A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Week 2: Stave I — Marley's Ghost
Read Stave I ('Marley's Ghost') of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
Previewing Week 2 of A Christmas Carol
Read 3 of 7 discussion questions below. Unlock the complete 7-week guide when you’re ready.
Dickens opens with what may be the most famous first sentence in English fiction, insisting seven times that Marley is dead — because everything that follows depends on it. Read this Stave slowly and notice how Dickens builds both a character and a world in a single evening.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.Dickens uses a remarkable string of adjectives to describe Scrooge: 'squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous.' He also says Scrooge was 'secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster,' and that he 'carried his own low temperature always about with him.' What picture do these images build? What kind of life does Scrooge appear to be living?
2.Scrooge's nephew Fred argues that Christmas is valuable not because it puts 'a scrap of gold or silver' in his pocket, but because it is the one time of year when people 'open their shut-up hearts freely, and think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave.' Scrooge dismisses this as humbug.
a.Who do you think has the better argument — Scrooge or Fred — and why?
b.Fred's phrase 'fellow-passengers to the grave' is striking. What does it mean to actually live as though other people are fellow-passengers, not strangers?
3.When the two charity collectors ask Scrooge for a donation, he asks 'Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses — are they still in operation?' He genuinely believes the poor should use these institutions. What does his logic reveal about the way he sees human beings? Have you ever caught yourself reasoning in a similar way — treating a system as a sufficient substitute for personal compassion?