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Grade 9 christmas carol analysis + garde 9 exemplar answer
Grade 9 christmas carol analsyis + Model Grade 9 answer
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Starting with this extract, explore how Dickens presents the effects of greed in AChristmas Carol.
Write about:
How Dickens presents the effects of greed in this extract.
How Dickens presents the effects of greed in the novel as a whole.
As he explains in the forward to his novel, Dickens uses A Christmas Carol to
“raise the Ghost of an Idea” - this "idea" is that readers should embody the spirit
of Christmas all year round (valuing family, behaving charitably, experiencing joy
and placing faith in redemption). Underpinning all of these aspects is the denial
of personal greed. It is with this idea Dickens intends to “haunt” his readers
“pleasantly”: we are moved through emotions and lessons towards an epiphany
by the “spirit at [our] elbow”. First, Scrooge and the reader are haunted by the
“Ghost of Christmas Past”, who works to the "reclamation" of humanity and
instils the value of family and fellow man - causing Scrooge to see how Greed
has corrupted his own life and happiness. Second, the “Ghost of Christmas
Present” raises socio-political issues of 1843 England - used to demonstrate the
wider consequences of Greed in society. Third, the “Ghost of Christmas Yet to
Come” brings both prior strands together, and inspires a desire for redemption -
a turning away from the sin of Greed and towards cardinal virtues.
Dickens uses the character of Scrooge to illustrate how greed might develop.
Dickens returns to his past, the "prime of his life", when he began to "wear the
signs of care and avarice" and when there was a "greedy, restless motion in the
eye" - a description that might inspire the same antipathy as the sight of the
miserly grotesque in his counting-house, as per the initial stave. But, Dickens
then uses a dialogue with Belle to present the very human, empathetic origins of
the "passion" that had "taken root". She believes that he had replaced her with
a “golden” Idol, believing him to have altered in character from valuing her to
valuing money (his values as presented in the opening stave). Yet, Scrooge's
own account indicates that he feared "poverty" - an understandable concern.
This causes Belle to somewhat modify her condemnation, telling him "You fear
the world too much". Nevertheless, she explains that his "nobler aspirations"
began to "fall off one by one" until "Gain" began to "engross" him - and thus his
once understandable aims have given way to a detrimental obsession.
This dialogue becomes a warning to readers: it is then, in the next scene,
when Scrooge (and the reader) can see how his desire for gain has ironically left
him worse off. When he witnesses Belle with her husband and children, Scrooge
vacillates between his interest in wealth and his latent desire for a family – and
Dickens utilises what might be considered a proto-Modernist stream of
consciousness to present this wavering. First, Scrooge observes that the room is
“not very large or handsome”, before realizing it is “full of comfort”. Then, when
he observes their “tumultuous” behaviour, he exclaims “What would I not have
given to be one of them!” – before immediately retracting with an opposing
exclamation, “Though I never could have been so rude, no, no!” But, finally, his
thoughts become reconciled when he values “an inch” of a child’s hair to be “a
keepsake beyond price”, and then will “confess” to himself that he “should have
liked […] to have had the lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man
enough to know its value”. Here, the language of finance and trade (“price”,
“licence”, “value”) applied now to family indicates that Scrooge has now
transitioned in attitude: he now recognises the worth of family. Dickens then
renders Scrooge an even more sympathetic figure when he is compelled to
witness the “master of the house”, the father, return and sit with his daughter.
, When Scrooge “thought that such another creature, quite as graceful and as full
of promise, might have called him father, and been a spring-time in the haggard
winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed”. Here, the reference to seasons
also suggests a transition in character: while in the first stave he was associated
with a “cold within” and “frosty rime”, he now sees the “haggard winter” of his
old age as a cause for depression – and realises he is much in need of the
warmth and light that young family members can bestow.
Having illustrated the detrimental effect of greed upon the individual, Dickens
presents the awful consequences upon wider society. At the close of the third,
Dickens constructs the manifestations, personifications of Ignorance and Want to
illustrate the “degradation” and “perversion” humanity has inflicted upon itself.
They are characterised through lists of adjectives that hold very different
connotations and evoke very different attitudes: at times, they seem “wretched”,
“abject”, “meagre” (conveying vulnerability and evoking pity); but they also
seem “ragged”, “miserable”, “yellow” (perhaps provoking repulsion); and, they
also seem “frightful”, “hideous”, “scowling”, “wolfish” (perhaps provoking fear
and disdain). Scrooge asks the question of the charitable: “Have they no refuge
or resource?”. The spirit then echoes his own words to the portly gentleman,
when he represented the greedy: “Are there no prisons?” and “Are there no
workhouses?” Dickens thus evidences both the voice of sympathy and the voice
of the callous yet again opposed political beliefs – intending to condemn those
who created and supported the Poor Law Amendment of 1834, in order to
greedily slash expenditure on poverty by setting up a cruelly deterrent regime.
Now, the reader should side with the altered Scrooge – and recognise the
“monsters” and that “They are Man’s”. Poverty has “twisted them, and pulled
them into shreds”, and turned them from “angels” towards “devils” that “lurked,
and glared out menacingly”. They are to be owned, therefore – and the spirit is
used to issue a warning if mankind does not acknowledge them and remedy their
causes: “Beware them both […] I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased”. There is an irony to this: short-term greed for some results
in long-term disaster for all humanity.
Thus, throughout the novel, Dickens uses the spirits to guide away from greed
and towards charity. The transformation of Scrooge is shown through the change
from the first to the last stave; in particular, Dickens uses Scrooge’s interactions
with a charity collector to show how a "merciless creditor" to a compassionate
benefactor . In the opening of the novel, a portly gentleman solicits charity for
“the Poor and destitute” who “suffer greatly at the present time” – perhaps
alluding to Dickens’s own time, the so-called ‘Hungry Forties’ (as historians
would later designate the period). Yet, Scrooge is at first unaffected by words
and debate, and he remains cold, caustic and unsympathetic: he tells the
gentleman, “If they would rather die […] they had better do it, and decrease the
surplus population.” Here, Scrooge alludes to the tract by Thomas Malthus, who
suggested that those whose labour was not required had no right to life. But, at
the close of the novel, in their second meeting, Scrooge “quickened his pace” in
eagerness to speak with the man – a complete contrast to when he announced “I
wish to be left alone”. He then greets him as “my dear sir”, before whispering a
sum of money so great that the charity collector exclaims “Lord bless me!” in
surprise. Of course, Scrooge’s generosity is somewhat self-serving – these “back-
payments” are required for his own redemption (a Christian idea that means to
literally ‘buy back’), and corresponds with Marley’s warning that to escape
purgatory Scrooge will need to make “mankind” his “business”.
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