feedback on para (Question was: How is Scrooge presented in 'A Christmas Carol'?)

I've started the first paragraph of my essay and was wondering how many marks this would get so far and how I could as I really struggle with analysis.
In the opening of ‘A Christmas Carol’ Scrooge is represented as a selfish and greedy character. He refuses to make a ‘slight provision’ to donate to charity and says if they did not like workhouses then they better do it, and decrease the surplus population’. This shows that Scrooge is selfish as he effectively says that poor people are a waste of space and not worth caring for which was the opinion of many members of the upper class during when the novella was set. The use of the adjective ‘surplus’ tells us that Scrooge thinks that there is an excess of poor people. The phrase ‘do it’ shows that he would rather them die and decrease the surplus population which shows selfishness as he does not wan to help them. However, in Stave 5 Scrooge offers to donate to charity and that there would be a ‘great many back payments’. This shows the transformation as it shows that he regrets his selfishness and would like to redeem himself because of the help that he received from the spirits which made him reflect on the good past life he had when he was alone as a boy, alone like the struggling poor. ‘many’ is used in contrast to ‘nothing’ in Stave 1 when he was not interested in donating at all.

Question was: How is Scrooge presented in 'A Christmas Carol'?

Reply 1

ssokka

So firstly your quote drops are really good, I’m not sure what structure you are used to doing at school but I usually start with an overview to questions like this. It just summarises in a really short paragraph how and why Scrooge changed and then I would begin my first paragraph on stave 1. So in yours you have jumped straight away from stave 1 to stave 5 so you might lose marks on tracking the text? Ideas to get you more marks in this paragraph is: include readers response, give alternative interpretations of quotes and also you can include ‘the malthusian theory’ with that quote which makes you sound clever and links to context, hope this helps xx (btw I’m not an English teacher just a student like you so I just said what i think an examiner would think)

Reply 2

safa2225

yeah, you should maybe go in order of the staves.Also maybe expand on your analysis by giving more detail of how the structural or language technique links to your point and how it backs up the fact that he is selfish and greedy.The way you have started your paragraph enables you to speak about the text in general and you could zoom in on many things in the novella.Also I dont know if your school follows this structure but you could note down something about the writers intention and the affect that this has on the audience. You are doing great so far though!

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