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Ebenezer Scrooge

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 24.63.171.108 (talk) at 19:58, 15 December 2010 (Removed error: Fan is the younger sibling. Scrooge's mother could not have died giving birth to Ebenzer.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Scroogie Scrooge
'A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas' character
Ebenezer Scrooge encounters "Jacob Marley's ghost" in Dickens's novel, A Christmas Carol
Created byCharles Dickens
Portrayed bySee below
In-universe information
SpeciesHuman
GenderMale
OccupationMoneylender
FamilyFred (nephew)
Fan/Fran (sister)
NationalityBritish

Ebenezer Scrooge is the principal character in Charles Dickens' 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol. At the beginning of the novel, Scrooge is a cold-hearted, tight-fisted and greedy man, who despises Christmas and all things which give people happiness. Dickens describes him thus: "The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and he spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice ..." His last name has come into the English language as a byword for miserliness and misanthropy, traits displayed by Scrooge in the exaggerated manner for which Dickens is well-known. The tale of his redemption by the three Ghosts of Christmas (Ghost of Christmas Past, Ghost of Christmas Present, and Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) has become a defining tale of the Christmas holiday. Scrooge's catchphrase, "Bah, humbug!" is often used to express disgust with many of the modern Christmas traditions.

Origins

Several theories have been put forward as to where Dickens got the inspiration for the character.

  • One school of thought believes that it stems from a grave marker for an Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie. The marker identified Scroggie as a "meal man" (corn merchant), but Dickens misread this as "mean man".[1]
  • Still more claim that Dickens based Scrooge's views on the poor on those of demographer and political economist Thomas Malthus.[2]
  • Yet others that the minor character Gabriel Grub from The Pickwick Papers was worked up into a more mature characterisation (his name stemming from an infamous Dutch miser, Gabriel de Graaf.)[3][4]
  • Jeremy Wood (James/Jemmy/Jacabos), owner of the Gloucester Old Bank and possibly Britain’s first millionaire, became a nationally known figure for his miserly ways, and may have been another.[5]
  • The man whom Dickens would eventually mention in his letters[6] and who strongly resembles the character portrayed by Dickens' illustrator, John Leech, was a noted British eccentric and miser named John Elwes (1714–1789).

Story

The story of A Christmas Carol starts on Christmas Eve, with Scrooge at his place of business. The book says that Scrooge lives in London, England. Charles Dickens refers to Scrooge as "...a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!" It is usually assumed that he is a banker or professional money lender. Some recent versions portray him as a solicitor. Whatever his main business is, he seems to have usurious relationships with people of little means. These relationships, along with his lack of charity and shabby treatment of his clerk, Bob Cratchit, seem to be his major vices.

His nephew however, has great regard for Christmas and we are introduced to him early in the story.

Scrooge has only disgust for the poor, thinking the world would be better off without them, "decreasing the surplus population," and praise for the Victorian era workhouses. He has a particular distaste for the merriment of Christmas; his single act of kindness is to give his clerk, Bob Cratchit, the day off with pay. Done more as a result of social mores than kindness, Scrooge sees the practice akin to having his pocket picked on an annual basis.

After introducing Scrooge and showing his shabby treatment of his employee, business men, and only living relative, the novel resumes with Scrooge at his residence, intent on spending Christmas Eve alone. While he is preparing to go to bed, he is visited by the ghost of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley. Marley (who had died seven years earlier on Christmas Eve) spent his life exploiting the poor and as a result is damned to walk the Earth for eternity bound in chains of his own greed. Marley warns Scrooge that he risks meeting the same fate, and that as a final chance of escape he will be visited by three spirits: Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The rest of the novel acts as a biography and psychological profile, showing his evolution to his current state, and the way he is viewed by others.

As promised, the Ghost of Christmas Past visits Scrooge first and takes him to see his time as a schoolboy many years earlier. Here it is suggested that his father abandoned young Scrooge at his boarding school, even during Christmas. This is relevant to Scrooge, because it shows the beginnings of his lack of socialization and empathy. He does not socialize because he never experienced steady growth in a strong family unit. He does not empathize thanks to the way he was treated: as a child, he was the least of his father's concerns, and this in turn taught him not to feel for fellow humans. In some versions of the story, his father goes to jail for not paying debt – it is hinted that he may have died while in prison. Later the ghost shows how his success in business made him become obsessive and develop a workaholic tendency. His money and work-obsessed personality traits eventually compel Scrooge's fiancée, Belle, to leave him, which further hardens his heart. The death of his sister Fran, the one relative who had a close relationship with him, also injures him greatly enough that he loses any love he had for the world. Scrooge has only his nephew left but doesn't particularly care for him, likely due to Scrooge blaming him for his sister's death following childbirth.

