Scrooge's Redemption in A Christmas Carol: A Grade Nine Guide

I'm going to show you the 14 quotes you would use to write an essay on Scrooge's redemption. 14 quotes is enough for a

grade nine. I will also show you how these quotes will answer every question that could

possibly come up every year. So, let's begin with the idea of redemption. You have to begin with a thesis statement,

and I always recommend three parts to your thesis. So, we're going to say Dickens has written this novel

because he wants to illustrate his opposition to the poor laws, which are cruel and dehumanizing to the poor. So,

you're going to include the attack on Malthusian economics, more of that in a minute. Secondly, he wants to encourage

his readers, who are all basically middle class, this is an expensive book, to contribute to charity, because

there's no welfare state. The only thing helping the poor are people with money. And then, the other way everyone reading

this book can help the poor is by increasing wages. This is Victorian England. People have housemaids, they

have cooks, they employ people to get them food from the grocer's, from the butcher's, to clean their house. They

employ a whole economy of people who they pay a pittance, and that will be important later.

And all of these things encourage the reader to think of society as their family. They must become like a

father to the poor. And Scrooge's redemption, as we will see in point 13, is that he becomes a father to Tiny Tim

and to the Cratchits, and that is going to symbolize how we should become, the Victorian reader, a father to the poor.

That is the point of Scrooge's redemption. Okay. The first quote that fits every

essay. If they would rather die, they had better do it and decrease the surplus population.

With every quote, I'm going to tell you the most important words to zoom in on for your AO2 analysis. And here, it's

decrease the surplus population. This is an economic argument, and it is expressed in economic language. This is

the language of numbers. Surplus population is a way of glossing over the fact that these are real

people. They are the poor, and Scrooge is saying, "We should just let them die. They are a drain on

society. You, me, we would all be better off if they were dead." And you can see that callousness in the language that he

uses. Now, why does he use that language with Scrooge? Yes, he wants to portray Scrooge as a caricature of a miser. He's

a ridiculous, laughable figure, a wicked figure at the beginning. But,

check out quote number two. Scrooge says to the charity workers, "And the workhouses,

are they still in operation?" The workhouses are not Scrooge's idea.

They are society's solution to the poor. If you're poor, you're basically put into a workhouse,

you work for less than the minimum wage, and money is taken from you simply so you can live in bunk beds without

privacy in a workhouse. It's almost slave labor, and society takes the view, "The poor deserve it." But, this, of

course, keeps them poor and keeps them servile, like servants. So, now you can see why Dickens creates Scrooge as this

ridiculous miser, this wicked old man, because he's saying, "Look, dear reader, that's exactly what our society is like.

That's what you voted for. That's the poor laws, remember the thesis statement, that's the poor laws that you

have supported. We need to change that." And then, for some AO2 analysis, the word operation treats the poor as part

of a machine. You operate a machine. Again, it dehumanizes them. We now have a semantic field, a lot of language

connected to dehumanizing the poor. Grade nine is easy when you use the right vocabulary. And so, we come to

quote number three. This is about Scrooge, and he is a solitary child neglected by his friends

is left there in his school still. Now, why is this important? Why does Dickens take us back to Scrooge's

childhood? Well, he wants us to be sympathetic to Scrooge. We can see his origin story,

don't use that in the exam. We can see what has caused his misanthropy, his hatred of people, and it is the neglect

that he has had as a child because he has not had a loving father. His father has abandoned him, has treated him

without love. His mother has obviously abandoned him metaphorically because she's obviously dead.

Scrooge feels alone, and that isolation and loneliness is what he then reproduces

in adulthood. In psychology, this is called patterns of attachment. The grade nine essay that I've put in the link to

my description, you can get it in my newsletter. The idea of a pattern of attachment is

that we repeat the behaviors of our early childhood. We're trapped into recreating the relationships we had with

our carers. Scrooge, he wasn't cared for, and so he recreates that in his adult life by not

caring for others, and ultimately not even caring for himself. That, of course, is what needs to be redeemed.

Once he can care for himself and others, he can then redeem himself and change society.

Grade nine is easy. More times you use the word society. In quote number four, Dickens makes it really clear that

fatherhood is the issue. And so, Fan comes along, his loving sister, and says,

"Father is so much kinder than he used to be that home is a very heaven." Father,

heaven. This is the religious, Christian imagery of the novel. Because, of course, it is

Christmas. It's not just a time for giving and celebration, it is also a time for celebrating Jesus and God.

Because Dickens' wider message is, if you are a Christian, and obviously everyone in his readership, his audience

was Christian, then it is going to be your Christian duty to help the poor. Dickens is linking Scrooge's father to

God the Father, and he's looking at the difference, you know, the Father God is there to look out for us all, the father

of Scrooge abandoned Scrooge. Again, it gives us the psychological reason for his wickedness and misanthropy, and it

also makes us sympathize with him more. Then, we leap forward to Scrooge's engagement with Belle. Now, Belle was

very much younger than Scrooge. In my guide, I argue that this is an example of Scrooge repeating his pattern

of attachment. He picks a woman who is young and beautiful, and is therefore likely to reject him as he gets older.

