Harsh Personality of Scrooge

Dickens suggests several times that has inhuman characteristics, such as the cold within, as humans are warm blooded. Red eyes are associated with the devil or being evil. Blue lips implies that Scrooge would have no blood in his body or being dead. Harsh words are used like nipped/pointed. Many of these points link Scrooge to the weather. Dickens is linking Scrooge to the negative aspects of the environment. ‘and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas’. This is an extension of the metaphor, the idea that the cold doesn’t change, its always there and even at the festive time of Christmas he doesn’t change.

Essay Example on Harsh

Everyone knows that Christmas should be a time of happiness, joy, family and sharing but Scrooge has none of it. Dickens uses alliteration ‘wintry weather’ this gives us the cold atmosphere of Scrooges personality. When dickens uses personification he doesn’t use it to make the weather seem more human, he uses it to make Scrooge seem insensate.

Scrooge isn’t affected by the weather, warm or cold. Dickens uses contrast for effect this reinforces the inhuman qualities of Scrooge. Comparative adjectives such as ‘bitterer’ and ‘more intent’. Deepens this contrast.

“The heaviest rain and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boost the advantage over him in one respect. They often ‘came down’ handsomely, and scrooge never did. ” Dickens explains that even the weather has at least one positive quality that Scrooge did not have like the fact they posses some way of making people happy or a type of energy.

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Scrooge is again compared to the worst qualities of the weather. The coldness of Scrooge is repeated again in the description of him. Coldness of ‘aura surrounding Scrooge is actually echoed in the description of his character: ‘Oh!

But he was a tight fisted hand at the grindstone, scrooge a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner’ There is a metaphor used to compare Scrooge to a ‘grindstone’. The grindstone is used as a symbol of hardness, again shown Scrooges inhuman qualities. The use of many adjectives, could be seen as excessive but it emphasises just how dreadful Scrooge is . ‘Hard and sharp as a flint from which no steel has ever struck out generous fire’ Once again a comparison to stone. The idea that fire could be gained from flint but Dickens points that no fire can be achieved from Scrooge.

This gives the idea that Scrooge has no warmth. Dickens removes all positive qualities of the stone leaving him not only to be inhuman and also being compared to an inanimate object, Dickens goes one further to say that he is even worse. Dickens wrote this book to show the people of Victorian times how they need to understand poor are just poor, they were people to. They need to be treated much better than how they were treated. Poverty wasn’t something to be scared about. He knew that there would be a much stronger chance that if he wrote a book people would see what an awful person Scrooge was.

Showing how dreadful he was around people who were his family. He treated his works with no respect, they feared him. Dickens used strong language to if not over emphasis the abominable behaviour of Scrooge. Descriptive language used to help us imagine Scrooge is also very strong. Dickens used many metaphors, comparisons against the negative sides of the weather to show Scrooges bad side. How the weather may have a positive, Scrooge didn’t. Charles Dickens in the end shows how Scrooge this inhuman, evil man could be changed to care. Than maybe everyone else could have come a better person.