A Christmas Carol Study Guide

A Christmas Carol Study Questions

Stave One Questions ~

1. What is the simile in the second paragraph?

2. Why does the narrator make such a point of Marley’s being dead?

3. Why doesn’t the weather affect Scrooge?

4. How is Scrooge’s nephew different from Scrooge?

5. What do the “portly gentlemen” who come in after Scrooge’s nephew leave want?

6. How does the knocker change?

7. Why does Scrooge like the darkness?

8. What has Marley’s ghost been doing since his death?

9. What is the warning that Marley gives Scrooge?

10. Why are the phantoms upset?

Stave Two Questions ~

1. What was the strangest thing about the way the spirit looked?

2. What is Scrooge’s initial attitude toward the spirit?

3. What is different about Scrooge when he says “Remember it? I could walk it with a blindfold?”

4. Who is Scrooge talking about when he says “Poor boy!”

5. What does it tell us about Scrooge when Dickens observes“a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual character.”?

6. When Fan comes to pick Scrooge up, we learn a reason why Scrooge may have turned out the way he did. What is this reason?

7. What kind of people are the Fezziwigs?

8. Who is Belle and why was she important to Scrooge?

9. Why does Scrooge say “Remove me.”

10. How does Scrooge try to "extinguish the light"? Does he succeed? What is the light a symbol of?

Stave Three Questions

First Half ~

1. How is what Scrooge is thinking as he lies in bed waiting to see if the spirit appears different from the previous chapter?

2. What does the spirit look like?

3. What is this ghost’s personality like?

4. How has Scrooge’s attitude toward his being escorted by a ghost changed?

5. What is the point of the long description beginning “The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker …” and continuing on for several pages until, “But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces.”

6. What are three significant things we learn about the Cratchit’s?

7. How is Scrooge affected by seeing the family?

Second Half ~

1.What does the Spirit mean when he says But they Know me. See!”

2. What is the point of going to the lighthouse? to the ship?

3. What is the great surprise to Scrooge in the next paragraph (96)?

4. What would Fred think would be a positive outcome of his Christmas invitation to Scrooge?  What happens to Scrooge’s mood as the party goes on? Why do you think this happens?

6. Describe the game called “Yes and No” Scrooge witnesses at his nephew’s Christmas party.

7. What does it mean to say the boy and the girl (Ignorance and Want) are “Man’s children”?

Stave Four Questions ~

1. What does the spirit of Christmas future look like?

2. What is this spirit’s personality like?

3. How does Scrooge feel about this spirit?

4. What is the point of the long discussion between Joe and Mrs. Dilber?

5. What are some of the words Dickens uses to create the mood of the paragraphs that follow?  What is this mood?

6. When Scrooge asks the phantom to let him "see some tenderness connected with a death,” What does the ghost show him?

7. What is the lesson Scrooge learns in this stave that he had not learned before? Why is this stave needed when Scrooge’s attitude had already changed so much.