Just in the same way that he was rejected metaphorically by his dead mother, and literally by his father. And

so, what happens is Scrooge gets his rejection in first. He stops treating Belle as his partner, as someone he

loves, and he stops treating her as the idol of his love, and instead turns to a golden one. He starts worshipping money.

The idea of worshipping money and having idols is, of course, anti-Christian. In the Church of England, you are supposed

to not have idols. So, the importance of this quote is also to establish the Christian message behind Scrooge's

redemption, because Dickens wants his readers to also reject the accumulation of wealth, because that doesn't benefit

society. The next thing that the Ghost of Christmas Past introduces Scrooge to is

Belle with her grown-upish, say, 16-year-old daughter. And he notices the daughter sitting on

her father's lap, and Scrooge says to himself, "She might have called him a father."

Scrooge might have had this daughter, and been a springtime in the haggard winter of his life.

Winter gives us the idea of his age. It also reminds us of that description of Scrooge at the beginning, which we

associate entirely with cold, with being frozen emotionally, and depriving poor old Bob Cratchit of heat with his one

piece of coal. But, the cure for this the cure is fatherhood. Fatherhood is going to bring a

springtime. This, of course, is a redemption. Winter is redeemed by spring. That is the

natural cycle. Dickens is pointing out that Scrooge's transformation is not unexpected. It is a natural cycle. If

someone looks back on their own life and looks at the effect they have on others, it will be only natural for them to

reject the poor laws and to seek to become a father to the poor. The word natural and unnatural is going to appear

later. Linking those two quotes is going to be an easy grade nine technique. At number seven, we have the turning point

of the novel and the beginning of Scrooge's redemption. It is the moment he says to the Ghost of

Christmas Present, "Tell me if Tiny Tim will live." This links Scrooge's miserliness and his

misanthropy to the consequences, which is that the vulnerable will die. This is a microcosm for wider society.

If we, as rich or middle-class people, do not contribute to the poor, the weaker among them will die. We will be

responsible for their deaths. And Scrooge's transformation is not caused by fear of his own death.

It is caused by fear of the death of Tiny Tim, the death of the vulnerable. It is a social message. It's not just a

story about Scrooge and his particular journey. And now, we have the political message spelled out for us by the ghost

because the ghost turns on him and uses Scrooge's Malthusian economics against him. He uses his own words against him.

He says, "If he be like to die, he had better do it and decrease the

surplus population." Again, using that insensitive economic language to condemn Scrooge

with his own words. But, remember the workhouse, the poor laws are society's solution. So, the ghost's real

target, of course, is not Scrooge. The real target is us, the reader, who supports these institutions and believe

that the poor deserve the misery they get. The ghost's

>> [snorts] >> final revelation in his robes are the two figures of ignorance and want. And

this quote, "Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow is

written that which is doom." That is the political message. So, want is poverty.

Ignorance is a lack of education. Dickens is obsessed with the idea that if we educate the poor, they will be

able to raise up their own status in society because they will qualify for a greater range of better-paid employment.

If they can do that, they will cease to be poor. They will eradicate want. He is telling us, as he tells Scrooge, that

our job is to make sure there is less want, less poverty in society, and that there is more education and less

ignorance. At this time, Dickens is campaigning for more access to free schools. It shouldn't just be for the

middle class and the wealthy. And what is the consequence to society if we don't? It is doom. Well, what does he

mean here? He doesn't spell it out, but what he means is increased crime, increased violence in the streets,

and the possibility of the poor rising up in revolution. Now, that might seem to you unlikely, but this is 1845,

and only 3 years later, revolution spread across many of the countries of Europe. Revolution was in the air. Why?

Because the poor were suffering. And what do people do when they suffer? They fight back.

Scrooge's message is simple. We shouldn't make them fight back. We should give them what they need. It's

Christmas, remember? This novel is published just before Christmas to harness the Christmas spirit.

That, of course, is important to Scrooge's redemption and the religious message, but it's also important, in

terms of timing, to getting the reader to change. They're already feeling charitable and full of goodwill to all

men because it's Christmas. Quote number 10 gives us the reaction of the people

Scrooge has employed in his life and, despite being rich, has paid a pittance. So, the charwoman calls him a wicked old

screw. Wicked, of course, is biblical language pointing to his evil and, therefore, his need to be redeemed, to

redeem his soul. And screw is this language of the machine again. Do you remember the

workhouse in operation? Now, Scrooge is part of the machine, and the machine is trying to screw the poor out of money.

This caricature is what Dickens is saying society is like, and he's asking his readers to change that. The second

part of the quote, "Instead of being unnatural in his lifetime." So, Dickens is

pointing out that the poor laws, this attitude towards the poor, is unnatural.

