Category: A Christmas Carol

When Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol it was a response to British social attitudes towards poverty, particularly child poverty, and wished to use the novella as a means to put forward his arguments against it and how people should change for the better especially the rich who dickens saw as hoarding wealth and not paying their workers a proper salary.

Scrooge, the main character of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the human embodiment of the phrase ‘humbug’ however the miserly man after meeting several ghosts and achieving moral redemption. This is one of Dickens’s reasons for writing this novella as he wanted to emphasize how big factory owners can always change their ways and start contributing to their worker’s communities.

Dickens’s description of Scrooge is unpleasant and shows to the reader how cold Scrooge is,’ no warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him’ Dickens use of pathetic fallacy to represent Scrooge’s nature at the start and Dickens uses it as a metaphor for Scrooge’s misanthropic behavior as at the beginning scrooge seems as he won’t change and will never!

Dickens is writing about the factory owners of his time who tended to be old men who spent their whole lives in pursuit of wealth.

Scrooge is a miserly old person and incredibly stingy with his money, ‘clerk came in with the shovel and the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part’ this indirect speech shows that Scrooge is not concerned with the well-being of his faithful employee and doesn’t care if he is cold and uncomfortable. Dickens again wants to show similarities with the employers of his time who tended to pay their workers as little as possible to maximize their profits.

Scrooge’s merry nephew visits to wish his Uncle a ‘Merry Christmas’ ‘ and Scrooge is unthankful and is very cumodnenly. ‘Every idiot who goes about saying ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled alive with his pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart’ This unpleasant response although comical, establishes his churlishness in rejecting Fred’s offer for Christmas dinner. Dickens is trying to show how the employers of his day cared little about happiness and saw them as distractions from the real purpose of life which they saw as to collect the most wealth.

When Dickens uses the simile ‘solitary as an oyster’ he uses it as a simile An oyster lives alone at the bottom of the seabed this is similar to Scrooge who spends all day on his own and is very misanthropic preferring to eat is ‘his melancholy dinner’ alone in the ‘Melancholy tavern’ So when Dickens is uses oyster, to the reader that harsh and hard exterior we are sown can also indicate the existence of a jewel which is indeed the case in this novel. Dickens also wants the reader to question their behavior and see how even bad people can change for the better.

Once Scrooge encounters his past self he accounts completely differently to his behavior in stave one ”Good Havens’ said Scrooge, clasping his hands together ‘I was bred in this place. I was a boy here’ This shift is used by Dickens to trigger the start of a night of transformation for Scrooge.

Eventually, the spirit takes Scrooge to a vision of his old boss, Mr. Fezziwig Scrooge defends Fezzwig’s generoucity when he says, ‘like his former self, not his later self’ This suggests that Scrooge didn’t always think money was more important than happiness. Dickens uses this to show how many of the big industrialists who ran the factories did not necessarily have the family prestige that many of the aristocrats had and that many had started as clerks or lower positions during the earlier stage of the Industrial Revolution.

When Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present he is shown just how ill tiny Tim is and how his family cannot afford to properly treat him on the salary Scrooge pays Cratchit. When visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Scrooge sees that Tiny Tim has died. Spirit,’ said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, ‘tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’This, and several other visions, lead Scrooge to reform his ways as earlier in his life he would not care for the sickly boy and saw him as a waste of life. ”Are there no prisons?… And the Union workhouses?’ At the end of the story, Dickens makes it explicit that Tiny Tim does not die and that it was thanks to Scrooge’s transformation again suggesting that although the wages that the employers were paying were below what they needed to support their family and indirectly leading to children without food on their plates and unable to afford life-saving medicine they can always adjust their page and lead to standards of living increasing.

