Attitude Toward the Poor in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

664 Words2 Pages

Attitude Toward the Poor in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol Dickens encourages readers to change their views by showing what scrooge is like before, during and after the ghosts have visited him. "A Christmas Carol" is about a horrid old accountant and how people react around him on Christmas Eve he is visited by 3 ghosts and they try and change his wicked ways. Dickens knows what it is like to work in factories because, as a child he used to work in one, putting labels on shoe polish bottles. In the 19th century in the Victorian period there was a huge difference in the way the rich and the poor lived. The Victorians believed in "self help" so the poor had not a lot of help with money or equipment to get work or do it. So most of the poor had to work in dangerous factories, scrooge himself believed this was a good thing as he believed in "self help". Scrooge liked the idea of the work house "are there no prisons" that was a scrooge after some charity workers came to his door for some money. The union workhouses were like prisons for the poor; most poor people would rather die than go there. Scrooge was disliked by many in his local society "he frightened everyone away from him when he was alive"; he didn't like to be very sociable so he didn't have many if a friend. His best friend and old business partner Jacob Marley died and he comes back as a ghost to tell him to be nicer to people "I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer", there are to more people who he interacts with and they are his nephew "A merry Christmas to you uncle" and his clerk ". Scrooge's attitude to homeless/poor people was the typical stereotype for the poor. Scrooge thought he was liked but when he gets shown how people act around him he is shocked and upset e.

Open Document