In A Christmas Carol, Dickens ably satirizes dominant social prejudices towards the poor and downtrodden. When Dickens wrote the story, most of his fellow countrymen believed that the poor were the architects of their own downfall—that they only had themselves to blame for their poverty. If people were poor, so the prejudice went, it was due to a moral failing on the part of the poor themselves. It was therefore deemed folly for the government to intervene to help the poorest members of society, as it was thought that it would be counterproductive, encouraging already lazy people to be even lazier.
Dickens challenges these assumptions in his portrayal of Bob Cratchit. By no stretch of the human imagination could Bob be described as lazy. On the contrary, he's a very hardworking man who slaves away at his desk for several hours a day for an absolute pittance. The problem...
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isn't him; it's his skinflint employer Scrooge, who won't pay him a decent wage.
In humanizing the poor in this way, Dickens is attempting to correct some of the worst prejudices of his readers. In the figure of Bob Cratchit, he shows us that hard work itself is not enough to dig oneself out of poverty and that most people are poor through no fault of their own.
Charles Dickens’ satire is always based upon the issues of the industrial revolution and how it specifically affected Victorian England. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is no exception. During the industrial revolution the rich become richer (in that they own the workhouses and factories) while the poor become poorer (in that they are left to work in the factories for low pay and are often unable to feed their families while they grow ever sicker because of poor conditions). Scrooge, of course, is an example of the rich in society. Luckily, he has a grand transformation to see the error of his ways. The poor are exemplified by many characters such as Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim.
Satire, of course, is the use of elements such as humor, irony, and exaggeration in order to highlight the problems in society. In my opinion, the best examples of satire are provided by the ghost of Christmas present quoting Scrooge’s own words. Earlier in the novel, Scrooge tells a couple of humanitarians that the poor, if they want to, should simply die to “decrease the surplus population.” Later in the novel, Scrooge becomes well acquainted with the poverty stricken (and crippled) Tiny Tim. The second spirit wastes no time in telling Scrooge that Tiny Tim is the very kind of person for whom Scrooge suggested death to decrease that surplus in the population. The spirit then reprimands Scrooge severely by using exaggeration saying the following:
Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child.
It is examples just like this one (that often make the reader chuckle) that show Dickens’ satire of the rich in Victorian England in order to indicate the plight of the poor.