Plot

The novella is divided into five chapters. The novella opens on a cold, bleak Christmas Eve in London, seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge’s business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge, an ageing money-lender, demonstrates his ardent miser negativity, declining any dinner invitation with his nephew, Fed, refuting some beggars asking for money that evening and only begrudgingly allows his underpaid and overworked, clerk, Bob Cratchit the day off on Christmas with his dutiful payments included. 

However, that evening, the crux of the narrative begins. Scrooge is visited at home by Jacob Marley’s ghost, who, it seems, wanders the Earth adorned with heavy chains and money boxes forged during the life he led of greed and selfishness. And yet here we go - Marley informs Scrooge that he only has one chance to avoid the same fate - he will be visited by three spirits and must listen attentively or be cursed with more heavy chains of his own.

So, accordingly, in the next chapter the “The Ghost of Christmas Past” transports Scrooge to scenes of his childhood when he was more innocent. Eventually, the ghost takes him to an image of his fiancé, Belle, ending the relationship because, she claims, Scrooge loves his money more than her. The chapter concludes with Belle spending a much happier Christmas, without Scrooge, on the date of Marley’s death. Hearing Belle’s recounting over Scrooge’s decline, he deplores the ghost to remove him from this scene.

In the third chapter, the “Ghost of Christmas Present” takes Scrooge to a joyful market with people buying supplies for Christmas. The pair of them then visit Bob Cratchit’s festive family lunch, where they see a character called Tiny Tim, who is very ill and according to the ghost who informs Scrooge, will die if nothing changes. The ghost presents Scrooge with a dystopian, nightmarish image of “Ignorance” and “Want”, two metaphorical characters, before the chapter comes to an end. 

The final visit from a ghost occurs in chapter 4. Here, the “Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come” shows Scrooge a vision of a depressing funeral attended by miser and corrupt people, before, having asked to see an emotional passing away, the ghost takes him to the funeral of Tiny Tim, which is imbued with love. Alternatively, the ghost takes Scrooge to a neglected tombstone, bearing Scrooge’s name. Thereupon, distraught, Scrooge pledges to change his ways.

In the final chapter, Scrooge wakes up on Christmas Day a very much changed man. He makes a large donation to the charity he rejected the day before, anonymously sends a big turkey to the Cratchit family and spends the afternoon with his nephew, Fred. Yet further, the following day, he raises Bob Cratchit’s salary and becomes more of a father figure to Tiny Tim. He is dutifully reborn as a benevolent figure and the novella ends with his blissful transformation.