This is a very famous book by Charles Dickens. For those of you who don’t know, it’s about an old miser named Ebeneezer Scrooge and he’s really bitter. He’s cheap and he hates Christmas. So he get’s visited by three ghosts (four if you count Jacob Marley) these ghosts are known as the ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present and the ghost of Christmas yet to come.
The purpose of these ghosts is to try and change Scrooge into becoming a better person. It’s a good book especially for annotating at GCSE level because there are so many links to context that can be made.
It is safe to say that it is implied that Scrooge represents the government at the time which was really harsh, especially to poor people. There would be circumstances where if you were poor you would actually end up in prison or a workhouse and the conditions were awful. When Charles Dickens was a child, his father ended up in one of these prisons.
Tiny Tim is implied to give a face to the nameless poor, he represents all that was wrong with society back then. His fate is almost sealed by Scrooge and the fact he refuses to pay Bob enough money for him and his family to live.
The whole book is pretty much a call for change in the corrupt political system back then.
So please feel free to ask questions and discuss the book below.
Also try to consider if the book can still be applied to today.
We are doing a version in my drama class. I’m playing Scrouge so I get to shout a lot and unleash my inner anger so far we have done the first scene and the one with the ghost of Christmas past. But our teacher insists we modernise it