Since the introduction of Scrooge, we are shown that he is a very frugal, insular, and ‘covetous’ character, obsessed with his wealth and dreadful of losing it all. The text states that Scrooge ‘wept to see his poor forgotten self’. Scrooge’s fear is in the form of regret and remorse knowing that he has lost companions, a fiance, and a family. Fear itself encourages Scrooge to change his ways. Dickens wanted to get readers to consider the plight of the workers of his day and how inconsiderate people could do more to support those less fortunate; thus embodying the spirit of Christmas.

In conclusion in the story, Scrooge is visited by 4 spirits throughout the experience a dramatic change of heart occurs. Scrooge ends up becoming a merry, generous man who lives his life with others and celebrates the holidays with his family and friends this is fermented as in the penultimate chapter the word ‘good’ is mentioned no less than seven times this infers dickens message wished to spread that everyone can change for the good and be forgiven for mistakes of their past, as we

In A Christmas Carol Dickens uses the theme of poverty for the Cratchit family to show how most poor lives lived, on the other hand, the rich lived happily in Victorian Society.

In A Christmas Carol stave 1 Scrooge does not lots of what the Cratchits are going through by shows his ignorance to Bob by asking for a day off. This is seen in the quote ‘A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December’ The adjective ‘poor’ is Scrooge lacking knowledge of what his apprentice is going through because he might not know that well but indeed Bob and his family are poor and are struggling. This highlights Malthus’s theory of the poor being excessive and taking everything that belongs to the deserving, what the deserving need to survive. Also, further on in the extract the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to Bob’s house. This is seen in the phrase’ Wonderful pudding!’ This straight away implies that they are grateful for what they have and are keen on sharing it despite it being a ‘small pudding’ for a large family. The Cratchit family all say how wonderful it is and don’t complain that they wanted more. This implies that this has been happening in the past so maybe they every Christmas get a small pudding. The noun ‘family’ means unity, love, and hope between ones of the same blood or even different. This is the opposite of Scrooge as when his only family Fred his nephew appears, he denies him by saying ‘Bah Humbug’ The modern readers would probably be surprised because they might be able to get a big pudding for a family that is big but they never knew how it has been like in the Victorian Era. However, the readers at the time this was written might have a lot of fixed mindset and believe in what Malthus is telling them so they would blame the Cratchits that it is their fault they have ended up there. This links to what Malthus is trying to say because he would have happily given away the small pudding to a wealthy family. After all, in his eyes, they aren’t the excess group of people. This symbolizes how happiness is with family because Cratchits have proven to be happy even if they are undeserving to the rich. Dickens wants everyone to be happy with what they have and not ask for more because you might not always get what you want in life.

In the extract, you can see when the Ghost of Christmas Presents takes him to the Cratchits family, Bob even do he is ignored by Scrooge in Stave 1 is still raising a toast. This is seen in the quote’ I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge, the founder of the Feast’ The noun ‘founder’ implies to the target audience that Bob is the only one who works within the family. This means all the money for their feast was from Scrooge. In the Victorian era, it would have been quite normal to have one working parent only because there were not enough jobs for everyone. Bob symbolizes faith in his employer whilst Scrooge being the wealthier one doesn’t even know anything about Bob. Scrooge as being the richer one is judgemental. Another quote to prove this is from Mrs Cratchit, Bob’s wife saying ‘I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon. The verb ‘give’ denotes love, care, and happiness but the way Mrs Cratchit phrased it implies that she is not happy or caring or loving to Mr Scrooge because of what little he has done for them. Same with the noun ‘feast’ represents hope but Mrs Cratchit is so disappointed in him that she lost all hope for him so she wants him to have the worst life ever. This symbolises what hate can do because during Christmas you are supposed to wish the best upon everyone in stave 1 Fred said to his uncle ‘A merry Christmas Uncle, may god save you’ The adjective ‘merry’ tells you how you have to feel. In the modern time in which this was written, readers would feel sympathy not for Scrooge because he is getting blamed but for the Cratchit family because of how the events have ruined and still ruining their lives. Dickens may have written like this because when his father went to prison that affected his life because he had to go to a workhouse where when the gentlemen came Scrooge told them to send the poor there. Dickens is linking his own life with Bob’s family on how mistreated they were. This links to the time it was written during the Industrial Revolution because there was a lack of homes, food, and jobs.

