Poverty Chritmas carol

Point 1

Poverty is seen through the cratchit family to symbolise the dignity and hardship of the working poor.

“Not a handsome family, yet they remain “happy,grateful and pleased with one another”. STAVE 3

-Revealing how love and togetherness can exist in hardship.Dickens uses Juxtaposition and listing here.

-By showing that the cratchits are emotionally rich even though they are financially poor, Dickens challenges the idea that poverty means misery.

-The word “grateful” stands out emphasising how they appreciate even the smallest joys of life. This evokes sympathy in the reader and admiration for their strength, especially when contrasted with Scrooges cold isolation

-Through the Cratchits,Dickens argues that poverty should be met with support, not judgment.

The setting and atmosphere of poverty

Dickens vividly depicts the squalid conditions of the poor to highlight society’s failure to care for its most vulnerable.

The streets are dedicated as “foul and narrow…. like so many cesspools” STAVE 4

This creates a powerful image of decay and neglect.Dickens uses simile and sensory language to evoke disgust.

-The use of ‘cesspools’ implies not just dirt, but danger-disease, filth and moral abandonment.

-The word forces the reader to imagine poverty not as distant but as something urgent and unclean.

-Dickens uses this setting to attack societal structures that allows such conditions to exist.

“The boy is Ignorance, the girl is want. The most striking image of poverty comes through dickens allegorical children,ignorance and want.

The boy is a symbol for society and how society is ignorant of the struggles of the lower class and struggles of children growing up in society, because poverty is ignored.This is due to the capitalist mindset that is pushed by society and this ignorance creates a cycle of suffering.

The girl want is a result of societies ignorance. It creates people who want. These wants are necessities that they need to survive but they don’t get these needs, b it due to ignorance of the rich, these needs are never met, creating a never ending cycle of suffering.

-Dickens uses these two to argue that ignoring the poor will lead to the downfall of society itself.

-This shocks the reader into recognising poverty as not only social failure but a dangerous one