Marley's Ghost
I was watching "A Christmas Carol" the other day and George C. Scott's performance in the 1984 version caught me by surprise. Scott plays Scrooge as a hard nosed but genial businessman whose major flaw is an exclusive focus on the financial "bottom line" rather than personal relationships and social service. A workaholic, guarded by a misguided, pragmatic humor, Scott's Scrooge rejects love and compassion with a resigned cynicism acquired early in his loveless childhood. He is so affectively blind it takes four spiritual visitations before he can see that his faithful nephew, who looks like Scrooge's late sister, loves him. Dickins character of Scrooge is prophetic, and an archetype, of the loveless Man of Commerce (uncompassionate, unethical and often immoral) we see today in corporate America.
From Wikapedia: The story “A Christmas Carol" deals extensively with two of Dickens' recurrent themes, social injustice and poverty, the relationship between the two, and their causes and effects. It was written to be abrupt and forceful with its message, with a working title of "The Sledgehammer". The first edition of A Christmas Carol was illustrated by John Leech, a politically radical artist who in the cartoon "Substance and Shadow" printed earlier in 1843 had explicitly criticised artists who failed to address social issues. Dickens wrote in the wake of British government changes in the "Poor Laws" (welfare system), changes which required among other things, welfare applicants to "work" on treadmills, as Ebenezer Scrooge points out. Dickens asks, in effect, for people to "lighten-up" in treatment of the poor.
Marley's Ghost speaking to Scrooge…
`Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,' cried the phantom, `not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!'
`But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
`Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. `Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
`At this time of the rolling year,' the spectre said `I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!'
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
`Hear me!' cried the Ghost. `My time is nearly gone.'
`I will,' said Scrooge. `But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!'
`How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.'
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
`That is no light part of my penance,' pursued the Ghost. `I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.'
`You were always a good friend to me,' said Scrooge. `Thank 'ee!'
From Wikapedia: The story “A Christmas Carol" deals extensively with two of Dickens' recurrent themes, social injustice and poverty, the relationship between the two, and their causes and effects. It was written to be abrupt and forceful with its message, with a working title of "The Sledgehammer". The first edition of A Christmas Carol was illustrated by John Leech, a politically radical artist who in the cartoon "Substance and Shadow" printed earlier in 1843 had explicitly criticised artists who failed to address social issues. Dickens wrote in the wake of British government changes in the "Poor Laws" (welfare system), changes which required among other things, welfare applicants to "work" on treadmills, as Ebenezer Scrooge points out. Dickens asks, in effect, for people to "lighten-up" in treatment of the poor.
Marley's Ghost speaking to Scrooge…
`Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,' cried the phantom, `not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!'
`But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
`Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. `Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
`At this time of the rolling year,' the spectre said `I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!'
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
`Hear me!' cried the Ghost. `My time is nearly gone.'
`I will,' said Scrooge. `But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!'
`How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.'
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
`That is no light part of my penance,' pursued the Ghost. `I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.'
`You were always a good friend to me,' said Scrooge. `Thank 'ee!'
posted by Michelle Coder | 11:08 PM
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