Dickens has written to show how the poor are treated by the wealthy and that things must change to have a better life. This is seen at the end of the novella in stave 5 when Scrooge becomes better, goes to church, gives to charity and last of all raises Bob Cratchits salary, what he needed most of all, this is seen in the quote ‘And therefore I am going to raise your salary’ Scrooge has shown improvement and understanding of what poor go through and he wants others to see what he sees and think the same.

Dickens explicitly criticizes the issues of poverty in Victorian society in this excerpt. For this, he utilizes the characters of Ignorance and Wants as allegories, depicting them as victims of severe deprivation, emphasizing the challenges faced by the poor and the situations under which they lived. Dickens uses the characters of Indifference and tries to show the viewers’ ignorance of society’s issues while they are consumed by covetousness.

He accomplishes this in the extract of Dickens’ intention to shock and appall the viewer by using Ignorance and Wretchedness as a metaphor for how the poor in Victorian society are handled. This can be seen in the ‘yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish’ lexical field; in which Dickens highlights how hideous they looked while offering an insight into how indigent they were. Dickens uses this to explain the horrific creature that humanity had made, whilst the adverb ‘yellow’ indicates that they were ill and malnourished, indicating the effects of social injustice. The adverb ‘wolfish’ shows that they were inhuman. As they should be full of life and material, Dickens uses the fact that they are kids here to demonstrate how unchildlike they look. In Victorian culture, this represents the harsh reality and poor treatment of the workhouses and child labor. As he had first-hand experience with child labor, this played a major part in Dickens’ appetite for social change. In addition, the author uses the novel’s structure to create a dramatic shift of tone from Fred’s celebrations to describe the wretchedness of Ignorance; to create the reader’s emotional reaction, and to highlight the real problem in society. In addition to this, Dickens uses The Ghost of Christmas Present’s character to bring ignorance to the audience and to highlight that injustice is now occurring in society. The line ‘they cling to me’ demonstrates this. The verb ‘cling’ has connotations of terror, which may indicate the dangerous circumstances facing the poor. Perhaps it could also demonstrate that stressing the daily suffering of the poor in society, they hang on tightly for life. Ignorance and Desire come from the Ghost, which often symbolizes how the rich have ignored the poor and rejected them.

The goal of Dicken here is to raise awareness of society’s inequality, targeting the affluent Victorian audience at the time to show them their lack of social responsibility, making them feel guilty and accountable. In addition, Dickens uses the Ghost as his voice in this extract to represent his thoughts and desires, which are for social change and transparency. The author illustrates that the use of hyperbolic language here reflects the need for reform in Victorian culture through the noun ‘doom,’ otherwise, there will be consequences and all of mankind will be doomed. The noun ‘doom’ has connotations of hell, as Christianity and morality were very influential at the time, the purpose here will be to scare the Victorian people. Therefore, Dickens says that if they do not change their ways and attitudes towards the disadvantaged, they will be doomed, initiating a reaction and response from the audience to social justice and transparency.

Dickens makes frequent references to the corrupt and destructive theme of poverty in the novella. His aim in doing this is to denounce the society of Victoria and to try to cause a change in their attitudes towards the poor. Dickens uses the character of Scrooge in the novella to represent the harsh middle-class Victorian views towards the lower classes. This can be seen through the ‘Dismal Little Cell’ line, which describes the workplace of Bob Cratchit.

