I've been thinking about Scrooge lately.
We get a glimpse into what may have informed his world view through the various interpretations of Dickens' text, but, were you in his shoes, what would it take for you to turn your back on your community and your fellow man?
The question is interesting to me because the story is a story of redemption which suggests that, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, he had to power to change all along.
And yet he did not.
For Scrooge, redemption requires a traumatic intervention. A series of three shocks to the system, far more powerful than a simple clicking of the heels, in order for him to return home, to his true nature.
The story attempts to convince us that he is at the end, just as he was in the beginning--of his life, not of the story--open-hearted and filled with the Christmas spirit.
Is Scrooge authentically transformed by his experience among the spirits? Or is he suffering Stockholm Syndrome?
Does he adopt his "new" attitude because he is a changed man, or is he, in an act of self-preservation, adopting the affect that he believes will most please his tormentors?
Don't get me wrong, I love this story. It is full of complexity and rich in veins that demand mining. It's one that I return to every year. But, with each revisiting the experience of another year of life informs my response.
The story begins by making it unequivocally clear that Marley is dead and that this must be understood before anything else.
Scrooge's partner had to die before the story could start.
I have questions.
Certainly, the death of any long-term partner will produce trauma. Scrooge's reaction is an interesting one in that he absorbs Jacob Marley's life. He takes his money and his meager sticks of furniture. He takes over his house. And yet, we are not really given any indication that these actions result in any significant change in Scrooge's world view. Scrooge subsumes Marley giving up that which was his for that which was Marley's and yet for seven years, he has not changed the name of his company. It is still "Scrooge and Marley," but, in reality, the firm should probably be called just plain Marley.
These are acts of sentimentality that are nowhere else displayed in Scrooge's character during the first part of the story.
He does not value his nephew as a living link to his dead sister, but chooses to blame him for her death. He likes the fact that people will get out of his way rather than deal with him. He seems to relish sending away those two men of business endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. And he has no compassion for the poor who would rather die than go to the poor houses.
But Marley.....
We are told that since taking over his life, Scrooge hadn't given his former partner a second thought until those men appeared in his office on Christmas Eve and then, he starts to see his face in door knockers and the tiles in his fireplace surround. And then in the vaporous flesh of a spirit.
Were this a contemporary tale, we would understand these as symptoms of trauma, orf post traumatic stress.
Understood in this way, Scrooge's affect, his world view, make sense. He is in pain and lashing out at the world in response to what he perceives as wrongs that have been done to him. In effect, the Scrooge persona is a mask, a suit of armor against the world being such a cruel place.
So, what might the world have done to Scrooge to make him as we find him?
It's not being packed off to school, because all of that is undone when his sister comes to rescue him. It's not whatever happened between Scrooge and his father because all of that is forgiven.
In the book, we are given no information about how Scrooge and Marley meet. We are given a scene where Scrooge and Belle break up and we are told that he is now a person who values every interaction as a transaction, in terms of gain and loss. We know they had a long-term relationship, but we don't know for certain how long and to what extent.
One could argue that it is this relationship that is what begins to poison Scrooge against the world. But Scrooge obviously continues to evolve because he is not yet the schemeing, grasping, covetous old miser that is described at the beginning of the story. At some point, gain ceased to be the yardstick and became an end in and of itself.
The only constant of which we are aware is Marley.
Is it reasonable to assume that the loss of Belle is the precipitating trauma that resulted in Scrooge as we meet him, or could it be prolonged exposure to the toxic Jacob Marley?
It seems quite possible to build an anecdotal case against Marley and his malignant influence on Scrooge, but how does that profit us in understanding the story?
I think that it is possible that when we meet Scrooge he is treading water and has been since Marley's death.
Despite taking the affirmative, if hostile, act of "consuming" all traces of Marley by assuming his worldly goods, Scrooge is doubtless repeating patterns that were engrained when Marley was still alive if, for no other reason than that they are familiar and would doubtless provide some comfort in a mourning process.
There are hints of this "patterning" in the annual conversation between Scrooge and Cratchit over being allowed time off for Christmas Day.
The disruption of the two men of business and their inability to distinguish Scrooge from his long-dead partner has to be seen as an inciting event in the same way that words and phrases, sights, sounds and smells can be triggers for those who live with post-traumatic stress.
This experience does not go down well, or to put it another way, is hard for Scrooge to digest. He even attributes Marley's apparition as the reaction to a "badly digested bit of beef." One can easily imagine him processing this slight as he returns his Marley home. This would, in turn, provide a context for him seeing Marley's face in the door knocker.
The seemingly paranormal events that Scrooge experiences while entering his house and preparing for bed can thus be seen as associations. He is literally surrounded by Marley's inanimate posessions and the triggering has brought them to life.
Where he might have spent the intervening seven years since Marley's death trying to re-gain some mastery over this defining relationship, that stability--such as it might have been--has disolved much like a ghost passing through a solid object might.
Marley's stated purpose in appearing to Scrooge is save him from suffering the tormet of an afterlife of suffering for not having invested in mankind's welfare while he was alive.
That Marley is described as dragging a lengthy chain suggest that his freedom is somehow limited, his ability to have agency is impaired. Obvious interpretations, but it further suggests that Marley as described is less a creation of the ominiscient narrator, than of Scrooge's tormented psyche. It is not Marley as he might be, but Marley as Scrooge sees him. Marley is suffering because Scrooge believes he should suffer. Scrooge is acknowledging that Marley has wronged him.
The remainder of the story is an internal battle for control of Scrooge. The path that journey takes, fragmented as it is, is not because of the whim of these spirits that are being sent to Scrooge by Marley, but rather aspects of the Scrooge psyche trying to become whole; to become fully integrated. Scrooge is trying to emerge from under Marley's shadow.
