Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory - Analysis, A Christmas Carol | A Christmas Carol - Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

MARLEY'S CHAINS

You know what's interesting about all the movie and TV versions of this novella they make? They usually get Marley's ghost totally wrong.

Oh, sure, he's usually a totally creepy special effect, and the makeup tends to be ghoulish enough, and they even tend to recreate the jangling rattle noise that his chains make as he walks… but the chains themselves?

In every version Shmoop can remember, Marley's chains are shown to be just really big heavy metal chains, which is fine as it goes, we guess. Except that in the original, Marley actually looks pretty much the same as he did in life, but—and it's a huge but—he's bound and tied by something that is much more sinister and scary:

The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.

[…]

"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"

"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?" (1.98-132)

What's the chain made out of? Not out of standard links at all, but instead out of the things that were most important to Marley before he died—money, debt, interest, profit. Why is this scarier, you ask? Well, maybe not scarier in a horror-movie kind of way, but certainly the idea that you will be manacled by the very things that you held up as important has a nice terror about it.

Think about it: this is specifically not a chain that's been made by some external force, some higher power that judges you after you die and that you can complain about not being fair or whatever. No, this is all your own doing—"I made it link by link of my own free will," says Marley in the above quotation, pointing out that the choice to what to value in life has endless ramifications, even beyond the grave.

SCROOGE'S GRAVESTONE

So… yeah. Maybe the symbolism of this one isn't so very hard to dig out. But still, the gravestone is a very important element in the whole let's-turn-Scrooge-back-into-a-human-being project.

However invested Scrooge eventually becomes in his own spiritual life, and however bad he feels about the kind of man he has allowed himself to become, nothing really gets through to him quite like the gravestone with his name on it that confirms that the terrible, unmourned death he has been observing with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is in fact his own.

It's this final discovery that really makes him desperate to change—to "sponge away the writing on this stone" (4.164). In a pretty powerful scene, the unemotional, angry Scrooge that we've seen so far suddenly gives way to a guy who bursts into straight up pleading. He doesn't know whether the phantom actually has any powers to change stuff, but he can't help screaming, "hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse" (4.160).

Just imagine a really good actor sink his teeth into that one—a showstopper for sure.

SCROOGE'S BED

You know what's kind of crazy (okay, one of the many things that are kind of crazy) about the way Scrooge gets his groove back? It's very, very invasive. Now, Shmoop isn't a psychiatrist and doesn't even play one on TV, but there's something about the fact that everyone who tries to reform Scrooge-the-loner keeps on breaking into his bedroom that smacks to us of the traditional treatment for phobia.

What's that you ask? It's constant exposure to the thing you're scared of.

And the object that seems to register highest on Scrooge's invasiveness scale is none other than his bed—arguably the most private and isolated place in his house, or anyone's house for that matter. Think about how many times Scrooge is pulled into and out of his bed. The Ghost of Christmas Past opens up his bed curtains to reveal a terrified Scrooge. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come turns into one of the bedposts when it melts away, and each time a ghostly adventure is over, Scrooge finds himself plopped back into his four-poster.

But the real kicker comes from the possible future that Scrooge sees while traipsing about with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. You know, those three thieves who have made off with his stuff after his death? The most appalling of these is the charwoman, who makes off with… well, let's let her tell it:

"Bed-curtains!"

"You don't mean to say you took 'em down, rings and all, with him lying there?" said Joe.

"Yes I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"

[…]

[Scrooge] recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language. (4.64-78)

Even the pawnshop guy, who apparently is used to this kind of thievery, is floored by the idea that this corpse was so unattended that the woman could have actually removed the curtains from the bed without anyone giving a hoot.

Also, check out how the fact that the bed is "uncurtained" and "bare" makes the scene with Scrooge's corpse look even more chilling and horrifying. In the novella, this violation of the bed is pretty much the ultimate invasion—since Dickens isn't willing to have Scrooge's actual body be harmed in some way.

And finally, what's the first thing Scrooge turns to in his immense relief that he gets to Mulligan his life? You guessed it—the bed:

Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in! (5.1)