In addition, in the novella, Dickens portrays the Cratchits as a sign of the poor, but they are a loving and caring family despite this. This can be seen by the ‘as good as gold’ line, which similarly emphasizes that Bob Cratchit values his kids and family more than money. Dickens’ purpose here is to contrast the Cratchits with Scrooge who, despite having money as well as the upper-class men who are portrayed as ‘monstrous’, is lonely and unhappy, which makes the audience doubt their own happiness and lifestyle choices, making them realize that money is not everything.

At the beginning of the novel, Scrooge is portrayed as a hardhearted man and very unsociable. He struggles to connect with others but out of his own choice. Scrooge is shown as selfish and as someone who doesn’t care for others at the start of the novel with Marley’s funeral. He shows little sympathy and only cares about the money he gained from his business partner’s death.

In the extract, scrooge is described as a new man who is cheerful and happy. At the start, Scrooge finds himself in his bed. He repeats his promise to “live in the past, the present, and the future”. This suggests that he is still committed to changing into a better person. At the beginning of the novel, Scrooge refuses to wish anyone a happy Christmas and uses his famous phrase “bah humbug” towards Christmas itself. This phrase means that he is calling Christmas a fraud. He does this because he thinks the celebration of Christmas is a total sham. Later on in the novel he wishes everyone a merry Christmas, he says that Christmas should be “praised” for his transformation and that his understanding of the Christmas spirit is one of the things that has made him change.

When Scrooge wakes up in the passage he realizes it’s still Christmas day so he still has time to spend Christmas the way it should be spent, later in the novel he buys Bob a huge turkey so he can enjoy Christmas with his family more so lavishly. Whereas before Scrooge treated his clerk coldly. He even begrudges Cratchit’s taking Christmas off to be with tiny Tim and the rest of his family and threatens to fire him when Bob is excited at Fred’s Christmas speech. Scrooge’s relationship with Bob changes a lot from stave one to stave five. he becomes more open to him and treats him like a friend. The office fire is weak and small in the first stave but by the fifth scrooge lets Bob buy more coal for the fire. Also, Scrooge resents having to pay Bob over Christmas in the first stave, and the fifth he gives Bob a pay rise. In the extract, Charles Dickens uses similes to show how Scrooge feels that morning, “I am as light as a feather” This suggests he feels like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders and he doesn’t have to be sad anymore. This gives him relief. The weather changes from the dark, gloomy weather in the first stage to now “golden sunlight”, “clear”,” bright” and “jovial” outside. This adds to the joyful mood of the chapter, the reader can sense that the ending will be happy because of the changed weather. The weather also changes to match Scrooge’s temperament. Money becomes less important to Scrooge in the latter stave because, in the first stave, he is a miser who hoards his money. And hardly ever spends his money, whereas, in the fifth stave, he meets one of the charity collectors and donates a large amount of money to their cause. He says “it’s very kind” of them to do the work they do. He also offers to help the Cratchit family in this chapter, he sees that it is his responsibility to help others who are worse off than he is.

Dickens uses the transformation of Scrooge to help his readers understand the importance of helping the poor. Scrooge is now more interested in helping other people, and he realizes that he can do this by being generous with his money. Lastly in stave one scrooge is invited by Fred to spend Christmas with his family and refuses to attend. In stave five scrooge joins his family. Despite Scrooge’s behavior towards Fred and his family, he is welcomed. Fred shakes his hand enthusiastically and they celebrate Christmas with “wonderful unanimity”. Dickens uses the acceptance of Fred and his family to illustrate that family love is unconditional, and can be the source of “wonderful happiness”.

Scrooge also gains another family, he becomes a “second father” to Tiny Tim. In chapter two scrooge is upset that he never became a father, helping Tiny Tim and the Cratchit has allowed him to achieve that dream.

Overall dickens presents Scrooge to change dramatically from a selfish and cold person to a loving, kind, and generous one.

When Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol it was a response to British social attitudes towards poverty, particularly child poverty, and wished to use the novella as a means to put forward his arguments against it and how people should change for the better especially the rich who dickens saw as hoarding wealth and not paying their workers a proper salary.

