Story
The story of A Christmas Carol starts on Christmas Eve in 1843, with Scrooge at his place of business. The book says that Scrooge lives in London, England. Charles Dickens refers to Scrooge as "... a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!" Despite owning a vast fortune, Scrooge prefers to hoard his money, denying himself proper conveniences and living a lifestyle of poverty. It is usually assumed that he is a banker or professional money lender. Some recent versions portray him as a solicitor. Whatever his main business is, he seems to have usurious relationships with people of little means. These relationships, along with his lack of charity and shabby treatment of his clerk, Bob Cratchit, seem to be his major vices.
His nephew however, has great regard for Christmas and we are introduced to him early in the story where he unsuccessfully attempts to invite Scrooge to his Christmas dinner party only to be rebuffed by Scrooge with a repeatedly said sentence: "Good afternoon." After his nephew leaves, two charitable men come in and ask Scrooge if he is willing to help them raise a fund to help the poor, but Scrooge comments that he pays taxes for the poor. The two charitable men comment that many would rather die than go to a government funded workhouse. To which Scrooge responds: "If they'd rather die then perhaps they had better do so and decrease the surplus population." and angrily dismisses them.
Scrooge has only disgust for the poor, thinking the world would be better off without them, "decreasing the surplus population," and praise for the Victorian era workhouses. 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 introducing Scrooge and showing his shabby treatment of his employee, business men, and only living relative, the novel resumes with Scrooge at his residence, 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: Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The rest of the novel acts as a biography and psychological profile, showing his evolution to his current state, and the way he is viewed by others.
Read more about this topic: Ebenezer Scrooge
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