Chapter 1

 Jacob Marley is dead. This is important to remember, the narrator

comments, in order to comprehend the events of the story, much like
Hamlet’s father’s death is so critical to Hamlet.
o Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly, solitary, hard-hearted old man, was

Marley’s business partner. Marley was also Scrooge’s only friend.

o Marley has been dead exactly seven years. Their business is still

named for both of them, and Scrooge will answer to either name.

 Scrooge is in his counting house on Christmas Eve.

o Scrooge is cold and hard, and his looks match his disposition.

 No one stops to greet him on the street, and that is precisely

how he likes it.

o Scrooge keeps the office cold and keeps all the coal in his own office

so that his clerk, Bob Cratchit, cannot get it without drawing

Scrooge’s attention.
 Scrooge threatens to fire Cratchit if he does take any coal.

o Scrooge’s nephew Fred comes in to wish Scrooge “Merry Christmas”

and to invite him to eat Christmas dinner with him and his new wife.
 Scrooge, however, is irritated by any mention of Christmas,

which he calls a “humbug.”

 Scrooge views Christmas as nothing but a day of profit lost,
and says it has never done him any good.
 He also points out that his nephew has no reason to be merry,
since he is quite poor.
 Fred, however, insists that Christmas has always done him
good. His praise of Christmas leads Bob Cratchit to applaud,
much to Scrooge’s annoyance.
 o Scrooge also objects to his nephew’s marrying for love, which he
thinks is a silly reason.
 Scrooge brusquely refuses his nephew’s dinner invitation.
o Fred, in response, maintains his good humor and departs.

 Soon after, two men come into Scrooge’s office, collecting donations for
the poor.
o The men explain that the poor are often especially in need at

Christmas time.
o They hope Scrooge will donate generously.

 Scrooge refuses to donate and asks the two men whether prisons and
workhouses still exist.
o The men respond that both do exist, to which Scrooge retorts that

the poor can always go for shelter to those places.

 When the men respond that some of the poor would rather

die, Scrooge replies that they should do so and “decrease the

surplus population.”
 Scrooge sends the men away. Later, he scares off a young boy who comes
singing carols by throwing a ruler at him.

 While the rest of London is preparing for festivities despite the gloomy
weather, and even the Lord Mayor is telling his servants to enjoy
themselves, Scrooge descends into an increasingly bad mood.
o Scrooge only reluctantly agrees to give Cratchit the day off work on

Christmas, telling him he should come in even earlier the next

morning to make up for it.
o Scrooge equates Christmas to employees picking their employers’

pockets every year.

 After leaving Scrooge’s office, and while walking home, Cratchit stops to go
down a slide twenty times, his playful Christmas Eve tradition.
 That evening, Ebenezer Scrooge eats dinner at a grimy tavern and returns
to his home in a gloomy, isolated area.

o The rooms he now occupies used to belong to Jacob Marley.

 As Scrooge reaches to open his door, he is startled as the door-knob
changes for a few moments into a likeness of Marley’s face.

 Moments later, the door-knob returns to its usual form, and Scrooge enters
the house.

o He tries to convince himself he was only imagining seeing something,

and goes up the wide staircase.
 The staircase is wide enough for a carriage to pass through,

which may be why that night he imagines a funeral hearse

going up it.
 The apartment is dark, but he likes the dark, in part because

darkness is cheap.
 Once he sees that all appears normal in his room, he sits down to eat gruel.

o But as he eats, all the faces of the scriptural figures that adorn his
fireplace seem to change to Marley’s face.
o Once again, Scrooge tries to dismiss this vision as “humbug.”

 Suddenly, all the bells in the house start ringing, and he hears the sound of
chains clanking up the stairs.

 The ghost of Marley emerges up the stairs, with a long chain wrapped
about him.
o Scrooge asks who he is, and the ghost says that in life he was Jacob

Marley.
 Scrooge continues to doubt the reality of the specter, and only gradually is
convinced.
 o He asks the ghost to sit, and it does. The ghost asks him why he
doubts his senses, and Scrooge points out that a little thing like
indigestion can throw them off.
o In response the ghost wails and shakes its chains, frightening

Scrooge. Scrooge confesses he believes in the ghost now and asks

why it has come.
 Marley tells him that the chain was one he forged in life through his selfish
deeds, and that he is doomed to wander the earth and witness the
happiness he could have had while alive, had he cared about others.
o He says that Scrooge has also been forging a chain, and that it is even

longer than his own.

o Scrooge asks the ghost to offer him some comfort, but he can give

none.
 Marley says he must soon leave and continue his wandering.
o Scrooge responds that he must be moving slowly if he hasn’t seen

the whole world by now.

o Marley retorts that he has traveled fast but that no amount of space

can contain his regret.

 Scrooge points out that Marley was a good man of business, but that
upsets the ghost even more.
o The ghost says that human welfare should have been his true

business, and his trade was only a tiny part of it.

o He especially laments that even on Christmases he was not moved to

show charity and kindness.

 Finally, Marley’s ghost says that he wants Scrooge to avoid this same
terrible fate in the afterlife.
o Marley’s ghost tells Scrooge that he will be visited by three more

spirits.
o One will come that night at 1:00 am, another the next night at that

time, and the last one at midnight on the third night.

 Marley’s ghost walks backward through the wall and vanishes into the
night.
o It mingles with other ghosts, all in chains and wailing mournfully.

o Scrooge recognizes some of them from when they were alive.

 The ghosts fade away, and Scrooge falls into his bed and sleeps.