A Christmas Carol is so wild to me because it takes not one, not two, but like four fucking ghosts to convince this dude not to be the biggest douche in the universe. Like, four fucking ghosts came back from the dead, rose from the Goddamn grave to be like, “I came back from the dead because you need to quit your shit.” Fuck. How big of an asshole do you have to be to have four fucking ghosts tell you to stop?
Have you ever met a rich capitalist
Also, one of those ghosts was a rich capitalist douche. He needed to reform Scrooge to work off his own sentence, didn’t he?
Marley’s ghost basically told Scrooge that if he kept being a greedy douchebag he would go to hell and Scrooge still needed convincing and that honestly is 100% believable to me
That an old rich white guy being told “Your going to hell unless you help the poor” would respond by going “I still kind of want to NOT help the poor tho?”
Charlie Dickens knew what was up.
Dickens had to work in a factory hos entire childhood. His father was thrown in a debtor’s prison. Thats why all his stories are about rich fucks getting owned.
And yet Dickens made Scrooge into an empathetic character. One whole ghost is showing how Scrooge got to be that way. You understand the complexity of his motivations and how a life can begin to harden ones heart and soul.
Dickens was not so simplistic as to make a ham fisted “durr capitalists evil” tract. There are hundreds of those. The reason why A Christmas Carol sticks with you is because even the man you’re supposed to hate you leave understanding and even liking.
Also, when we visit Scrooge’s past, we’re shown that he used to work for Fezziwig, a kindly, rich businessman who not only gave his employees the day off for Christmas with pay, but also invited them to his huge, expensive Christmas party, which not only serves as a contrast as to how Scrooge treated Bob Cratchit, but also makes it stand out among other “capitalism bad” tracts by having a rich businessman who was benevolent to his employees as character with quite a bit of significance. It’s also made pretty clear that Scrooge originally went into business so that he make enough money to support his fiancée, Belle, but the problem is that he lost his way and became consumed with greed, and neglected Belle until she had no choice but to leave him.
Another problem Scrooge had wasn’t just because he was rich, but he was rich and cheap as hell. We’re talking about a guy who was so cheap that not only did he refuse to replace the “Scrooge and Marley” sign outside his office building even after Jacob Marley had been dead for seven years, but also refused to furnish or clean up the dingy, old house Marley had left to him even after he moved in.
Edit: I forgot to mention, the purpose of all four ghosts is to show what will happen to Scrooge if he doesn’t repent, show how he used to be and how he fell, what’s he’s missing out on and how others still depend on him, and how he can change his ways.
Marley’s Ghost shows what will happen to Scrooge in the afterlife if doesn’t start looking out for his fellow man.
The Ghost of Christmas Past shows how Scrooge had nobler goals and ambitions before he became a miser, and, as I said before, shows how he should likely emulate his old benevolent boss instead of just being another crass businessman.
The Ghost of Christmas Present shows the joy that Scrooge has been missing out on not only on Christmas, but missing out on life as well. It also shows how there are still people who rely on and even care about him, specifically Bob and his nephew, Fred (Fred because they’re only the family either one has left and Fred knows deep down that Scrooge is just hurting himself, and Bob because even though he’s not paid a lot, he still relies on Scrooge as his employer to pay him in order to feed his family, even going so far as to Scrooge “the founder” of his family’s feast in spite of his crappy treatment).
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows what will happen to Scrooge in the mortal world after he dies (ends up hated, mocked, and barely remembered in death), and how his carelessness affects the other people he knows (Bob Cratchit is out of a job and his son is dead because Scrooge neglected to pay Bob better, and it’s somewhat implied in some versions that Fred may go down a similar path Scrooge went down because they were so distant, and Fred lost the only other family he had left in the world), and this all culminates in Scrooge genuinely seeing the error of his ways, wanting to prevent all of this from happening, and leads him to swearing to “honor Christmas, and try to keep it all the year.”
This is the reason for all for of the Ghosts’ visits, and why Scrooge couldn’t, in his own words, “take them all at once and have it over with.”
YES
The “Capitalism bad” yahoos missed or outirght ignored big important parts of the story to spin it as a simplistic “capitalism bad” story?
