How does the main protagonist in a christmas carol change throghout the text - Essay Example

I will be analyzing all the social, historical as well as cultural features that can be found in the text, too, and also the problems mentioned in the book which are similar to today’s multi-cultural society. The protagonist of this book is Ebenezer Scrooge who, in the beginning is, shown as an old, ‘tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone’ man who is ‘a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!’. Bob Cratchit works for him but Scrooge pays him a paltry sum which is not enough for him to bring up his large family.

Scrooge is ‘self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.’ (Dickens, 1843, p. 4) He does not like any celebrations, particularly Christmas, nor does he like having happy people around him. One of the most frequent adjectives used by Scrooge is ‘Humbug!’ (Dickens, 1843, p. 7). His personality undergoes a drastic change once the Ghosts of the Past, Present and Yet to Come visit him in his dreams. At seeing himself end up as a lonely person abandoned by all during all three of these, he wakes up a changed man, promising to ‘honour Christmas in (his) heart, and try to keep it all the year’.

(Dickens, 1843, p. 125) He calls himself ‘as happy as an angel … as merry as a schoolboy . . He has used adjectives very appropriately in the first stave to give the reader a sense of the characters and the setting. He also uses onomatopoeia to emphasize on emotions as well as the sounds: ‘Clash, clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash.’. (Dickens, 1843, p. 129) The reader would also notice the use of similes so one can compare the situation to something ‘Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

’ (Dickens, 1843, p. 3) When describing Scrooge, Charles Dickens uses the weather elements to show what his character is like and even his facial structure: ‘The cold within him froze his old features … He carried his own low temperature always about with him … and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas … No wind that blew was bitterer than he ..’ (Dickens, 1843, p. 5) Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is thought to be a novella by many. These are usually fictional, narrative stories which are not too long in length and the plot is not too diverse, but mostly focuses on a particular plotline, the endings usually suggesting a change.

The story is in first person which makes the reader believe that it is the author Dickens himself who is the narrator of the book, an omniscient narrator to be precise. Using the first point of view allows him to capture the readers’ interest, allows them to believe that they are a part of the story. The narrative form also lets the reader to feel what is happening in the novella. There is a great deal of imagery one comes across in the book so one can have a vivid picture of what exactly is going on.

It helps give a greater impact of the setting and the