Both Scrooge and Tiny Tim's death bring a change into the world. Scrooge's death brings happiness: the miserly firm of Scrooge and Marley will be no more, and a couple trembling with fear that the hard-hearted Scrooge would ruin them over the repayment of a loan is relieved to hear he has died. The wife, Caroline,
was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands.
Tiny Tim's death also brings a change into the lives of those who knew him, but it one of sadness, not joy. Although Tiny Tim was merely a poor, disabled little boy, his death is a crushing blow to his family and especially to his father, Bob Cratchit. The family is very quiet now, when once they were lively and joyful despite their poverty. Bob walks slowly now, not in the brisk fashion he did when he carried Tiny...
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Tim on his shoulder. The family is so sorrowful that their littlest boy, the sunbeam of their lives, is gone that they hardly know what to do.
In contrast, every one who had contact with Scrooge is glad he is dead. The servants who tended to him are pleased they can steal the goods from his death bed, such as the curtains that went around it, and sell them to a scavenger. The businessmen who knew him predict a cheap funeral and say they will only attend if a good meal follows it.
Scrooge dealt with people in terms of what he could get from them, and in death, he is treated only in terms of what people can get from him. Tiny Tim, who freely gave love and joy to all who came his way, has a death that rips up those around him. Both are alike in that they get their just rewards at death. However, those rewards are quite different.
Another glaring difference in the deaths of Tiny Tim and Scrooge is revealed in the descriptions of their grave sites. Tiny Tim's grave site is described by Bob Cratchit as a "green...place" that "would have done" Mrs. Cratchit "good" to see it. In contrast to this "green" heavenly site of Tiny Tim's grave, Dickens describes Scrooge's as
overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up with too much burying.
As for the comparisons of their deaths, a very interesting one can be seen in the common practice of the day; both of them are laid for viewing in their homes, and in their own beds.