A Christmas Carol (Essay Example)

Often time’s people get set in their ways, and it is hard for them to see themselves as others do. For most people to change their behavior, a significant emotional event must take place. For example, people who contract an illness such as cancer often make radical changes in their lifestyle and behavior when confronted with the fragility of life. In literature, change is often accompanied by great drama such as A Christmas Carol where the character Ebenezer Scrooge tries to find out who he is. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens uses the supernatural to dramatize the need for Ebenezer Scrooge to change from miser to socially responsible citizen. At the start of the novella, Scrooge is a bitter man who is obsessed with money and completely shuts himself from society. Scrooge is defined as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner,” (2). It identifies him as a man with no heart and does not give a care about others in the world. During the time where we read about Scrooge talking with his nephew, Fred, we learn about Scrooge’s obvious hate for Christmas. To him, Christmas is nothing but a “Humbug” (3) or hypocrisy. Scrooge gives a speech about why people should not like Christmas and says “Every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding,” (3-4). As if Scrooge didn’t get his point across, he tells Fred to “keep Christmas in [him] own way, and let [Scrooge] keep it in [his],” (4). As Fred leaves, two portly gentlemen walk in looking for donations. Scrooge does not want to give up his money so he firmly states that he will give them “Nothing!” (6). Even though he has a lot of money, he says that he “can’t afford to make idle people merry,” (6). As Scrooge argues with the men about how the poor could live in prisons or go to the Union workhouses, one of the gentlemen says that many of the people would rather die than go to those places. Being the mean old man he is, Scrooge has the nerve