Marley Flashcards
“a slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat”
-Scrooge dismisses the Ida of Marley due to food poising as puts his vision of Marley as “a slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat”
-Scrooge is vehemently opposed to the interaction with the supernatural as this means he will be forced to change his rigid and parochial views of the world
“Scrooge fell upon his knees and clasped his hands before his hands”
-S is horrified through the gothic supernatural presentation of Marley
-Marley is portrayed as conforming to the archetype of a ghost, horrifying in appearance and painted in its suffering, to try eliciting a reaction from S to catalyse a change
“But you were always a good man of business Jacob”
-Scrooge sees his worth as an individual synonymous with his worth and value within business. His ignorant capitalist mindset is shown when he can’t understand Marley suffering ‘quote’
-the comma after business creates a pause, emulating Scrooge’s confusion as to why Marley is suffering despite his immense financial and business contribution. Momentarily this evokes a sense of pity from the reader as they can see that Scrooge cannot see the world without looking at it through a monetary lens
“dragging a heavy chai”
-symbolic of eternal consequences of the pursuit of materialism: in his life on earth he shunned poverty indulging in his avarice thus in his afterlife he experiences spiritual poverty
-chain symbolises restriction and entrapment. Through Marley dragging a heavy chain his chain is a conceit for the restricting and eternal consequences of being parsimonious
-tiresome very dragging exacerbates that the eternal punishments he is enduring as it appears he has been carrying these punishments for a time-he is sempiternally bound to the punishments if his previous life
“The chain he drew was clasped about his middle” “clasped around his middle”
-Marley is a physical and metaphorical representation of how if making money and materialism main purpose to your life, then it will be the main reason for your eternal suffering wuote as it was wuote shows entire being cannot escape this sempiternal torture
Was a long,and wound about him like a tail”
-dehumanising and animalistic image is painted of Marley as his chain quote
-the simile like a tail implies that his egoism and selfishness has lead to his animalistic treatment in hell: his disregards for others in his life has lbeen ad him being disregarded as an animal in his after life
“I wear the chain I forged in life…i made it link by link”
-as chains are make of links which are all interconnecting, this is alike how to Marley is warning Scrooge that is infatuation with money and abandonment of compassion for other is directly connected to his anguish
Dickens as a social commentator
D uses conventional gothic elements of the supernatural within this novella as Victorian ghotic literature was prevalent at the time. He uses it to explore morality in a way inter winded with the supernatural, the u canny and the realm of endless possibilities.
-dickens using fictional characters such as M and S to indicator social ills and the misanthropic nature of upper class
-uses conventional gothic elements paired with humour, fiction to carry his allegorical tale to make criticism of society easy to understand
-through using fictional gothic char tiers ti carry his indictment about the misers that pervaded the upper class, it allows the reader to immerse themselves in a fictional world filled with the supernatural, whilst also he scornful of the characters immoral traits
—D uses Marley as his first mouthpiece to explore the need for a collective social conscience. Marley tells Scrooge “mankind was my business”
- D uses Marley to explore the desperate need for the upper Class to realise their neglection of the poor is exacerbating poverty, squalor and mistreatment
