When Scrooge awakens, he's back in his normal world and it's Christmas morning. A horrified Scrooge begs the Ghost to spare mercy on him, and vows to better himself to prevent this outcome. Despite the troubles of Bob's family (especially Bob's sickly youngest son, 'Tiny Tim'), they still find a place for happiness in their lives.įinally, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge bleak visions of the future: Tiny Tim will succumb to his illness, and Scrooge himself will die alone and unmourned. Next is the Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows Scrooge some folks who have retained their Christmas spirit in spite of suffering worse than he has, including Bob Cratchit. These include visions of Scrooge's early life at boarding school and encounters with his sister Fan, his jolly first employer Fezziwig, and his fiancée Belle, all of whom left Scrooge's life for one reason or another around Christmas. The Ghost of Christmas Past is the first to arrive, and shows Scrooge (and the reader) the ups and downs of the life that drove him to become the man he is today. Marley warns Scrooge that his chains will be even heavier if he doesn't change his ways, and that Scrooge's only hope for redemption lies in heeding the advice of three other ghosts who will be calling on him later that night.

Though seven years dead, Marley appears wrapped in chains and weighted down with lock-boxes that symbolize his own obsession with money in life. At home that evening, Scrooge is haunted by the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley.

But just for the record.Įbenezer Scrooge is a hard-hearted, crotchety old moneylender living in Victorian London, hesitant to close shop for Christmas Day and only reluctantly talked into it by Bob Cratchit, his overworked and underpaid clerk. A Christmas Carol note full title: A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas is a novella written by Charles Dickens and first published in 1843, which few contemporary people have actually read but pretty much everyone knows the story of.

A christ mas carol