How is Bob Cratchit presented in A Christmas Carol?

How does Bob Cratchit's role develop across the novella?

A Christmas Carol is split into five chapters called staves, the word for the verses of a song. Bob Cratchit, Scrooge's clerk, is there in the first stave and the last, and Dickens uses him as a measuring stick: how Scrooge treats Bob shows how far Scrooge has travelled.

In Stave 1 Bob works in a freezing office and is grudged a single day off for Christmas. Yet on his way home he slides on the ice at Cornhill "twenty times", like one of the boys, so we know his spirit is not crushed. In Stave 3 we meet the family: Mrs Cratchit; Martha, an apprentice at a milliner's (a hat-maker's shop); Peter; Belinda; two younger children; and Tiny Tim, who walks with a crutch. Their Christmas dinner is small but joyful, and Bob insists on drinking to Scrooge's health.

Stave 4 shows the same family in a possible future, grieving for Tiny Tim. The house is quiet, and Bob breaks down when he talks about the boy. In Stave 5 Scrooge plays a joke, pretending to be angry that Bob is late on the morning after Christmas, then raises his salary and promises to help the family. Tiny Tim, we learn, "did NOT die", and Scrooge becomes "a second father" to him.

Which moments show the Cratchits most clearly?

Stave 1, the office. Bob works in "a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank", and his fire is "so very much smaller that it looked like one coal". A tank holds water or fish, not a person, so the metaphor (describing one thing as if it were another) shows how Scrooge sees his clerk: as something to be stored, not cared for. The single coal turns warmth into a measure of meanness.

Stave 3, the Christmas dinner. Dickens lists what the family lacks: "They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed", their shoes let in water and their clothes are thin. Then the passage turns, and they are "happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time". The structure moves the reader from pity to admiration. When Bob raises his glass to "the Founder of the Feast", the title is ironic (it says the opposite of the truth), because Scrooge pays Bob so little. Mrs Cratchit calls Scrooge an "odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man", saying aloud what the reader is thinking.

Stave 3, Tiny Tim. His blessing, "God bless us every one!", leaves nobody out. When Scrooge asks whether Tim will live, the Ghost describes "a vacant seat" and "a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved". The empty seat and the kept crutch make a death feel real before it happens. This is pathos, writing that makes the reader feel pity, and it is aimed at Scrooge as much as at us.

Stave 4, grief. "My little, little child!" cries Bob. The repetition breaks the brave, cheerful voice he has used all through the book. It shows the reader, and Scrooge, what the "surplus population" really means: somebody's child.

What context matters for the Cratchits?

Context counts towards AO3, the assessment objective about the time a text was written. Use it to explain why Dickens built the Cratchits the way he did.

Wages and the workhouse. Bob earns fifteen shillings a week (Dickens jokes that he pockets "fifteen copies of his Christian name", because "bob" was slang for a shilling). A family living that close to the edge had little protection. Under the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, help for poor people who could work was meant to come through the workhouse, where conditions were made deliberately harsh and families were split up. That is the threat hanging over households like the Cratchits, and the reason Scrooge's "Are there no prisons?" sounds so heartless.

Dickens's childhood. When Dickens was 12, his father was imprisoned for debt, and Charles was sent to work in a blacking factory, labelling pots of boot polish. He knew how quickly a family could fall, and it is easy to see that knowledge behind the Cratchits' fragile happiness.

Malthus. Thomas Malthus argued in 1798 that population grows faster than food, and his ideas were used to claim that helping the poor only made things worse. Scrooge's talk of "surplus population" echoes this. In Stave 3 the Ghost throws it back at him over Tiny Tim: if the boy is going to die, "he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population". Tiny Tim is Dickens's answer to Malthus, because the surplus has a name.

What might an exam question ask about the Cratchits?

Section B of AQA's Paper 1 asks one question on your 19th-century novel. You analyse a printed extract, then widen out to the whole novel, for 30 marks, with no marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar in this section. A question might focus on the Cratchits directly, or on a theme such as poverty or family where they are your best evidence.

Two focuses to practise: how Dickens presents family life, starting with the Christmas dinner in Stave 3; and how Dickens uses Tiny Tim to change Scrooge's attitude to the poor.

Here is a model paragraph on the first focus:

Dickens uses the Cratchits to show that poverty is not a moral failing. He lists everything the family lacks, "They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed", before turning to what they have: they are "happy, grateful, pleased with one another". The passage moves the reader from pity to admiration. Tiny Tim sharpens the point. When the Ghost describes "a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved", the empty object makes a possible death feel real, and "carefully" shows how loved the boy is. Scrooge, who once talked of the "surplus population", is forced to see that the surplus has a name and a family.

Key quotations to learn

Six short quotations that follow Bob and his family from the first stave to the last:

• "a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank" (Stave 1): Bob's workplace, described as a container rather than a room.
• "happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time" (Stave 3): poor in money, rich in love.
• "the Founder of the Feast" (Stave 3): Bob's loyal toast, which is also ironic.
• "God bless us every one!" (Stave 3): Tiny Tim's blessing includes everyone, even Scrooge.
• "My little, little child!" (Stave 4): the repetition breaks Bob's brave face.
• "a second father" (Stave 5): what Scrooge becomes to Tiny Tim, the clearest sign of his change.