Does Scrooge successfully escape?
I don't think I can seriously approach that question, because I think it is at precisely this point that I find myself as I write this.
I think it is because I recognize this internal struggle for integration that I keep coming back to this story and, in particular, the Alaistair Sim film version of 1951.
The scenes that are the most vivid for me are the ones with Marley and the other spirits. The Ghost of Christmas Past is disturbing because of the different scenes that he conjures up for Scrooge, scratching at memories that Scrooge would rather see buried. The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come is the stuff of nightmares because of his inscrutable, judgmental silence, but it is the Ghost of Christmas Present that frightens me most.
In the movie, the Spirit shows Scrooge a series of vignettes in which are depicted various celebrations of Christmas. Some of the participants are known to Scrooge--his nephew, and the Cratchit Family--and some are not such as the singers who, for some reason, I associate with Welsh coal miners. The intent is to show different modes of celebration that are not dependent on status and material position, but rather on a connection to the true spirit of generosity and compassion for one's fellows.
Most time is spent with the Cratchits and their fully-realized Christmas dinner, albeit on reduced circumstances.
Scrooge seems particularly drawn to the plight of Tiny Tim and askes about his future. The spirit--in his only act of prediction, or indeed awareness of days other than Christmas--responds that unless something happens there will be an empty stool next to the fireplace. This moment and the drinking of the toast to Scrooge, despite his continual mistreatment of Cratchit, seem to be the most affecting as they elicit an expression of compassion from him as indicated by his desire to have a word with his clerk.
In each of his interactions with the spirits, Scrooge seems to acknowledge and understand the meaning of the lessons he is being taught, but at the Cratchit's something more seems to happen. He is no longer "too old" to change, but rather seems anxious to be returned to his world so that he might begin his reformation.
At the end of his time with this spirit, Scrooge is introduced to the spirit's wards, Ignorance and Want He warns Scrooge to beware them both but to be most concerned about Ignorance.
The moment of their revelation, when we first discover them under the spirit's robe, clutching to his legs, is shocking because it is unexpected and because they stand in stark contrast to Scrooge and the well-fed spirit.
It is this jump-scare moment--one that evokes the sudden self-correction of a vinyl record that had been skipping.
The time with the middle spirit is spent looking at disconnected moments. The Ghost of Christmas Past deals chronologically with the evolution of Scrooge--his backstory--and the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come provides a glimpse of Scrooge's legacy. Christmas Present is less linear in his presentation and that created a disorienting effect, but it is also perhaps the most authentic.
Coherence is one of the filters that comes with hindsight. It is also a lens through which to see a path toward one's future. Only in the present are we truly in open water and subject to the pounding of waves coming from all directions and the pull of changing tides.
And it is here, out of sight of land--port of embarkation, or of call--that it is easiest to lose your way, to be blown off course; to become 'misguided,' if you will.
It is Dicken's contention that Scrooge is misguided and the spirits that are sent to him are intended as a course corrective.
What troubles me, as one who has been lost at sea for many a year, is that when all is said and done Scrooge returns to Marley's house. He has travelled the Great Circle to his port of embarkation.
Scrooge goes to bed as a man who is certain, a man who knows that the idea of spirits is 'humbug," and he greets the new day as one certain that he doesn't know anything. He has been reset like when you turn your computer off and back on again.
The last act of the story is Scrooge making choices that are out of keeping with his character. He begins to give away his money: a big turkey for the Cratchits, a raise for his housekeeper and a new coal scuttle for the office. These would appear to be in direct response to the traumatic events of the previous night.
Are they any more authentic that the choices made prior to meeting Marley's ghost?
Scrooge is a thoughtful and sensitive child who becomes transformed into greedy, grasping, covetous old sinner after meeting Marley. He is again transformed, or appears to be transformed, by exposure to the Spirits. At the end of the story, are we now seeing the "real" Ebeneezer Scrooge? Is it like those cartoons where the character gets amnesia after being struck by a frying pan and can only recover his memory by another blow to the head? Or is Scrooge a study in adaptation as a means of survival?
If the former, then we should all buy frying pans and keep them handy in case of emergency. If the latter, then Scrooge could very easily return to earlier behaviors, or indeed take up entirely new ones.
But for the fact that we are told by the story's narrator that Scrooge was true to his word and became a good friend and a good master for the rest of his life, we have no direct evidence of this. The narrator has his own credibility problems, not to mention an apparent obsession with the comparative vitality of door nails versus coffin nails.
Don't get me wrong, I want to believe that Scrooge is redeemed because it promotes the idea that it is never too late to change one's ways and the resulting world view. However, to return to the open water analogy, it is not clear which is the right direction and it is not possible to try them all until you are back on course.
Like Scrooge, I am trapped in a limiting world view that has transformed my behavior and all but extinguished hope. I have also wasted a lot of time looking for my Marley only to find myself in the open water. I cling to the extremely unlikely notion that a ship will pass and rescue me, even though I know that the only certain way out is to start swimming. But if I leave this spot--stop treading water--then how will they know where to look for me.... But if I start swimming, how will I know I'm headed in the right direction? What if I make the wrong choice? I should, but I can't; I have to, but I won't
Conflict may be a critical component of drama, but it is a wooden shoe in the mechanism of decision.
Doing nothing is better than the destructive potential of doing something.
I have in effect Scrooged myself. I have become a hoarder of regret, keeping careful records of the decades of inactivity that have led me to where I am, so far from the shores of where I want to be.
I should go an get a frying pan, but I've already had once concussion and all that did was make me less driven. I worry about what another might do.
And I haven't yet done enough to be visited by spirits.
Can't even get that right....
Humbug.
