How Does Scrooge Change In A Christmas Carol

Does doing one good thing make up for all the bad things a person has done? No, it does not. Scrooge is a cruel and grumpy old man from “A Christmas Carol” written by Charles Dickens. He is not sympathetic. However, some people say that he is because he changed in the end, but doing one good thing does not make up for all the bad things a person has done and Scrooge was mean and cruel for the majority of his life.

To begin with, Scrooge was mean and cruel for the majority of his life. This can be seen at the beginning of “A Christmas Carol” when he was interacting with his employee Bob, the volunteers, and his nephew Fred. For example, when the volunteers asked him to make a donation to the poor, he said “It’s enough for a man to understand

This can be seen when Scrooge interacts with the same people he did at the beginning; his nephew, the volunteers, and his employee Bob. He acts nice towards all of them and gives money to charity, shows up at his nephew's party, and even increases Bob's salary. In addition to that, his past is what makes most people feel sympathy for him. When the Ghost of Christmas Past first takes Scrooge back to his childhood school, we observe that most Christmases he remained at the empty school, alone. (#33, Dickens) And then, finally, one Christmas, his sister arrives at the school and says that their father, so much kinder than he used to be, has consented to Scrooge coming home for Christmas. She says it very optimistically but adds “And you’re to be a man!” essentially revealing to us that the father has decided that it is time for Ebenezer to leave school and go to work. (#34, Dickens) Regardless, what we see is that Scrooge, as a boy, felt unwanted and alone. The experience must have given him a sense of inferiority – that he wasn’t good enough for his father to love him. Young Scrooge, feeling inferior, searched for security. He found that possibility of that security in the acquisition of wealth, but the hole within him could not be filled with money. Trying to have enough money to feel secure became an obsession, an obsession that his fiancee saw, and drove her to release him from their

Scrooge lived every day in fear and that fear desiccated his soul. However, I do not think that Scrooge is sympathetic because his past does not have anything to do with other people. He should have never acted the way he did because he was cruel and mean to the people closest to him. My evidence clearly shows that he isn’t sympathetic and the actual reason he changed was because the Ghost of Christmas Future told him he was gonna die unless he changes, so that fear made him change, which is a selfish act because he only did it for himself. This can be seen when he says “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach…” (#84, Dickens) The reader can certainly see that he is scared and that he is only saying this out of fear which is why he is not