ALL KEY QUOTES Flashcards
CHRISTMAS CAROL: He was solitary as an oyster
Arguably, this is the most famous quote from A Christmas Carol. The image of the oyster is almost perfect for Scrooge at this stage in the book. Like an oyster, he keeps himself to himself, hidden beneath a hard shell that he uses to protect himself from the world. However, inside that shell - like Scrooge - the oyster is soft and vulnerable. Also, and most tellingly, given time an oyster produces one of natures greatest changes - that of creating pearls out of sand. Scrooge, like an oyster, has great potential and Dickens reminds us of this during the opening of the book.
CHRISTMAS CAROL: Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
Here, Scrooge is suggesting that the poor should simpy use the workhouses and prisons that are setup for them if they can’t afford food. On one level, this reveals just how selfish and unreasonable he is: the workhouses were horrendous places to be, and a prison sentence (for stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving family, for example) could see you deported to Australia forever. However, there is a defence here: Scrooge pays for the prisons and workhouses out of his taxes. In effect, he contributes to the government and supports their policy on how to deal with poverty; his attitude is that, beyond that, the poor aren’t his problem. In a lot of ways, this isn’t unreasonable. The problem here isn’t that Scrooge isn’t contributing directly to the poor, but that the government’s solutions were just so unreasonable.
