A Christmas Carol - Stave Two Flashcards
what happens with the Ghost of Christmas Past?
- The Ghost takes Scrooge to his past, showing his mistakes
- He firstly takes him to his youth at school and his isolation
- Then at Fezziwig’s Christmas party, showing him he did have joy
- Then, his fiance ending the engagement because she was ‘displaced by a golden idol’
how is the weather presented in this section of the novel?
- the reader is shown a world shrouded in fog and cold
- showing the cold, isolating life that Scrooge is living and the fog of ignorance of the lives of the poor
analyse a quote from youth, age and memory
‘it was a strange figure’, this unsettling description is constantly shifting between childlike impressions and aged impressions
analyse a quote from extract 1
- There is a lot of contrasts in this section
- ‘uncommon stength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed’ , contrast between strength and delicacy represents memory
- ‘light’ and ‘dark’, contrasting
- ‘white’ and ‘green’, colour contrast of white and green representing innocence and maturity
- ‘holly’ and ‘summer flowers’, contrast between seasonal flowers represents time
what happens when the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge back to his youth?
- When the Ghost takes him back to his boyhood at school, we can see he is left alone at school at Christmas, showing he has always had a sense of solitude
- Scrooge weeps at this memory of his ‘poor forgotten self’
- The Ghost then shows another Christmas, where he is still alone. His younger sister, Fan, comes to tell him that he can go home
- Scrooge and the Ghost discuss Fan’s generous heart and they reveal that before she died she had one child - Fred
analyse a quote from this extract
- ‘conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air’, at this point Scrooge begins to experience sensations - a shift from his former oyster-like self
- ‘Your lip is trembling’, the Ghost indicates that Scrooge is feeling emotion, it doesn’t directly say that he’s crying but asking a question, leaving Scrooge to recognise and name the emotion
analyse a quote from extract 1 when he sees a vision of himself as a child, left in school at Christmas
- ‘clapping her tiny hands’, ‘bending down to laugh’, ‘brimful of glee’
- Like Fred, she is shown as a force of joy and happiness
- She is seen doing these things, this joyful noise contrasts with the silence of the counting house from Stave One
how is Fezziwig presented?
- The Ghost takes Scrooge to the warehouse where he was apprenticed by Fezziwig as a young man
- He calls all of his apprentices to prepare the warehouse for a Christmas party
- Scrooge and the Ghost listen to two apprentices praise Fezziwig and he reflects on how an employer can make his workers happy/unhappy, he wishes he could ‘say a word or two’ to his clerk, Bob Cratchit
analyse a quote from this extract
‘Fezziwig! Bless his heart, it’s Fezziwig!’
- Scrooge’s joy at seeing his former boss is shown through the use of exclamations and the repetition of his name
- Dickens uses a charactonym here to imply traits within Fezziwig, such as soft consonants ‘f’, ‘zz’, ‘w’ to suggest a warm personality
what do we learn about Scrooge’s past relationship?
- Belle, Scrooge’s fiance, has seen he is too obsessed with work and money and leaves little time for her
- She tells him that money has replaced her in his affections and breaks of their engagement, telling him that their ‘contract’ was made when they were both poor and that he is now a changed man
what do we learn about Scrooge through Belle?
- This section reveals Scrooge’s downfall into the bitter miser he is now
- Through Belle, Dickens shows us a different side of Scrooge, that he was loveable, but his love of money came between them
- Belle uses religious imagery, the metaphor ‘golden idol’ tells the reader that Scrooge worships money and wealth but not her
how does Dickens reveal Scrooge’s decline?
- Dickens reveals this by showing the reader the changes to his face
- We are told his face ‘had begun to wear the signs of avarice’
- ‘Avarice’, is extreme greed for wealth or money, and both the Victorian and contemporary reader understand that this trait is a sin
- Personification is used to show the impact of Scrooge’s love of money
- Through this image, Scrooge is presented as wearing his love of money as someone would wear clothes, visibly and obviously
analyse a quote from this section of the extract
- ‘I cannot bear it!
- Scrooge can’t bear to face the memories of Belle, and he has had to face the images of himself alone, ‘solitary child’
- Dickens presents the loving but financially poor family as a contrast to Scrooge’s life
how is Christmas shown in this Stave?
- In the party at Fezziwig’s warehouse, we see a Christmas of good cheer
- Dickens is not presenting a religious view of Christmas, instead he shows the power of Christmas to bring people together in joyful celebration
how is Redemption shown in this Stave?
-The reader sees a shift in this Stave, we can see Scrooge showing emotion and we see a different side of him
- Dickens shows that shedding light on our memories and learning from them can help us to be better people
- Scrooge wishes he had treated his clerk differently after viewing is memories of Fezziwig as an employer