Scrooge, the main character of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the human embodiment of the phrase ‘humbug’ however the miserly man after meeting several ghosts and achieving moral redemption. This is one of Dickens’s reasons for writing this novella as he wanted to emphasize how big factory owners can always change their ways and start contributing to their worker’s communities.

Dickens’s description of Scrooge is unpleasant and shows to the reader how cold Scrooge is,’ no warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him’ Dickens use of pathetic fallacy to represent Scrooge’s nature at the start and Dickens uses it as a metaphor for Scrooge’s misanthropic behavior as at the beginning scrooge seems as he won’t change and will never!

Dickens is writing about the factory owners of his time who tended to be old men who spent their whole lives in pursuit of wealth.

Scrooge is a miserly old person and incredibly stingy with his money, ‘clerk came in with the shovel and the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part’ this indirect speech shows that Scrooge is not concerned with the well-being of his faithful employee and doesn’t care if he is cold and uncomfortable. Dickens again wants to show similarities with the employers of his time who tended to pay their workers as little as possible to maximize their profits.

Scrooge’s merry nephew visits to wish his Uncle a ‘Merry Christmas’ ‘ and Scrooge is unthankful and is very cumodnenly. ‘Every idiot who goes about saying ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled alive with his pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart’ This unpleasant response although comical, establishes his churlishness in rejecting Fred’s offer for Christmas dinner. Dickens is trying to show how the employers of his day cared little about happiness and saw them as distractions from the real purpose of life which they saw as to collect the most wealth.

When Dickens uses the simile ‘solitary as an oyster’ he uses it as a simile An oyster lives alone at the bottom of the seabed this is similar to Scrooge who spends all day on his own and is very misanthropic preferring to eat is ‘his melancholy dinner’ alone in the ‘Melancholy tavern’ So when Dickens is uses oyster, to the reader that harsh and hard exterior we are sown can also indicate the existence of a jewel which is indeed the case in this novel. Dickens also wants the reader to question their behavior and see how even bad people can change for the better.

Once Scrooge encounters his past self he accounts completely differently to his behavior in stave one ”Good Havens’ said Scrooge, clasping his hands together ‘I was bred in this place. I was a boy here’ This shift is used by Dickens to trigger the start of a night of transformation for Scrooge.

Eventually, the spirit takes Scrooge to a vision of his old boss, Mr. Fezziwig Scrooge defends Fezzwig’s generoucity when he says, ‘like his former self, not his later self’ This suggests that Scrooge didn’t always think money was more important than happiness. Dickens uses this to show how many of the big industrialists who ran the factories did not necessarily have the family prestige that many of the aristocrats had and that many had started as clerks or lower positions during the earlier stage of the Industrial Revolution.

When Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present he is shown just how ill tiny Tim is and how his family cannot afford to properly treat him on the salary Scrooge pays Cratchit. When visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Scrooge sees that Tiny Tim has died. Spirit,’ said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, ‘tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’This, and several other visions, lead Scrooge to reform his ways as earlier in his life he would not care for the sickly boy and saw him as a waste of life. ”Are there no prisons?… And the Union workhouses?’ At the end of the story, Dickens makes it explicit that Tiny Tim does not die and that it was thanks to Scrooge’s transformation again suggesting that although the wages that the employers were paying were below what they needed to support their family and indirectly leading to children without food on their plates and unable to afford life-saving medicine they can always adjust their page and lead to standards of living increasing.

Since the introduction of Scrooge, we are shown that he is a very frugal, insular, and ‘covetous’ character, obsessed with his wealth and dreadful of losing it all. The text states that Scrooge ‘wept to see his poor forgotten self’. Scrooge’s fear is in the form of regret and remorse knowing that he has lost companions, a fiance, and a family. Fear itself encourages Scrooge to change his ways. Dickens wanted to get readers to consider the plight of the workers of his day and how inconsiderate people could do more to support those less fortunate; thus embodying the spirit of Christmas.

