Jacob Marley
Jacob Marley is a fictional character in Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, a former business partner of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who has been dead for seven years. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited at home by Marley's ghost, who wanders the Earth entwined by heavy chains and money boxes forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a single chance to avoid the same fate: he will be visited by three spirits and must listen or be cursed to carry much heavier chains of his own. However, the spirits will offer a chance of redemption. Importance to the story By early 1843, Dickens had been affected by the treatment of the poor, and in particular the treatment of the children of the poor after witnessing children working in appalling conditions in a tin mine and following a visit to a ragged school. Originally intending to write a political pamphlet titled, An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child, he changed his mind and instead wrote A Christmas Carol which voiced his social concerns about poverty and injustice. The ghost of Jacob Marley in Stave One becomes a mouthpiece for part of Dickens's message regarding these. In the novella, Marley and Scrooge 'were partners for I don't know how many years' and were indistinguishable, both being 'good men of business', grasping of money and unconcerned about the well-being of their 'fellow travellers to the grave'. While it appears that Marley had died without being punished in life for his lack of social responsibility and his indifference to the well-being of his fellow Man, unbeknown to Scrooge after death Marley is forced to roam the eye of the earth in Purgatory, fettered in chains, cash boxes and ledger books, desperately wanting to help the poor and needy but unable to do so. On the seventh anniversary of his death on Christmas Eve, the ghost of Jacob Marley, in his torment, appears to Scrooge in his rooms: Marley in his pig-tail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling like his pig-tail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.' Marley warns Scrooge that his own chain was as full and heavy as Marley's seven years ago, and that he has been working on it since owing to his indifference to the poor. Scrooge's chain is now ponderous and to avoid an eternity of purgatory, Scrooge must change his life and show penance; to assist him with this, Marley has interceded for Scrooge to be visited by three Spirits who will