So, it's not just un-Christian, it goes against what it means to be a human being.

Our basic human nature is to help others, and Scrooge needs to rediscover that, just as the reader does. Now,

these people who steal from Scrooge are making almost nothing. We know that because they take their stolen goods to

Old Joe, and Joe is living in a hovel. He's having to sell stolen goods because he's about 70 years old. Crime does not

pay. He's still ridiculously poor. What's Dickens' message? If you pay people almost nothing, you're driving

them towards crime because you're not giving them a living wage. That, of course, is true of Scrooge paying Bob

Cratchit because Tiny Tim is still going to die on the wages that Bob Cratchit gets from Scrooge. And Bob Cratchit's

wages, they're the going rate. That is why Bob Cratchit still works for Scrooge. He can't get a better-paid job

elsewhere because society doesn't pay people more for that level of work. At quote number 11,

Scrooge asks the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come if he can change the future. "Assure me that I yet may

change these order to change the future for other people. So, he's going to lead an altered life. He's going to be

redeemed not just for himself, but to change the future of those he cares about. And so, we come to the last two

pages of the novel. These are so relevant to every single question. And so, he says to Bob, "I'll raise your

salary." The importance of that is Bob is a symbol of the worker.

The message to the reader is that we must pay people a living wage. He is also going to assist Bob's struggling

family. Dickens is making the crucial point that when you pay a man, you pay the whole family. The whole family need

to exist on that wage. And if you don't pay enough, you've got a whole family that's going to suffer. You've got

children who are going to starve or be malnourished and die through illness. You've got Tiny Tims. And so now, we

have another crucial repetition, a cyclical structure. To Tiny Tim who did not die. This is the

point of Scrooge's redemption, not just to save his own soul, much more importantly, to save Tiny Tim, to save

Bob's family. And what does he do to Tiny Tim? He becomes a second father. This is a metaphor for becoming a father

to society, which is what he wants the reader to do. And it also gives us that psychological

plausibility. Scrooge has redeemed the lack of a father that he had by replacing his

terrible example of fatherhood with a new example. He is becoming a father himself and caring for others. That is

true redemption. And so, the novel ends with the Christian message, again from Tiny Tim, "God bless us everyone." It's

his the final reminder that if you do not redeem yourself, dear reader, you will not save your own soul. You will

not be acting as a true Christian. And so, the political message of the novel is married exactly to the Christian

message. You now have a grade nine essay on Scrooge's redemption. What if the question is about the importance of

family? Well, you're going to write about Scrooge's [snorts] need to become a

father. So, the family is the microcosm that represents the macrocosm of society. Scrooge becomes a father to

society. We become a father to society by helping the poor. Who is the family in the novel? Well, it is the Cratchits.

And it's the Cratchits who prompt Scrooge to change. It's Tiny Tim. It's Bob.

Therefore, you can easily apply this to an essay about the family, always linking it back to those three

intentions that Dickens had for the novel. This thesis statement will fit anything. Ah,

Mr. Salles, what if it is a question about the ghosts? Okay, well,

what is the purpose of the ghosts? It is to teach Scrooge the lesson that will, guess what, redeem him. We can look at

the Ghost of Christmas Past and the things in our plan that he shows to Scrooge to establish the psychological

reasons for why he became a miser and a misanthrope and the psychological reasons for why he needs to change and

become a second father. We can look at the Ghost of Christmas Present and that turning point about Tiny Tim and

Ignorance and Want linked to the political message. And then, we can look at the Ghost of Christmas Future, whose

job is to show that the shadows of Scrooge's sins can be wiped away with the new reality when Scrooge wakes up

and redeems himself and becomes a new man, a father to Tiny Tim and to society. So, everything applies to a

question about the ghosts. Aha, what if it is about Scrooge's fear? You haven't mentioned Scrooge's

fear once here, Mr. Salles. What you going to do now? Well, hopefully, you're getting the idea that you can apply what

you know to the question. And so, with Scrooge's fear, is he afraid for his own soul or afraid for the future of others?

Well, you can see in my argument, I'm suggesting he's much more interested in his fear for the future of Tiny Tim and

for the future of Bob Cratchit's family. He is changed by his views on social responsibility, not by his selfish

self-interest in saving his own soul. Now, how did I pick the quotes to give you? I picked them in advance because

they fit every question. I've got the top quotes on A Christmas Carol with the grade nine analysis on my website. You

can access it in the doobly-doo. Or not. You might not want the quotes for every single essay because you're

thinking, "No, Mr. Salles, you've convinced me. This essay will fit anything that comes up. I just want your

essay on your Substack in the Or you might think, "No, Mr. Salles, I ain't paying you nothing because you

just gave me a grade nine essay for free." You're welcome. This is the time when I recommend the next video, which

will give you the top quotes. However, I'd much rather you don't watch this video and you go and write this essay

now from memory to practice what you've learned. No? All right, watch the video.