Examples Of Scrooge In A Christmas Carol

The society of the 1800s had an atrocious attitude towards charities and the poor. Charles Dickens had a first hand experience to this barbaric society. At a young age, his father was ripped away from him to be put into a debtors prison and Dickens was then forced to work at a blacking factory. There, he was exposed to all the inequitable treatment of the corrupt government. Dickens wanted reform against the unjust system, but improvement didn’t seem to be an option. He channeled his criticism into a novella and characters to create a realistic scenario of this social, economic, and moral issue. In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens uses the character Scrooge as a parallel to represent the callous government against the poor in the Victorian Society of the 1800s.

When Scrooge encounters a gentleman, he sarcastically responds, “Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation?” (Dickens 6). Dickens hints here that even at the most buoyant time of the year, greediness and selfishness can bring out the true personality of a government official or in this case, Scrooge. Not only would this occur on this seemingly joyful day, but in everyday Victorian society the poor faced the rejection of aid from the upperclass. Scrooge saw no reason to donate or even have an ounce of heart for them because prisons and workhouses were where they belonged. In the quote, “If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population” (Dickens 6), Dickens reveals how their purpose in society is not needed. That their death would help everyone because there’s already too many people in the society. Scrooge exemplifies this by never minding the poor and his family. He believes that money and selfishness wins over being