In conclusion in the story, Scrooge is visited by 4 spirits throughout the experience a dramatic change of heart occurs. Scrooge ends up becoming a merry, generous man who lives his life with others and celebrates the holidays with his family and friends this is fermented as in the penultimate chapter the word ‘good’ is mentioned no less than seven times this infers dickens message wished to spread that everyone can change for the good and be forgiven for mistakes of their past, as we

In A Christmas Carol Dickens uses the theme of poverty for the Cratchit family to show how most poor lives lived, on the other hand, the rich lived happily in Victorian Society.

In A Christmas Carol stave 1 Scrooge does not lots of what the Cratchits are going through by shows his ignorance to Bob by asking for a day off. This is seen in the quote ‘A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December’ The adjective ‘poor’ is Scrooge lacking knowledge of what his apprentice is going through because he might not know that well but indeed Bob and his family are poor and are struggling. This highlights Malthus’s theory of the poor being excessive and taking everything that belongs to the deserving, what the deserving need to survive. Also, further on in the extract the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to Bob’s house. This is seen in the phrase’ Wonderful pudding!’ This straight away implies that they are grateful for what they have and are keen on sharing it despite it being a ‘small pudding’ for a large family. The Cratchit family all say how wonderful it is and don’t complain that they wanted more. This implies that this has been happening in the past so maybe they every Christmas get a small pudding. The noun ‘family’ means unity, love, and hope between ones of the same blood or even different. This is the opposite of Scrooge as when his only family Fred his nephew appears, he denies him by saying ‘Bah Humbug’ The modern readers would probably be surprised because they might be able to get a big pudding for a family that is big but they never knew how it has been like in the Victorian Era. However, the readers at the time this was written might have a lot of fixed mindset and believe in what Malthus is telling them so they would blame the Cratchits that it is their fault they have ended up there. This links to what Malthus is trying to say because he would have happily given away the small pudding to a wealthy family. After all, in his eyes, they aren’t the excess group of people. This symbolizes how happiness is with family because Cratchits have proven to be happy even if they are undeserving to the rich. Dickens wants everyone to be happy with what they have and not ask for more because you might not always get what you want in life.

In the extract, you can see when the Ghost of Christmas Presents takes him to the Cratchits family, Bob even do he is ignored by Scrooge in Stave 1 is still raising a toast. This is seen in the quote’ I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge, the founder of the Feast’ The noun ‘founder’ implies to the target audience that Bob is the only one who works within the family. This means all the money for their feast was from Scrooge. In the Victorian era, it would have been quite normal to have one working parent only because there were not enough jobs for everyone. Bob symbolizes faith in his employer whilst Scrooge being the wealthier one doesn’t even know anything about Bob. Scrooge as being the richer one is judgemental. Another quote to prove this is from Mrs Cratchit, Bob’s wife saying ‘I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon. The verb ‘give’ denotes love, care, and happiness but the way Mrs Cratchit phrased it implies that she is not happy or caring or loving to Mr Scrooge because of what little he has done for them. Same with the noun ‘feast’ represents hope but Mrs Cratchit is so disappointed in him that she lost all hope for him so she wants him to have the worst life ever. This symbolises what hate can do because during Christmas you are supposed to wish the best upon everyone in stave 1 Fred said to his uncle ‘A merry Christmas Uncle, may god save you’ The adjective ‘merry’ tells you how you have to feel. In the modern time in which this was written, readers would feel sympathy not for Scrooge because he is getting blamed but for the Cratchit family because of how the events have ruined and still ruining their lives. Dickens may have written like this because when his father went to prison that affected his life because he had to go to a workhouse where when the gentlemen came Scrooge told them to send the poor there. Dickens is linking his own life with Bob’s family on how mistreated they were. This links to the time it was written during the Industrial Revolution because there was a lack of homes, food, and jobs.

