Fate In A Christmas Carol

Have you ever done something and thought that it was someone else’s fault? Blamed it on your sibling? All do it, even Charles Dickens. But in “A Christmas Carol”, Charles Dickens explains how one’s fate belongs to one’s actions through the spirits of Christmas past, present and future. Scrooge’s late business partner and friend Jacob Marley visits Scrooge as a spirit and warns him if he keeps up his malicious deeds he too would bear the chains that Marley wears. Jacob also mentions three spirits that will help Scrooge change into a better man.

Scrooge doesn’t like or want anything to do with Christmas, social events, or people who are ‘unnecessarily joyful’. The only person he would interact with is his late partner Jacob Marley. They

The light that shines from this Ghost’s head is the “illumination” which can come from one reflecting on his/her past and the cap the Ghost wears symbolizes the ability one has to extinguish the light from a memory that Scrooge later attempts to do. This Ghost is also described on page 54 as being “...like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man.” This describes Scrooge’s past. He was a child, yet he worked, talked and acted like an old man. Perhaps caused by his past, being a pupil who was lonely and neglected ( pg 59 as “‘A solitary child, neglected by his friends is left there still.’” ). When his little sister Fanny comes to bring Ebenezer home for Christmas one can understand that he is not with his family for most of his childhood. In the 1800s, London, England, it was common for families to put their children in workhouses which might have been what happened to Ebenezer. Even when Ebenezer was home, Fanny talks of it as if it may not have been a pleasant place to go. (“‘He spoke to me so gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home!’” pg 63) Belle is one of the only things besides money in Scrooge’s life that made him happy. The only woman he has ever loved. Near the end of the first spirit’s life, the spirit show Scrooge one more significant event occurring in his