A Christmas Carol Study Guide

Characters

• Ebenezer ScroogeA changed man, joyful and generous, who sends the Cratchits a prize turkey, gives to the poor, dines with Fred, raises Bob's salary and becomes "a second father" to Tiny Tim.First appears: Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost
• Marley's GhostThe ghost of Jacob Marley, Scrooge's business partner, dead seven years, who drags a chain of cash boxes, ledgers and purses and warns Scrooge that three spirits will visit him.First appears: Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost
• FredScrooge's nephew Fred, who welcomes his uncle warmly when Scrooge comes, at last, to Christmas dinner.First appears: Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost
• Bob CratchitScrooge's clerk, late to work the day after Christmas, who is astonished when Scrooge raises his salary and promises to help his family.First appears: Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost
• TPThe two portly gentlemenScrooge meets one of them in the street, asks his pardon and whispers a gift so large that the gentleman can hardly speak.First appears: Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost
• The Ghost of Christmas PastA strange figure, like a child and an old man at once, with a jet of light shining from its head, who shows Scrooge "shadows of the things that have been".First appears: Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits
• FFanScrooge's much younger sister, who once came to fetch him home from school for good. The Spirit says she had "a large heart"; she died a grown woman, and her one child is Scrooge's nephew.First appears: Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits
• SThe schoolmasterThe master of Scrooge's cold, bare school, who glares at the boy "with a ferocious condescension" before letting him go home.First appears: Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits
• FezziwigThe jolly old man in a Welsh wig to whom young Scrooge was apprenticed, who stops work at seven on Christmas Eve and turns his warehouse into a ballroom for his family, workers and neighbours.First appears: Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits
• FMrs FezziwigFezziwig's wife, "one vast substantial smile", who leads the dancing with him and is "worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term".First appears: Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits
• DWDick WilkinsScrooge's fellow apprentice at Fezziwig's who, Scrooge remembers, "was very much attached to me".First appears: Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits
• BelleThe young woman who releases the younger Scrooge from their engagement because "Another idol", gold, has taken her place. Years later she is a contented wife and the mother of a large family.First appears: Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits
• BHBelle's husbandThe father of Belle's happy, noisy family, who tells her he saw Scrooge sitting alone in his office while his partner lay near death.First appears: Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits
• The Ghost of Christmas PresentA jolly giant in a green robe, enthroned on a heap of Christmas food, who sprinkles blessings from his torch and grows older through the night until his life ends at midnight.First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• CMrs CratchitBob's wife, poorly dressed "but brave in ribbons", who proudly serves the Christmas pudding and will drink Mr Scrooge's health only for Bob's sake and the day's.First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• MMarthaThe Cratchits' daughter, a poor apprentice at a milliner's who works long hours, and who hides to tease her father when she comes home on Christmas Day.First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• BCBelinda CratchitThe second of the Cratchit daughters, who helps her mother lay the cloth and sweetens the apple sauce.First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• PCPeter CratchitBob's "son and heir", proud to wear his father's shirt-collar for the day, for whom Bob hopes to find a job at five-and-sixpence a week.First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• TYThe two young CratchitsA smaller boy and girl of the family, who smell the Cratchits' goose at the baker's and can hardly keep still with excitement.First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• Tiny TimBob's little son, who did not die, and to whom Scrooge became "a second father".First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• SNScrooge's nieceFred's very pretty wife, Scrooge's niece by marriage, who has "no patience" with Scrooge and plays the harp well.First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• TTopperA bachelor guest at Fred's party with a fine bass voice, who, the narrator is sure, only pretends to be blind at blind man's buff so that he can catch the plump sister.First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• PSThe plump sisterOne of Scrooge's niece's sisters, "the plump one with the lace tucker", who guesses the answer to Fred's game of Yes and No: Scrooge himself.First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• IWIgnorance and WantTwo wretched, wolfish children, a boy and a girl, whom the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals under his robe. They are "Man's", and the Spirit warns most of all against the boy, Ignorance.First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• The Ghost of Christmas Yet to ComeA silent Spirit shrouded in black, with only one pointing hand showing, that leads Scrooge through shadows of the future without ever speaking a word.First appears: Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
• MBThe men of businessRich City men Scrooge knows, who joke about a death and care more about lunch or the cold weather than about the man who has died.First appears: Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits
• OJOld JoeA grey-haired dealer in rags, bones and old iron, nearly seventy, who buys the dead man's stolen belongings in his filthy back-street shop.First appears: Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits
• CThe charwomanA bold woman who took the dead man's bed curtains, his blankets and even the shirt he was to be buried in, and laughs that he frightened everyone away "to profit us when he was dead".First appears: Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits
• DMrs DilberThe laundress, who sells old Joe the dead man's sheets, towels, teaspoons and boots, and agrees that his lonely death is "a judgement on him".First appears: Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits
• UMThe undertaker's manA man in faded black who sells old Joe a few small things from the dead man: seals, a pencil case, sleeve buttons and a brooch.First appears: Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits
• CHCaroline and her husbandA couple in debt, who are thankful to hear that the merciless man they owed money to has died.First appears: Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits
• BIThe boy in Sunday clothesA boy below Scrooge's window, whom Scrooge pays to fetch the prize turkey from the poulterer's.First appears: Stave 5: The End of It

