A Christmas Carol Analysis – Scrooge’s Beginning (and purpose as vehicle for social
responsibility)
Dickens makes a conscious and calculated structural decision to characterise
Scrooge from the very outset; that is, to lay out overwhelmingly negative descriptions
of him, and so to further emphasise the eventual narrative transformation. Indeed,
the precise means by which Dickens depicts Scrooge’s “covetous” disposition is in of
itself overwhelming; deploying a series of long, complex sentence, which carry with it
evocatively negative imagery:
Points of analysis here:
● Lexical set of dynamic present participles – “squeezing… clutching” ��
myriad of harsher consonants, in both guttural, dental and fricative sounds ● The
internal “cold”, residing within Scrooge himself, extends out and affects the
external – freezing his own “old features”, “pointed nose”, “blue” lips and, indeed,
further out to “his office in the dog-days”. His constant “own low temperature”,
ices everything around him
Perceptive: - “secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster”
Strikingly, despite the abundance of overwhelming negative description and imagery
in which to describe Scrooge, Dickens seemingly hints at the possibility of an
eventual transformation. Dickens uses the simile of the oyster to depict Scrooge’s
hard exterior, precisely as that of “an oyster”, but also to the potential, metaphorical
pearl within him: a light, a contrast that may be unveiled over the course of the
novella.
● It’s worth thinking about the fact that Dickens delegates most of the humorous
lines of dialogue to that of the “old sinner” Scrooge. For example, “every idiot
who goes about with… buried with a stake of holly through his heart” ��
Dickens must make Scrooge, despite his status as villain, a compelling
responsibility)
Dickens makes a conscious and calculated structural decision to characterise
Scrooge from the very outset; that is, to lay out overwhelmingly negative descriptions
of him, and so to further emphasise the eventual narrative transformation. Indeed,
the precise means by which Dickens depicts Scrooge’s “covetous” disposition is in of
itself overwhelming; deploying a series of long, complex sentence, which carry with it
evocatively negative imagery:
Points of analysis here:
● Lexical set of dynamic present participles – “squeezing… clutching” ��
myriad of harsher consonants, in both guttural, dental and fricative sounds ● The
internal “cold”, residing within Scrooge himself, extends out and affects the
external – freezing his own “old features”, “pointed nose”, “blue” lips and, indeed,
further out to “his office in the dog-days”. His constant “own low temperature”,
ices everything around him
Perceptive: - “secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster”
Strikingly, despite the abundance of overwhelming negative description and imagery
in which to describe Scrooge, Dickens seemingly hints at the possibility of an
eventual transformation. Dickens uses the simile of the oyster to depict Scrooge’s
hard exterior, precisely as that of “an oyster”, but also to the potential, metaphorical
pearl within him: a light, a contrast that may be unveiled over the course of the
novella.
● It’s worth thinking about the fact that Dickens delegates most of the humorous
lines of dialogue to that of the “old sinner” Scrooge. For example, “every idiot
who goes about with… buried with a stake of holly through his heart” ��
Dickens must make Scrooge, despite his status as villain, a compelling
