Essay question:
Starting with this extract, how does Dickens present Scrooge as a loner?
Within the extract, Dickens portrays Scrooge as a loner through the juxtaposing themes of isolation and Christmas. An example of this would be the first sentence of this extract, ‘Once upon a time - of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve - old Scrooge sat busy in his counting house.’ This juxtaposition emphasises to the reader the strangeness that despite the merriment of Christmas, a time to spend with your family and friends, Scrooge chooses to continue working alone, because he either dislikes his peers or has no friends, implying that Scrooge is a loner.
The theme of isolation continues through the extract and is shown by how Dickens separates Scrooge indoors, and the people enjoying Christmas outdoors. ‘He could hear the people in the court outside’ tells the reader that whilst people are celebrating Christmas outside, ‘beating their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them’, Scrooge is sat alone, indoors, with ‘a very small fire’ going. This separation shows to the reader that Scrooge is unwelcomed and is casted out in society, for he is antisocial and is always fixated on money
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Scrooge lives in a ‘gloomy suite of rooms in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing hide and seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.’ Scrooge’s personal loneliness is reflected through the personification of his residence and tells the reader that whereas Scrooge used to be somewhat jolly (pg 56-57), he has lost his way and has forgotten the way out, and has now turned into a gloomy miser, representing what most rich men would have gone through in Dickens’ time. (because