The following passage provides just one example of the highly detailed visual imagery employed throughout A Christmas Carol:
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part or its own expression.
Here, the reader is able to vicariously experience some of Scrooge's curiosity and fear. From "dismal light" to "livid color," each phrase provides an increasingly detailed picture of Marley's ghost. The hair "curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air," evokes the hair-raising experience of seeing a ghost. Although he is neither angry nor ferocious, the appearance of a once-dead man is cause for concern. And the narrator's lengthy description, rife with visual imagery, suggests a striving for accuracy in an account of a seemingly impossible occurrence. Scrooge scrutinizes Marley's ghost down to the texture of his hair because he suspects that it is not real.
Dickens uses visual and tactile imagery to give readers a perfect sense of Scrooge's old and mean character at the beginning of the novella in Stave 1:
The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
This description references frost, cold, and ice in order to emphasize the link between the cold within Scrooge's heart and his frosty exterior. It contrasts sharply with the description of Scrooge at the end of the story in Stave 5:
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.
Not only does Scrooge begin to "glow" with good intention, which suggests the warmth of a hearth or fire, but his face is also "wet" with tears. His initial frosty rime has melted and he begins to feel normal human emotions. His sobs subside when he awakens because he has accepted the spirits' messages and decided to enact their wishes.
Dickens uses visual and tactile imagery to give readers a perfect sense of Scrooge's old and mean character at the beginning of the novella in Stave 1:
The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
This description references frost, cold, and ice in order to emphasize the link between the cold within Scrooge's heart and his frosty exterior. It contrasts sharply with the description of Scrooge at the end of the story in Stave 5:
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.
Not only does Scrooge begin to "glow" with good intention, which suggests the warmth of a hearth or fire, but his face is also "wet" with tears. His initial frosty rime has melted and he begins to feel normal human emotions. His sobs subside when he awakens because he has accepted the spirits' messages and decided to enact their wishes.
