Ghost of Christmas Present

Question 1

What is the purpose of the Cratchit family?

Answer 1

• The Cratchit family is to be the sympathetic face of the poor and
  change the dangerous views held by many Victorians that the poor were ‘undeserving’.

Question 2

‘Scrooge was the ogre of the family’

Answer 2

• Scrooge has a hugely negative impact on the Cratchit family shown by the way they talk about him

Question 3

‘They were not a handsome family, but they were happy, grateful, pleased
with one another’

Answer 3

• Dickens criticises how dispassionate the rich were towards the
  poor by highlighting their moral worthiness through his sympathetic portrayal of
  the Cratchit family.
• Although they have very little, they are proud. This positive depiction conveys Dickens’ central message that family and friendship provide more happiness than wealth.

Question 4

‘Tell me if Tiny Tim will live, O kind spirit! Say he will be spared.’

Answer 4

• Dickens uses the symbolic death of Tiny Tim to show the consequences of avarice on a family.

Question 5

‘This Boy is Ignorance and this Girl is Want. Beware of them both.’

Answer 5

• highlight what he believed were the two major problems in Victorian society: Ignorance and Want. Dickens’ aim was to provoke a strong empathetic response from readers by
  using children to symbolise these problems.

Question 6

‘Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish’

Answer 6

• the children looked sickly and unnatural which perhaps symbolises the impact of disease and lack of nutrition on the poor.
• the adjective ‘wolfish’ means animalistic and savage which perhaps symbolises how poverty dehumanises the poor