Cesar Granda
E.G 121

When reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens you realize that Scrooge’s childhood has a huge impact on his adult life, his adult self is a mirror image of his child self, both in his emotions and relationships. This becomes apparent when the ghost of Christmas past appears and takes Scrooge on a journey back into his childhood days. His childhood really molds Scrooge into the person he becomes later in life. Scrooge was a lonely and withdrawn child because he lost connection with the only parent he had left after the death of his mother at childbirth. His father sends him away to boarding school and refuses to allow the young Scrooge to return home. This disconnection from the only parent he has left leads young Scrooge to become introverted and lonely. Having been deprived of a father figure he probably could not have sustained a relationship with other boys, in fact, it probably was the opposite of that. Boys at the school could easily have picked on him for the situation he was in. At Christmas time this becomes more apparent when all the boys return home with Scrooge being the only one remaining in school. All of these events take a tremendous toll on the young Scrooge’s psychological state that culminates on Christmas day when he is alone in the deserted school reading a book next to a fireplace: “Suddenly a man, in foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at: stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and leading an ass laden with wood by the bridle.”(Dickens) Grown up Scrooge, along with the ghost of Christmas past, is looking at himself as a young boy and starts to eagerly point out the figures that his younger self is hallucinating on and subsequently begins to sob. This image leads us to believe that grown up Scrooge’s psychological state has for the most part remained the