Part of my dramaturgy presentation was analyzing the content of Dickens' novella and the adapted script that is being produced for OSU's fall audio drama. The research I did on Dickens' past helped to see why he planned to write the novel, and further research explained just how Dickens used these characters and story that are so loved by readers and audiences of the past, present, and most likely future, to get across his wish for society to change and for the most desolate of us to be treated with warmth, kindness and Christmas cheer. The character I focused on the most in my research was one Ebenezer Scrooge, as well as Dickens' use of cold and warmth throughout the story to show how greed and anger effect how we see and are seen by the world, and that we can only experience warmth when we choose to live for others.
Ebenezer Scrooge
Dickens set out to show readers how becoming complacent to the exploitation of the poor and the young for the sake of your own gain can lead to a society of cruel and incomplete people - in this piece this is represented through the character of Scrooge. Dickens’ childhood spent in the blacking warehouse desperately trying to save money for his father and exposure to men who exploit others for profit was inspiration for the character. It is also said that upon visiting a graveyard while on a walk in Edinburgh he saw a tombstone for a man named Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie, whose job was listed as a meal man—a corn merchant; Dickens misread the inscription as "mean man" and adapted the name for his character.
Here are some lines from the script that show Scrooge's characterization and explicitly tell us how he views money as the all important part of life.
FRED
And what of that? His wealth is of no use to him. He won’t do any good with it. He doesn’t make himself comfortable with it. And he certainly hasn’t the satisfaction of helping others
P.37
And what of that? His wealth is of no use to him. He won’t do any good with it. He doesn’t make himself comfortable with it. And he certainly hasn’t the satisfaction of helping others
P.37
BELLE
Surely you fear the world too much. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, gain for the sake of gain, now engrosses you. Have I not? Your desire for this Idol has swallowed the man I used to know.
P.25
BELLE
That which promised happiness when we were one in heart is fraught with such misery now that we have been split in two. How often I have thought of this, I will not say. I did not want to believe you had changed so, at first I tried not to see. But the shadow of greed had so consumed you that I could no longer recognize your face or your heart. Now that the truth is so apparent, I can release you.
P.25
Cold/Warmth and Worldview
Dickens uses the imagery of temperature and the weather to stand in place of the two sides of the story. Scrooge is seen as cold and dark when he is spoken of, and the world directly around him is described in the same way. This use of cold and wintery weather is a stand in for the money hungry selfishness that Dickens is describing as what is wrong with society throughout the play, it cuts him off from connecting to the world around him. The warmth is seen in the other characters who embody love, generosity, and Christmas spirit. We slowly see more warmth associated with Scrooge as the spirits lead him through the Christmases and end with him finally feeling both cold and warmth and finding joy in it.
Through the following lines we see the use of cold and warmth as it relates to Scrooge and how it changes throughout the story.
FRED
If I may now add to this story. He was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, my Uncle Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, covetous old sinner! Cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. He carried his own remarkably low temperature always about him; he iced his office in the dog-days, and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas. This fateful London night was cold, bone shatteringly cold. The fog and darkness thickened so.
P.8
BOB CRATCHIT
In this time of year of fog and piercing, searching, biting cold we all find reason for infectious joy. See here as the steeples call good people all, to church and chapel, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. We can all smell the sticks of cinnamon, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar, the moist and pulpy figs, and everything so good to eat in its Christmas dress. There is music in the air and much is right with the world that hearts are touched with spirit of goodness in mankind.
P.2
SCROOGE
Cold enough for you, Cratchit?
BOB CRATCHIT
Good morning Mr. Scrooge.
SCROOGE
Is it? You don’t look particularly “good” on this bleak and biting winter day.
BOB CRATCHIT
Why ‘tis the Christmas season. There is warmth to be had in this city. Why, there
isn’t a merrier time in all the year. I’ll think on that to warm myself.
P.3
GENTLEMAN
They are, still. I wish I could say they were not! As they scarcely furnish good cheer of mind and body to the multitude, a few of us each season endeavor to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink and means of warmth.
P.7
FRED
That night began like so many cold, winter nights as Uncle Scrooge gathered his books and his ledgers, cold lifeless things and locked up his miserable counting house. The pitiful fire had died out hours before, not that Scrooge would take notice of the dismal nip in the air. He moved out into the town and down the foggy streets to his home, a grey miserable place that had once belonged to his deceased partner.
P.9
FRED
The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.
P.10
Here we see the first sign of warmth associated near Scrooge with the arrival of the first spirit, and it continues to grow as the remaining spirits visit Scrooge and show him each Christmas timeline.
Scrooge turns to his side to go back to sleep and suddenly the room floods with bright shimmering light, accompanied with a warm chorus of voices. The 1st SPIRIT appears beside Scrooge, and giggles in a childlike way.
P.15
SCROOGE
It’s more than that, Spirit. Your fellow spirit showed me things I did not wish to see. I felt a coldness in my bones and in my heart. It is there I lack the courage to feel it again.
P.28
2nd SPIRIT
Now Scrooge, you have simply forgotten how to feel the cold, haven’t you? Or the warmth for that matter. Rest assured you cannot perceive one without the other. Come with me to share in the spirit of the season!
P.28
2nd SPIRIT
Drink Scrooge! This is no ordinary potable – but the spirit of all humankind. The warmth, generosity, and conviviality of this season
P.29
2nd SPIRIT produces the cup again and SCROOGE drinks deeply, smacking his lips and for once feeling rather warm inside.
