A Christmas Carol (Grades 9–1) York Notes

Dickens presents Scrooge’s attitude to money by showing it is very important to him.

The description of his face and eyes shows us he loves money, ‘the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.’ ‘Avarice’ is love of money and so this shows Scrooge loves money when he is speaking with Belle.

Another thing is his eye shows he is greedy and Dickens tells us his ‘passion’ is for money, not Belle. Belle knows this when she says ‘You are changed’ and ‘Another idol has displaced me’. This shows us Scrooge should love the woman he was going to marry, not money and so she leaves him and he ends up being married to money. By saying money is an ‘idol’ it makes it seem like Scrooge worships money, like a god.

This links to the part where all the people go to church because it is Christmas. Dickens didn’t agree with people having to go to church rather than be able to earn money.

The idol Scrooge worships is ‘golden’ this implies it is rich and attractive. It is colour symbolism.

Scrooge doesn’t listen to what Belle is saying because he believes that money is really important and he justifies all he is doing and he tells her that people need money if they are going to get on in the world. He says ‘There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty’. This shows us that being poor at this time was really bad, like we see with the Cratchits and the other poor people. It shows us Scrooge is really scared of being poor and so he got obsessed with getting rich.

Moreover, Scrooge thinks his attitude to money means he is wise and he is impatient with Belle for saying all this about money.

Overall, in this extract, Scrooge’s attitude to money is that it is needed and you have to have it to be happy.

In the rest of the novel this is pretty much the attitude he shows. When we first meet him he is really mean to Bob and will only let him have one coal on the fire which makes Bob cold. He also goes on at Fred for being in love when he doesn’t have money and he refuses to give money to the charity collectors. Dickens wants us to be shocked when he says the poor should die now rather than wait if they don’t want to go to the workhouse because this is what Dickens was shocked about at the time.

The only times we see him not caring about money are at Fezziwig’s party where he is happy and at the end when he has changed. At the end other people laugh at him but he doesn’t care and ‘his own heart laughed’ because he has learned his lesson and he knows it’s better to use money to make other people happy rather than just save it all up so that there is lots of it when you die and it can’t do you any good which is Dickens’s message.