A Christmas Carol- Scrooge’s word bank and brief ideas. ( GCSE English Literature tuition Bolton)

Scrooge: Word bank.

Context

Social and historical context

Men sitting down to a workhouse meal

The Poor Law was amended in 1834 to reduce the cost of helping the poor. Those desperate for assistance and having no other option were sent to workhouses.

The novella shows these contrasts by presenting poverty in the Cratchit household, in the characters of Ignorance and Want who are sheltered by the Ghost of Christmas Present and also in the scene of thieves going through the dead Scrooge’s possessions.

Scrooge’s Character.

He is ‘dead’ to begin with. ( Irony)

Resurrection story

A Rebirth of the soul.

A Christmas Story

Forgiveness

Compassion

Transformative narrative

Metamorphosis

Healing

Only the intervention  of FOUR ghosts can alter Scrooge’s entrenched behaviour and spiritual entombment. Why is Marley important? What does his purgatorial fate reveal to a reluctant, disbelieving Scrooge?

Ghosts encourage a revision of his outlook through the revisitation  of his past and by example. Past offers some understanding of Scrooge’s pathological meanness, though it does not exonerate him.  Final ghost does not speak. Language has become irrelevant. Those Scrooge despises come to filch thorough his belongings. The horror of a worthless life. An ignoble end. Scrooge haunted by his own despicable dismissal of  the suffering of others, specifically the poor.

Defiant

Self-protective

Materialistic

Pragmatic

Witty

Mistrusting

Defensive

Lacking compassion

Sardonic

Miserly

Cynical

Mercenary

Isolated

Self-alienated

Spiritually arid

Friendless

Failed intimacies

Repression of feeling.

Self-reflection

Introspective

Responsible

Exuberant

Spontaneous

Relieved

Reawakened