Dickens has written to show how the poor are treated by the wealthy and that things must change to have a better life. This is seen at the end of the novella in stave 5 when Scrooge becomes better, goes to church, gives to charity and last of all raises Bob Cratchits salary, what he needed most of all, this is seen in the quote ‘And therefore I am going to raise your salary’ Scrooge has shown improvement and understanding of what poor go through and he wants others to see what he sees and think the same.

Dickens explicitly criticizes the issues of poverty in Victorian society in this excerpt. For this, he utilizes the characters of Ignorance and Wants as allegories, depicting them as victims of severe deprivation, emphasizing the challenges faced by the poor and the situations under which they lived. Dickens uses the characters of Indifference and tries to show the viewers’ ignorance of society’s issues while they are consumed by covetousness.

He accomplishes this in the extract of Dickens’ intention to shock and appall the viewer by using Ignorance and Wretchedness as a metaphor for how the poor in Victorian society are handled. This can be seen in the ‘yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish’ lexical field; in which Dickens highlights how hideous they looked while offering an insight into how indigent they were. Dickens uses this to explain the horrific creature that humanity had made, whilst the adverb ‘yellow’ indicates that they were ill and malnourished, indicating the effects of social injustice. The adverb ‘wolfish’ shows that they were inhuman. As they should be full of life and material, Dickens uses the fact that they are kids here to demonstrate how unchildlike they look. In Victorian culture, this represents the harsh reality and poor treatment of the workhouses and child labor. As he had first-hand experience with child labor, this played a major part in Dickens’ appetite for social change. In addition, the author uses the novel’s structure to create a dramatic shift of tone from Fred’s celebrations to describe the wretchedness of Ignorance; to create the reader’s emotional reaction, and to highlight the real problem in society. In addition to this, Dickens uses The Ghost of Christmas Present’s character to bring ignorance to the audience and to highlight that injustice is now occurring in society. The line ‘they cling to me’ demonstrates this. The verb ‘cling’ has connotations of terror, which may indicate the dangerous circumstances facing the poor. Perhaps it could also demonstrate that stressing the daily suffering of the poor in society, they hang on tightly for life. Ignorance and Desire come from the Ghost, which often symbolizes how the rich have ignored the poor and rejected them.

The goal of Dicken here is to raise awareness of society’s inequality, targeting the affluent Victorian audience at the time to show them their lack of social responsibility, making them feel guilty and accountable. In addition, Dickens uses the Ghost as his voice in this extract to represent his thoughts and desires, which are for social change and transparency. The author illustrates that the use of hyperbolic language here reflects the need for reform in Victorian culture through the noun ‘doom,’ otherwise, there will be consequences and all of mankind will be doomed. The noun ‘doom’ has connotations of hell, as Christianity and morality were very influential at the time, the purpose here will be to scare the Victorian people. Therefore, Dickens says that if they do not change their ways and attitudes towards the disadvantaged, they will be doomed, initiating a reaction and response from the audience to social justice and transparency.

Dickens makes frequent references to the corrupt and destructive theme of poverty in the novella. His aim in doing this is to denounce the society of Victoria and to try to cause a change in their attitudes towards the poor. Dickens uses the character of Scrooge in the novella to represent the harsh middle-class Victorian views towards the lower classes. This can be seen through the ‘Dismal Little Cell’ line, which describes the workplace of Bob Cratchit.

In addition, in the novella, Dickens portrays the Cratchits as a sign of the poor, but they are a loving and caring family despite this. This can be seen by the ‘as good as gold’ line, which similarly emphasizes that Bob Cratchit values his kids and family more than money. Dickens’ purpose here is to contrast the Cratchits with Scrooge who, despite having money as well as the upper-class men who are portrayed as ‘monstrous’, is lonely and unhappy, which makes the audience doubt their own happiness and lifestyle choices, making them realize that money is not everything.