Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ was a prompt response to the rising and evident evils of capitalism, but at the same time, the author also wished to pay his piles of unpaid bills.
About a month and fortnight after visiting Manchester where his novel was completed, Dickens was underwhelmed with the profit that he had made.
The first few paragraphs of his story set the scene of Ebenezer Scrooge in his counting-house on Christmas Eve in London of 1843 denoting someone extremely concerned and obsessed about making money.
Ebenezer is a biblical name that originates from a stone that Samuel used to commemorate the divine victory over the Philistines, but the name could have foreshadowed another divine victory. The onomatopoeia here works really well, who kept in mind that his story would be read aloud to the rest of the family.
The word ‘scrooge’ is also a blend of ‘scrouge’, the verb to squeeze or to press, used in the early 1800s and is also a layer of decomposed rocks or minerals found along the walls of a vein. Dickens solidified the Christian name Ebenezer and the Scrooge surname together and interlinked the character with the dark, overly populated and polluted environment of London.
The character is shown as the physical embodiment of the cold winter weather and he is also depicted as having the power to control the weather.
Read more about Ebenezer Scrooge here in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
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