SYMBOLISM

• Ebenezer Scrooge

– The typical greedy, oppressive capitalist

• Bob Cratchit

– The longsuffering, but faithful and good servant

• Marley’s Chains

– The money and priorities that Marley valued in his life while he was living.

• The chains represent his business affairs and pursuit of wealth

• Fred- Scrooge’s Nephew

– The perennial optimist

• The Ghost of Christmas Past

– Glimmering and shining (the past always seems brighter than the present), yet indistinct with parts fading in and out of view (memory is always incomplete)

• The Ghost of Christmas Present

– The cultural marriage of Father Christmas on the one hand and the pagan vegetation god on the other. Note his empty scabbard and his torch shaped like the horn of plenty

• The two children cowering beneath the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present represent the two social problems Dickens believed were the result of humanity’s greed, which if unchecked, would threaten humanity’s future.

» Boy Ignorance- willful blindness to suffering (Ignorance)

» Girl Want- pervasive poverty (Want)

• The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

– Silent, robed, and hooded like the figure of Death, the Grim Reaper; the uncertainty and fear of the future