Chapter summaries

1. Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost

   The narrator insists that Marley is dead, then paints Scrooge as a man as cold inside as the winter weather, "solitary as an oyster". On Christmas Eve Scrooge calls Christmas "Humbug!", mocks his nephew for marrying for love, and keeps his clerk working beside a fire that looks like one coal. When two gentlemen ask for money for the poor, he says the prisons and workhouses are enough, and that those who would rather die should "decrease the surplus population". At home he sees Marley's face in his door knocker, and then Marley's Ghost arrives, bound in a chain of cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds and purses. Marley says he forged the chain in life by caring only for business, and that Scrooge's own chain was as long seven years ago and has grown since. From the window Scrooge sees the air full of chained phantoms who long to do good and have lost the power. The stave presents a man cut off from everyone, and gives him one chance, through the three spirits, to escape Marley's fate.

2. Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits

   The first Spirit is a strange figure, like a child and an old man at once, with a jet of light shining from its head. It takes Scrooge to the country where he grew up, and he weeps to see his younger self alone at school at Christmas, with only the characters from his books for company; he even wishes he had given something to the carol singer at his door. His sister Fan arrives to take him home, saying their father is "so much kinder than he used to be", and the Spirit reminds Scrooge that her only child is his nephew. At Fezziwig's Christmas Eve dance, Scrooge defends his old master's small kindnesses and admits he would like to say a word to his own clerk. Then he watches his younger self, already showing "an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye", lose Belle, who says that a golden idol has taken her place. Finally he sees Belle years later, the happy mother of a large family, while her husband reports seeing Scrooge "Quite alone in the world". The stave shows that Scrooge was not always hard, and that his love of money grew over time and cost him love.

3. Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits

   The second Spirit is a jolly giant in a green robe, enthroned on a heap of Christmas food, whose torch blesses the dinners of the poor and restores good humour to people who quarrel. At Bob Cratchit's four-roomed house the family, poor and shabbily dressed, make a feast of a goose stretched out with apple sauce and mashed potatoes, and Tiny Tim, who walks with a crutch, says "God bless us every one!" When Scrooge asks if Tiny Tim will live, the Spirit foresees "a vacant seat" and then quotes Scrooge's own words about the "surplus population", and Scrooge hangs his head in shame. Bob toasts "the Founder of the Feast", but his wife calls Scrooge "odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling" and drinks only for Bob's sake and the day's. At Fred's party, Scrooge's nephew says he pities his uncle and will keep inviting him, and Scrooge, forgetting he cannot be heard, calls out answers in the guessing games. Before it vanishes at midnight, the Spirit reveals Ignorance and Want and throws Scrooge's words "Are there no prisons?" back at him.

4. Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits

   The last Spirit never speaks and shows only one pointing hand, and Scrooge fears it more than any spectre he has seen. On 'Change, men of business joke that a certain man's funeral will be cheap, and one will go only if lunch is provided. In a filthy back-street shop, a charwoman, a laundress and an undertaker's man sell the dead man's belongings to old Joe, down to the bed curtains and the shirt he was to be buried in. The only feeling his death stirs is pleasure, in a couple who owed him money. At the Cratchits', by contrast, the family grieve for Tiny Tim with love, and Bob tells them how kindly Scrooge's nephew spoke to him. In a neglected churchyard Scrooge asks whether these are shadows of what "Will be" or "May be only", then reads his own name on the grave and promises to "honour Christmas in my heart".

5. Stave 5: The End of It

   Scrooge wakes laughing and crying, "as light as a feather", and learns from a boy below his window that it is still Christmas Day: "The Spirits have done it all in one night." His first act is a secret gift, a prize turkey "twice the size of Tiny Tim", sent to the Cratchits without a name. He asks pardon of the gentleman he refused the day before and whispers a gift so large that the man can hardly speak, then finds the courage to knock at Fred's door and is welcomed in to dinner. The next morning he pretends to be his old self to scold Bob for arriving late, then raises his salary and promises to help his family. The narrator tells us that Scrooge did all this and more, that Tiny Tim did not die, and that Scrooge came to be known as a man who "knew how to keep Christmas well". The ending shows that change must be acted on, not just felt, and that Scrooge's new happiness comes from giving.

Key quotes