Ebenezer Scrooge is a character who has been jaded by life experiences and corrupted with outward hate, that, as one reads A Christmas Carol, can see stems from inward hate. The infamous “bah-humbug” is a popular response from Scrooge when any mention of Christmas fills his ears, and any extension of happiness from someone in proximity dares approach him. In this literary analysis I will argue how the character of Scrooge reveals and emphasizes the ideas of how the past, present, and future are coupled with William Blake’s Romantic period concepts of “innocence and experience” in his two Introductions in the Songs of Innocence and Experience.
In the beginning of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge has a bitter encounter with his nephew, who is a clerk for him at his business, and reluctantly gives him Christmas day off work. His nephew, kind and patient, invites his uncle over for Christmas dinner the following evening in hopes to brighten his meager spirit. As his nephew persists, Scrooge resists, and his only response is “Good afternoon!” Initially, this encounter with his nephew made me wonder why Scrooge completely resisted any conversation of Christmas, of love, (asking his nephew why in fact he chose to get married) as well as the efforts of some charitable gentleman looking for donations of local business to help the poor. Scrooge is cynical. That is evident right away.
An interesting encounter with Scrooge and the Ghost of Jacob Marley suggests the “chain” of experiences created in life and still heavy after death. “I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will…. Or would you know, the weight and length of strong coil you bear yourself? (Dickens 14). This denotes Marley as a prophet of experience, which William Blake emulated while enticing his readers in his Songs of Innocence and Experience. In his Songs of Experience “Introduction,” Blake opens with, “Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, and Future sees. Whose ears have heard, The Holy Word, That walk’d among the ancient trees” (Blake). Blake is a prophet of experiences for his readers, just as Jacob Marley was an initial prophet for Scrooge before his three hauntings. It is also possible that “the voice of the Bard,” is linked to the later Victorian character of Jacob Marley.
The Ghost of Christmas Past is the inaugural jolt for Scrooge’s corrupted experiences back to the innocence of childhood. Instantly, as the Ghost takes him to the town where he was raised, Scrooge is overwhelmed with emotion, perhaps for the first time in many years and begins to cry. His next out-of-character response is his sympathy, saying “poor boy” to a scene the Ghost replayed him of his younger years, and begins to ponder his own present – how he had scolded a young caroler and now regrettably wishes he had given him the time of day. Scrooge is again overwhelmed with emotions when the Ghost brings him to a different Christmas, one where he sees the younger version of his sister: bright, innocent, and full of hope regardless of her brother’s depressing situation at school. Her attitude reflects William Blake’s view of “innocence” before being corrupted with experience. Blake uses words in his Songs of Innocence “Introduction” such as “piping,” “pleasant glee,” “child,” and “laughing” to ignite a positive connotation of innocence and youth to readers. It is in direct contrast with is vocabulary in his “Introduction” in the Songs of Experience in which he uses words like “Lapsed soul,” “weeping,” “night is worn,” and “wilt” all of which are associated to sadness with a negative connotation. Blake’s depiction of innocence with his drawings and calligraphy in his first “Introduction” are very fairytale-like, provoking a lighter mood that innocence can emulate in one who had not been jaded by corruptive experiences. Scrooge’s sister is an example of Blake’s view of innocence just has Scrooge is a beautiful, tainted outcome of a man clouded with his experiences. In this first scenario, the Ghost of Christmas Past acts as a prophet of experience, as Blake was self-proclaimed, while Scrooge is an example of experience who gets a taste again of what it was like to be innocent.
We move on to Scrooge’s second haunting where he meets the Ghost of Christmas Present and is exposed to the events happening around him in the present. He is first shown the home of the Cratchits, where there is so much love and joy apparent in their tiny home amongst second-hand clothing with minimal food for a large family. Nevertheless, when Mrs. Cratchit asked her husband how their youngest and crippled son, Tiny Tim, behaved while they were out, Mr. Cratchit responded with a peculiar thought of his son’s that clearly stuck with him, telling his wife that Tiny Tim said “because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see” (Dickens 37). This is another example of how innocence has not been corrupted with the negativity of reality. Tiny Tim could undoubtedly be a miserable child with his given limitations. Rather, he chooses to see the light of Christ in those that pass him, even as a very young boy. This is in contrast with Scrooge, whose innocence was corrupted at a young age with an angry father and many years spent in solitude in a boarding school, not seeking out love or positivity elsewhere.
This is also reflected in Scrooge’s dark obsession to make money and shut those around him out, which given his childhood could be the only way he knows how to be successful. We learned this when Scrooge was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, his love, who had stuck by him through much of his darkness, ultimately chose to leave him, making remarks leading up to her dismissal such as, “You are changed, when it was made, you were another man,” and Scrooge asking her prior, “What Idol has displaced you?” and she responds, “A golden one” (Dickens 27). I believe that corruption and cloudiness are traits that William Blake wanted to bring to life from this Songs of Experience; one would not understand what corruption of the mind truly is without knowing at one point what having an innocent mind is like. Blake needed to reaffirm his ideas regarding the self and what the past and present can determine about ones’ future – how ones’experiences shape the person that is grown from the initial stage of innocence. It led me to wonder throughout reading A Christmas Carol if Scrooge had love in his heart and mind prior to the angry and desolate person he had become, or if he learned those dark life experiences and feelings at too early of an age to retain any memory of innocence. The point of Jacob Marley, and of the three Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future were to be prophets for Scrooge personally throughout to re-emphasize what truly matters in life, compared to William Blake’s inherent prophetism in his Songs of Innocence and Experience in which he is a prophet for his many, in this case, his readers.
The Ghost of Christmas Future is the final prophet of self-reflection that Scrooge is offered as he is revealed a doomed future. The silent, ominous spirit leads him around his present town, and someone has died. The reader can understand that the person the townspeople are referring to is Scrooge, though Dickens doesn’t make Scrooge apparent of his own death until the end of this encounter. He sees a dead man in a bed but cannot bear to look close enough to confirm the identity. Tiny Tim is dying. The death of this “unknown” man had put many at concern of what their futures will come to be, as Scrooge seemed to have been a creditor. The death of Scrooge in this futuristic possibility is the talk about by many on the streets and around the town, but not one person mourns his death. He experiences those around him going about their lives as if they could sleep more soundly now that Scrooge was no longer with them. The most powerful scene in the novel, to me, is when Scrooge askes the Ghost of Christmas Future, “…answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they the shadows of things that May be, only?” (Dickens 58).
Although Scrooge had many points of realization through the shadows of his past, present, and future, his “lapsed Soul,” as Dickens coined, needed to be awakened to reclaim the child-like “glee” necessary for a reformation. As Scrooge had promised himself, and the versions of himself he had seen from the past, he would reform from his bitter experiences and expand himself to exemplify the kindness to others he may have not received in his own life. He is now aware of how his experiences paved the way for his life of heavy chains and bitterness but can recognize that there are some in this world who would be better off staying innocent, as well as noticing through his hauntings that not all who have been dealt a poor hand in life choose to live bitter because of their experiences.
Works Cited
Blake, William. “Songs of Innocence and of Experience.” The William Blake Archive, 2003, http://www.blakearchive.org/copy/songsie.b?descId=songsie.b.illbk.05.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2020.
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