Scrooge & Marley

Scrooge & Marley is the counting house where aforementioned money lenders worked as business partners. This company was a major investor in the London Stock Exchange and both were dedicated to obtaining selves-interest by usury and elitism. Scrooge & Marley followed an arrogant policy respect to poors like leave them die to decrease the surplus population or recruit them in prisons or workhouses. After Marley's death Scrooge ended up running the company on their own during the following seven years curiously without changing the placard, maybe because his defunct partner was the only person he still felt appreciation or because he was too stingy to spend money on a new. Currently, due to Scrooge's redemption, his company is dedicated to charity.

Synopsis
In life, Jacob Marley was Ebenezer Scrooge's partner and only friend. When both was teenagers, they had been apprenticed in business and met as clerks in another business. The firm of Scrooge and Marley was this evil lair; a style-nineteenth-century financial institution counting house to which Marley refers as 'their money-changing hole'. They became successful yet hard-hearted bankers, with seats on the London Stock Exchange. In spite of this Scrooge showed little to no remorse of Marley's death.

Jacob Marley ended dying on December 24, 1836, on Christmas Eve. Seven years later, on Christmas Eve 1843, his ghost would be Scrooge's first visitor (before the three other spirits to come). Scrooge was described as Marley's "sole friend" and "sole mourner", and praised Marley as being a good friend to him.

Jacob Marley preyed upon Scrooge's mind in many different ways, notably his face manifesting on the knocker on Ebenezer Scrooge's front door and causing the bells in his house to ring. The ghost maintained the same voice, hairstyle and sense of dress that he had in life, but was translucent. He weared a handkerchief tied about his jaws, and "captive, bound and double-ironed" with chains which was described as "long, and wound about him like a tail; it was made... of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel." He often, in moments of great despair or impatience at Scrooge's scepticism, flinged these upon the ground before him and almost induced his former partner "into a swoon". He explained that it was the chain he unknowingly had forged himself in life, as a result of his greed and selfishness. As he had spent his life on this earth obsessing over money and mistreating the poor and wretched to fill his pocket, Marley was condemned to walk the earth for eternity never to find rest or peace, experiencing an "incessant torture of remorse", lamenting that Christmas is the time he suffers most of all.

When the ghost asked, "Why do you doubt your senses?" Scrooge anwered that "...a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more gravy than grave about you, whatever you are!" Marley's only replied is a spine-chilling howl that brought Scrooge to his knees, begging for mercy.

Marley told Scrooge that he would be visited by three spirits, and admonished his former partner to listen to what they had to say, or Scrooge would suffer Marley's fate; he said that Scrooge's chain was as heavy as his seven years earlier, and remarks that "you have laboured on it since — it is a ponderous chain!". Even though it is unknown why it took seven years for Marley to haunt Scrooge, it could be implied that Scrooge could have died that very night if he was not haunted. This is evident in the fact that Marley seems to be aware that Scrooge was very close to suffering the same fate as him. Thus, Marley was given a chance to save his only friend's life before it was too late.

Marley then departed into the night sky, surrounded by a countless horde of other tormented spirits, some of whom were known to Scrooge when they were alive, all of them chained in a similar manner to Marley and suffering the same unbearable torment, as they struggled in vain to make up for their wasted lives by attempting to help a homeless mother and baby.

Past
The Ghost of Christmas Past was, after visitation by Jacob Marley, the first of the three spirits to haunt Scrooge. This angelic spirit showed Scrooge scenes from his past that occurred on or around Christmas, in order to demonstrate to him the necessity of changing his ways, as well as to show the reader how Scrooge came to be a bitter, cold-hearted miser.

The Ghost of Christmas Past had a white-robed, androgynous figure of indeterminate age with its head a blazing light, reminiscent of a candle flame, and carried a metal cap, made in the shape of a candle extinguisher.

After showing up in Scrooge's house, the Ghost of Christmas Past took his hand and flied with him over London. It first showed Scrooge his old boarding school, where he stayed alone but for his books while his schoolmates returned to their homes for the Christmas holidays. The spirit then showed Scrooge the day when his beloved younger sister Fan picked him up from the school after repeatedly asking their cold, unloving father to allow his return, as she joyfully claimed that he has changed and is now kinder than he was. Next, the spirit showed Scrooge a Christmas Eve a few years later in which he enjoyed a Christmas party hosted by his first boss, a kind and loving man named Mr. Fezziwig, who treated Scrooge like a son, and was more compassionate to him than his own father was.

