Plot summary
Subject: / English
Age groups: / 12-14, 15-16
Topic: / ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens
‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens: Part 1
It is Christmas Eve and the weather is very cold. It is foggy outside.Ebenezer Scrooge is sitting in his office. He is a mean old businessman. His clerk, Bob Cratchit, is working in the next room. Bob Cratchit is very cold because the fire in the office is very small. Scrooge is too mean to spend money on buying coal for it.
Scrooge's nephew, Fred, who is a happy young man comes to visit his uncle. Scrooge asks him why he is so happy when he is poor. Fred asks Scrooge why he is so miserable, when he is rich!Fredthen invites his uncleto have Christmas dinner with him and his family. He says Christmas is a very happy time for them and wishes Scrooge ‘Merry Christmas’. Scrooge sends him away, saying ‘Bah humbug!’ This means he thinks celebrating Christmas is a waste of time and money.
Two fat men arrive and ask Scrooge for some money for charity. They explain that they are collecting money to buy food and drink for the poor at Christmas.Scrooge says the poor can go to the prisons and the workhouses. He sends the two men away without giving them any money.
A boy singing carols comes to the door and Scrooge sends him away as well. He tellshis clerk, Bob Cratchit, that Christmas Day is the same as any other day andhe must come to work as usual.
Later that evening, Scrooge is back in his dark, cold home. Scrooge has another visitor. It is the ghost of his business partner, Jacob Marley, who died seven years earlier. Marley is very pale and he is tied up in chains.He says he has come to warn Scrooge. Because Marley was greedy and only interested in making money when he was alive, his spirit is being punished by having to wander around the world wearing heavy chains. Marley tells Scrooge that he must change his behaviour and pay more attention to people and less attention to making money. If Scrooge doesn’t change the same thing will happen to him. When he dies his spirit will also have to wear chains and wander around the world.
Marley’s ghost also tells Scrooge that three more ghosts will visit him that night. Then he disappears and Scrooge goes to sleep.
Key words or phrases with pictures
Key words to translate
Word or phrase / Translation / Meaningbusiness partner
to change
to celebrate
charity
a clerk
Christmas Day / 25 December
Christmas Eve / 24 December
to die
greedy
heavy
to invite
mean (miserly)
nephew
pale
to pay attention to
to punish
prison
to sleep
uncle
to wander
to warn
a waste of time
workhouse
to visit
visitor
Image attributions
- Scrooge: By Frederick Simpson Coburn, Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons
- Fred: By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons
- Scrooge and Bob Cratchit: By Fred Barnard [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
- Marley’s ghost: By Frederick Simpson Coburn, Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons