Bob Cratchit is an accountant who works for Scrooge, and he is a kind and loving family man. Scrooge generally mistreats Cratchit, but the accountant bears his employer no ill will because he believes that Scrooge's life is lonely. The greatest sorrow in Cratchit's life is that his young son, Tiny Tim, is very ill. Because Bob's salary is so meagre, the family cannot afford treatment for Tim. When Scrooge sees their situation during one of the ghostly visitations, he realizes that he must be more generous to his employee and help save Tiny Tim.
Tiny Tim is Bob Cratchit's youngest son. He is a lame boy with a cheerful nature despite his ailments. At the Christmas church service, Tim hopes that people will look at his ailment and be reminded of how Christ healed the lame and blind. Tiny Tim's guileless nature impresses Scrooge, and when he learns from the Ghost of Christmas Present that Tiny Tim will die soon, Scrooge is saddened. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come also shows the Cratchit house without Tiny Tim, and the vision is a sad one. Scrooge is touched by the gentleness of the little boy and wishes to prevent this fate from occurring. Families were very important in Victorian times, and tended to be quite large. Dickens had a large family and was one of eight children. Despite being relatively well-off, Dickens saw himself as a “very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy", and at the age of 12 his father was sent to a debtors prison and Dickens had to work to help support his family. Because of this, Dickens felt that he could empathise with all families, and sought to highlight the plight of struggling families in much of his writing. Scrooge's attitude to family
The Cratchit family
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