Marley’s chains are the real lesson of “A Christmas Carol”

Charle’s Dickens “A Christmas Carol” never played much into my Christmas celebrations growing up. My first experience with it was either Mickey’s Christmas Carol, or The Muppet’s Christmas Carol. Both relatively hammy versions of the original tale, though not without their merit. I watched them in late childhood, and hadn’t ever given it a second thought. Not until seeing a live performance of the classic story, did it finally click with me.

Much has been written on it, and this is not a review of the story or play, but an examination into its most striking and often overlooked part.

If you for some reason don’t know the story, Ebeneezer Scrooge is a miserly old financier, whose firm partner died seven years prior to the story, hates Christmas, hates the poor, hates freeloaders and all but spits in the face of happiness. He is given an opportunity by Three visiting ghosts of The Past, The Present and The Future. He sees where he’s gone wrong, how he’s hardened his heart, and how his life matters (and doesn’t) to his little community. In one night, he sees the light, makes the change and lives the Christmas spirit through the rest of his days. Applause, applause applause, actors take their bows aaaaand lower the curtain. (Oof, my summary is a little Scrooge-like, but you get the picture).

But Scrooge is visited by four ghosts. Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s long dead partner surprises him Christmas Eve and gives him the heads up that he’ll be visited by the ghosts, and he better pay attention.

Scrooge has none of it and for the majority of the time Marley is on stage, he spends it in disbelief that Marley is there at all. Why not? A Victorian gentlemen is an educated one, and the senses can be deceived so easily. He claims even the slightest disorder of the stomach can throw them off.

You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” — Ebenezer Scrooge

Marley goes on and Scrooge does his best to hear him out, but as quickly as he enters, he exits stage left (or through the fireplace as per the production I most recently attended) and Scrooge writes off his advice, eager to get into bed to rid himself of the dreadful apparition.

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free-will, and of my own free-will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”

This is the first of Marley’s true advice to Scrooge. On the surface it’s the big warning: Repent now and save yourself from a similar fate! And yet still the chain is more. Marley speaks of free-will. His choices are what forged his “punishment” right? No, I think it is a little deeper than that.

The problem of Free Will is a fantastic subject of debate in theological/philosophical circles. It goes, simply, if you have an

• Omnipotent
• Omniscient
• Omnibenevolent

God, how can it be said that you have the will to choose? If they know all, they could predict any and every choice you and everyone, everything in the known universe could make. They made it conceivably. How are we then not just following a script set forth by God? That you don’t know the choices, but God does isn’t a solution either, it’s still not free will.

Dickens was Christian, and it’s evident in the book the characters are so. While the book doesn’t have an exact time line it’s presumed to be set in the early 1800’s. Kant, Bentham, Schopenhauer, Stuart Mill, Kierkegaard would have all been prevailing philosophers at the time. Utilitarian ideals about happiness, the prevalence again of Reason (thanks to Kant in the wake of David Hume), and the leap of faith (a la Kierkegaard).

Marley, like his partner Scrooge was a practical man, focusing his talent on the acquisition of wealth and not much else. He profited off the poor, and died wealthy and alone. So what about his advice is so damn important you ask?

Jacob forged his chain not through his choice but his reason, his intent. His warning to Scrooge isn’t simply beware your actions for they become your destiny, its beware your beliefs. What he believed true about the world shaped the choices he made in it.

This is made clear when Marley makes his second point:

“It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death

It’s tempting to see this as eternal punishment by God. That man’s purpose is set forth and to work in opposition to it is hubris. But again its more than that. Marley is left unfulfilled, and his chains are the physical manifestations of regret he has in his life. Each link was an opportunity he turned away from. Because he has free-will given to him by God.

He sees the fullness of his and others existences from the other side and when he speaks of “required of every man” it is our obligation to life that I believe he is talking about.

Proofs of God have been argued about since Socrates. Thomas Aquinas and his 5 proofs, Descartes & The Cogito, Kant & Noumena. They’re almost endless. Yet we have no solid proof. And for everything, we still exist. Even solipsism cannot refute existence. For whatever reason, we have life, consciousness, morality, reasoning, and we bear the burden of existence. We have life. Nature can take it just as freely as we can do ourselves. And yet we largely don’t as a species.

Since we are all given it equally, with our primitive notions of culture/gender/race/nationality etc.. (being equally nominal as they are spurious) having no actualizing effect on existence, we must have an obligation to it and ourselves. Life is all of ours and no one has more or less right to life than anyone else.

Marley could be interpreted as saying that it is every living being’s obligation to share their life with others who live. To know each other’s lives as vast and different. See from all the corners the map and let each see from yours.

Now put them in order and see that Marley is encouraging Scrooge to engage in the purpose of his life, find opportunities to maximize the life he is given by seeking life far and wide. Life being people. It’s Kantian in that life is not a means to an end, it (and those given life) are ends unto themselves.

If the requisite for forging chains is forgoing opportunities to engage with people in this life, would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself in the afterlife?

Think about it this Christmas season as you buy gifts, attend dinners, get-togethers, Friendsmas celebrations. Where are the opportunities to walk your spirit among your fellow humans? Where in lie the times you can connect with them as they are, not for reasons to something else, but as ends unto themselves?

Catch a local production of it if you can before years end, you’ll be surprised how much the intersection of truth and storytelling’s expressed in theatre, and how real it might become to you.