Synopsis of "A Christmas Carol"

Essay by thedrummer122High School, 11th gradeA+, March 2006

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Ebenezer Scrooge is a selfish, penny-pinching miser. He doesn't care for the people around him and mankind exists only for the money that he can make through business. In particular, Mr. Scrooge detests Christmas, which he views as a useless time that only interrupts his business for 2 days a year. After a day of harassing those who are celebrating Christmas, Scrooge is visited, on Christmas Eve, by the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley who had died seven Christmas Eves ago.

Marley, a man from the same mold as Scrooge, is suffering the consequences in the afterlife of not being generous and giving, and hopes to help Scrooge avoid his fate. He tells Scrooge that he will be haunted by three spirits, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, to try and succeed in showing Scrooge the error of his ways.

Scrooge is first visited by Christmas past, where a young boy and girl, and their mother and father visit him, and show him the Christmases of past, and one such scene was when it showed him as a young child, when his eldest sister came to pick him up from his boarding schools, after years of being alienated by his father.

In the next vision, Scrooge is shown as a teenager with his love, and then is shown losing her on Christmas Eve do to his selfish ways. At this point he is beginning to feel the Christmas spirit, but is not thoroughly convinced to change.

The next ghost that visits him is the ghost of Christmas Present, and Scrooge is shown the family of Bob Cratchit, his poor, underpaid clerk who also has a crippled son. After seeing the struggles that Scrooge's selfishness causes the Cratchits, and then begins to show concern for the...