Symbolism In A Christmas Carol

610 Words3 Pages
A CHRISMAS CAROL NOTES * Dickins love of wordplay is also evident at the beginning of the text. The very first line “Marley was dead to begin with”- can be read in multiple ways and is infused with subtle irony when we later realise that Marley is a ghost trapped in perpetual misery. * Dickins plays with imagery too. He uses the English winter to symbolise the iciness of scrooge’s heart and contrasts this with the warm family interiors at his nephew’s house and at the Cratchit hearth. * Immediately scrooge is contrasted with his warm and kind hearted nephew Fred who has coke to bid him Christmas tidings * Given these contrasts, we should expect a change in the imagery as Scrooge gradually warms tot eh Christmas spirit. Indeed,…show more content…
* Scrooges transformation from miser to philanthropist * Dickins sought to make his middle-class readers aware of the appealing poverty around them * Dickins revisits his indignation at this degrading treatment of some society’s most vulnerable people in A Christmas Carol when scrooge demands of the two gentlemen collecting subscriptions for the poor, “the treadmill and the poor law are in full vigour then?” these words come back to hunt scrooge several times in the course of the narrative and the inhumanity of his question is emphasised by his increased discomfort when confronted with his words. * By positioning Scrooge as an outsider, glimpsing the festivities from which he isolated himself, Dickins skilfully juxtaposes the dismal life of the selfish miser with the child-like glee of characters including bob Cratchit and Mr Fezziwig. * Obsessed with accumulating wealth and with no concern for his beleaguered employee, bob Cratchit, Scrooge is an allegorical representation of the forces of capitalism driving Britain’s industrial economy in the
Open Document