Hypocrisy in a Christmas Carol: A Study of Scrooge Sejal Sharma 10th Grade

‘Jacob Marley was as dead as a doornail.’ The celebrated author Charles Dickens accentuates this inert nature of a door nail to the society to 1843 England through his classic novella ‘A Christmas Carol.’ The novella’s titular character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is a product of human hypocrisy. Scrooge accedes to ‘Ignorance’ and ‘Want’ in order to be accepted into the society that fathers these ‘wretched children’ and chisels the traits they embody; but are then socially ostracized for doing so. A transformed Ebenezer addresses his accountability after he is confronted by ramifications of his past, present, and future but the society that is pivotal in sculpting Scrooge does not.

Socially ostracized for fostering society’s ideals, Ebenezer has no choice but the pursuit of money. Although propelled by ambition, the winter of Scrooge’s life is founded on the neglect and abandonment continuously thrust on him by society. A ‘poor but content’ man, who only engages himself in the pursuit of wealth in order to elevate himself from the status of a ‘neglected, solitary child’, again finds himself shunned from society. Dickens positions this point in Ebenezer’s life as a shadow climax, which although not explicitly stated in the book, can be...