‘Marley was dead, to begin with. ‘The novella opens with a succinct focus on the death of Scrooge’s business partner, Marley, who is miraculously presumed resurrected in the first line. Note how effectively the syntax and punctuation work together!The novel begins with a disturbing and intriguing book. How can death be a transitory or impermanent state we wonder? Significantly, this ‘resurrection’ of Marley imbues the opening with grotesque humour and suggests that this story is a ghost story to be enjoyed as part of the Christmas tradition.Furthermore, Dickens himself even playfully refers to the ‘ ghost of an idea’ in the Preface emphasizing the genre of the tale and that its message should linger ‘ May it haunt their house pleasantly.’ Such expectations are encapsulated in the opening line and create the anticipation of ghostly visitations for Scrooge.‘ Scrooge never painted our Old Marley’s name. ..it was all the same to him. ‘Scrooge’s indifference to answering to ‘Scrooge’ or to ‘Marley’ underlines the connection between the business partners which precipitates the arrival of Marley’s Ghost in Stave One. The continued reality of their linked names despite Marley’s death reveals Scrooge’s pathological meanness with himself let alone paint! The protagonist literally remains stuck in the past, unable to truly mourn Marley, unable to forge any fertile new relationships which might help him navigate what remains of his future. Little wonder that Scrooge is unable to demonstrate any compassion for the poor and relies on his highly developed cynicism as a way of communicating with others. He quite literally starves himself of any compassion too remaining ‘as solitary as an oyster’ until the powerful intervention of the ghosts.‘As solitary as an oyster. ‘In the midst of the images of hyperbolic cold within and without Scrooge, the narrator likens Scrooge’s predicament to that of an oyster.In terms of context, this is interesting as oysters were readily available in Victorian London and their ubiquity perhaps undermines the power of the simile. Yet in their natural habitat, then oysters are solitary and are anchored to the ocean bed.This analogy then creates tension as the preponderance of oysters to eat in London shows how brutally uprooted the shellfish are and this might reflect Scrooge’s own secret sense of exile within his own life.Of course, the hardened shell could reflect Scrooge’s difficult and seemingly defensive exterior. He is brittle because he fears intimacy because of his secret hurt around paternal betrayal. Inside an oyster, a previous Pearl might remain hidden from scrutiny. This Pearl could be Scrooge’s capacity for affection and human intimacy. Yet who would have the strength nor even the tool to prise open the shell and extract the Pearl? No human seems able as Scrooge’s nephew Fred who will repeat his annual invitation to dine with his family yet Scrooge will prefer to remain estranged, ‘solitary ’ and antagonistic to others. Fred is his mother’s son and his natural warmth probably reminds Scrooge of his dead sister whom we discover in stave two, had rescued her blighted brother from their callous father’s banishment from home – at least for a final Christmas before Scrooge was apprenticed to Fezziwig.Little wonder that Scrooge’s relationship with Christmas is so deeply negative.‘Nephew…keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine!’Forced to defend himself against good humoured eloquence of Fred, Scrooge reveals his extreme ambivalence toward Christmas. He is palpably defensive and leaves himself open to Fred’s immediate retort that Scrooge does not ‘keep it’ at all. This exchange allows the reader to encounter a powerful foil to Scrooge’s intransigence over the values of Christmas and could be said to give a representation of one of the different forms of haunting in the novella. Scrooge’s behaviour with Fred suggests the latter’s presence does unsettle him and Scrooge is forced to repeatedly close the conversation ‘Good afternoon!’ In order to regain the safety of his cynicism.The uplifting effect of Fred on the clerk, Bob Cratchit contrast with the dismal mean-mindedness of Scrooge. ‘ who cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge.’ Once again we have reference to the sustained metaphor of coldness with respect to the spiritual aridity of Scrooge.Maybe it is because of Scrooge’s discomfiture at his nephew’s consistent goodwill that the former behaves so excessively cynically towards the two charity collectors: ‘Are there no prisons?’ With further gratuitous callousness as he mentions both the ‘workhouses’ and Poor Laws’ as if these were humane remedies to poverty and suffering.It seems as if Scrooge’s arch callousness is compensation for his discomfiture at his nephew’s eloquent challenges to his emotionally arid lifestyle.