The visit by the Ghost of Christmas Past also reveals the origin of Scrooge's neurotic hatred of Christmas; most of the events that negatively affected Scrooge's character occurred during the Christmas holiday season.

One of the sources of his negative ways is the pain he feels for losing his love, Belle. Engaged to be married to her, he keeps pushing back the wedding until his finances are as healthy as he would like; something that, given his insatiable lust for money, he would probably never have. Realizing this, Belle calls off the engagement and eventually marries someone else, causing Scrooge to further withdraw from society and relationships.

Scrooge and Bob Cratchit illustrated by John Leech in 1843

Scrooge is then visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows him the happiness of his nephew's middle-class social circle and the impoverished Cratchit family. The latter have a young son (Tiny Tim) who is lame, yet the family still manages to live happily on the pittance Scrooge pays his clerk. When Scrooge asks if Tim will die, the ghost – quick to use Scrooge's past unkind comments to two charitable solicitors against him – suggests "they had better do it now, and decrease the surplus population".

The ghost also warns him of the evils of Ignorance and Want. As the spirit's robe is drawn back Scrooge is shocked to see these two aspects of the human psyche suddenly manifest before him as vicious, terrifying, little children, who are more animal than human in appearance.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge the final consequences of his actions. Tiny Tim has died from his illness, leaving the entire Cratchit family in mourning. In addition, Scrooge's solitary life and disdain for those in need will ultimately lead others to find comfort and happiness from his own death. No one will mourn his passing and his money and possessions will be stolen by the desperate and corrupt, the very people he condemned in life. The only people who feel any emotion are a young couple Scrooge was about to ruin financially. His death, however, allows them the small amount of extra time (while Scrooge's affairs were being settled) to raise the funds to pay off their debt to his estate. His final legacy will be that of a cheap tombstone in an unkept graveyard. Scrooge then weeps over his own grave, begging the ghost for a chance to change his ways before awakening to find it is Christmas morning. He has been given an opportunity to repent after all. Scrooge does so and becomes a model of generosity and kindness. "Many laughed to see this alteration in him, but he let them laugh and little heeded them. His own heart laughed and that was quite enough for him. And it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well if any man alive possessed the knowledge."

Actors portraying Ebenezer Scrooge

Scrooge has been portrayed by:

Scrooge and the English language

The name "Scrooge" is used even outside of the UK and the US as a word for a person who is always complaining. Interestingly, it is almost always used in that context, and not as a person who changes from bad to good, despite the fact that his unpleasant side is only shown in its entirety within the first chapter, or "stave".

The character is most often noted for exclaiming "Bah! Humbug!" in spite of uttering this phrase only twice in the entire book. The word "Humbug" he uses on its own seven times, although on the seventh we are told that he "stopped at the first syllable" after realising Marley's ghost is real. The word is never used again from thereon in the book.

The word "Ebenezer" comes from Hebrew and is actually two words pronounced together: Even Haezer. It is usually transliterated as a proper name by dropping the definite article (Ha) from the Hebrew word for "help" (Ezer) and putting it together with the Hebrew word for "stone" (Even) to create: "Ebenezer." The etymological roots of the word, thus defined, should demonstrate that an "Ebenezer" is, literally, a "Stone of Help." The Biblical Scripture reads as follows:

“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer; for he said, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’ So the Philistines were subdued and did not again enter the territory of Israel; the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel. The towns that the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron to Gath; and Israel recovered their territory from the hand of the Philistines. There was peace also between Israel and the Amorites.” (1 Samuel 7:12-14 NRSV)

A species of snail is named Ba humbugi after Scrooge's comment.[8][9]

Scrooge appears in Louis Bayard's 2003 novel "Mr. Timothy," a mystery story starring Tim Cratchit and touted as a partial sequel to Dickens' story.

See Also

Grinch

References

  1. ^ Scotsman.com News
  2. ^ Frank W. Elwell, Reclaiming Malthus, 2 November 2001, accessed 28 September 2006
  3. ^ "Real-life Scrooge was Dutch gravedigger"
  4. ^ "fake Scrooge 'was Dutch gravedigger'"
  5. ^ "Jeremy Wood"
  6. ^ The Letters of Charles Dickens by Charles Dickens, Madeline House, Graham Storey, Margaret Brown, Kathleen Tillotson, & The British Academy (1999) Oxford University Press [Letter to George Holsworth, 18 Jan. 1865] pp.7
  7. ^ Fleming, Michael. "Jim Carrey set for 'Christmas Carol': Zemeckis directing Dickens adaptation", Variety, 2007-07-06. Retrieved on 2007-09-11.
  8. ^ "Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature". Retrieved 2008-12-23.
  9. ^ Fountain, Henry (2005-02-20). "Ba Humbugi! Let's Nameus That Speciesus". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-12-23.
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