Thread by @GCSE_Macbeth

I love the opening sentence of A Christmas Carol:

"Marley was dead: to begin with."

Let's dig into it...

1/

Marley was dead to begin with. But obviously Dickens is foreshadowing his return in spectral form. Dickens knew the outlines of good storytelling. You don't say a character is dead unless you're going to have his ghost turn up a few pages later...

2/

So Marley is dead "to begin with" in the sense that Marley's death, and his return as a ghost, marks the "beginning" of the story of A Christmas Carol.

3/

We don't learn much about the life of Marley himself beyond his partnership with Scrooge. Perhaps he was always spiritually "dead" -- a misanthropic, ignorant hoarder like Scrooge becomes.

The important contrast here would be that Scrooge was not "dead to begin with".

4/

Scrooge had a childhood with perhaps few friends, but certainly curiosity, imagination and the capacity for merriment and joy, as seen in the flashback sequences.

5/

Marley's spiritual death condemns him to a long afterlife, seeing the people he could help but is now unable to. His death, wrapped in chains of wealth, is a continuation of his life. In this sense, he was already dead to begin with.

6/

But when Marley visits Scrooge, he marks a new beginning, as Scrooge is able to learn the lessons of generosity and compassion. So Marley's death "begins" this new phase of Scrooge's life.

7/

In one way, we can say that Marley was kept alive by Scrooge, who never took his name down from the business and was accustomed to being mistaken for Marley.

I love how ambiguous that is.

8/

Was Scrooge so unmoved by Marley's death that he never cared about changing the sign? Or was he (unconsciously?) preserving the life of his only companion in the world?

9/

To live as Marley did is a type of living death. But to distance himself from Marley might be to truly let him die, and maybe Scrooge can't do that.

10/

Dickens is also playing with Christian iconography in Marley.

Hey, is there anyone in the Bible you can think of who returns from death so that others might be forgiven their sins?

So it's sort of fitting that A Christmas Carol begins with a little nod to Jesus.

11/

I think the fact of Scrooge's story beginning not with Scrooge, but with Marley, suggests we should seek the beginning of Scrooge's story -- his emotional state now, his future change -- in Marley's death.

Not bad for six words!

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