The spirit also showed Scrooge the Christmas Eve when, as a young man, his beloved fiancée Belle ended their relationship upon realizing that he now cared more for money than he did for her. Scrooge did not ask Belle to end their engagement, but he did not fight to keep her. Finally, the spirit showed him how she married and found true happiness with another man. After this vision, Scrooge pleaded with the spirit to show him no more, to which the spirit replies:

"These are the shadows of things that have been. That they are what they are, do not blame me!"

Angered, Scrooge extinguished the spirit with his cap and found himself back in his bedroom, where the time on the clock not being changed.

Present
The Ghost of Christmas Present was, after the visitations by Jacob Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Past, the second of the three spirits that haunted the Scrooge. This ghost appeared as "a jolly giant" with dark brown curls, a fur-lined green robe and on his head a holly wreath set with shining icicles. He also carried a large torch, made to resemble a cornucopia, and appeared accompanied by a great feast. He stated that he had had "more than eighteen hundred" brothers and later revealed the ability to change his size to fit into any space. He also beared a scabbard with no sword in it, a representation of peace on Earth and good will toward men.

The spirit transported Scrooge around the city, showing him scenes of festivity and also deprivation that was happening as they watch, sprinkling a little warmth from his torch as he travels. Amongst the visits was Scrooge's nephew, and the family of Bob Cratchit, his impoverished clerk.

The spirit also shared a vision of Tiny Tim's crutch, carefully preserved by the fireplace. Scrooge asked if the desperately ill Tim would die. The Ghost first stated that "If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die," then – quicked to use Scrooge's past unkind comments toward two charitable solicitors against him – suggested he "had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

The spirit finally revealed to Scrooge two emaciated children, subhuman in appearance and loathsome to behold, clinging to his robes, and named the boy as Ignorance and the girl as Want. The spirit warned Scrooge, "Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom unless the writing be erased." The spirit once again quoted Scrooge, who asked if the grotesque children had "no refuge, no resource," and the spirit retorted with more of Scrooge's unkind words: "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"

The Ghost of Christmas Present, having already aged, revealed that he would only exist on Earth for a single year's Christmas holiday as the Present only took place on the one day of the year. He finally disappeared at the stroke of midnight on Twelfth Night, and left Scrooge to face the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, as it approached "like a mist along the ground"

Future
The Ghost Of Christmas Future were for Scrooge the most fearsome of the Spirits; it had as a figure entirely muffled in a black hooded cloak, except for a single spectral hand with which it points. Although the character never spoke, Scrooge understood it, usually through assumptions from his previous experiences and rhetorical questions. It was notable that, even in satires and parodies of the tale, this spirit retained its original look. It looked the way it did because it represented what the future held for Scrooge if he did not change his ways.

When the Ghost made its appearance, the first thing it showed Scrooge was three wealthy gentlemen making light of a recent death, remarking that it would be a cheap funeral, if anyone came at all. One businessman said he would go....if lunch is provided. Next, Scrooge was shown the same dead person's belongings being stolen by Scrooge's charwoman Mrs. Dilber, Scrooge's laundress, and the local undertaker and sold to a receiver of stolen goods called Old Joe. He also saw a shrouded corpse, which he implored the Ghost not to unmask. Scrooge asked the ghost to show anyone who felt any emotion over the man's death. The ghost could only show him a poor couple indebted to the man momentarily rejoicing that the man was dead giving them more time to pay off their debt. After Scrooge asked to see some tenderness connected with death, the ghost showed him Bob Cratchit and his family mourning the passing of Tiny Tim. The spirit then took Scrooge to a rundown churchyard and showed the repentant miser his own grave; Scrooge then realized that the dead man of whom the others spoke ill was himself.

Horrified, Scrooge begged the ghost for another chance to redeem his life and "sponge away the writing on that stone".

For the first time the hand appeared to shake. "Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!" The kind handed trembled.

Scrooge awakened on Christmas morning with joy and love in his heart. He spent the day with Fred's family and anonymously sent a prize turkey to the Cratchit home for Christmas dinner. The following day, he gave Cratchit a raise and became like "a second father" to Tiny Tim. A changed man, Scrooge now treated everyone with kindness, generosity, and compassion; he now embodied the spirit of Christmas. As the final narration states, "Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him...it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well if any man alive possessed the knowledge." The story closed with the narrator repeating Tiny Tim's famous words: "God bless us, every one!"