A Christmas Carol - character study of Scrooge "A Christmas Carol" “Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!” Scrooge is the main character in the novel ‘A Christmas Carol’. At the beginning of the novel he is a brutal, evil, pitiless, cold-hearted man, but subsequent to meeting three spirits, Scrooge regrets his life and decides he needs to alter it. The main theme Charles Dickens conveys through the story is redemption; this is significant especially in the Victorian era, whilst there was an immense gap between the prosperous and the inadequate. Dickens uses Scrooge (a rich, greedy business man) to direct his novel to the very rich people, and to exhibit how money can impede your …show more content…
H e is portrayed as “Hard and sharp as a flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire”; he is “secret and self-contained”. Dickens depicts Scrooge as a lonely sad person “Solitary as an oyster”, he wants to make Scrooge out to be a very malicious, malevolent, cruel character, so that it would make the transformation much more dramatic. Dickens perceives Scrooge as he saw rich people when he was living in poverty. Scrooge is very harsh on his clerk, Bob Cratchit; he treats him like a slave. Scrooge keeps the coal-box in his own room so the clerk is not able to replenish his fire whenever he wants to. This shows that Scrooge is very greedy; he would rather let his employee freeze to death than consume some money to keep warm. When Bob Cratchit asks for Christmas day off, Scrooge is quite spiteful “You’ll want all day tomorrow I suppose?” The Clerk observes that it is only once a year, but Scrooge is merely concerned about losing money, “A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December”. When Scrooge’s nephew comes to visit Scrooge, he is very cheerful and wishes Scrooge “Merry Christmas, uncle, God save you!” but as usual Scrooge replies “Bah!...Humbug!”. We can already see that he’s not fond of Christmas. Scrooges nephew attempts to persuade
Scrooge is an overly grumpy, greedy, curmudgeon, mild, insensitive, thoughtless, dolorous, elderly man who lives in a house all by himself. He has silver, gray hair, a pointed nose, and wiry chin. He acts like a harsh, miserable, lonely, gloomy, and depressed fellow. He also was very unfriendly to those young fellows who were trying to gather donations for the poor. When Scrooge was younger, he was actually very kind and generous to the people around him. Scrooge is very inconsiderate of others, and according to the text on page one, stave one it said that “ No wind blew was bitterer than he”, and he was a person who did not believe in the Christmas spirit until a trio of ghosts shows him his past, present, and future.
It says, “Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.” (Dickens, 33). Scrooge is starting to change when he saw his past and saw that when his friends had neglected him and showed his emotions. It also states, “‘I should be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now!’” (Dickens, 43). Scrooge is transforming into a cordial gentleman and after he realizes how bad of a boss he was to his clerk, Bob Cratchit. Scrooge realizes how blessed he actually was and transformed into a better man after witnessing what the ghosts showed him about the past and
A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens Scrooge is represented from the beginning as a miserable old man being described as a "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! " I think this a perfect description of him in one sentence. People know Scrooge well and avoid him, this suites Scrooge because he does not like other people and not a big fan of being sociable. The name 'Scrooge' was created by Dickens and is now well known in the dictionary as someone that is mean, this is basically what Scrooge is in the novel, a symbol of meanness. It is described that the people know Scrooge well and avoid him as much as possible.
The text explicitly states Scrooge, a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching, covetous, old sinner has passed away. According to the text, he despises many things such as happiness, humor, and even Christmas. From the reading, I know that he is depressed all the time, consequently his mental state has led him to call other people stupid, dumb, and idiots. On page three, in the conversation with his nephew Fred, Scrooge insults his nephew about marrying and loving his wife. The text states, that he also “seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the frost and even more congenial frost.” From the reading I know that Scrooge isn’t a people person and is very down about life. Based on the text he doesn’t really like being around them. For example Scrooge didn’t donate any money to the poor, and blew off his nephew about spending Christmas with them. In the text it states that there is no wind as bare as Scrooge, this means he doesn't really care or doesn't have many feelings.