P.31
PETER
There we go! Let’s get this fire blazing.
P.31
2nd SPIRIT
There is much. Around the city and around the world, people feast together. Golden, crisp turkeys, red apples, pies and puddings dusted with sugar. Bellies are full and spirits are high. Glasses are raised and laughter is heard over and over in rooms and halls. Do you not feel the warmth in the air? It rises above the cold and the frost and enters the hearts of so many
The Spirit and Scrooge move through the space and see families sitting celebrating Christmas together, warm around fires. They stop and look out into the darkness.
P.36
2nd SPIRIT
It is a place where miners live, who labor in the bowels of the earth, but they know me. See! See how the light warms them, see how cheerful the company is assembled round the fire. Dressed in their finest holiday attire, they celebrate together sharing what little they have as if they were the wealthiest family in the world.
P.36
SCROOGE
So cold. Where are we now?
The raspy breath of the SPIRIT answers him.
P.51
While Scrooge is presented to the readers/audience originally as a cold unfeeling man, what Dickens hoped to get across was that people are capable of change once they recognize this coldness inside themselves. We see this foreshadowed when young Scrooge is visited by his sister Fanny and she mentions the change she has seen in their father.
SCROOGE
My father, well – he had other priorities and . . . I had to get my schooling. Education is a priority!
P.17
FANNY
Father is so much kinder than he used to be that home is like Heaven! He has changed, Ebenezer, changed for the good. He had been ever so much more cheerful that I drew up the courage to ask him, once more, if you might come home and he said yes! He sent me in a coach to bring you!
P.18
We start to see this recognition in Scrooge when the spirits use his own previous comments regarding the less fortunate against him. In this scene when Scrooge has just seen the Christmases of today the 2nd Spirit introduces him to Ignorance and Want.
2nd SPIRIT
They belong to Humankind. And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers and mothers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both and all of their degree. But most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is doom unless the writing is erased.
SCROOGE
But have they no refuge or resource? Something must be done!
2nd SPIRIT
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
P.45
Once Scrooge begins to recognize the coldness within him, he is shown how it will affect others if it continues when visited by the third spirit. This ghost shows Scrooge what Christmas yet to come will look like if he continues as he has, and he sees how those around him begin to take on the same selfish and money hungry attributes that he holds. Here we see people from his present life clinging to his possessions in hopes to sell them, and feeling no remorse for his death because of how he was in his life.
CHARWOMAN
You’re too slow, Mrs. Dilber! Ha! Every person has a right to take care of themselves, he always did. Who’s the wiser. Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, that’s for certain.
MRS. DILBER
I certainly shan’t hold my hand when I can get anything in it by reaching it out for the sake of such a man as he was. I promise you that, Joe.
P.55
Scrooge finally sees himself for who he truly is when visiting the Christmas yet to come. He is told of a cruel and unfeeling man whose death was mourned by no one, this man seems to Scrooge to deserve this fait. Upon realizing that he is indeed that man he is struck with not only the realization that he must change to save himself, but that he must change for others. He is faced with the outcome of a life spent exploiting those around him and not caring for the welfare of others. He sees how this will not only doom him to a fate like Marley’s, but will end in the unhappiness of all those around him, as it did in his life, but he had chosen not to see it.
SCROOGE
Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if preserved in, they must
lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Isn’t that so, Spirit?
The future is not written. It cannot be. Say it thus with what you show me!
P.56
SCROOGE
Good Spirit! Please assure me that I yet may change these shadows! I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future! The Spirits shall all stay with me and I shall not shut out the lessons that they teach. I beg you, tell me that I may sponge away the writing on this stone!
P.56
Scrooge is Changed!
When Scrooge has been faced with the realities of who he is becoming and how he is affecting the world in such a negative way, he realizes how much he needs to change. We finally see the idea of warmth associated with him, along with the cold, and we see him acknowledge the potential within himself to live the way he saw Mr. Fezziwig do so, the first place in his past where he encountered the generosity, kindness, and love that are associated with this warmth.
MRS. DILBER
He dressed himself in “all his best” and, giddy as a school boy, he bounded down his staircase to greet the world, crisp and fresh with snow and warmed by friendly faces.
P.59
SCROOGE
It isn’t that. It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. His power lies in words and looks, in things so slight and insignificant that they are impossible to count. The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it had cost a fortune –
P.24
(In reference to Mr. Fezziwig)
“His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.”
We see Scrooge’s obsession with wealth and gain take away his family, his chance at love with Belle, friendships, enjoyment of everyday pleasures such as food, music, home, and his possessions, as well as warmth in general, all things that Dickens so strongly associated with Christmas. Scrooge changes when he learns that money or “gain for the sake of gain” is not life’s sole purpose and that he must prioritize the qualities seen in characters such as the Fezziwigs, Belle, his nephew Fred, and The Cratchits, all of which center around caring for others.
Dickens wanted to make his point about the state of his world through a Christmas story because he didn’t want to portray positive social change as an all encompassing ordeal. He valued this himself, but also enjoyed reading, deserts, traveling, and spending the holidays with his family. He wanted to present change in a way that was digestible for the public, and would show that you can take part in all of these things at once, but would give them a sense of urgency to help others nonetheless. The story of Scrooge’s change of heart that has remained popular during the Christmas season for decades not only promoted social change, but also shaped our idea of the Christmas season.
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