Central to the story is the metamorphosis of Scrooge, cold, sterile and inhuman at the beginning of the narrative and thawed by degrees into warmth and generosity. By the end of the tale, that frosty rime is no more. The transformation is occasioned by the images of the past, the present and the future presented to him by the ghosts that visit him on Christmas Eve. His likely outcome is shown to us in the guise of Marley, his erstwhile partner and fellow miser, who turns up festooned in the chains, padlocks and cashboxes that so weighed down his life and continue to burden his tormented afterlife. But Marley is a mere appetizer among the strong lessons that Scrooge is about to swallow.
Nothing is left out.
This episode is in fact an early indicator that the audience should retain some sympathy for Scrooge. Novelists, especially, like Dickens and Thackeray, began to assume the postures of moralists and teachers. Led through his past, Scrooge watches himself change by degrees into a man alienated by greed, even from the woman whom he loved and to whom he was betrothed, till they separate. To some extent Dickens is attacking the rise of venture capitalism that characterized the strong economic and industrial growth of the Victorian age. Mammon is the god of choice, as Scrooge s fiance points out when she offers him the opportunity to break their engagement.