Scrooge’s attitude to others is terrible, he is not at all courteous to anyone he meets. He is especially horrible to his clerk, Bob Cratchit who he pays terribly. He does not allow Mr.Cratchit to have any time off work during the year, except Christmas day: (Which he does very bitterly and reluctantly) ‘’…a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!’’ I believe that this description displays Scrooge making his clerk work tirelessly for long hours all through the year, and permitting him to have one day off. Trying to get him work incredibly hard for every penny Scrooge parts with.
money to the poor. He thinks of them as idle and he states that if
Scrooge is presented as a lonely character who has little left in life. Often he is linked to cold and darkness, perhaps linking to the demons he faces and how he presents them to others coming across as a moody, melancholics man. He has a fixation with money and how no money should be given away. Scrooge is similar to a villain in fairy tales which may be where Dickens got his character from. In the opening line of the extract Scrooge is described as "a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone".
The way Scrooge acts in the story says a lot about him, but so does the description about him in the sixth paragraph. The passage clearly states that Scrooge is “a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone” and is “hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel struck out a generous fire.” Furthermore, the passage continues to show more detail by saying that he’s “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner” and “solitary as an oyster.” All of this shows a generous amount of greediness and coldheartedness. The text even says “the cold within him froze his features,” which proves the point that he is not a very happy camper. The story continues and compares him to weather and how it can be beautiful, while Scrooge cannot be. As it continues, we discover that Scrooge hates Christmas and everything related to it (including carolers, donors, etc.)
Remuneration can lead to hostility in social groups. The Gift of the Magi, written by O. Henry, has a synopsis of two people who willingly devote their hard-earned money for each other, although they hanker for a renovated lifestyle. They are a bit morose when dealing with their living situation. On the other hand, A Christmas Carol, scribed by Charles Dickens, tells a story of an affluent man who indulges in downright unsuccessful behavior towards humans and, after an abundance of procuration, is goaded by three spirits to culminate his narcissism. People treat others miscellaneously based on wage as evinced by their contrasting outlooks on the world, conversiality of sacrificial choices, and relationships toward others.
Scrooge is a mean person who has a very interesting life when he meets three spirits that helped over time. Scrooge was a person who thought business was all about money. Since of that Scrooge became a mean and selfish man over time and throughout the story. This shows that in a Christmas Carol Charles Dickens shows us that the business in life is to help other 9, through Scrooge’s changes throughout the story.
Some names are so closely tied to human characteristics, that present society can substitute the name for the behavior. A "Judas" is a traitor. A "Mother Theresa" is someone who gives of him or herself to help others. Another famous name that immediately substitutes for behavior is Ebenezer Scrooge, the fictional protagonist from Charles Dickens' classic novella, "A Christmas Carol." Today, the very mention of his name induces the image of the mean-spirited and miserly. It is common to challenge avaricious behavior with the admonition, "Don't be a Scrooge." No good person is ever accused of Scrooge-like behavior. But Dickens' novel describes the evolution of Scrooge’s character beyond this callous, penny-pinching stereotype to that of a generous
At the point when Scrooge returns home, he is startled by a change in his entryway knocker which immediately resembles a repulsive rendition of Marley's face. Scrooge is then visited by the ghost of christmas past the very next day. The ghost takes Scrooge to Fezziwig's warehouse where Scrooge apprenticed as a young man. At the point when the Ghost challenges Fezziwig's activities, Scrooge protects his liberality. This begins to be translated into a desire to be generous in his own life: “I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now,” says Scrooge.
Can people really change? Throughout the play, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge changed as a person and as an employer. Scrooge’s character started out as an old cranky miser who cared about no one except himself and his earnings. He was so and in the end he came out as one of the most generous and caring people in the town. He became a second father to Tiny Tim. The spirits showed him his mistakes and he learned from them therefore becoming a better person who cares more about people’s well being than his money. The spirit of Christmas Past came at the last strike of twelve.
Throughout history, many people have prejudged one another because of how much money they have, how they talk, or if their mindsets differ from their own. In the book, a Christmas Carol all of the secondary characters and the minor characters had a predetermined idea of who Ebenezer Scrooge was. This is because he wasn’t huge on the Christmas season like the other people in the book were, however, as the book progresses the reader learns more about Scrooge's experiences around Christmas that made him feel the way he did about Christmas and why he saw it as a holiday for spending money and trying to pay bills with no money.
This text states that Scrooge was extremely greedy; an example of his greediness would be when the people that were asking for donations visited, he straight up told them he didn’t believe in charity for the sake of the government supplied help to those in need. From the reading, I know that Scrooge was impolite as when he insulted his nephew’s wife and their marriage for it involved love. This article explicitly states him as being a cold-hearted, uncaring, and selfish person when he gave Christmas day off to his employee, and thereupon he says it is the only day of the year his employee can rob him.