How does Dickens use the symbols of the Hearth and the City to his own putposes in ‘A Christmas Carol’?
...mth given off by the Hearth. The cold is also used to describe death, forging a link between the city and death. The city accounts for Tiny Tim, whose crippled and restricted appearance symbolizes his family’s plight in the city and contrasts with the “high spirits” of the boys in the countryside. The only reason all the city’s inhabitants are not corrupted by its “misanthropic ice”, is because they enrich themselves with the warmth and safety of their blazing fire. Scrooge, however has a “very low fire indeed” at home as well in his workplace and therefore denies himself the glow of civilised fire. Before his transformation, Scrooge is the embodiment of the City. He has no domestic hearth to sate the mercantile spirit which city life has instilled into him. The hours he spends at his “gloomy suite of rooms” do not give him the escape from the ruthlessness of his work, because he refuses himself the nourishment of the Hearth. Also, Scrooge’s lack of compassion stems from the hard-hearted nature of the city and not from a moral choice. The “strife and tumult of” the city mean that Scrooge now only sees matters through the narrow perspective the city offers and he claims to no knowledge beyond his immediate surroundings. What he considers his business is based entirely on his actual fiscal business. This is shown in his encounter with the charity solicitors when Scrooge merely establishes the “fact” that prisons and workhouses still operate before retreating into a more limited position. This deficiency of knowledge corresponds with the lack of nourishment he recieves from the hearth. Also, Scrooge’s temperament is reflected in the city, when he is the miserly “tight fisted hand at the grindstone” the city is dark and cold, yet after Scrooge’s enlightenment the city basks in “golden sunlight”. The roles of darkness and light represent the City and the Hearth respectively. Just as the darkness of the city hides the social decay, which was so prominen in this period (nicknamed “the hungry forties), the light of the hearth signifies knowledge. Before the Spirits’ visits, Scrooge is content with darkness, “darkness is cheap and Scrooge liked it”. Scrooge is not only depriving himself of warmth,...