Discussion Topic
Quotes from A Christmas Carol that reveal details about Ebenezer Scrooge's appearance, personality, ambitions, and relationships
Summary:
Quotes from A Christmas Carol reveal that Ebenezer Scrooge is described as "a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone" with a "pointed nose" and "shrivelled cheek." His personality is miserly and cold, as shown by "Hard and sharp as flint." His ambitions are solely focused on wealth, and his relationships are distant, illustrated by "solitary as an oyster."
What quotes from A Christmas Carol reveal Scrooge's personality, ambitions, appearance, and relationships?
Ebenezer Scrooge is well-known as the "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner" of Charles Dickens's classic novella A Christmas Carol. "Hard and sharp as flint" he is, and "secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster" (stave 1).
Sometimes overlooked in the vilification of the Ebenezer Scrooge who famously said that "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart" is the other Ebenezer Scrooge—the Scrooge who the miserly, curmudgeonly Scrooge becomes with the help of his deceased former business partner and three spirits of Christmas.
The transformation from one Scrooge to the other is remarkable, because it is so emphatic and so complete and is done "all in one night" (stave 4). The transformation, sometimes called Scrooge's "redemption," begins before the reader becomes aware that it's...
Unlock
This Answer NowStart your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
happening.
The first glimpse of Scrooge's humanity is the vulnerability he shows when the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, appears to him. Scrooge is at first unimpressed by the ghost, who he rationalizes might be merely the result of "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato" (stave 1).
Within minutes, though, Scrooge is on his knees, begging the ghost to "speak comfort" to him and to tell him how he can escape Marley's fate of wandering through eternity dragging the heavy chains he forged in his life of "business" with "no rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse” (stave 1).
“You were always a good friend to me,” said Scrooge. Who would have thought that Scrooge had any friends at all?
The transformation continues as Scrooge's humanity returns to him, little by little. Taken by the Ghost of Christmas Past back into his own past, Scrooge remembers what kind of person he was and how he felt before he devoted his life to the accumulation of wealth.
He remembers the kindness shown to him by Mr. Fezziwig, the friendship of Dick Wilkins, and the happiness he felt at Fezziwig's Christmas party. He remembers the sadness and the sense of loss he felt when Belle broke off their engagement because of his love of money. He remembers how he once wanted nothing more than to be a beloved husband and father:
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his own fireside; and when he thought that such another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have called him father, and been a spring-time in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed. (Stave 2)
More and more of his Scrooge's humanity returns to him as he travels with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet To Come, until he finds himself back in his own room on Christmas morning, feeling reborn. He says,
I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. (Stave 4)
With his humanity restored, "He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.... and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge" (stave 4).
Of all the memorable characters created by Charles Dickens, Scrooge is probably the best known. In fact, his very name has become synonymous with that of a cold-hearted miser. In his novella, Dickens portrays Scrooge with words that are equally as familiar as his name-- "Bah!...Humbug!"
In Stave I, the reader learns much about the personality of Scrooge, who does not even stop working when his partner of many years, Marley, dies. Nor does he bother to paint over Marley's name; indifferent to his absence, Scrooge even answers to his name if a client should call him "Marley." Dickens describes him as
...a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, gasping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, ripped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on he eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
In a small cell the clerk of Scrooge's countinghouse works where Scrooge can keep his eyes upon him. Scrooge is so parsimonious that he
has a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal.
When his nephew enters his business, heartily wishing him "A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" Scrooge gruffly replies, "Bah!...Humbug!" He tells his nephew to desist in his wishes or he "will lose [his] situation," and he refuses his nephew's kind invitation to come to Christmas dinner, as well, asking him why he has married and dismissing him by growling, "Good afternoon!"
When two men enter, requesting charity for the poor, Scrooge asks, "Are there no prisons?" and "no Union workhouse?" in which the poor are confined. One of the men tells him that some would rather die than go to the workhouse; to this, Scrooge dismisses them,
"It is not my business....It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
Finally, the day draws to its close and Scrooge must release his clerk, Bob Cratchit, but not before he grumpily says, "...you don't think me ill-used when I pay a day's wages for no work" as he must allow the man a holiday on Christmas. Ordering the man to "Be here all the earlier" the next day, Scrooge reluctantly lets the man go home.
Clearly, Ebenezer Scrooge is a misanthrope who shares no warmth with any man. As he dismisses his nephew, Scrooge declares,
"If I could work my will,...every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"
What quotes from A Christmas Carol describe Ebenezer Scrooge's appearance?
At the beginning of the story, in Stave I, we get a physical description intermingled with a description of his personality.
"The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin" (Stave I).
So, he has thin lips, has a grating voice, and a wiry chin. We also know he is an old man because a few lines later it says that "Old Scrooge" would sit in his counting house. He is also the uncle of an adult man, Fred, so we know he is older in years. Other than this, we do not have a lot in the text that physically describes the current Scrooge.
The original story came with illustrations, so we know a lot from those. They show an old, white, shriveled and wrinkled man in his bed clothes, a night cap and slippers. He looks skinny and a bit short. He is mostly balding, but what hair he has left is white.