OverviewWhen you are revising go through the summaries and highlight key moments in the story- think about why they are important and what they show- you can mention these during your essay.
Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits This is the Ghost of Christmas Past - Scrooge's own past. The ghost has a strange changing form and gives out brilliant light. With it Scrooge revisits the scenes of his earlier life. We see him as a boy at school (a boarding school)on two occasions. First, he sits alone in a cold schoolroom - but as the spirit touches the arm of the child we see the characters of whom he is reading: Ali Baba and the parrot in Robinson Crusoe. Later we see him with his (slightly) older sister, Fan, who has come to bring him home for the holidays. We learn that his father (who seems once to have been unkind) become "much kinder than he used to be". The ghost notes that (unlike Scrooge so far) his sister had a "large heart". She has died, but her son is Scrooge's nephew, Fred. Next we see Scrooge as a young apprentice working for Mr. Fezziwig, in his warehouse. At seven o'clock on Christmas Eve, Mr. Fezziwig tells Scrooge and his other apprentice, Dick Wilkins, to make the warehouse ready for a party. Everyone is welcome at Mr. Fezziwig's ball, and the young Scrooge enjoys it immensely. The Ghost tells Scrooge that Mr. Fezziwig has done nothing special, only spent a little money he can easily afford. Scrooge replies that it is impossible to add up things like words and looks, but "the happiness" Mr. Fezziwig gives "is quite as great as if it cost a fortune". The final scenes show us Belle, Scrooge's ex-fiancée. Scrooge is now in the prime of life. His (reasonable) fear, when younger, of being poor has now become an unreasonable love of money. Belle releases Scrooge from his engagement because she can see that he no longer loves her. He has not asked her to break the engagement but does not object to her decision. Another glimpse of Belle follows. Some years later - seven years before the present, she sits with her daughter. (At first Scrooge thinks the daughter is Belle, but she is now older. She has other children, too. Her husband tells her how he saw Scrooge that day, working alone in his office, while his partner, Marley, was lying "upon the point of death". Scrooge contrasts his life with hers and her husband's. While they have a happy Christmas together, he is working alone. They are not wealthy as he is but not poor financially. In other ways they are far richer than he. Scrooge thinks of how good it would be to have a daughter like Belle's to look up to him. |