A Christmas Carol Mind Map (GCSE)

On Christmas Eve, Scrooge refuses his nephew Fred's invitation, turns away two charity collectors and treats his clerk Bob Cratchit harshly. The ghost of his old partner Jacob Marley appears in chains and warns that three spirits will visit.

Scrooge sees himself as a lonely boy at school, his sister Fan, Fezziwig's joyful Christmas party, and Belle ending their engagement because he has come to love money more than her.

Scrooge sees the Cratchits' poor but happy Christmas dinner and the sick Tiny Tim, then Fred's party. The spirit reveals two starving children, Ignorance and Want.

People discuss a dead man nobody mourns, and his belongings are sold off. The Cratchits grieve for Tiny Tim. Scrooge sees his own name on the grave and begs to change.

Scrooge wakes on Christmas morning a changed man. He sends a prize turkey to the Cratchits, gives to the charity collectors, joins Fred's party, raises Bob's salary and becomes a second father to Tiny Tim, who does not die.

A cold, mean and isolated moneylender who is transformed into a generous, joyful man. His change is the whole point of the story.

Scrooge's poorly paid clerk, a loving and patient family man. The Cratchits show that the poor are not to blame for their poverty.

Bob's sick youngest son. The thought of his death moves Scrooge to change, and he stands for the innocent poor children society neglects.

Scrooge's cheerful nephew, who keeps inviting him despite being refused. He shows the warmth and generosity Scrooge lacks.

Scrooge's dead business partner, punished in the afterlife for his greed. He warns Scrooge of the fate waiting for him.

The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, who show Scrooge the effects of his choices on himself and on others.

Anyone can change, even someone as cold as Scrooge. Dickens hoped his readers would change too.

The rich have a duty to help the poor. Scrooge learns that, as Marley puts it, "Mankind was my business".

The hardship of the Victorian poor, shown through the Cratchits and through Ignorance and Want.

Wealth without kindness leaves Scrooge miserable and alone. He cuts himself off from others, and pays for it.

Warmth, generosity and togetherness, set against Scrooge's isolation. The Cratchits and Fred's party show what Scrooge is missing.

The narrator, Stave 1: "Secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster." Scrooge's isolation. In the same stave he dismisses Christmas with "Bah! Humbug!"

Scrooge, Stave 1: "If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." Moments earlier he asks the charity collectors "Are there no prisons?" The Ghost of Christmas Present later throws his words back at him.

Marley, Stave 1. The chain is made of his own greed: the consequences of how he lived.

Marley, Stave 1: "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business". Social responsibility, learned too late.

The Ghost of Christmas Present, Stave 3. Two starving children who stand for society's neglect of the poor: Dickens's warning to his readers.

Scrooge, Stave 4: "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." His promise to change. In Stave 5 he wakes "as light as a feather".

The poor were sent to harsh workhouses. Scrooge's "And the Union workhouses?" shows he supports the system.

His father was imprisoned for debt, and Dickens was sent to work in a factory at 12. He knew poverty first-hand.

A government report on child labour shocked Dickens in 1843, the year he wrote and published the novella.

An economist who argued the population was growing faster than food supplies. Scrooge's "surplus population" echoes his ideas.

Christmas traditions were growing in popularity, and the novella helped shape the idea of Christmas as a time of family and generosity.

The chapters are called staves, like the verses of a song or carol, matching the title.

The story starts and ends with Scrooge at Christmas, so the contrast between his two selves shows how completely he has changed.

A chatty third-person narrator who speaks directly to the reader, making the story feel like it is being told aloud by the fire.

Cold, bleak, foggy weather in Stave 1 reflects Scrooge; clear, bright weather on Christmas morning in Stave 5 reflects his change.

The ghosts, and Ignorance and Want, stand for ideas, which makes the novella a moral lesson as well as a ghost story.