How Does Scrooge Change In A Christmas Carol

“The intimate contest for self-command never ends, and lifetime happiness requires finding the right balance between present impulses and future well-being,” Author, Virginia Postrel. This is particularly evident in Charles Dickens’s classic novella, A Christmas Carol. In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is a selfish and unthoughtful man who hates Christmas. Marley, his old business partner, comes to him and tells him that three ghosts will come, and they do. The ghosts show him things from his past, present, and future that help him become a kind and generous person at the end of the story. In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, plot and characterization demonstrate that the quest for happiness is the reason people change.

First, the plot of the story emphasizes the theme. In the beginning, Scrooge walks through his house in the dark because “darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it” (Dickens 15). Scrooge doesn't like to spend his money and he believes that wealth will make him happy. He does not enjoy being with others, so he sits alone in the dark. Next, the ghost of Christmas past shows him the scene of him and his old master Fezziwig, and Scrooge tells the ghost, “‘The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a

The ghost of Christmas future takes him to his grave and he is shocked to see what has been written on his gravestone, he cries out to the spirit to “‘tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone’” (Dickens 103). Scrooge wants to change as a person. He realizes that in order to be happy, he must accept others into his life. Finally, Scrooge, a merry man, lives a life of joy “and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well if any man alive possessed the knowledge” (Dickens 113). Scrooge has finally discovered what it means to be happy. He realizes that joy comes from being together with other people and helping others