A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens
Scrooge is represented from the beginning as a miserable old man beingdescribed as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching,covetous, old sinner!” I think this a perfect description of him inone sentence. People know Scrooge well and avoid him, this suitesScrooge because he does not like other people and not a big fan ofbeing sociable. The name ‘Scrooge’ was created by Dickens and is nowwell known in the dictionary as someone that is mean, this isbasically what Scrooge is in the novel, a symbol of meanness. It isdescribed that the people know Scrooge well and avoid him as much aspossible. Although this suites him well because he does not like otherpeople, and is not sociable in any way.
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Dickens makes you dislike Scrooge from the very beginning by using anumber of methods such as, the described setting and Scrooge, how hetreats the poor, the language used etc. The setting he’s in is justlike him, cold, gloomy, small and cheap. His treatment to the poor isappalling as when he is asked to give a donation for them he replies,”Are there no prisons?” “And the Union Workhouses?” this is very harshand selfish, because he is basically saying they should be put inprison instead of trying to get money off of him, this instantlycreates bad impression on him. His counting house is described byDickens to be like a “dismal little cell”, this gives the impressionthat it is cheap, dark and cold because the fire he describes is sosmall its as if it only has one coal. Being so cheap and not wantingto spend anymore money than he has to he only employs one person BobCratchit (…
…ery clear that, is you are not kind to people then youwill have something bad happen to you in your afterlife. This isproved clear when Marley’s ghost appears, and explains to Scrooge thatthere is “‘No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse'” as hewhen he was living acted just as Scrooge does.
Dickens portrays Scrooge in many different but excellent ways andmakes you feel a real sense of hatred for him by doing this. Bysetting the novel in the Victorian era it helps to create an image ofthe destitute poor and how badly people like Scrooge treat them. Theactual setting he is in is similar to Scrooges personality andfeatures, the use of similes and other descriptive language all add toScrooges nasty nature. To sum up what the reader is encouraged to feelin the first chapter is basic hatred for Scrooge.
