darkness is literally cheap ( it doesn't cost anything) whereas coal to light a room does. Its easier for scrooge to be unemotional because for him to experience this metaphorical light he would have to make an effort to be a good person.
• 'A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner !'Stave 1


  Asyndetic listing of adjectives emphasises how awful scrooge is. All the adjectives relate to hands in some way refering to how scrooge holds tightly to everything he has because he is too fearful he will lose it all.
• 'Oh! but he was a tight fisted hand at the grindstone scrooge!' Stave 3


  Dickens uses imagery of a grindstone sharpening a tool to describe scrooges single minded obsession of aquiring wealth. The exclaimation suggests the narrator is overwhelmed by how outrageously unpleasent scrooge is. The excalmation mark also draws attention to the following description
• ' He iced his office in the dog days and didn't thaw it one degree at christmas' Stave 1


  Demonstrates Scrooges attitude towards christmas, whilst others make provisions for the poor and destitute as christmas is a time of charity, scrooge continues to display his greed by keeping the office cold to save money. At the expense of Bob Cratchit's comfort
• 'I help support the establishments I have mentioned they cost enough'Stave 1


  Scrooge doesn't distinguish between the poor an vulnerable with criminals this ignorance Dickens portrays shows how ignoring the problems faced by the poor create more social problems.
• “An obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute”

  Scrooge has been living an ignorant life, basing all of his ideas about poorer people on his ideas and assumptions about where they live and what they do. He has never even been to this particular part of London before, but he knows it by its bad reputation stave 2
• “Let me see some tenderness connected with a death”

  Scrooge is horrified that nobody is sad about his death. stave 4
• “I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been”

  Scrooge vows to learn his lesson and change, to be a better man and a kinder person.
• "Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so much smaller that it looked like one coal"

  
  

  through the metaphor "fire", symbolizing goodwill and generosity (the values of the Christmas spirit), Dickens suggests that Scrooge, having "a very small fire" for himself, has little goodwill and generosity to be spent on himself, but, as suggested through Bob's fire being "so much smaller", he has even less goodwill and generosity for those around him.
• "Bah!" said Scrooge "Humbug!"

  
  

  Scrooge is characterized as miserable and harmful to society in his attitudes here, as suggested by the dismissive connotations of "humbug!" (meaning rubbish or nonsense) suggesting that scrooge is dismissive of Christmas and the values that come with it, and the animalistic onomatopoeia of "bah!" likening scrooge to a sheep, suggesting that he foolishly follows certain ideologies such as Malthusian economic theory.
• tell me if Tiny Tim will live."

  "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.
•  he was a second father.  Tiny Tim, who did not die,


  Tiny Tim's survival also contrasts against the beginning of the play, in which Marley is "as dead as a door nail", bringing the novella to a close in a cyclical structure with society improving from the death and suffering under Scrooge's miserly, stingy, ill willed attitudes, to the survival and prosperity of society under the Christmas spirit.
• Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name

  Demonstrates how Scrooge is perhaps sentimental, or that Dickens is saying their names are interchangable or thirdly painting over the name was just expensive.
• But what did Scrooge care?It was the very thing he liked.... warning all human sympathy to keep its distance

  Scrooge is unapologetically himself, in stave 1 he likes being an outcast its his preference.
• What reason do you have to be merry? You're poor enough.

  Scrooge doesn't understand true values of christmas only the superficial misconception that christmas is all about money.
• What's christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money.

  Again Scrooge is portrayed to be shallow and ignorant to the true christmas values.
• Should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

  Violent semantic field intensifying Scrooge as a misanthropic character which allows for Dickens character development and Scrooge's ultimate redemption.
• 'Why did you get married' said scrooge

  Genuine confusion portrays how scrooge is so lost in his spiralling obsession to obtain wealth and status.
• Are there no prisons? Treadmill and the Poor law in full vigour then?

  demonstrates Scrooge's dismissive attitude towards the poor and his belief that they belong in institutions rather than receiving charitable assistance.Scrooge's depiction of the 'treadmill and Poor Law' in 'full vigour' refers to the two of the most notorious Victorian solutions to taking 'responsibility' for the poor with the building of human treadmills and the creation of workhouses under the Poor Law that provided a deliberately harsh regime to try to 'discourage 
• I can't afford to make idle people merry.

  Scrooge's ignorance towards lower class.
• They had better do it and decrease the surplus population.

  No sentiment or empathy for people suffering. Reinforced by business terms 'decrease' and 'surplus'.Direct reference to malthus' economic beliefs 1798.
• A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty fifth of december
• Scrooge in stave 2.

  And he sobbed. And wept to see his poor forgotten self. Poor boy!
• Scrooge at fezziwig's party

  "scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits"

  "the happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune"
• I should like to say a word or two to my clerk just now.

  his moment represents the time when Scrooge begins to understand the error of his ways and develops a genuine desire to change. “I should like” displays his intent to make amends with Bob and treat him better