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Three sociological perspectives on poverty
Three sociological perspectives on poverty
Three theoretical perspectives poverty
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Poverty has many definitions that interpret many ways. At first glance, someone might assume it means being in the state of extreme poorness. Poverty in today’s society makes it seem like an economic thing with two sides, someone is either poor or they’re not. A lack of something is a better definition of poverty than being poor. Those who are actually poor might not see it as a completely bad thing. A Christmas Carol suggests kinds of poverty that are represented in the social standards as well as in Scrooge himself.
Confronted by multiple people who have the spirit of Christmas to share, Scrooge denies it. His nephew wants him to attend their Christmas dinner and two poorly men ask for him to give to their charity. Scrooge says Christmas time isn’t any different from the rest of the year. He doesn’t spend time with his family or give money to the poor any other time so why should he waste it now. He expresses his disgust by saying, “Bah! Humbug!” (Dickens 19). The town in which the characters live has the very poor and the very rich. This doesn’t mean one lives in poverty while the other has nothing to worry about. The different types of poverty aren’t by the amount of money they have, Those who are getting as much out of live as they can
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will never see the deepest parts of poverty. While those who go about life just to make money will never have a great appreciation. The ghosts begin to visit Scrooge and show him the real meaning of poverty.
He begins to realize even though bad things might happen, it can get better, Scrooge was always a mean person who didn’t care about anything. He was shown his past and responded, “No more! No more. I don’t wish to see it. Show me no more!” (47). When really he felt that if no one cared about him as a child, why should he care now. He didn’t want to see the terrible things he went through as a child again. Scrooge is living in poverty by pushing away people all the time and isn’t fulfilling his potential in life. He doesn’t realize the potential he has as a business person. He can help those in need and help himself by getting into the Christmas
spirit. By the end of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge vows to dedicate himself to Christmas and do what he can to help others. He realizes how fortunate he really is and wants to enjoy the life he has instead of wasting it, expressing, “Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!” (88). Once noticing he didn’t miss Christmas, Scrooge wanted to enjoy is and let everyone know he was too. Poverty was a state Scrooge was living in. He was at a loss by not enjoying things in life and by pushing those who tried to care for him, away. While there were people who didn’t have much money, they didn’t live in the same type of poverty Scrooge did, Those people lived life to its fullest potential, accepted the life they lived, and were grateful for what they had. It took a while, but Scrooge finally understood the true meaning of Christmas. It isn’t about feeling bad for those who don’t have as much as others, but to appreciate what is given to you and share that with others. So everyone can live with some type of wealth.
Scrooge hates christmas, but he doesn't see the love and joy in it, because he is filled with greed. “Fred: A merry christmas to you uncle! god save you. Scrooge:Bah! Humbug!” this is just one example of how scrooge is so negative, and that greed has taken over. This also shows how Fred is filled with love, and is merry and happy even though he is pore. Unlike Scrooge who is financially loaded and miserable. But will Scrooge ever be burdened or punished by his greed? he doesn't think so. Jack marley, his partner certainly was. on page 396 he rises from the dead as a spirit to teach Scrooge a lesson. “ You will walk where I do, burdened by your riches.” This statement shows how being greedy is not a good thing, and it will haunt you, if you
Dickens displays guilt as the main form of how Scrooge’s character develops into a compassionate person by the end of the novella. As Scrooge feels this quilt, it's purely based on the visions that the ghosts provide which further causes Scrooge to realise the consequences of his actions. His alienation from specific characters that he used to love such as Belle, “...has displaced me…” whom left Scrooge, due to his desire for money and wealth which grew. This desire grows with him as he is rejecting the christmas joy and spirit as he continuously states that Christmas is a “humbug,” but by stating this it provides comparison. Dickens depicts that Scrooge has become a better person because of fear but in the end he has become kinder. As the
Scrooge was and owner of a factory and made a whole bunch of money, but he did not care about anyone else. “Merry Christmas said his nephew, what right do have to be merry you are poor enough”. This shows that scrooge is mean to family and does not care about Christmas.
The first reason he said what he said is because of what the Spirit of Christmas Past said to him. One of the first things he showed him was when he went to a party with his girlfriend and proposed marriage. She said yes. This was before he was greedy and mean. This showed him that being pleasant and kind pays off. The spirit then shows Scrooge another part of his past, where his wife
Although he didn’t reach this point his business partner Jacob Marley did. When Marley died he had to wear a chain link for every bad deed he did. So his punishment was bearing the weight of his actions. Scrooge was also headed down this path but lucky for him Marley and the ghosts helped him to shun his path. The ghost of Christmas yet to come showed him the reaction of people when Scrooge was going to die. This was one of consequences, since he was mean and cold-hearted to everyone people seemed happy and joyous at the fact of his death. Some people said they would only go to his funeral if there was food and because they could wear their fancy black gloves. “It's likely to be a very cheap funeral,'' said the same speaker; ``for upon my life I don't know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?'' ``I don't mind going if a lunch is provided,'' observed the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose.” In the end though Scrooge was able to shun his path and started treating people kinder with more respect. His was able to change his attitude towards people from being rude and nasty to being kind and found that people liked him a lot better that
In the 19th century in the Victorian period there was a huge difference in the way the rich and the poor live. The Victorians believed in "self" help" so the poor did not have 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."
