Scrooge, a “man of business” (1), is the novel’s protagonist. He is also an antihero (a protagonist who embodies negative characteristics); the narrator describes him as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!” (2). Scrooge’s miserliness and misanthropy stem at least partly from childhood neglect, and through the intervention of the three ghosts, a contrasting side of the character emerges; he was at one time a lonely, imaginative child who had a close relationship with his little sister, but who turned towards money as a source of security and social approval. His imagination is essential to his latent ability to empathize with the Cratchits and Tiny Tim. The seed of Scrooge’s transformation is already within him.

Dickens is thought to have based Scrooge on two people. One is the economist Thomas Malthus, who proposed that the cause of poverty was surplus population (and that economic abundance inevitably leads to population growth). The other is notorious miser John Elwes. Elwes was a member of Parliament (MP) in Great Britain from 1772 through 1784. After inheriting his uncle’s fortune, Elwes became one of the wealthiest men in England, but his lifestyle did not reflect his fortune.