Point: initial coldness and isolation

O! B h w a t-f h a t g, S! a s, w, g, s, c, c o s!

“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!” Dickens’ exclamations paired with an asyndetic list of harsh adjectives, all becoming progressively more aggressive and extreme suggest Scrooge’s parsimonious and avaricious demeanour. The biblical image of “sinner” would resonate with a Christian Victorian audience, presenting Scrooge as morally corrupt rather than simply unpleasant, while the semantic field of greed reinforced by the metaphor of Scrooge as an unforgiving ‘fist’ reflects fears about capitalism making people emotionally cold. Dickens suggests greed is spiritually damaging and anti-Christian, perhaps criticising wealthy Victorians who valued profit over compassion during the Industrial Revolution.

h a s a f

Dickens describes Scrooge as “hard and sharp as a flint”. His simile and tactile imagery could accentuate that Dickens reflects Victorian concerns that industrial society had made people emotionally hard. The adjective ‘sharp’ carries connotations of knives, suggesting he wounds people’s feelings by his words and actions. Since the noun ‘flint’ is a type of stone, Dickens could be suggesting that Scrooge unfeeling, unsympathetic and emotionless, through his use of chremamorphism. From another perspective, a reader could consider a ‘flint’ to strike a fire, referring to Scrooge as doomed to eternal suffering in hell. On the other hand, it could foreshadow Scrooge’s eventual transformation and moral awakening, warmth, light, and how Scrooge will be a candle in the darkness for Tiny Tim, a force of positivity or spark of hope. This also mirrors Christian ideas that even sinful people can change and be redeemed.

s, a s-c, a s a a o

Dickens describes Scrooge as “secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster”. His repetition of sinister sibilance sounds encompassed in his triplet emphasises Scrooge’s unsociable persona. Dickens’ noun ‘oyster’ could reflect Scrooge shutting people out, leading to his self-created isolation. However, some readers may consider the simile to also serve as a metaphor, foreshadowing a hidden pearl within Scrooge’s character, hinting a potential metamorphosis. A contemporary audience might view Scrooge’s isolation as unnatural, because Victorians valued family and social responsibility. Dickens suggests isolation, here, is self-imposed and emotionally destructive.

f r w o h h

c w h f h o f

In the opening Stave the narrator is unsympathetic in his dealings with Scrooge, presenting him as wholly unlikeable through the use of an extended metaphor where Scrooge is likened to the weather. Dickens writes that a “frosty rime was on his head” and that the “cold within him froze his old features”. The fricative alliteration accentuates his coldheartedness, reflecting on his appearance. Dickens portrays him as a cold, hostile and unappealing character. This description in some ways presents him as an archetypal villain. Dickens’ use of pathetic fallacy paired with his metaphor could suggest that Scrooge’s frosty and unfriendly demeanour and appearance remains constant, as he cannot see the light in the darkness around him, since he himself is fuelled by darkness.

n w t b w b

a c, b, b w

Dickens describes that “no wind that blew was bitterer” than Scrooge; his plosive alliteration connotes hard, harsh and aggressive sounds, which modern readers may consider in keeping with his frosty demeanour. The pathetic fallacy parallels Scrooge’s lack of warmth. Some readers may consider Dickens description as a hyperbole, because Dickens asserts that there was “a cold, bleak, biting weather”, which mirrors the first description in terms of plosive alliteration and the aggressive connotations. Dickens’ tricolon encompassing adjectives of increasing severity may imply that the weather is perhaps almost too ‘bleak’ for a human to possibly encompass, but readers might feel that Scrooge evidently breaks this assumption. Dickens’ use of zoomorphism may depict the inclement weather as a predator; its hostility parallels Scrooge’s unkind and frosty conduct.

c’s f w s v m s

Dickens asserts that though Scrooge’s fire was small, his “clerk’s fire was so very much smaller”. The intensifiers and comparative adjectives ‘so very much’ may imply Scrooge’s ungenerous and parsimonious character. The fact that Scrooge’s clerk remains anonymous until Stave three highlights how Victorian society may have viewed the working class as faceless labour rather than individuals.

W t? I h b l t d, h h b d i, a d t s p

Scrooge asks the portly gentleman “What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” This rhetorical question emphasises Scrooge’s lack of empathy, because he does not wish to understand the suffering that the impoverished face. Instead, Dickens’ use of alliteration paired with harsh consonant sounds connote Scrooge’s bitter tone. Dickens attacks the Malthusian view, which suggested poverty was caused by overpopulation. Dickens’ phrase “surplus population” dehumanises the poor, reducing people to statistics. Victorian readers may recognise this as a criticism of cruel and unjust political and economic attitudes.