1 / 11

Exploring Scrooge's Attitude to the Poor in A Christmas Carol

In this lesson, students will analyze Dickens' language choices to understand Scrooge's attitude towards the poor in A Christmas Carol. They will also gain insight into Victorian society through discussions on payday loans, the Poor Law, and workhouses.

ldossantos
Download Presentation

Exploring Scrooge's Attitude to the Poor in A Christmas Carol

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Questions (Answer in full sentences): What is meant by the word ‘inwardly’ in paragraph 1? What do the children want? What is meant by the word lethargic in paragraph 2? Thursday, 04 October 2018 Understand and analyse attitudes to the poor.

  2. Learning Objectives By the end of the lesson… • You will explore Scrooge’s attitude to the poor through analysing Dickens’ language choices (AO1 and AO2) • You will gain some insight into Victorian society (Historical Context AO3)

  3. Starter Activity: Payday Loans discussion Think about the following: • What is a payday loan? • What groups of people are they aimed at? (think more than just ‘poor people’) • What problems are associated with payday loans? • How could payday loans relate to A Christmas Carol?

  4. Stave 1 – the charity collectors • When asked if Scrooge will give money to help the poor, he offers alternative suggestions – • Are there no prisons? • And the Union workhouses? • The Treadmill and the Poor Law? • Subheading – The treadmill • Make notes on what the treadmill was, considering what this tells us about Scrooge’s attitude to the poor who often ended up in prison • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al-30Z-aH8M

  5. Subheading - The Poor Law The Poor Law was the way that the poor were helped in 1815. The law said that each local council had to look after its own poor. If you were unable to work then you were given some money to help you survive, a bit like today’s benefits. However, the cost of the Poor Law was increasing every year. By 1830 it cost about £7 million and criticism of the law was increasing. Discuss: What problems in society do you think occurred because of this?

  6. Subheading - The Workhouses Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s hardworking and underpaid assistant, represents the Victorian poor, whilst Scrooge personifies the awful attitudes many had to the poor. What is Dickens’ point of view? Can you link this to your contextual knowledge of Dickens? (AO3) In 1834 thePoor Law Amendment Act was passed by Parliament. This was designed to reduce the cost of looking after the poor as it stopped money going to poor people except in exceptional circumstances. Now if poor people wanted help they had to go into a workhouseto get it. They earned their food and accommodation by doing extremely hard jobs in the workhouse. The government, terrified of encouraging lazy people, made sure that people feared the workhouse and would do anything to keep out of it. Families were split up, children were worked hard, and the food was tasteless.

  7. Stave 1 extract analysis • Task 1 – use a dictionaryto find out what the key words from this extract mean • Task 2 – if you finish Task 1 before others, begin reading the extract to yourself, considering what we learn about Scrooge’s attitude to the poor, and highlighting important words and phrases.

  8. Task: analysing Scrooge’s attitude to the poor Cold, economicallanguage: the poor are numbers on an account book to Scrooge. As the poor don’t add wealth into society, they are ‘extras’ of no use. “decrease the surplus population” Scrooge dehumanisesthe poor and separates them from the rich. Continue annotating your extract considering - What is Scrooge’s attitude to the poor?

  9. Challenge task! • CHALLENGE TASK– identify what sentence moods (imperative - command, exclamatory - exclamation, declarative - statement, interrogative - question) and words classes (verbs, adverbs, adjectivesetc) are used, considering what this tells us about Scrooge’s attitude to the poor. • E.g. When asked how much Scrooge will donate, he replies with the exclamatory ‘Nothing!’. This tells us he aggressively snapped this word at the charity workers’ request, implying his cruel and heartless attitude to helping the poor.

  10. Task: analysing Scrooge’s attitude to the poor Cold, economicallanguage: the poor are numbers on an account book to Scrooge. As the poor don’t add wealth into society, they are ‘extras’ of no use. “decrease the surplus population” Scrooge dehumanisesthe poor and separates them from the rich. Using the highlighted words/phrases from the extract and your knowledge of the Victorian era, draft a PETER paragraph that answers the following question: What is Scrooge’s attitude to the poor?

More Related