Jacob Marley



Jacob Marley (died 24 December, 1836) is a fictional character who appears in the Charles Dickens novel A Christmas Carol.

Relationship with Scrooge
In life, Marley was the business partner of Ebenezer Scrooge. As teenagers, both men had been apprenticed in business and met as clerks (presumably in accounting) in another business. The firm of Scrooge and Marley was a nineteenth century financial institution, probably a counting house, as Marley refers to their offices as 'our money-changing hole'. They have become successful bankers, with seats on the London Stock Exchange; they are also stockholders and directors of at least one major association, but a vast amount of their wealth has been accumulated through usurious moneylending. Scrooge is described as Marley's "sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner". He has been dead seven years by the time the story begins.

The Haunting of Ebenezer Scrooge
Jacob Marley preys upon Scrooge's mind in a variety of different ways. First, his face appears in place of Scrooge's door-knocker as Scrooge approaches his lodgings; secondly, Scrooge gets the impression of a "locomotive hearse" ascending the stairs before him as he climbs; thirdly by making his face appear to engulf the whole design of the fireplace in Scrooge's bedroom; next by making every bell in the house ring of its own accord and then, most famously, by appearing before Scrooge in the form of a ghost himself.

The ghost maintains the same voice, hairstyle and sense of dress that he had in life, but is completely transparent, wearing a handkerchief tied about his jaws, and "captive, bound and double-ironed" with chains which are described as "long, and wound about him like a tail; it was made... of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel." He often, in moments of great despair or impatience at Scrooge's skepticism, flings these upon the ground before him and almost induces his former partner "into a swoon". He explains that it is the chain he subconsciously built himself in life, as a result of his extortionate behaviour. The ghost is also described as being provided with "an infernal atmosphere of its own... its hair and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven". He despairs at his inability to ever find happiness in the mortal world or the next. As he spent his life on this earth obsessing over money and mistreating the poor and wretched to fill his pocket, Marley is damned to walk the earth for all eternity, never to find rest or peace.

At first Scrooge does not believe that Marley's ghost is real, and a mere figment of his imagination. When the spectre asks, "Why do you doubt your senses?" Scrooge scoffs that "...a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!" Later, more pointedly he says, "Humbug, I tell you! Humbug!" Marley's only reply is a spine-chilling howl that brings Scrooge to his knees, begging for mercy. Satisfied, after explaining his situation and the reasons for it, Marley delivers his message of the three hauntings that will help redeem Scrooge of the same punishment, he then flies out of the window in the company of other restless souls, all of them chained in a similar manner to himself, and all of them suffering the same incessant torture.

Analysis
The life and afterlife of Jacob Marley is not detailed in A Christmas Carol. The reader has no idea exactly how Marley escaped with an arrangement for Scrooge's redemption. Even he himself appears uncertain as to how he is visible to Scrooge "on this night", when he has followed him, invisible, on "many and many a day". One interpretation has been offered in the prequel novel, Marley's Ghost, (2000) by Mark Hazard Osmun, an imagining of Marley's life and subsequent sacrifice on behalf of his former partner.

However, various adaptations of A Christmas Carol have made various differences to Marley. In A Christmas Carol, for example, his birth-date is given as 1785, and in Mickey's Christmas Carol, it is said that Marley left very little in the way of a fortune, so he was instead buried at sea. In that same film, he was implied to be a ruthless criminal as well, "robbing the widows and swindling the poor", all in the same day and his punishment of being "forced to carry his heavy chains for eternity" was a result of it.

Trivia

 * In 1963, President John F. Kennedy quoted Marley in his speech about businesses in America, saying "Humanity was my business".
 * In 1993, Aimee Mann released a song called "Jacob Marley's Chain" on her album Whatever.
 * Marley's grave - covered in chains - can be briefly seen in one scene from the 1994 film .
 * In the 1998 episode of Sports Night entitled "Thespis", Jacob Marley is referenced and compared to Thespis of ancient Greece, when the show's production appears to be haunted by the ghost.
 * In 2008, Nightwish's single, "Bye Bye Beautiful", a reference to Jacob's ghost is made due to the problems that lead the band to fire their former singer, Tarja Turunen.
 * Marley's Ghost is the name of a Northern California band extant since the early 1990s whose diverse musical styles are principally focused on bluegrass, country, and folk.
 * Jacob Marley's Ghost is an esoteric music group from the late 1990s which originated in Eugene, Oregon. Once led by Ezra Holbrook, the band now seems to be "defunct".
 * In the  episode "Exogenesis", Marcus makes reference to Marley while quoting Dickens.
 * In the short story "Adaptation", by Connie Willis, Marley's ghost appears as a stand-in for the Ghost of Christmas Past (who has become corrupted by the increasing commercialisation of Christmas and retired to Florida).
 * In the 1984 film adaptation of "A Christmas Carol", Scrooge hears Marley's ghost from a spectral hearse that is pulled by two spectral horses while returning home from working at his office.
 * In the 1999 television film adaptation of "A Christmas Carol", the film opens with a prologue of Scrooge attending Marley's funeral at a rural churchyard.