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Ebenezer Scrooge (/ ˌ ɛ b ɪ ˈ n iː z ər ˈ s k r uː dʒ /) is a fictional character and the protagonist of Charles Dickens's 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol.Initially a cold-hearted miser who despises Christmas, his redemption by visits from the ghost of Jacob Marley, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come has become a defining ...
That night Scrooge is visited at home by Marley's ghost, who wanders the Earth entwined by heavy chains and money boxes forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a single chance to avoid the same fate: he will be visited by three spirits and must listen or be cursed to carry much heavier chains of his own.
Scrooge learns that unless the future changes, the Cratchit's disabled son, Tiny Tim, will die. The final spirit is The Ghost of the Future. This spirit shows Scrooge scenes of people discussing someone's death. The people in the room do not seem to care about the deceased. Scrooge suddenly realizes that he is the man whose death is celebrated.
Paul Carlin, right, as Ebenezer Scrooge and Curt Denham as The Ghost of Christmas Present in "A Christmas Carol" at The Maltz Jupiter Theatre in Jupiter, Florida, earlier this month.
He is the Scrooge of the story, a hard-hearted, unfeeling man who has lived off of the exploitation of children all his life. He is the employer of Caleb Plummer and schemes to marry May Fielding. Like Scrooge, he softens at the end of the story in The Cricket on the Hearth.
The fact that Scrooge seems to hate Christmas makes us ascribe the saying to someone who simply has no interest in the holiday. However, there is more to the meaning than just a general dislike.
Engraving of Old Christmas 1842 - Illustrated London News (December 1842). The Ghost of Christmas Present is described as "a jolly Giant", and Leech's hand-coloured illustration of the friendly and cheerful Spirit, his hand open in a gesture of welcome confronted by the amazed Scrooge has been described by Jane Rabb Cohen as elegantly combining "the ideal, real, and supernatural" with humour ...
Angela Carter first did this in 1979 with The Bloody Chamber, a powerfully savage collection that morphs delicate Beauty into a beastly tigress. Rather than merely mocking the conventions upheld by sedate, waif-like princesses, she kept the appealing structures of popular fairy tales in place, filling them in with uncensored human subjects.