A Christmas Carol Blog Post

In the part of Stave two that we read, the spirit of Christmas past visits. He describes the ghost as being childlike but also old, he had no wrinkles and a youthful face but he had old white hair. The spirit shows him his past. Every scene is around christmas time, when he was at boarding school he was lonely at christmas because his parents didn't come to bring him home. With every scene the spirit shows Scrooge regrets something like helping the boy who was caroling earlier he knows what it's like to be in his position. Even bigger though, he regrets not treating Fan's son better. He always shuts Fred down and hates how he is cheery because Scrooge is so miserable and gloomy he doesn't like other people who are joyful which is why he's especially grumpy during the holidays, there is Christmas cheer everywhere.

Charles Dickinson is very descriptive when writing his novels. He takes long paragraphs just to describe things that other authors may just take one short, brief paragraph to do. When he describes the spirit, he is describing a lot of contradicting things. Scrooge must have gotten used to be alone and it might've been hard for him to adjust to having people in his life, for his whole childhood he was alone and maybe that's why he isn't good at supporting relationships now. We can also conclude that Scrooges father was abusive when Fan has to convinve him to come back home. This was more acceptable, to beat children for diclspline, but this took a toll on Scrooge. This is a key example of Scrooge being  a product of his past. Scrooge also misses his sister Fan a lot and seeing Fred just reminds him of her death which is hard for him, he also internally blames Fred for her death and may be why he is so cold. In that time the chances of the mother of a baby dying was much higher than it is today.