Throughout the play, A Christmas Carol, we learn that change begins simply. As stated by Robin Sharma, “Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end.” Luckily Scrooge changed directly like what Robin Sharma’s quote stated. When he had the help of the three ghosts it was hard in the beginning, messy in the middle, and truly gorgeous at the end. Unfortunately, Scrooge believed that he will suffer too many hardships to change and became a stingy, greedy, and cold-hearted old man. Since Scrooge thought it was hard to change he didn’t think it was worth the time and effort to do it. Luckily for Scrooge, Past, Present, and Future helped him out so he could change. In conclusion moving forward Scrooge will transform into a new man, he keeps Christmas in his heart all year round and will spread love and joy to
“Bah Humbug!” (Dickens 3) To some people, money is their only thought in life, or in other words, they’re greedy. He or she would need a life lesson to allow their mind to set straight on what’s right and what’s wrong. In A Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens, you see a man named Ebenezer Scrooge, who lives out as the person getting a lesson by play and movie. Sounding different, yet the same story, these two do have some minor differences, as well as major similarities in the climax, conflict, and resolution.
Scrooge was a terrible, terrible man. However, after a fantastic night of visions, he transforms into a better man. Patrick T. Reardon wrote in the National Catholic Reporter, that “A Christmas Carol isn’t about a sinner. It’s about a sinner who goes through a conversion experience. (Reardon, Patrick T. "The conversion of St. Scrooge." National Catholic Reporter, 18 Dec. 2015) He says that we are all like Scrooge, and we all have our Bah Humbug experiences; and like Scrooge, we need a conversion in some way. Scrooge is in all of us, but it’s what we do to try and change ourselves that’s makes the story have a happy
On page 64, we see how Scrooge shows sympathy in the quote, “There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him something. That 's All.” After being shown a memory of himself as a boy, Scrooge regrets being harsh to the boy caroling and not giving him any money. Seeing his own sadness as a child made him realize it would have been nice to give the boy something to make him happy. He will probably do nicer things in the future because he now realizes that the boy would have been upset because of how Scrooge turned him away so harshly. He is changing his actions, and regretting bad actions in the past. He wants to fix what he did wrong, and he feels sympathy for the boy. People want to be shown compassion, so in the future if he helps people out and is kind, he will not be as isolated. Another quote to show how he becomes less detached from humanity is on pages 92-93, ‘”Spirit,” said Scrooge, “Tell me if Tiny Tim will live.” Scrooge feels sorry for Bob Cratchit because the spirit says if the future remains unaltered he will die. He feels upset that Tiny Tim will die, and sympathy for Bob because his son will probably die. He probably regrets not giving Bob more time with his son. He had made a comment earlier that if someone will die they better go and die to decrease the population, when the donation collector
During the story, Scrooge is visited by the Ghosts from Christmas past, present, and future, who shows the ill-tempered Scrooge how to be feel compassion towards others human beings. A large quantity of the story revolves around money, and it plays a large role, to contrast how generosity is viewed in society. Scrooge is incredibly wealthy, as he lives a l...
He is like Victor and chooses to be isolated for how he treated others. For example, Scrooge says, “I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry” (Dickens 16). Scrooge is showing the reader that he is an ungrateful and a non-friendly man. The author wants us to know that he has no Christmas sprit and is selfish man that is also very stingy with his money. He also is rude to the people that come to his store. Charles Dickens describes him in A Christmas Carol as “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel has ever struck generous fire; secret, and self contained, and solitary as an oyster” (Dickens 12). This description of Scrooge shows that he is a very negative person, that chooses to isolate himself, and keeps things all to himself. He does not care about anyone other than money and himself. He loves money and also watching his clerk; “the door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk” (Dickens 13). Scrooge was always watching what his clerk was doing; he was not a friendly guy. There is an example of this in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein also, where Victor was being watched constantly by the monster, everything victor did the monster was watching. Scrooge
An example of this is shown in his bitter attitude towards the cheerfulness of his nephew Fred and by thinking Christmas a "humbug." And then, moments before he bitterly declines his nephew's friendly invitation to come dine with him, he says crossly to him, "'Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.'" Lastly, an instance that illustrates the cold heart of Scrooge is when he speaks of the poor, "'If they would rather die, they better do it, and decrease the surplus population.'" By these demonstrations, Scrooge exposed the coldness of his own
Explore how Dickens makes his readers aware of poverty in A Christmas Carol One of the major themes in "A Christmas Carol" was Dickens' observations of the plight of the children of London's poor and the poverty that the poor had to endure. Dickens causes the reader to be aware of poverty by the use and type of language he uses. He uses similes and metaphors to establish clear and vivid images of the characters who are used to portray his message. Dickens describes his characters like caricatures. Dickens exaggerates characters characteristics in order to make his point and provide the reader with a long living memory.
...t, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within [him]." With this still resonating in his mind, he jumps out of bed and immediately begins setting things right. He buys a turkey bigger than Bob Cratchit's son and sends it to him, and instead of being rude to the Poulterer, he pays for a cab to get them to Cratchit's home. He then goes out with joy in his heart and bumps into a man who asked him to donate money to the poor the day before. As opposed to being unkind and cruel, the new and improved Scrooge donates a large sum of money to the cause happily. This kind, happy, and generous man is a complete change from the stingy and unkind Scrooge from Christmas Eve. If someone this awful can change, anyone and everyone can do the same. They just need a little push in the right direction.