Ebenezer Scrooge

Dickens describes Scrooge as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint,… secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster." He does business from a Cornhill warehouse and is known among the merchants of the Royal Exchange as a man of good credit. Despite having considerable personal wealth, he underpays his clerk Bob Cratchit and hounds his debtors relentlessly, while living cheaply and joylessly in the chambers of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley. Most of all he detests Christmas, which he associates with reckless spending. When two men approach him on Christmas Eve for a donation to charity, he sneers that the poor should avail themselves of the treadmill or the workhouses, or else die to reduce the surplus population. He also refuses his nephew Fred’s invitation to Christmas dinner, and denounces him as a fool for celebrating Christmas.

That night, Scrooge is visited by Marley’s ghost, who is condemned to walk the world forever bound in chains as punishment for his greed and inhumanity in life. Marley tells Scrooge that he will be visited by three spirits in the hopes that he will mend his ways; if he does not, Marley warns, Scrooge will wear even heavier chains than his in the afterlife.

The Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge visions of his early life. These visions establish that Scrooge’s unkind father placed him in a boarding school, where at Christmas-time he remained alone while his schoolmates returned home to their families. His beloved sister Fan came to take him home one Christmas, Scrooge’s one happy childhood memory. She later died after giving birth to Fred. Scrooge then apprenticed at the warehouse of a jovial and generous master, Mr. Fezziwig. He fell in love with a young woman named Belle and proposed marriage, but gradually his love for Belle was overwhelmed by his love for money. Belle realised this and, disgusted by his greed, left him one Christmas, eventually marrying another man. The present-day Scrooge reacts to these memories with a mixture of nostalgia and deep regret.

The Ghost of Christmas Present arrives next, and shows Scrooge that his greed and selfishness hurt others as well, particularly Cratchit, who cannot afford to provide his desperately ill son Tiny Tim with medical treatment because of Scrooge’s miserliness. The spirit tells a horrified Scrooge that Tiny Tim will die within a year, and throws Scrooge’s own heartless words about the poor and destitute back in his face.

Finally, the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows Scrooge where his greed and selfishness will lead: a lonely death, servants stealing his belongings in lieu of pay, debtors relieved at his passing, and the Cratchit family devastated by the loss of Tiny Tim.

Scrooge asks the spirit if this future can still be changed, but the spirit does not reply. Scrooge begs the spirit for another chance, promising to change his ways - and wakes up in his bed on Christmas Day. Overjoyed, Scrooge commits to being more generous and compassionate; he accepts his nephew's invitation to Christmas dinner, provides for Cratchit and his family, and donates to the charity fund. In the end, he becomes known as the embodiment of the Christmas spirit.

Several theories have been put forward as to where Dickens got inspiration for the character.

• Ebenezer Scroggie, a merchant from Edinburgh who won a catering contract for King George IV's visit to Scotland. He was buried in Canongate Kirkyard, with a gravestone that is now lost. The theory is that Dickens noticed the gravestone that described Scroggie as being a "meal man" (corn merchant) but misread it as "mean man".[1][2] This theory has been described as "a probable Dickens hoax" for which "[n]o one could find any corroborating evidence".[3]
• It has been suggested that he chose the name Ebenezer ("stone (of) help") to reflect the help given to Scrooge to change his life.[4][5]
• Commentators have suggested that the surname was partly inspired by the word "scrouge", meaning "crowd" or "squeeze".[5][6][7] The word was in use from 1820.[8]
• One school of thought is that Dickens based Scrooge's views on the poor on those of demographer and political economist Thomas Malthus, as evidenced by his callous attitude towards the "surplus population".[9][10]
• Another is that the minor character Gabriel Grub from The Pickwick Papers was worked up into a more mature characterization (his name stemming from an infamous Dutch miser, Gabriel de Graaf).[11][12]
• Jemmy Wood, owner of the Gloucester Old Bank and possibly Britain's first millionaire, was nationally renowned for his stinginess, and may have been another model for Scrooge.[13]
• The man whom Dickens eventually mentions in his letters[14] and who strongly resembles the character portrayed by Dickens' illustrator, John Leech, was a noted British eccentric and miser named John Elwes (1714–1789).

Kelly writes that Scrooge may have been influenced by Dickens' conflicting feelings for his father, whom he both loved and demonised. This psychological conflict may be responsible for the two radically different Scrooges in the tale—one a cold, stingy recluse, the other a benevolent, loving man.[15] Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, a professor of English literature, considers that in the opening part of the book portraying young Scrooge's lonely and unhappy childhood, and his aspiration to rise from poverty to riches "is something of a self-parody of Dickens's fears about himself"; the post-transformation parts of the book are how Dickens optimistically sees himself.[16]

Reginald Owen as Scrooge in the 1938 film adaptation

Scrooge could also be based on two misers: the eccentric John Elwes, MP,[17] or Jemmy Wood, the owner of the Gloucester Old Bank who was also known as "The Gloucester Miser".[18] According to the sociologist Frank W. Elwell, Scrooge's views on the poor are a reflection of those of the demographer and political economist Thomas Malthus,[19] while the miser's questions "Are there no prisons? ... And the Union workhouses? ... The treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" are a reflection of a sarcastic question raised by the reactionary philosopher Thomas Carlyle: "Are there not treadmills, gibbets; even hospitals, poor-rates, New Poor-Law?"[20][lower-alpha 2]

There are literary precursors for Scrooge in Dickens' own works. Peter Ackroyd, Dickens's biographer, sees similarities between Scrooge and the title character of Martin Chuzzlewit, although the latter is "a more fantastic image" than the former; Ackroyd observes that Chuzzlewit's transformation to a charitable man is a parallel to that of Scrooge.[22] Douglas-Fairhurst sees that the minor character Gabriel Grub from The Pickwick Papers was also an influence when creating Scrooge.[23][lower-alpha 3]

• Grinch
• Scrooge McDuck

• Works by or about Ebenezer Scrooge in libraries (WorldCat catalog)