Mr. Dickens And His Carol

Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella A Christmas Carol is a story about a cold and unkind miser named Ebenezer Scrooge who experiences redemption after being visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. The novella is divided into five chapters, which Dickens calls “staves.” In the first stave, Ebenezer Scrooge rejects his nephew Fred’s invitation for Christmas dinner and refuses to donate money to the poor when two men ask him to do so. He also pays his clerk, Bob Cratchit, very little money and only gives him paid leave for Christmas Day. That night, he is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, who is forced to carry chains due to his greed and neglect of the poor in life. Marley tells Scrooge that three ghosts will visit him and that he must listen to them or suffer a worse punishment than Marley. In the second stave, the Ghost of Christmas Past visits Scrooge and compels him to revisit his childhood and young adulthood. He remembers Belle, whom he planned to marry until she realized that he was too greedy. The ghost also shows him Belle’s family on the day that Jacob Marley died. This makes Scrooge regret how poorly he treated her.