Explore how Dickens presents the character of Scrooge in Stave 1

Scrooge is presented as an old miser who cares only about his business and making money. He lives isolated from social circles and is critical of charity. He treats his employees, like Bob Cratchet, with scorn.

The opening establishes not just the friendship between Marley and Scrooge but also Scrooge's fundamental aloneness—it's not just that they are friends; they are each other's only friends. The insistence on Marley's dead-ness and reference to Hamlet, one of the most well-known ghost stories of the time, hints that Marley is about to be un-dead and in so doing significantly change Scrooge's life, just as Old Hamlet's appearance changed Hamlet's.