Christmas Carol

"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, is a story that is rich in metaphors that ultimately questions the morals and ethics of the author's society during the time of his life, the industrial revolutionized society. In the story, the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is a greedy, rich accountant who is visited by his old business partner ghost, Jacob Marley.
Marley's ghost tells Scrooge that he may face a penalty of becoming a lost soul if he continues to value money more than anything else in his life. He also foretells that Scrooge will be visited by three other ghosts that will give him the chance to redeem himself, and he can break an iron chain of greed that he has woven. Each time a ghost visits Scrooge, he will become more aware of the failures of the society he lives in. The ghosts will also let Scrooge see his contributions to those failures.
As Dickens writes the story of the three visits, we are able to out more about Scrooge's inner self-character. We learn this about him as he finds out about his own fellow man and his community. The crux of the story is alluded to in the ingenious metaphors Dickens creeates to illustrate his own reflection on Nineteenth Century society.
In the beginning of the story, Scrooge and his assistant Bob Cratchit are working at Scrooge's counting house on a very cold night, Christmas Eve. Scrooge's offices are nearly freezing, because of the dreadful weather. They depend on using coal to keep warm. Scrooge is satisfied with a very small fire that he barely keeps going. More than that he thinks is unnecessary warmth. On the other hand, Bob Cratchit's fire is nothing but one dying morsel of coal. "Scrooge had a very small fire, but his clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal."
The irony in only using a small piece of coal is that they both had two entirely different reasons for not using more coal. Bob Cratchit is Scrooge's impoverished assistant, who can't afford to buy more coal to kindle up warmth in his office. If he had enough money to improve his working condition, he would. On the other hand, Scrooge had more than enough money to buy coal for his office and Bob's. He didn't find that necessary. Dickens makes reference to this as he shows how Scrooge doesn't find it necessary to build up more warmth in his office, or even to offer to keep his assistant's office warm, when he writes "But he (Bob Cratchit) couldn't replenish it (the fire), for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part."
The situation is much deeper than it appears. Dickens has not only created a spiteful and stingy character, but he creates a Scrooge whose very body is cold. The fact that Scrooge doesn't mind that his office is cold reveals that he is both physically and mentally a cold person. Throughout literature the use of hot and cold plays as two basic metaphors for love and hate: loneliness. Scrooge doesn't need warmth as a result of being a malevolent and bitter person. He doesn't have family or friends to share his love and heart with, so he developed into a person who was numb to his own warm feelings. The only emotions that are left are the bitter ones he has for his society.