Term
"Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping,scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!" - Narrator |
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Definition
The exclamation mark in "Oh!"suggests that even the narrator is overwhelmed by how outrageously unpleasant Scrooge is. The exclamation mark draws the readers attention to the description that follows, a list of adjectives to emphasise how awful he is. Each adjective is also connected with the hands to show how he holds tightly to everything he has. |
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Term
"Hard and sharp as a flint....solitary as an oyster." - Narrator |
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Definition
This shows how he is a practical man not pretty and is a simile for his loneliness. Oyster shells are calcified, hard and irregular in shape. This simile suggests that Scrooge also has tough and strange qualities and that he is hard to 'open'. |
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Term
| "No warmth could warm nor wintery weather chill him." - Narrator |
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Definition
| Dickens portrays Scrooge as a cold hearted individual using the weather as a metaphor to show how he is immune to his surroundings and the people around him. |
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Term
| "....and tried to warm himself at the candle" - Narrator |
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Definition
Scrooge is stingy with his money and will not even allow his clerk to have a decent fire to warm him on Christmas Eve. Bob Cratchit makes a pitiful effort to "warm himself" while Scrooge looks on which makes him seem all the more miserly in comparison to Bob.
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Term
| "Every idiot who goes around 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!" - Scrooge |
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Definition
| Scrooge is the opposite to all the values we associate with Christmas and therefore he can't accept any offering to the season. The character of Scrooge is carefully constructed by Dickens through his descriptions to allow Victorian readers to identify with some of the characteristics of Scrooge and try to change it in their own lives. |
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Term
"If they would rather die....they had better do it and decrease the surplus population." - Scrooge |
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Definition
| Dickens highlights the importance of generosity and charity through Scrooge's blunt disconnection of the poor. The Industrial Revolution created a society in which the gap between the rich and the poor was huge. Those struggling to survive in extreme poverty relied on the generosity of those better off than themselves. Dickens aimed to reach out to the wealthy and to teach them to accept their responsibility through his novella. |
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Term
| "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese...." - Scrooge |
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Definition
| Scrooge tries to deny Marley's ghost's existence by attributing the vision to something he has eaten.He compares the ghost to an aysindetical list of ordinary food in an attempt to maintain his authority. |
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Term
| "The ancient tower of a church whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge" - Narrator |
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Definition
| A representation of the religion suggesting his actions are not going unnoticed. |
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Term
| "It's not my buisiness," - Scrooge |
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Definition
| Another key quote to describe Scrooge not taking responsibility for his actions. |
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Term
| "Cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds and heavy purses" - Narrator |
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Definition
| These items symbolise how Marley was obsessed with money - just like Scrooge. |
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