social responsibility, poverty (impoverished), charity Flashcards
‘But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone,’ (S1)
- Metaphor to represent work
- Blacksmithing image (sharpening tool) may show diligence to work - Scrooge is obsessed with work
- ‘tight-fisted’ : miserly and not willing to give much money
‘“Are there no prisons?”’ (S1) Scrooge
- Rhetorical questions
- Scrooge believes the poor people belong there, suggesting that he believes his status means that poverty is not directly relevant to him and that anything to do with the poor matters
‘“If they would rather die, […] they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”’ (S1) Scrooge
- Saying that they should just die
- idle = doing nothing, lazy and don’t deserve help, and if they are poor then they should work. Scrooge shows no sympathy and does not want to share his wealth
- Personification: Upper working class doesn’t care about the poor
- Decrease: economic term, the poor are numbers on a ledger to him
- Surplus: meaning extra and excess, usually refers to stocks in business, and not people. he says that they don’t add wealth into the society, meaning they are useless
- Dehumanises the poor and separates them from the rich and refers them as numbers instead of people
- Lack of sympathy
Stave 3:
ghost of xmas present repeats
- scrooge ‘hung his head’ meaning that he is in shame
- ‘overcome with penitence and grief’ feels sorrow and regret
‘cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.’ (S1) - marleys chain
- Literally and metaphorically burdened with his wrongdoings and sins
‘“I wear the chain I forged in life,”’ (S1) marley
- Metaphor for the responsibility he has to take and his mental imprisonment and torture
- Forged: shaped or hammered, usually metal. Shows that what he did in life on earth shaped the way he ended up (the chains he is wearing)
‘They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility.’ (S3)
- Asyndetic listing
- Represents worst of the worst
- Submissive
- Malnutritioned
‘This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,’ (S3) ghost of xmas present
CHILDREN REPRESENT POOR
- Lack of education
- Child labour but require skills
- Poverty in cycle
- But the only route out is education
- Dickens highlight the inequality that children need to work at workhouses
- Grow up as ignorant adults
- Upper classes ignorant to social inequality
- Desires for more = steal and greed and crime because of poverty, find a way to get it because it is not fair
- Dickens chose children to show connotations of innocence and potential for change
- Children don’t deserve it
Poor amendment law 1834
- workhouses
- post-industrial revolution class inequality gap widening
- Having a childhood concept didn’t exist but then Victorians came up with it
‘“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”’ (S3) ghost of xmas present
- Scrooge rehears his own words
- Thomas Malthus - essay on population control
‘dressed out poorly in a twice-turned gown.’
- The gown had to be sewed twice because of it being broken, and the original side has been revealed again.
- Her actions show that even though she cannot afford to buy new clothes, she still makes an effort to look good on Christmas day
- Contrasts: Scrooge says that the poor are ‘idle’ but she’s not lazy or immoral
‘hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas day who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.’ tiny tim
- Rising above his own suffering, doesn’t want his weakness to pull him down
- Denotation of ‘cripple’ means weak and vulnerable, but he wants his presence to remind others of Jesus
- (Jesus context)
- Good Christian and has a positive mindset. He embodies the opposite characteristics of Scrooge to teach those who are ignorant that helping others like Jesus is how to be a good person.
- Tiny tim cleverness and maturity mocks the readers who are oblivious of the poor and to show that even a young child is smarter than them
‘I see a vacant seat […] If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die’
- explicitly connects poverty with death
- poor living conditions, poor diets, harsh working conditions, inability to have access the healthcare
- died of diseases that could have been remedied
- a stark insight into the harsh realities
‘held his withered little hand in his’
‘dreaded that he might be taken from him’
- pathos
- concern for tiny tim
- he has a disability as well as being weak and malnourished as they don’t have enough to give me adequate nutrition or medical attention
‘a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds.’
- shrivelled = loss of moisture, wrinkled, shrunk, but for old age -> severness of malnutrition
- pinch, twisted, pulled, shreds = pain. heartbroken violent actions
