Isolation/loneliness Flashcards
Scrooge doesn’t believe in getting involved in other people’s lives and doesn’t want them involved in his
“It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s”
- in chapter one Scrooge is presented as a negative, misanthropic person but also a lonely one this can show that he has no business with other people and doesn’t have any business to help charity and other people
Scrooges chairwoman makes the point that, because Scrooge was so unpleasant, he died alone, and ironically the fact that he died alone enabled her to invade his privacy and steal his most private possesssions.
“He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead!”
- what the chairwoman is saying is that when Scrooge was alive he was ‘robbing the poor’ so the poor have the right to steal his possessions but this can also show his loneliness because, eveybody is stealing from him as he had no friends and did bad things to other people instead of being friendly meaning everybody is stealing from him because nobody cares about him.
Scrooge is described as a man who chooses to live his life alone
“ as solitary as an oyster “
- an oyster is inside a shell which can represent scrooges life as he blocks off everybody from his life just like an oyster does to the sea
Dickens shows that even in the most solitary places, an individual can choose not to be lonely.
“There stood a solitary lighthouse…two men who watched the light… joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, wished each other merry Christmas”
- this shows that these two people are lonely than most other people but that doesn’t let them ruin their Christmas and come together to have a good time where as Scrooge doesn’t do this but instead chooses to block out everybody and stay solitary.
